Arthur Machen

In the fog-bound streets of late-Victorian London, three strangers spin tales to anyone who will listen - each hunting a vanished young man with spectacles and a peculiar gold coin. But their stories twist into something far stranger: whispered cults beneath the hills, a doctor's monstrous experiments, a town haunted by survivals older than Rome. As the narratives interlock and devour one another, the listener begins to suspect that every storyteller is a liar, every victim a mask, and the truth - when it arrives - wears a face no human should ever see.