An ancient evil. A modern city. The line between sanity and cosmic horror is about to break.
The normally quiet, industrial London neighborhood of Clerkenwell becomes the focal point of a baffling and terrifying transformation. The story opens with a disquieting account of a bizarre, sickly change coming over the people and the environment--a contagion of decay that seems to affect more than just the physical world.
As a skeptical narrator investigates the source of the corruption, he begins to uncover the traces of something far older and more sinister than any plague or ordinary crime. He finds clues hinting at the survival of a primordial, pagan influence buried deep beneath the streets of the capital, a remnant of a non-human reality that is now violently surging upward.
Arthur Machen, the master of subtle, atmospheric horror, crafts a deeply unsettling urban legend. Strange Occurrence in Clerkenwell ;is a chilling descent into the idea that our modern world is built directly atop a realm of pure, alien terror, where a sudden exposure to the unthinkable can shatter the mind and corrupt the soul.
Step into the heart of London and witness the terrifying rebirth of the archaic and the obscene.