The lurking fearLovecraft, H. P. (Howard Phillips)
Science
The lurking fear
Lovecraft, H. P. (Howard Phillips)
Catskill Mountains Region (N.Y.) -- Fiction; Horror tales; Short stories
But when two days later the squatters told me what the red glare
meant, I felt more horror than that which the mold-burrow and the
claw and eyes had given; more horror because of the overwhelming
implications. In a hamlet twenty miles away an orgy of fear had
followed the bolt which brought me above ground, and a nameless thing
had dropped from an overhanging tree into a weak-roofed cabin. It had
done a deed, but the squatters had fired the cabin in frenzy before it
could escape. It had been doing that deed at the very moment the earth
caved in on the thing with the claw and eyes.
_4. The Horror in the Eyes_
There can be nothing normal in the mind of one who, knowing what I
knew of the horrors of Tempest Mountain, would seek alone for the fear
that lurked there. That at least two of the fear's embodiments were
destroyed, formed but a slight guarantee of mental and physical safety
in this Acheron of multiform diabolism; yet I continued my quest with
even greater zeal as events and revelations became more monstrous.
When, two days after my frightful crawl through that crypt of the eyes
and claw, I learned that a thing had malignly hovered twenty miles
away at the same instant the eyes were glaring at me, I experienced
virtual convulsions of fright. But that fright was so mixed with wonder
and alluring grotesqueness that it was almost a pleasant sensation.
Sometimes, in the throes of a nightmare when unseen powers whirl one
over the roofs of strange dead cities toward the grinning chasm of
Nis, it is a relief and even a delight to shriek wildly and throw
oneself voluntarily along with the hideous vortex of dream-doom down
into whatever bottomless gulf may yawn. And so it was with the waking
nightmare of Tempest Mountain; the discovery that two monsters had
haunted the spot gave me ultimately a mad craving to plunge into the
very earth of the accursed region, and with bare hands dig out the
death that leered from every inch of the poisonous soil.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account