One of eight quartets from G. W. Thomas' The Book of the Black Sun, a collection of Cthulhu Mythos horror fiction. Each quartet is made up of a micro fiction piece of 100 words or less, a flash story 300-500 words, a short story of around 2000 and a longer one of 3000-5000 words. This one features "The Spine", "Whipping Boy", "The Man Who Would be King" and "If You Go Down To the Woods Today...". James Ambuehl wrote: "There Was An Old Lady" is a strange piece, owing an obvious, if unexpected debt, to Mother Goose nursery rhymes, while "The Man Who Would Be King" follows in the footsteps of the Maine Man — successfully wedding King's themes to the Master, HPL's. Yet the WAY they emulate their models, especially in the former, is ingenious!