His heart leaps at the name. Lovecraft! A new story! Douglas almost opens the issue right then, but Miss Marsh’s expression gives him pause.
“H.P.,” she says again. “I wonder if that could be the same… Howard Phillips… of Providence itself. Do you know his stories, Douglas? You do? I believe he is a local man. In fact, I think he lives not far from you on College Hill. Perhaps he’d like to know he has a bright young reader right here in Providence.”
Miss Marsh suddenly catches sight of the clock, and gives a little gasp. Rushing to the door, she leans outside and bangs the triangle. The clanging blends into the shouts of children, and the room fills up again with the greater noise of students. Miss Marsh catches and holds his gaze through the crowd, but what she has promised seems too great to acknowledge. He looks away, rolling up the magazine and shoving it under his desk. What else does she know about him, he wonders? Does she understand how madness haunts him? Would the writer, H.P. Lovecraft, understand? It all seems too secret, too personal, to discuss with anyone. But if anyone might understand, it would be a man like the one who writes such stories.
He hardly notices the passage of the afternoon, wondering if what she said could be true. At home, the Aunts have gone off on some errand, leaving him free to surround himself with his collection. He sorts through the magazines and pulls out everything by Lovecraft.
Combing through the issues, he sees how many of these stories are by one man—by this same Lovecraft of Providence. He had not recognized the pattern until Miss Marsh pointed it out. The thought that a living person could have written these stories had never occurred to him. He had not required that of them. They existed, that was enough. They carried him away to other lands, other places exotic and faraway—with names like Celephais and Sarnath, Ulthar and Ilek-Vad—all so different from the names he saw around him: College Hill and Federal Hill, worlds, he saw now, which were locked away in the stories of Lovecraft. From one mind, then, so many of Douglas’s own dreams had sprung. The knowledge is a key turning in a lock, revealing a new dimension to what he had already known. Indeed, Lovecraft had written “The Silver Key,” in which Randolph Carter found a secret path into a land of dream; he had written “The White Ship” and “The Cats of Ulthar,” and other tales of dream. But he had also written “The Rats in the Walls,” a tale of madness that had chilled and fascinated Douglas in equal measure; “The Festival,” “The Call of Cthulhu,” “The Outsider,” “Pickman’s Model”… and these truly are tales of madness. They hold secrets dark as the ones that haunt Douglas, the nightmares that torment him when he tries to think beyond his own memories, to a time before the Aunts had taken him in, a muddled dream which tells him nothing, a dream which remains impenetrable, approachable only, perhaps, through a deeper understanding of what madness itself might mean.
He crouches by the house in the deepening gloom, reading and rereading, searching for clues. The latest issue holds a story of Lovecraft’s called “The Hound,” a tale of grave robbers who pilfer a cursed amulet and are pursued relentlessly by its winged guardian. Douglas has read the story before, in one of his older issues of Weird Tales, but it takes him some time to recognize it. Everything seems altered by the fact that it was written here in Providence. He pictures the story taking place somewhere nearby—the graveyard might be Swan Point; the baying hound pursues the robbers through familiar neighborhoods rendered strange and mysterious, filtered through the light of Lovecraft’s words. His whole world feels changed in much the same way as the story. Providence itself has acquired a twilight tinge, a mysterious beauty he had never noticed until now. It took Lovecraft to make him see it.
Lovecraft…
His Aunts would know how to find the man. They have lived here all their lives; they know everyone, from the oldest families to the newest residents of the neighborhood. They had grown up in Providence when it was a much smaller town, and they still treat it as their own village. But how is he to question their knowledge without letting them know what he’s asking? For Douglas is quite certain they would not approve.
He decides on a sacrifice. He will pose a riddle and watch them attempt to answer it, and in the attempt learn much.
Douglas sorts his tattered magazines, looking for a cover that features Lovecraft’s name in suitably large letters. There are few appearances, and most are in small characters, rubbed illegible by constant use. Cringing inwardly, he returns to the latest, September, issue. With a pair of Aunt Opal’s sewing scissors, he slices into the brand-new cover, painstakingly cutting around Lovecraft’s name, removing the block of bright text. The wounded magazine he carefully replaces in the crawlspace, then slips onto the porch and puts the slip of colorful writing under the brass knocker, just at eye level. Then he lets himself into the house and busies himself with homework until he hears a clatter at the door: the Aunts are home. Muffled exclamations. They enter the house in a state of heightened excitement, their voices high chirps of curiosity.
“That’s Lillian Clark’s nephew, isn’t it?”
“I know who it is, and I certainly don’t intend to encourage him.”
“Missy, whatever do you mean? He’s no harm, that one. The poor fellow.”
“He’s not right and never has been. The hours he keeps. I hear he is an Atheist, did you know that?”
“Let’s be charitable, now.”
“The fact remains… whatever does he mean by this? Leaving it as some sort of calling card. Keep your distance from that one.”
“I was only thinking I might ask Miss Lillian.”
“No!”
“Come now, it’s only a short walk, what could it hurt? If her nephew is becoming more erratic, she should know. Before he harms himself, the poor man. You remember that time he collapsed on the street during a cold spell?”
“The only reason to speak to Lillian Clark is to ensure that she keeps her nephew away from us. If you wish to speak to her on that account, then I will accompany you.”
“I will do no such thing. Let’s just keep this to ourselves for now. If there’s another event, then… then we’ll discuss further steps. Now where is that boy?”
As Douglas listens, he cannot help but feel a kinship growing—affinity for a stranger. If the Aunts knew his secrets, would they speak of him in similar tones? Doesn’t muttering follow him about—on the schoolyard, in the streets, haunting him, setting him apart? In this he feels a kinship to all outcasts. It sharpens his resolve.
He finds Lillian Clark’s house the very next day, simply by greeting the postman on the walk to the Aunts’ front door. The postman is happy to provide the street number and even a description. Douglas stops short of asking if he knows the name of Lovecraft. He does not want the great, the wonderful man to be warned of his existence. Douglas’s admiration, his hopes, are too sensitive and secret. The deep sense of kinship he feels dare not name itself. It must be nourished in darkness. But he knows that if he can get close, he can touch the man directly—let him know that he understands, that they are kindred, that they share the same visions. But caution is engrained in his nature. Douglas prepares slowly.
In the shortening days, he devotes a measure of each afternoon before dusk to walking repetitively past the Clark residence, which proves to be not a house at all but an apartment building. Eyes glower at him from houses all around, and once he crosses the street to avoid a neighbor who clearly means to apprehend him. Of course he must return home before dark each night, and take great care not to arouse the Aunts’ suspicions. Once he creeps out long after bedtime, down the dark streets, and takes up a post only to find a light burning still at this hour in one window of the apartment building. He imagines H.P. Lovecraft at work even now, hunched above a writing desk, pouring out his visions of otherworldly places. Imagine, setting pen to paper, and the paper carrying one away like a magic carpet, an enchanted scroll, to the River Skai… the wilds of Arkham… imagine…