Deborah
ENGL 3850-02N
Supernatural Lit
Dr. Coats
12 March, 1998
Rats in the Walls and Bats in the Belfry
I will admit, Dr. Coats, that when I first skimmed (important term, skimmed) through this story, I thought to myself: "Jeez. It's just a combination of Graveyard Shift and Jerusalem's Lot. Whoop-ty-doo." But then my sense caught up with my brain and smacked it around: "Doofus! Hel-lo! Lovecraft wheedled this story out of his imagination long before King was out of diapers." And after careful consideration, I have to agree with my sense.
A man moves into the renovated house of his ancestors. This seems simple enough, but this family tree has had a lot of bad apples in it. Some went mad, some went missing and some went to Virginia. In an attempt to reclaim some family history, the narrator has ordered a complete renovation of the house. He is avoided by the townspeople but ignores this slight and manages to convince them that he has no evil motive for renovating the house. He begins to learn the history of the land as well as the house. As is always the case in an older area of land, the history involves supernatural lore, which our narrator dismisses as picturesque mythology (19). When he moves into the house, his research into his family's roots begins to accelerate.
Meanwhile, his cat (with a very Un-PC name, I might add) has begun to start and scrabble at unknown phantom objects. Soon, he begins to feels an unknown presence in the walls, as well. The unmistakable sound of thousands of rats inside the walls keeps him awake during the night. His dreams are filled with horrific visions. Soon, he and a friend decide to descend below the house to see where the rats might be hiding. They are unable to discern it, so they bring in experts in archaeology to help. The seven men descend below the house and are greeted by the ghastly sight of hundreds of ancient rat-gnawed skulls. They continue on past even more terrible sights until the narrator and his friend are separated from the group. The narrator either channels dead relatives and fulfills his destiny to become one of them, or his mind snaps and he is taken by madness. Either way, he is found over the dead body of his friend, committed to a madhouse, and the house of his ancestors is destroyed.
Every moment of this story screams of two main fears. The first-- the fear of the unknown-- is what drives him to explore that which should have been left alone. The unseen rats drive him to distraction and the unknown horrors of the past steal his mind. The fears of family and heredity also play a prominent role in this account. It is his destiny to become part of the mad circle into which his relatives have been placed for all eternity. Even when he is removed from the house, he hears the rats, for they have followed him out of the 'sinking ship' and will probably remain with him for the rest of his tortured life.