title: Stranger: Dark Tales of Eerie Encounters
author: Michele Slung
description: Michele Slung, an accomplished editor whose past books include I Shudder at Your Touch and Murder &amp; Other Acts of Literature, has selected stories that muse on the matter of unfamiliar faces from eight decades of creepy fiction in Stranger: Dark Tales of Eerie Encounters. In addition to the usual suspects Ray Bradbury, H.P. Lovecraft, even Patricia Highsmith there are pleasant (and very literary) surprises: contributions from Shirley Jackson, Mark Helprin and Edith Wharton. <br />Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
zlib_text: _**The Last Days of Shandakor**_
  
  _**Leigh Brackett**_
  
   **Startling Stories**
  
  _**April, 1952**_
  
   **I**
  
  He came alone into the wineshop, wrapped in a dark red cloak, with the cowl
  drawn over his head. He stood for a moment by the doorway and one of the slim
  dark predatory women who live in those places went to him, with a silvery
  chiming from the little bells that were almost all she wore.
  
  I saw her smile up at him. And then, suddenly, the smile became fixed and
  something happened to her eyes. She was no longer looking at the cloaked man
  but through him. In the oddest fashion—it was as though he had become
  invisible.
  
  She went by him. Whether she passed some word along or not I couldn't tell but
  an empty space widened around the stranger. And no one looked at him. They did
  not avoid looking at him. They simply refused to see him.
  
  He began to walk slowly across the crowded room. He was very tall and he moved
  with a fluid, powerful grace that was beautiful to watch. People drifted o