NEW YORK (AP) — In his dreams, Raymond Chandler could conjure tales as unsettling as some of his greatest novels, as if haunted by the spirits of Kafka and Edgar Allan Poe .

“Nightmare,” a brief and rarely seen sketch published this week in The Strand Magazine , finds the author of “The Long Goodbye,” “Farewell, My Lovely” and other crime fiction classics imagining himself in prison “somewhere” for a murder he does not remember committing. His cellmates include two men he knows nothing about, a pregnant woman named Elsa, and a piano in the corner that must be played lying down after “nine o'clock.”

Chandler's vision becomes even darker and stranger as he learns of his likely fate.

“As I was wondering, apparently rather audibly, about the date set for my execution, the guard said

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