As for Red Hook--it is always the same. Suydam came and went; a
terror gathered and faded; but the evil spirit of darkness and
squalor broods on amongst the mongrels in the old brick houses; and
prowling bands still parade on unknown errands past windows where
lights and twisted faces unaccountably appear and disappear. Age-old
horror is a hydra with a thousand heads, and the cults of darkness
are rooted in blasphemies deeper than the well of Democritus. The
soul of the beast is omnipresent and triumphant, and Red Hook's
legions of blear-eyed, pockmarked youths still chant and curse and
howl as they file from abyss to abyss, none knows whence or whither,
pushed on by blind laws of biology which they may never understand. As of old more people enter Red Hook than leave it on the landward
side, and there are already rumors of new canals running underground
to certain centers of traffic in liquor and less mentionable things. The dance-hall church is now mostly a dance-hall, and queer faces
have appeared at night at the windows. Lately a policeman expressed
the belief that the filled-up crypt has been dug out again, and for
no simply explainable purpose. Who are we to combat poisons older
than history and mankind? Apes danced in Asia to those horrors, and
the cancer lurks secure and spreading where furtiveness hides in rows
of decaying brick. Malone does not shudder without cause--for only the other day an
officer overheard a swarthy squinting hag teaching a small child some
whispering patois in the shadow of an areaway. He listened, and
thought it very strange when he heard her repeat over and over again:

"O friend and companion of night thou who rejoicest in the baying of
dogs and spilt blood, who wanderest in the midst of shades among the
tombs, who longest for blood and bringest terror to mortals, Gorgo,