Reading early 20th century horror is a fascinating experience. Namely because modern horror has desensitized me so badly that everything here just seems quaint by comparison. It’s like a little time capsule, containing everything that scared your grandparents.
This is a simple short. While exploring Mammoth Cave, our narrator is separated from his guide. As he wanders alone in the darkness, he comes across a beast as terrible as only our worst nightmares could concoct.
Spoiler alert for a hundred year old horror short: it’s a crazy man. You are now free to scream and soil yourselves.
It’s good that this is a short story. If it were any longer, I doubt I’d have finished it. It’s really boring. We don’t even have any fascinating cosmic horror monsters to hold onto!
Lovecraft was never a character writer. Normally, that is reasonably acceptable. But here? Without any characters to latch onto, this story is basically a boring pile of nothing! How do you write a horror story about human madness without exploring any of our cast’s humanity?
Despite this, there is still merit to reading this. Lovecraft’s descriptive abilities and control over the English language is still as remarkable as ever. It’s not much of a silver-lining, but it is there.
Besides that, it’s short. Like, really short. You could finish it in less than fifteen minutes. If you don’t like it, it won’t suck away massive amounts of your precious time.
If you’re a diehard Lovecraft fan, you’ll probably get more out of this one than I did. But for the casual reader looking for some classic horror, you should probably look elsewhere. There’s not much to go on here.
Well, at least this one wasn’t flagrantly racist.
Look, Lovecraft wrote some good stuff, but he wasn’t a perfect person.
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