Et in Sempiternum Pereant by Charles Williams

Lord Arglay, retired Chief Justice and seeker of forgotten knowledge, sets out for a quiet scholarly errand in the English countryside—only to find the landscape subtly warped, time grown strangely dense, and a chimney smoking where no fire burns. Drawn by a narrow path to a door that seems to wait for him alone, he enters a place where memory thickens, boundaries blur, and the air presses with the weight of something ancient and unyielding. Each step leads him deeper into a mystery that threatens not just understanding, but escape itself.

First published in The London Mercury, December 1935.


Charles Williams (1886–1945) was a British novelist, poet, and critic associated with the Inklings.
He wrote metaphysical thrillers—War in Heaven, Descent into Hell, All Hallows’ Eve—exploring theology, myth, and the supernatural.