The Rats in the Walls

"Ultimate horror often paralyses memory in a merciful way." In H.P. Lovecraft‘s 1924 short story The Rats in the Walls, the narrator, an American named Delaporte, is plagued by the sound of scurrying rats in the walls of his recently restored ancestral home—though no one else hears them. Driven by dread and curiosity, he descends into the catacombs beneath the estate and uncovers a grotesque secret buried for centuries that drives him to the edge of his sanity. Though virtually unknown and financially unsuccessful during his lifetime, H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) is now regarded as one of the most influential 20th-century writers of supernatural horror fiction. Widely credited with inventing the "cosmic horror" genre—fiction that explores humanity‘s insignificance in the face of vast, unknowable cosmic forces—he also created the "Cthulhu Mythos", a shared universe of ancient alien beings and forbidden knowledge that has influenced generations of horror and science fiction writers.