Algernon Blackwood 
A Prisoner in Fairyland 

In the train, even before St. John’s was passed, a touch of inevitable reaction had set in, and Rogers asked himself why he was going. For a sentimental journey was hardly in his line, it seemed. But no satisfactory answer was forthcoming — none, at least, that a Board or a Shareholders’ Meeting would have considered satisfactory. The old vicar spoke to him strangely. ‘We’ve not forgotten you as you’ve forgotten us, ‘ he said. ‘And the place, though empty now for years, has not forgotten you either, I’ll be bound.’ Rogers brushed it off. Just silliness — that was all it was. But after St. John’s the conductor shouted, ‘Take your seats! Take your seats! The Starlight Express is off to Fairyland! Show your tickets! Show your tickets!’ And then the forgotten mystery of his childhood came back to him. . . .

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Algernon Henry Blackwood, Cbe (14 March 1869 – 10 December 1951) was an English short story writer and novelist, one of the most prolific writers of ghost stories in the history of the genre. He was also a journalist and a broadcasting narrator. S. T. Joshi has stated that ‘his work is more consistently meritorious than any weird writer’s except Dunsany’s’ and that his short story collection Incredible Adventures (1914) ‘may be the premier weird collection of this or any other century’.