Inspired by overgrown mountain walking trails, this is a playful representative of dread from "what hangs over your head." Clay's desire to find safety in uncertainty is shown in the combination of the familiar quilt embrace with the strangeness of hand-tree limbs.

“The trees budded prematurely, and at night they swayed ominously... when there was no wind...Strangeness had come into everything growing now. Yet-Familiarity had dulled the people there." - The Color Out of Space by H.P. Lovecraft, 1927

"But, of course, it wasn't an arm. Who ever heard of an arm as tall as a tree? I don't know what made me compare it to an arm; maybe I imagined it." - The Space Eaters by Frank Belknap Long,1928