
A rainy summer afternoon finds a young man traveling with his brother Tristan and Tristan's fiancée Alice across a wide, wind‑blown field. As thunder rolls overhead, they scramble for shelter beneath a solitary oak, exchanging banter that hints at both camaraderie and unease. The narrator hesitates, feeling an inexplicable repulsion toward the tree, while the storm hammers them with cold sheets of rain.
Suddenly a pulsating, multicolored sphere drifts into view, hovering just above the grass and casting eerie, shifting lights on the drenched faces around it. Tristan, drawn by curiosity, reaches out, only for the orb to explode in a blinding flash that sends a shockwave through the field. When the light fades, the three survivors find Tristan grotesquely immobilized—his body twisted and pinned upside‑down on a branch, as if the sky itself had turned him inside out.
Language
en
Duration
~44 minutes (42K characters)
Publisher of text edition
Project Gutenberg
Credits
Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Greg Weeks, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
Release date
2009-07-12
Rights
Public domain in the USA.
Subjects
1891–1988
Best known today for the novel Disowned, this Montana-born writer also played a notable role in American theosophical circles. His career ranged from fiction to long-running editorial work, giving his writing an unusual mix of storytelling and serious reflection.
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