Not the greatest story, but these passages about Church architecture left me intrigued, and I just had to share.  Interesting how the word Gothic has connotations with horror and the strange, and Machen takes advantage of that in this story.

Via Arthurian Miscellany

“The church of Llantrisant is a typical example of a Welsh parish church,
before the evil and horrible period of ” restoration.”
This lower world
is a palace of lies, and of all foolish lies there is none more insane than a
certain vague fable about the mediæval freemasons, a fable which somehow imposed
itself upon the cold intellect of Hallam the historian. The story is, in brief,
that throughout the Gothic period, at any rate, the art and craft of church
building were executed by wandering guilds of
“free-

[58]

masons,” possessed of various secrets of building
and adornment, which they employed wherever they went. If this nonsense were
true, the Gothic of Cologne would be as the Gothic of Colne, and the Gothic of
Arles like to the Gothic of Abingdon. It is so grotesquely untrue that almost
every county, let alone every country, has its distinctive style in Gothic
architecture. Arfon is in the west of Wales; its churches have marks and
features which distinguish them from the churches in the east of
Wales.
The Llantrisant church has that primitive division between nave
and chancel which only very foolish people decline to recognise as equivalent to
the Oriental iconostasis and as the origin of the Western rood-screen. A solid
wall divided the church into two portions; in the centre was a narrow opening
with a rounded arch, through which those who sat towards the middle of the
church could see the small, red-carpeted altar and the three roughly shaped
lancet windows above it.”

…

“He said that while under the influence of the drug he had but to shut his eyes,
and immediately before him there would rise incredible Gothic cathedrals, of
such majesty and splendour and glory that no heart
had

[63]

ever conceived. They seemed to surge from the depths
to the very heights of heaven, their spires swayed amongst the clouds and the
stars, they were fretted with admirable imagery. And as he gazed, he would
presently become aware that all the stones were living stones, that they were
quickening and palpitating, and then that they were glowing jewels, say,
emeralds, sapphires, rubies, opals, but of hues that the mortal eye had never
seen.”

Parish of Llantrisant

ETA: Added a word.