As
Lovecraft spins his tale, we learn that the land that the house
was built upon once was used as a cemetery. The French Huguenot
descendants of Jacques Roulet, condemned to be burned at the stake
in Caude, France, in 1598 after confessing that he was a werewolf,
were buried in an unmarked cemetery beneath the shunned house.
The "anthropomorphic patch of mould" in the cellar acquired an
increased terror, and Lovecraft noticed that above it rose "a
subtle, sickish, almost luminous vapour which as it hung trembling
in the dampness seemed to develop vague and shocking suggestions
of form, gradually trailing off into nebulous decay and passing
up into the blackness of the great chimney with a foetor in its
wake." Lovecraft and his uncle, Dr. Whipple (filling a role similar
to that of Dr. Van Helsing in Dracula), decided to spend the night
in the cellar, augmented with scientific apparatus to analyze
and, if necessary, destroy the evil entity, which they surmised
was "traceable to one or another of the ill-savoured French settlers
of two centuries before, and still operative through rare and
unknown laws of atomic and electronic motion." One of their weapons,
a flamethrower, was to be used "in case it proved partly material
and susceptible of mechanical destruction--for like the superstitious
Exeter rustics, we were prepared to burn the thing's heart out
if heart existed to burn." I won't ruin a good story by revealing
its ending, so I suggest you read it yourself.
Text © Dr. Michael Bell |