The correspondence elements of this story made it feel a lot like 'The Whisperer in Darkness' to me, although with a more traditional occultist conspiracy rather than an extraterrestrial alien one. The 'surprise' at the end (which I saw coming, but still enjoyed) was also similar, although without the retrospective delay used in 'Whisperer.' (Makeup falling off = discarded 'mask') I didn't much care for J.K.
Jun 20, 2013 'Sticks' is a short story written by Karl Edward Wagner that was first published in March 1974 in a monthly horror / fantasy magazine called 'Whispers.' 'Sticks' is a short story written by Karl Edward Wagner that was first published in March 1974 in a monthly horror / fantasy magazine called 'Whispers.' Harry Potter And The Half Blood Prince Crack.
Potter's illustration for this story in the AH: I couldn't even figure out who the person pictured was supposed to be. Here are some snippets from Coye's correspondence as he remembered his trip to the Mann Brook area of New York and what he found there: There were all sorts of strange contraptions. Sticks from trees and bits of board nailed and wired together in a fantastic array. I cannot describe them adequately so will have to draw pictures. Sometimes these structures were stuck in a pile of stones or a stone wall – sometimes they were nailed in trees. One I remember could have been a child’s tree-house.
It had a definite third dimension, except it was so abstract and useless it was just a conglomeration of sticks and wire woven into the fabric of tree branches. Roughly two miles from my starting point I came upon the ruins of a house. It was fast falling into the ground; nearly swallowed up by the undergrowth and weeds and rampant lilac bushes but you could see what had once been a lawn and there were shade trees. The lawn and the trees and even the house were covered with these structures. I went inside and on the walls in some of the rooms were drawings, in what appeared to be charcoal, of these weird, abstract concoctions.
The drawings were applied directly to the walls, that is, right on the wall paper and plaster. Some of them covered a whole wall; huge, fantastic murals. Shortly after his return home, his signature 'sticks' began showing up in his artwork: Later on, in 1962-63, Coye was urged to try to locate the Mann Brook site by a folklore expert named Andrew Rothman (disguised as Strefoi, in the story), who was trying to make a NY connection with the “’New Light’ cult, led by Shadrach Ireland in the Harvard area, ca. Apparently Rothman was looking for megaliths and other strange man-made structures in the area as evidence.
Coye was eventually able to locate the site, but due to what seemed to be flash flooding and other abuse from the elements, all of the structures and evidence had vanished. Here is a current view of the Mann Brook area in Google Maps.