Collier was a British writer in Hollywood whose stories are often saucy and somewhat smart-arsed. This particular tale, however, is considered a classic of weird fiction, and deservedly so.

A poet, struggling for money, decides to move into a New York department store. After all, it’s got everything a man needs to live a comfortable life. Only it turns out he’s not the first person to have had this idea and, after dark, sinister squatters emerge from their hiding places:

“I looked, and it was empty. I looked, and there was an old lady, clambering out from behind the monstrous clock. There were three girls, elderly ingenues, incredibly emaciated, simpering at the entrance of the perfumery. Their hair was a fine floss, pale as gossamer. Equally brittle and colorless was a man with the appearance of a colonel of southern extraction, who stood regarding me while he caressed moustachios that would have done credit to a crystal shrimp. A chintzy woman, possibly of literary tastes, swam forward from the curtains and drapes.”

It’s not just this store, either. Every shop in New York has its night creatures, including delicatessens and even funeral homes.

Collier walks the line between overblown gothic melodrama (Poe, Ray Russell) and wit. My one-word review on first reading the story was “Ghastly.” It’s one of those pieces of writing that feels wrong, and touched with genuine madness.

First published in 1940. Collected in Fancies and Goodnights, 1951