Lovecraft, H P - The Lurking Fear

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The Lurking Fear

by H. P. Lovecraft

Written November 1922

Published January-April 1923 in Home Brew

I. The Shadow On The Chimney

Vol. 2, No. 6 (January 1923), p. 4-10;

There was thunder in the air on the night I went to the deserted mansion atop Tempest

Mountain to find the lurking fear. I was not alone, for foolhardiness was not then mixed

with that love of the grotesque and the terrible which has made my career a series of

quests for strange horrors in literature and in life. With me were two faithful and

muscular men for whom I had sent when the time came; men long associated with me in

my ghastly explorations because of their peculiar fitness.

We had started quietly from the village because of the reporters who still lingered about

after the eldritch panic of a month before - the nightmare creeping death. Later, I thought,

they might aid me; but I did not want them then. Would to God I had let them share the

search, that I might not have had to bear the secret alone so long; to bear it alone for fear

the world would call me mad or go mad itself at the demon implications of the thing.

Now that I am telling it anyway, lest the brooding make me a maniac, I wish I had never

concealed it. For I, and I only, know what manner of fear lurked on that spectral and

desolate mountain.

In a small motor-car we covered the miles of primeval forest and hill until the wooded

ascent checked it. The country bore an aspect more than usually sinister as we viewed it

by night and without the accustomed crowds of investigators, so that we were often

tempted to use the acetylene headlight despite the attention it might attract. It was not a

wholesome landscape after dark, and I believe I would have noticed its morbidity even

had I been ignorant of the terror that stalked there. Of wild creatures there were none-they

are wise when death leers close. The ancient lightning-scarred trees seemed unnaturally

large and twisted, and the other vegetation unnaturally thick and feverish, while curious

mounds and hummocks in the weedy, fulgurite-pitted earth reminded me of snakes and

dead men's skulls swelled to gigantic proportions.

Fear had lurked on Tempest Mountain for more than a century. This I learned at once

from newspaper accounts of the catastrophe which first brought the region to the world's

notice. The place is a remote, lonely elevation in that part of the Catskills where Dutch

civilization once feebly and transiently penetrated, leaving behind as it receded only a

few mined mansions and a degenerate squatter population inhabiting pitiful hamlets on

isolated slopes. Normal beings seldom visited the locality till the state police were

formed, and even now only infrequent troopers patrol it. The fear, however, is an old

The Lurking Fear

tradition throughout the neighboring villages; since it is a prime topic in the simple

discourse of the poor mongrels who sometimes leave their valleys to trade handwoven

baskets for such primitive necessities as they cannot shoot, raise, or make.

The lurking fear dwelt in the shunned and deserted Martense mansion, which crowned

the high but gradual eminence whose liability to frequent thunderstorms gave it the name

of Tempest Mountain. For over a hundred years the antique, grove-circled stone house

had been the subject of stories incredibly wild and monstrously hideous; stories of a silent

colossal creeping death which stalked abroad in summer. With whimpering insistence the

squatters told tales of a demon which seized lone wayfarers after dark, either carrying

them off or leaving them in a frightful state of gnawed dismemberment; while sometimes

they whispered of blood trails toward the distant mansion. Some said the thunder called

the lurking fear out of its habitation, while others said the thunder was its voice.

No one outside the backwoods had believed these varying and conflicting stories, with

their incoherent, extravagant descriptions of the hall-glimpsed fiend; yet not a farmer or

villager doubted that the Martense mansion was ghoulishly haunted. Local history

forbade such a doubt, although no ghostly evidence was ever found by such investigators

as had visited the building after some especially vivid tale of the squatters. Grandmothers

told strange myths of the Martense spectre; myths concerning the Martense family itself,

its queer hereditary dissimilarity of eyes, its long, unnatural annals, and the murder which

had cursed it.

The terror which brought me to the scene was a sudden and portentous confirmation of

the mountaineers' wildest legends. One summer night, after a thunderstorm of

unprecedented violence, the countryside was aroused by a squatter stampede which no

mere delusion could create. The pitiful throngs of natives shrieked and whined of the

unnamable horror which had descended upon them, and they were not doubted. They had

not seen it, but had heard such cries from one of their hamlets that they knew a creeping

death had come.

