The Colour Out of Space

A Blazing Meteor. An Unearthly Hue. A Sickness That Withered the Earth. Deep in the hills west of Arkham, Massachusetts, lies a blasted heath where nothing grows, and the water tastes of ash. Long before the valley was drowned to build a reservoir, a mysterious meteorite crashed into the rural farmland of the Nahum Gardner family. Scientists from Miskatonic University are baffled by the rock, which defies the laws of chemistry, refuses to cool, and glows with a strange, incandescent hue that exists nowhere on the human spectrum. But the true nightmare begins when the meteor dissolves into the soil. Soon, a subtle, alien corruption infects the entire farm. The crops grow abnormally large but taste like poison; the farm animals mutate into grotesque, silent monstrosities; and the local vegetation begins to glow softly in the dark. Caught in the center of this cosmic infection, the Gardner family undergoes a terrifying, claustrophobic decay of body and mind, harvested by an invisible, indifferent force that feeds on the very essence of life. Experience what H.P. Lovecraft himself considered his finest and most terrifying short story.