The Croquet Player
by H. G. Wells
This allegorical satire about a man fleeing his evil dreams was written under the influence of the Spanish Civil War. The croquette player sips vermouth comfortably while listening to a strange and frightening haunted story of the countryside. The modern ghost story of Cainsmarsh, a remote English village of Wells. Dark events surprise his people. A frightened farmer kills a railing. Family pets are slaughtered to death. Couples in love turn to each other with a vicious anger. People are suspicious of every step each other takes. Children come to school with grades on them. One observer thinks that evil is scattered in the swamp, invading the consciousness of the peasants and spreading. A good-natured, expressive, and somewhat pampered croquette tells the strange story of Cainsmarsh, and his apocalypse, his plight appears as if his evil situation was the beginning of the end of civilization.