In the morning citizens and state troopers followed the shuddering mountaineers to the

place where they said the death had come. Death was indeed there. The ground under one

of the squatter's villages had caved in after a lightning stroke, destroying several of the

malodorous shanties; but upon this property damage was superimposed an organic

devastation which paled it to insignificance. Of a possible seventy-five natives who had

inhabited this spot, not one living specimen was visible. The disordered earth was

covered with blood and human debris bespeaking too vividly the ravages of demon teeth

and talons; yet no visible trail led away from the carnage. That some hideous animal must

be the cause, everyone quickly agreed; nor did any tongue now revive the charge that

such cryptic deaths formed merely the sordid murders common in decadent communities.

That charge was revived only when about twenty-five of the estimated population were

found missing from the dead; and even then it was hard to explain the murder of fifty by

half that number. But the fact remained that on a summer night a bolt had come out of the

heavens and left a dead village whose corpses were horribly mangled, chewed, and

clawed.

The Lurking Fear

The excited countryside immediately connected the horror with the haunted Martense

mansion, though the localities were over three miles apart. The troopers were more

skeptical; including the mansion only casually in their investigations, and dropping it

altogether when they found it thoroughly deserted. Country and village people, however I

canvassed the place with infinite care; overturning everything in the house, sounding

ponds and brooks, beating down bushes, and ransacking the nearby forests. All was in

vain; the death that had come had left no trace save destruction itself.

By the second day of the search the affair was fully treated by the newspapers, whose

reporters overran Tempest Mountain. They described it in much detail, and with many

interviews to elucidate the horror's history as told by local grandams. I followed the

accounts languidly at first, for I am a connoisseur in horrors; but after a week I detected

an atmosphere which stirred me oddly, so that on August 5th, 1921, I registered among

the reporters who crowded the hotel at Lefferts Corners, nearest village to Tempest

Mountain and acknowledged headquarters of the searchers. Three weeks more, and the

dispersal of the reporters left me free to begin a terrible exploration based on the minute

inquiries and surveying with which I had meanwhile busied myself.

So on this summer night, while distant thunder rumbled, I left a silent motor-car and

tramped with two armed companions up the last mound-covered reaches of Tempest

Mountain, casting the beams of an electric torch on the spectral grey walls that began to

appear through giant oaks ahead. In this morbid night solitude and feeble shifting

illumination, the vast boxlike pile displayed obscure hints of terror which day could not

uncover; yet I did not hesitate, since I had come with fierce resolution to test an idea. I

believed that the thunder called the death-demon out of some fearsome secret place; and

be that demon solid entity or vaporous pestilence, I meant to see it.

I had thoroughly searched the ruin before, hence knew my plan well; choosing as the seat

of my vigil the old room of Jan Martense, whose murder looms so great in the rural

legends. I felt subtly that the apartment of this ancient victim was best for my purposes.

The chamber, measuring about twenty feet square, contained like the other rooms some

rubbish which had once been furniture. It lay on the second story, on the southeast corner

of the house, and had an immense east window and narrow south window, both devoid of

panes or shutters. Opposite the large window was an enormous Dutch fireplace with

scriptural tiles representing the prodigal son, and opposite the narrow window was a

spacious bed built into the wall.

As the tree-muffled thunder grew louder, I arranged my plan's details. First I fastened

side by side to the ledge of the large window three rope ladders which I had brought with

me. I knew they reached a suitable spot on the grass outside, for I had tested them. Then

the three of us dragged from another room a wide four-poster bedstead, crowding it

laterally against the window. Having strewn it with fir boughs, all now rested on it with

drawn automatics, two relaxing while the third watched. From whatever direction the

demon might come, our potential escape was provided. If it came from within the house,

we had the window ladders; if from outside the door and the stairs. We did not think,

judging from precedent, that it would pursue us far even at worst.

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摘要：

TheLurkingFearTheLurkingFearbyH.P.LovecraftWrittenNovember1922PublishedJanuary-April1923inHomeBrewI.TheShadowOnTheChimneyVol.2,No.6(January1923),p.4-10;TherewasthunderintheaironthenightIwenttothedesertedmansionatopTempestMountaintofindthelurkingfear.Iwasnotalone,forfoolhardinesswasnotthenmixedwithth...

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