The Lurking Fear

“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.”

Ah, Lovecraft’s The Lurking Fear was the first “adult” story I read, when I was seven or so, and it scared the crap out of me.

It was in a collection of short stories, with the primo The Shadow Out of Time right at the end. At that age I had difficulty — well, greater difficulty — distinguishing fact from fiction. I also had no concept of really long timescales, of millenia. I mean, I’d started reading about geology and evolution but this incredible final story really drove it home: “amidst the dust of a million centuries. No eye had seen, no hand had touched that book since the advent of man to this planet.”

Unfortunately, my later attempts at writing all those sweet little essays young kids were supposed to write about (trips to the seaside, soccer games in the park, my last birthday party) started off normal but inevitably descended into slithery gelatinous toothsome oozes gnawing peoples limbs and faces off. Suspecting child abuse, my parents were called in by the school authorities. Is it child abuse to expose kids to gross stuff? I wonder how many kids worldviews have been absolutely altered because of their viewing of the WTC events, live?