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Missing title to a short story that haunted me.

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06 July 2020, 08:18 AM
Hargrove, Paul B.
Missing title to a short story that haunted me.
Hello, everyone. I must appeal to your expertise because I have a very bad memory. I have forgotten the title and location of one of Ray's short stories that has haunted me.

The story is about a man who has been studying Martian texts. These texts allude to some secret place where there is a treasure or something of great importance. The man sets out in search of this place, as he believes it to be indicated by the text. He is being pursued by another man who is trying to stop him, because it is illegal to go to this place and the pursuer believes that the text does not really mean what the searcher thinks it does. In the end, the searcher walks through some portal, only to discover that he has landed in a barren wasteland from which he cannot return.

I thought this was published the Martian Chronicles but I can't seem to relocate it.

It's like a story by H.P. Lovecraft. When you first read it, it doesn't seem like much but, when you lay in your bed with the lights off at night, you swear you just heard something move in the closet. This story has that effect on me. Gives me the heebie-jeebies.

Does anyone know the title?


Hargrove, Paul B.
06 July 2020, 08:39 AM
Richard
Paul, I am not sure whether this is the story you are looking for, but check out "The Lost City of Mars". It appears in Ray's collection, I SING THE BODY ELECTRIC.