The Terrible Old Man

Three robbers decide that the ancient man who lives alone on Water Street in Kingsport, a former sea captain with no visible kin and rumoured gold, will be easy work. He keeps bottles with little lead pendulums inside, and speaks to them by name, names of the shipmates of his long vanished youth. The thieves go in. Only the old man is seen again.

What is found of the others is best left to the bottles. A very short, very cold tale, it is less a plot than a warning, that the quiet old thing the strong intend to prey on may have outlived far worse than them. The Archive returns to him twice, in the Miskatonic swing and again in the Arkham blues 'Lead Bottles'.