In 1927, a surveyor examining a site for a new reservoir arrives at the bottom of a desolate valley in rural Massachusetts... a place spoken of in fear, even by the inhabitants of witch-haunted Arkham - for in the past, they say, there were ''strange days'' there. The surrounding landscape is weirdly tangled and overgrown, but at the very center of the isolation are five acres where nothing lives and nothing remains, but a fine gray ash unstirred by the wind. What turned this farmland into a sterile, blasted heath? It happened long ago, the visitor learns from aged survivor Ammi Pierce, when in 1882 a visitor fell out of a clear blue sky, trailing smoke like a dragon. Soon scientists from Miskatonic University arrived at Nahum Gardner''s farm, where the meteorite landed - if indeed it was a meteorite, for the strangely plastic object refused to cool after its descent, seemed to gradually shrink, and in the laboratory, samples of it faded away slowly into nothingness. But not before revealing under analysis strange, shining radiance, unlike any known element of the spectrum. What had been a mystery to the professors gradually becomes a horror for the Gardner family as first, bizarre lightning disintegrates what remains of the cosmic visitor, and then their crops begin to come in strangely fruits big and bountiful, but bitter and repugnant to eat. Then the unnatural blight spreads to the animals... and finally, to the minds and bodies of the Gardners twisted by the colour out of space.