The Call of Cthulhu

George Henry Weiss, H. P. Lovecraft

Description

The Call of Cthulhu is H. P. Lovecraft’s most well-known and celebrated work of supernatural horror fiction. The short story is a fantastic fusion of science fiction and thrilling tension.

Francis Thurston is sorting through the notes of his late grand-uncle, a renowned professor of Semitic languages. As Thurston delves deeper into his relative’s research, he stumbles across evidence related to the existence of a cult that worships an ancient demonic god. As he follows the nightmarish connections made by his grand-uncle, he begins to realise the horror and madness that lies in wait not just for him but for the world.

First published in 1928, this chilling short story is not to be missed by fans of H. P. Lovecraft’s pioneering work in supernatural and science fiction horror.

Sujets

• Horror
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Read Books Ltd.
• Date de parution: 08 janvier 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781447481959
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

THE CALL OF CTHULHU
By
H. P. LOVECRAFT
WITH A DEDICATION BY GEORGE HENRY WEISS

First published in 1928



Copyright © 2020 Read & Co. Books
This edition is published by Read & Co. Books, an imprint of Read & Co.
This book is copyright and may not be reproduced or copied in any way without the express permission of the publisher in writing.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Read & Co. is part of Read Books Ltd. For more information visit www.readandcobooks.co.uk


To Howard Phillips Lovecraft
Essayist, Poet & Master-writer of the Weird 1890-1937
He lived—and now is dead beyond all knowing Of life and death: the vast and formless scheme Behind the face of nature ever showing Has swallowed up the dreamer and the dream. But brief the hour he had upon the stream Of timeless time from past to future flowing To lift his sail and catch the luminous gleam Of stars that marked his coming and his going Before he vanished: yet the brilliant wake His passing left is vivid on the tide And for the countless centuries will abide: The genius that no death can ever take Crowns him immortal, though a man has died.
F rancis Flagg ( George Henry Weiss )


Contents
H. P. Lovecraft
I THE HO RROR IN CLAY
II THE TALE OF INSPEC TOR LEGRASSE
III THE MADNESS FROM THE SEA




H. P. Lovecraft
Howard Phillips Lovecraft was born in 1890 in Rhode Island, USA. Although a sickly boy, Lovecraft began writing at a very young age, quickly developing a deep and abiding interest in science. At just sixteen he was writing a monthly astronomy column for his local newspaper. However, in 1908, Lovecraft suffered a nervous breakdown and failed to get into university, sparking a period of five years in which he all b ut vanished.
In 1913, Lovecraft was invited to join the UAPA (United Amateur Press Association) — a development which re-invigorated his writing. In 1917, he began to focus on fiction, producing such well-known early stories as Dagon and A Reminiscence of Dr. Samuel Johnson . In 1924, Lovecraft married and moved to New York, but he disliked life there intensely, and struggled to find work. A few years later, penniless and now divorced, he returned to Rhode Island. It was here, during the last decade of his life, that Lovecraft produced the vast majority of his best-known fiction, including The Dunwich Horror , The Shadow over Innsmouth , The Thing on the Doorstep and arguably his most famous story, The Call of Cthulhu . Having suffered from cancer of the small intestine for more than a year, Lovecraft died in Ma rch of 1937.


THE CALL OF CTHULHU


"Of such great powers or beings there may be conceivably a survival . . . a survival of a hugely remote period when . . . consciousness was manifested, perhaps, in shapes and forms long since withdrawn before the tide of advancing humanity . . . forms of which poetry and legend alone have caught a flying memory and called them gods, monsters, mythical beings of all sorts and kinds . . ."
— Algern on Blackwood


I
THE HORROR IN CLAY
THE most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a n ew dark age.
Theosophists have guessed at the awesome grandeur of the cosmic cycle wherein our world and human race form transient incidents. They have hinted at strange survivals in terms which would freeze the blood if not masked by a bland optimism. But it is not from them that there came the single glimpse of forbidden eons which chills me when I think of it and maddens me when I dream of it. That glimpse, like all dread glimpses of truth, flashed out from an accidental piecing together of separated things—in this case an old newspaper item and the notes of a dead professor. I hope that no one else will accomplish this piecing out; certainly, if I live, I shall never knowingly supply a link in so hideous a chain. I think that the professor, too, intended to keep silent regarding the part he knew, and that he would have destroyed his notes had not sudden death seized him.
My knowledge of the thing began in the winter of 1926-27 with the death of my granduncle, George Gammell Angell, Professor Emeritus of Semitic Languages in Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island. Professor Angell was widely known as an authority on ancient inscriptions, and had frequently been resorted to by the heads of prominent museums; so that his passing at the age of ninety-two may be recalled by many. Locally, interest was intensified by the obscurity of the cause of death. The professor had been stricken whilst returning from the Newport boat; falling suddenly, as witnesses said, after having been jostled by a nautical-looking negro who had come from one of the queer dark courts on the precipitous hillside which formed a short cut from the waterfront to the deceased’s home in Williams Street. Physicians were unable to find any visible disorder, but concluded after perplexed debate that some obscure lesion of the heart, induced by the brisk ascent of so steep a hill by so elderly a man, was responsible for the end.