The House on the Borderland

The House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson. What were they those Beast- gods and the others? At frst they had appeared to me just sculptured Monsters placed indiscriminately among the inaccessible peaks and precipices of the surrounding mountains. Now as I scrutinised them with greater intentness my mind began to reach out to fresh conclusions. There was something about them an indescribable sort of silent vitality that suggested to my broadening consciousness a state of life-in-death--a something that was by no means life as we understand it; but rather an inhuman form of existence that well might be likened to a deathless trance--a condition in which it was possible to imagine their continuing eternally. 'Immortal!' the word rose in my thoughts unbidden; and straightway I grew to wondering whether this might be the immortality of the gods.