H.P. Lovecraft 's 1925 The Horror at Red Hook reeks of xenophobia and racism. Lovecraft leaves no doubt regarding the source of evil: people from a different race and from a foreign country.
A year later, in 1926, the American author of horror fiction introduced Cthulhu, a gigantic cosmic entity that's combination octopus and dragon with traces of human form, a destructive, evil entity from a different dimension far from our Earth.
The tale under review, The Dunwich Horror, written in 1928, is eerie in the extreme, one key reason: the source of evil derives from a combination of the human and the Cthulhu. Another reason: the way Lovecraft builds suspense right from the first chapter and continues to mount suspense chapter by chapter right up to his concluding chapter ten.
To underscore the way in which Lovecraft mounts drama and deepens the horror as the tale progresses, I'll link my comments with direct quotes, as per -
“When a traveler in north central Massachusetts takes the wrong fork at the junction of the Aylesbury pike just beyond Dean's Corners he comes upon a lonely and curious country.... At the same time the planted fields appear singularly few and barren; while the sparsely scattered houses wear a surprising uniform aspect of age, squalor, and dilapidation.” --------- Lovecraft grounds his tale in realism, detail by detail. One can picture the rural landscape clearly – perhaps a reader has traveled through a similar rustic countryside.
“Two centuries ago, when talk of witch-blood, Satan-worship, and strange forest presences was not laughed at, it was the custom to give reasons for avoiding the locality. In our sensible age—since the Dunwich horror of 1928 was hushed up by those who had the town's and the world's welfare at heart—people shun it without knowing exactly why.” -------- Classic Lovecraft. This area of the world is shrouded in mystery and whispers of strange happenings. And, why do people shun Dunwich? At this point, Lovecraft leave it to a reader's imagination.
“The fact that the mother was one of the decadent Whateleys, a somewhat deformed, unattractive albino woman of 35, living with an aged and half-insane father about whom the most frightful tales of wizardry had been whispered in his youth. Lavinia Whateley had no known husband, but according to the custom of the region made no attempt to disavow the child.” --------- Lovecraft gives us this information about the strange family one Wilbur Whateley is born into. Deformed, ugly, half-insane – all characteristics befitting Lovecraftian horror. It's also recounted how there was a hideous screaming along with dogs howling and barking at the time the infant Wilbur was born.
“His (Wilbur's) speech was somewhat remarkable both because of its difference from the ordinary accents of the region, and because it displayed a freedom from infantile lisping of which many children of three or four might well be proud. The boy was not talkative, yet when he spoke he seemed to reflect some elusive element wholly unpossessed by Dunwich and its denizens. The strangeness did not reside in what he said, or even in the simple idioms he used; but seemed vaguely linked with his intonation or with the internal organs that produced the spoken sounds." --------- Hints of that Red Hook otherness conjoined with a tincture of the nonhuman – unsettling and creepy, creepy.
Less inexplicable was his fitting-up of another downstairs room for his new grandson—a room which several callers saw, though no one was ever admitted to the closely-boarded upper story. This chamber he lined with tall, firm shelving; along which he began gradually to arrange, in apparently careful order, all the rotting ancient books and parts of books which during his own day had been heaped promiscuously in odd corners of the various rooms. -------- No sooner is Wilbur born than the half-insane old grandfather swings into action with superhuman strength. Please note how ancient books take on central significance in preparing for Wilbur's occupying this secret room.
“About 1923, when Wilbur was a boy of ten whose mind, voice, stature, and bearded face gave all the impressions of maturity, a second great siege of carpentry went on at the old house. It was all inside the sealed upper part, and from bits of discarded lumber people concluded that the youth and his grandfather had knocked out all the partitions and even removed the attic floor, leaving only one vast open void between the ground story and the peaked roof.” --------- Ominous growth! At age ten, Wilbur possesses the body of a fully grown man. The people of Dunwich who catch sight of Wilbur shrink back in dread.
"Wilbur was by this time a scholar of really tremendous erudition in his one-sided way, and was quietly known by correspondence to many librarians in distant places where rare and forbidden books of old days are kept. He was more and more hated and dreaded around Dunwich because of certain youthful disappearances which suspicion laid vaguely at his door; but was always able to silence inquiry through fear or through use of that fund of old-time gold which still, as in his grandfather's time, went forth regularly and increasingly for cattle-buying. He was now tremendously mature of aspect, and his height, having reached the normal adult limit, seemed inclined to wax beyond that figure. In 1925, when a scholarly correspondent from Miskatonic University called upon him one day and departed pale and puzzled, he was fully six and three-quarters feet tall." -------- Youthful disappearances? A visiting scholar departing pale and puzzled after meeting with young Wilbur? What's going on here?
What I've cited here is contained within the first four chapters. There's six more chapters of Wilbur's astonishing development in and beyond Dunwich. Grab yourself a copy of this Lovecraft tale and enter a world of unspeakable terror.
American author H.P. Lovecraft, 1890-1937
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