I read this story in a collection of macabre stories, but sadly I don’t remember which collection. But the internet is marvelous, and I found it. 
     I offer the .pdf of Patricia Highsmith’s short story, “The Quest for Blank Claveringi” in the hopes that it will introduce more people to her elegant prose. Though the story is dark. Fairly warned.
     While I don’t remember the exact collection, I suspect I might’ve read Highsmith’s story in one of the collections edited by Marvin Kaye, of which there are several, and I recommend them all.
     If you’re a fan of Edward Gorey (you are, even if you don’t know his name, you love his illustrations and aesthetic, really, you do) then look for the Kaye collections that still have the dust jackets drawn by Edward Gorey.
     In Masterpieces of Terror and the Supernatural, you can read horror, ghost and speculative fiction stories that are amazingly gruesome in nature, and all written by authors who were masters of their forms, and these stories, whether or not you’re a fan of dark material, are master classes in short story writing.
     Each and ever one.
     Also, they’re handy stories to have at your disposal in case anyone starts giving you genre grief. You know, the old, ghost stories aren’t real literature b.s.

The authors, from the table of contents:
“Dracula’s Guest” – Bram Stoker

“The Professor’s Teddy Bear” – Theodore Sturgeon
     This story about the bear, has inter-dimensional demons, time travel and teaching, all rolled into a story, that, is messed up.
      Consider that a trigger warning. This story is dark.

“Bubnoff and the Devil” – Ivan Turgenev
“The Quest for Blank Claveringi” – Patricia Highsmith
“The Erl King” – Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
“The Bottle Imp”  – Robert Louis Stevenson
“A Malady of Magicks” – Craig Shaw Gardner

“Lan Lung” – M. Lucie Chin
     Lan Lung is a ghost story that is also a historical story, the narration is from the POV of a tourist who falls off the Great Wall of China and wakes up a ghost in ancient China. The story manages to be very thought provoking in regards to cultural appropriation, while also being damn entertaining and there’s dragons. Chinese dragons. 

“The Dragon Over Hackensack” – Richard L. Wexelblat
“The transformation” – Mary W. Shelley —
“The faceless thing” – Edward D. Hoch. 
“The anchor” – Jack Snow
“When the Clock Strikes” – Tanith Lee
“Oshidori” – Lafcadio Hearn
“Carmilla” – Sheridan LeFanu

“Eumenides in the Fourth Floor Lavatory” – Orson Scott Card
     Here, the author of the incredible series Ender’s Game, writes a story of vengeance that is messed up! I’m sorry, I don’t have very many ways of saying, this story really fucks with your head, but several of the stories in this collection do. 
     This is one of them. Be warned.

“Lenore” – Gottfried August Burger
“The Black Wedding” – Isaac Bashevis Singer
“Hop Frog” – Edgar Allan Poe
“Sardonicus” – Ray Russell
“Graveyard Shift” – Richard Matheson
“Wake not the Dead” – Johann Ludwig Tieck
“Night and Silence” – Maurice Level
“Flies” – Isaac Asimov —
“The Night Wire” – H. F. Arnold
“Last Respects” – Dick Baldwin
“The Pool of the Stone God” –  A. Merritt
“A Tale of the Thirteenth Floor” – Ogden Nash
“The Tree” – Dylan Thomas
“Stroke of Mercy” – Parke Godwin

“Lazarus” – Leonid Andreyev
     What happens to Lazarus after Jesus resurrects him? 
     Andreyev takes one of the rare ‘happy’ moments from the Bible and recasts it.
     Um. Darkness awaits in this one, too.

“The Waxwork” – A.M. Burrage
“The Silent Couple” – Pierre Courtois
“Moon Face” – Jack London
“Death in the School Room” –  Walt Whitman

“The Upturned Face” –  Stephen Crane
     Stephen Crane is the author that taught me prose could be poetic in its simplicity, and in this story, that simplicity is used to deliver one of the most powerful anti-war stories ever written.

“One Summer Night” – Ambrose Bierce
“The Easter Egg” – H. H. Munro (Saki)
“The House in Goblin Wood” – John Dickson Carr –
“The Vengeance of Nitocris” – Tennessee Williams

“The Informal Execution of Soupbone Pew” – Damon Runyon
     My grandmother introduced me to Damon Runyon’s work. He was fantastic with accents and dialog and if you’re a musical theater person, you know Runyon’s work in the musical “Guys and Dolls.”

“His Unconquerable Enemy” – W. C. Morrow
“Rizpah” – Lord Alfred Tennyson
“The Question” – Stanley Ellin 
“The Flayed Hand” – Guy de Maupassant
“The Hospice” – Robert Aickman
“The Christmas Banquet” – Nathaniel Hawthorne
“The Hungry House” – Robert Bloch
“The Demon of the Gibbet” –  Fitz-James O’Brien
“The Owl” – Anatole Le Braz
“No. 252 Rue M. Le Prince” – Ralph Adams Cram
“The Music of Erich Zann” – H. P. Lovecraft
“Riddles in the Dark” – J. R. R. Tolkien.