Synopsis

You decide to take a stroll in the pre-dawn light. The air is moist and still. There is a cool morning fog. The dog is behaving himself. You've had a rough week, but out here, all is right with the world. The park benches look faint across the field, on the other side of the park. As you near them, you notice someone sitting on one of them, alone. An old man. You're certain he wasn't there - you must have missed him somehow, in the fog. He looks friendly enough - the dog doesn't seem to mind him. He beckons you over, to sit down. He looks lonely... well, you have a free morning. Why not cheer the old boy up a bit and have a little chat? It might cheer you up too. After all, there's no harm in it, is there?

COLD COMMONS - an anthology of twenty-four Weird Tales by Lewis L. Mason, where the mundane becomes malevolent. Nothing is normal. Nothing is safe.

"There are the ordinary common objects - trees, houses, furniture, clocks and tables, kitchen appliances, cutlery, locations, and everything else. Just ordinary and plain; inanimate and utilitarian. The majority of things in the world, one would hope. But then there are the other locations, the other objects, alike in form and appearance - but they're not like the ordinary things; identifiable but not identical in the ordinary sense. They're different to the normal objects, you see... They're cold. Cold and dead. And full of malice. I call the first things the common things. The natural things. But I call the second lot cold commons. Because, believe me friend, they are cold."