"Canavan's Back Yard" (1958)

Joseph Payne Brennan's story is a fairy woods variation that works pretty well, predicated on a scary witch's curse, one Goodie Larkins from the witch-burning days of Salem, Massachusetts. This story is set in Connecticut but it's all New England, yes? First this backyard fascinates you, changing moods and altering perception almost like a psychedelic drug. It's just an ugly tangle of overgrown grass and brambles but both Canavan and the first-person narrator are caught gazing at it missing in action for lengths of time. When you go out to explore it you get lost, of course. Here it reminded me quite a bit of Algernon Blackwood's anti-Euclidean patch of woods in the story "Ancient Lights." "Canavan's Back Yard" is ludicrously tagged on ISFDB as a werewolf story because some sort of semi-visible ravening beast seems to be back there. Also, if you linger back there too long you apparently become a beast. These are nice details but not so necessary. My favorite part is the fascination. Brennan has a nice way of describing the uncanny shifts in perception. It starts with an overwhelming wave of emotional desolation, a really great detail, and then: "After I had stood looking out at it for a few minutes, I experienced the odd sensation that its perspectives were subtly altering.... I became convinced that it continued for an interminable distance and that if I entered it, I might walk for miles and miles before I came to the end." A backyard in a tract home in New Haven, Connecticut! The story is simple and straightforward. Canavan is a secondhand book dealer who emigrated from London and set up shop in a rental home on the outskirts of the city. The first-person narrator is his friend and neighbor who drops by frequently. After a time, he starts finding Canavan standing at a window looking out at the backyard and then it starts getting hard to get his attention. Gradually the focus of the story moves from the window of the house into the backyard and all the things that happen there. It's totally ridiculous but it's in a tradition and it's pulled off with a straight face, with some of the psychic and physical dislocations of The Blair Witch Project. I love that it is set in Connecticut. Careful that you don't ever get crosswise of Goodie Larkins.

When Evil Wakes, ed. August Derleth (out of print)
Story not available online.