H. P. Lovecraft - The Lurking Fear

[dem]

H. P. Lovecraft - The Lurking Fear (Panther 1964, 1970)

Cover illustration: Michael McInnerney

The Lurking Fear
The Shunned House
In The Vault
Arthur Jermyn
Cool Air
The Moon-Bog
The Nameless City
The Unnameable
The Picture In The House
The Terrible Old Man
The Hound
The Shadow Over Innsmouth
The Shadow Out Of Time

For the most part this is early HPL, full-on Poe-esque horror as yet uncluttered by the Cthulhu Mythos. As such, many critics seem to regard this as his second division stuff which is probably true. Personally, the closer he stays to the trad horror approach, the more I like him as is certainly the case with The Hound, The Picture In The House, Cool Air, In The Vault and elsewhere, Pickman's Model and the barking Herbert West: Reanimator. There's no accounting for taste.

The Picture In The House: New England. The narrator is caught in a storm as he cycles home to Arkham and takes shelter in what he takes to be a deserted house. As he eagerly peruses the library he finds a rare book which always falls open on the same page - a depiction of a cannibal feast. Presently he’s joined by the owner, a red faced, white bearded old timer in unlikely robust health. This curious individual positively drools over the nasty illustration - it gives him a “tickle” and wants to know if it does the same for his guest - and his conversation is decidedly ghoulish, littered with references to people who’ve gone missing in these parts down the years. As he speaks, a red patch spreads across the ceiling ….

Despite an ending I find disappointingly abrupt, one of my favourite of HPL’s traditional horrors for that unspeakably pervy old git.

In The Vault: George Birch, the village undertaker of Peck Valley is locked in the vault overnight. He stacks coffins one atop the other with a view to climbing to freedom but, unfortunately the uppermost one houses the carcass of old Aspath Sawyer, a singularly vindictive character with “a tenacious memory for wrongs real or fancied”. The less than diligent Birch has given him just cause for retribution …

The Hound: The narrator and St. John, “wearied by the commonplace of a prosaic world where even the joys of romance and adventure soon grew stale”, enthusiastically launch themselves into a new career - as grave robbers. They set up a secret underground museum where they can gloat over their hideous finds and savour the rank stench of corruption undisturbed. Learning of a fellow ghoul five centuries buried in a Dutch churchyard, they resolve to dig him up and get their hands on the powerful amulet he stole - “the ghastly soul symbol of the corpse-eating cult of inaccessible Leng.” Within a week of their triumphant return to England they hear scratching at their windows, a faint baying as first heard when they exhumed the tomb-looter and the flapping of hordes of bat-wings. Whatever it is that seeks them attacks St. John and reduces him to a mangled corpse. The terrified narrator realises his only hope is to return the amulet …..

Cool Air: “You ask me to explain why I am afraid of a draught of cool air; why I shiver more than others upon entering a cold room, and seem nauseated and repelled when the chill of evening creeps through the heat of a mild autumn day”. New York. Why is the brilliant Dr. Munoz holed up in a decrepit boarding house and how comes his room is always icy cold and reeks of ammonia? All is revealed when the refrigeration pump gives up the ghost and there is not enough ice in the local shops to keep him chilled. Lovecraft’s very own The Facts In The Case Of M. Valdemar.

The Terrible Old Man: Ricci and Silva make the fatal mistake of trying to rob the “pathetic” ex- sea captain in his home as he converses with his beloved bottle collection. Czanec, waiting outside in the car, assumes that the screams are the old mans as the boys torture him into revealing the whereabouts of his valuables. He wishes they’d go easy on him.

The Moon-Bog: Having made his fortune in the States, Denys Barry emigrates to Ireland, the home of his ancestors and buys the family castle in Kilderry, C. Meath. His doom is sealed when, against the pleas of the supposedly superstitious and ill-educated villagers, he makes plans to drain the bog which reputedly conceals a sunken city. The locals evacuate en masse and Barry hires outside laborers with no knowledge of the ‘curse’. On the eve of the operation the guardians of the city rise from the morass and, in emulation of the Pied-Piper, lead the party into the bog where they’re transformed into hideous frog creatures.

[benedictjjones]

i think i'd have to be one of those critics in relation to some of his early stories although i love the hound which is in this and have only read cool air online.

[H_P_Saucecraft]

All good stories, but i can't comment on the shunned house, never been able to find a lovecraft paperback with that in. Will have to look out for The Lurking Fear.

Love the cover, although I can't help being reminded of one of those whack-a-mole games


Dave.

[Craig Herbertson]

check here for a few covers on different editions

www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?an=lovecraft&bi=0&bx=off&ds=30&kn=shunned+house&sortby=2&sts=t&x=0&y=0

Happy hunting

[dem]

It's not quite the same thing I know, but you can read The Shunned House online at dagonbytes

Favourite HPL cover for me is Tim White's depiction of Pickman's Model for this greatest hits collection!

H. P. Lovecraft Omnibus III - The Haunter Of The Dark (Grafton, 1985, 1986)

Illustration: Tim White

Introduction - August Derleth

The Outsider
The Rats In The Walls
Pickman’s Model
The Call Of Cthulhu
The Dunwich Horror
The Whisperer In Darkness
The Colour Out Of Space
The Haunter Of The Dark
The Thing On The Doorstep
The Music Of Erich Zann
The Lurking Fear
The Picture In The House
The Shadow Over Innsmouth
The Shadow Out Of Time

[Craig Herbertson]

I definitely had one and two but three?

[benedictjjones]

^i have those! and probably think i like the cover of omnibus 1 best (there was also the 'new tales of mythos') done in a similar style.

[mattofthespurs]

I have those too.
3 in total from Lovercraft, a Derleth one done in the same style plus a Ramsey Campbell antho also done in the same style.

[benedictjjones]

^my lovecraft one's list a different publisher on the spine to the 'new mythos' volume which is quite odd (i'm guessing just earlier edition and the companies are really the same people...)

[mattofthespurs]

All five six of mine are from Grafton although I suspect that they and Harper Collins (who re-printed them) are one of the same.

Tim White also did the cover for Derleth's "The Trail Of Cthulhu" which is exactly the same in style to the other four volumes on the front and rear covers and the spine.

Nearly forgot "Mask Of Cthulhu" by Derleth which again features a cover by Tim White and again is exactly the same as the other volumes in this 'series'.

[benedictjjones]

^HAVEN'T SEEN THE OTHERS IN THE SERIES, I'LL HAVE TO HAVE A LOOK.
YES I THINK MY mythos one is grafton and the others HC reprints.

[bradstevens]

THE LURKING FEAR actually contains 4 stories missing from Grafton's supposedly complete three-volume collection of Lovecraft's work: THE SHUNNED HOUSE, IN THE VAULT, COOL AIR and THE TERRIBLE OLD MAN.

I'd also highly recommend the collection entitled THE HORROR IN THE MUSEUM, which contains 24 stories that Lovecraft worked on anonymously. Many of these were entirely rewritten by Lovecraft, retaining (as August Derleth points out in his introduction) "only the plot or central theme of the author whose by-line appeared over the work - and not even this in every case".

[lobolover]

The Shunned house I have to revisit sometimes,but its the one with the "elbow".

[allthingshorror]

Here's another cover - this one much more blander. Panther Books 1964.

[benedictjjones]

yes i always wondered why the supposedly complete HC/grafton 3 book set missed out several stories yet included fragments and 'early tales' whereas Wordsworth Edition 'The Loved Dead' was lovely for filling in the gaps with stories that he co-wrote, gave ideas for and ghost wrote.