(EDITOR'S NOTE: When A. Merritt passed away in 1943, he left several unfinished projects on his desk. Two of these literary fragments proved to be the opening chapters of novels. As a service to the great legion of Merritt readers, the editor of this volume is pleased to include these short fragmentary works here. It is believed that “The White Road” was to have been a novel based on the theme of “Thru the Dragon Glass,” and “When Old Gods Wake,” which, immediately follows this in this book, was to be a sequel to his novel “The Face in the Abyss.” Tantalisingly incomplete, we think they show even in their few pages the same delicate Merritt touch that characterizes his best work. ~D. A. W.)
CHAPTER I. GATE OF THE WHITE ROAD

DAVID CORFAX laid down the last torn sheet of the stained old parchment with a wonder that had grown steadily while he read. What he had read was incredible, but the true incredibility lay in that it had been written. Therein was the. heart of his wonder and the indefinable terror of it. For what the writing dealt with was — the White Road!

All his life he had known the White Road. You saw it first as a slit, a hair-line of white light, just the width of your eyes and somewhere, it seemed behind them — somewhere between your brain and your eyes, in your own head. In childhood, it had been after you had gone to bed; sometimes as soon as your lids closed, sometimes when you were dropping off to sleep. Later it might come in broad daylight, while you sat thinking or reading. But at those times you never got far on the White Road.

The laws of this world not those of yours.

All his life he had known the White Road; in all his life he had spoken of it only to three persons. Two of these were dead; the third had been a child whom he had not seen for years and who should long ago have forgotten. Yet it had been she who had sent him the parchment. And out of it had come a voice silent four hundred years, and speaking of the White Road as one who had been a pilgrim upon it.

How young he had been when first he saw the White Road, David Corfax could not tell. But it was as real to him as was this old house in which he sat, the sun of a September afternoon streaming through the window upon this yellowed manuscript which told him that the White Road was no dream — or if a dream then not his alone.

And there had been that enigmatic postscript of Deborah's: “I too have seen the White Road!”

Was it real after all? Whether real or not, it had its mechanics, unchanging, unchangeable. First there was the humming, not heard but felt, a vibration along every nerve, in every cell. Then the slit, the hair-line of white light.

Then the slit would open — half an inch, an inch. And then the White Road would begin to unroll. You could see straight ahead of you, but that was all. It was as though you stood a little distance back of the slit.

In a sort of black box that moved smoothly along the road. And yet you seemed to be out on the road, too. Sometimes the sides would sweep past swiftly, as though you were galloping on some effortlessly moving horse; sometimes slowly as though you were walking. But once the road began to unroll you never stopped. And you never looked back, that is until you learned that looking back meant journey's end. When you stopped, the slit went out — like a lig............