HP Lovecraft's "The Secret Cave" part 1

            Today is the birthday of cult horror icon, HP Lovecraft.  Thru his writing, he has indirectly had massive impact on the world of fiction, so I decided to do another rewrite on one of his old works.  I have done this writing exercise 3 times prior, One, Two, and Three.

Standard Introduction

            I am a fan HP Lovecraft.  Not his god-awful racism of course, but the fact that he wrote in such a stilted un marketable way.  I think it was Neil Gaiman (Though I can’t find the interview) that described HP’s work as "a churning morass of adjectives".  But the ideas in the stories, the mysterious and weird parts that lend themselves so well too modern horror are often great.

            The idea of humanity not being important at all, that the universe is chaotic and hostile, and that even knowing about these things leave the protagonists of the stories insane from the knowledge, those are all cool.

            What is also cool is that all of HP Lovecraft’s writings are public domain.  They can be re-printed, referenced, and even re-written by those (like me) who are fans of the ideas but want to make the writing cleaner, or tighter, or just less racist.  (Seriously, why did you name the cat that Howie?  Did you think it was funny?)

Today’s Entry

            While I previously went with his more accessible writing, and shorter stories at that, today I am working from a fragment that is just junk.  I guess his estate or old publisher was just binding together whatever they could at this point, because even though it was written in 1897 when Howard was a literal child and did not know how punctuation worked… it was published in 1959 by vultures attempting to capitalize on Lovecraft’s cult fame.

            “The Secret Cave or John Lees Adventure” is a fragment published after Lovecraft’s death.  Taken for what it is, a short adventure story about finding a mysterious cave in one’s basement as a child... it is fine.  It was written by a little kid.  Howard clearly had a bigger vocabulary and imagination than he knew how to express, but that doesn't make it good and it definitely didn't fit into what people know as "Lovecraft".  I had to hammer this thing like nobody’s business to work it into anything approaching a complete story.

            This is an exceptionally short work, but could have easily served as the outline for a scary children’s story in his adult life had he bothered to write it out more and put, “inspired by a story I wrote as a child” in the introduction.  You know how I KNOW it could have been more?  Because I turned it into a multipart story, each part of which is much longer than the original story.

            For more info, here is a link to the story, and here is a link to the Wikipedia entry.

            If you want to do this yourself, here is a link to HP Lovecraft’s complete works, or at least his work in horror.  I believe he wrote some romance stories too and I have no idea where to find those.

            Anyway, here is the story.  I hope you enjoy it.

The Secret Cave or John Lee's Adventure

            “Be good while I am away,” said Mrs. Lee “And don’t get into trouble.”

            “Yes Ma’am,” replied John.

            “Bye, Mama,” said Alice.

            Mr. & Mrs. Lee were going off for the day, and for the first time were going to leave John, who last week had turned 10, in charge of his little sister Alice, who was 8 but wiser than her brother.  As soon as the elder Lees were away the younger Lees went down cellar and began to rummage among the rubbish.  This rummaging would have been frowned upon by their parents.

            “John, we aren’t supposed to be down here,” little Alice leaned against the wall watching John.  “Mom doesn’t want us breaking things or getting hurt.  Let’s just go play pretend upstairs.”

            “Mom and Dad don’t let us play down here when they are here,” John said while making a boat out of barrel staves.  “So, we should play around down here when they are not around.”

            “They don’t let us play down here because they don’t want us hurt,” said Alice.

            “We won’t get hurt,” said John.  “And when they get home I can show them that I built a boat down here without getting hurt and after that they will have to let us play down here because we will have shown them that we won’t get hurt.”

            Alice gave a piercing cry as the bricks behind her crumbled away and she fell back into a hidden passage.

             “Oh, god,” said John as he rushed up to her and lifted her out.  “Tell me you aren’t hurt.  We don’t want to get in trouble.”

            As soon as her scream subsided she said, “The wall went away.”

            “Yeah, it did, didn’t it?” said John going to the hole and looking down a long passage.  It looked cold, it looked damp, and there was something else about it.  “Something is weird about this, let’s go down and see what this is.”

            “What?  No,” said Alice, moving to step back into the cellar.  “Hold on.  It’s too dark to just go down there.”

             Alice ran back upstairs to the kitchen and got a box of oversized candles left over from John’s birthday, climbed up to the high shelves for a little box of matches, and then went back to the cellar passage.

            “Here,” Alice said, handing the candles and matches to John.

            “Alice, you are so smart,” John said.  Alice blushed.

            The two once more entered the passage, lit by candles in tiny hands.  They could see the walls were plastered, that this hall had been part of the house ages ago.  They wandered deeper down the passage into what John suspected were bat caves, or when his imagination started taking hold pirates’ cave like from “Treasure Island”

            “We could find a mountain of treasure,” said John.

            “Or we could get bitten by rats or something and have to get shots,” said Alice.

            After walking further in, the plaster disappeared.  Lighting new candles they could see that the walls were hewn stone and the floor was packed earth and sand, signs that this had been part of a house disappeared.  They came to a wider open space in the earth, the light of their candles unable to show them the whole of what must be a cavern of some kind.

            “Where do you think we are?” asked John.

            “In a cave dumb-dumb,” said Alice.  “Did you forget?”

            “I mean compared to the house,” John said rolling his eyes.  “I would have thought we would reach the beach by now.

            “Let me see,” said Alice kneeling to the sandy floor.  She drew a square, “Here is the house,” she drew a long line off to the side, “There is the cliff over the beach,” she then turned her head, stood up and walked around her little drawing, “Which wall was the hole in?”

            John started thinking and pointing first to his left, then his right.  “Here?” he asked pointing.

            Alice nodded, “Okay,” she then drew a long line that was not quite side by side with the line for the beach cliff, “Guess this is the tunnel then,” and she put a wide mouth at the end of the line, “and this is the big part of the cave we are in.”

            “Listen,” said John.

            “What is it?” said Alice tensing and reaching to hold John’s hand.

            In the candlelight they both heard a hiss noise, or maybe more like heavy breathing.

            “It’s the beach,” said Alice.

            “Good,” said John.  “Hey, follow me.”

            “John, we are really deep,” said Alice.  “And this cave is too big for us to know how to find our way out.  We can’t even see one wall from the other.”

            “It will be alright,” said John.  “Here,” he wrote in the sand an arrow pointing to the hall out and started shuffling his feet, “we’ll leave a trail, and every so often we’ll make an arrow to point back the way we came.”

            Alice was anxious, but John’s plan made sense, “Alright,” she said.

            As they shuffled along the sound of the water became clearer and nearer.  Stopping every so often to draw an arrow, to light new candles, or to shake the sand from their shoes as, “I should have brought a stick from the basement for this” got muttered by each of them at various points.

            They finally stopped when they found a small locked box, sitting somewhat deep in the sand.

            “I knew this had to be a pirate cave,” said John.

            “What?” asked Alice.

            “This is a treasure chest,” said John.  “These are pirate caves.  They would come in thru the cave’s mouth on the beach, take their stuff up to whatever building was there before our house and sell it or hide it.”

            “That sounds crazy,” said Alice.

            “This must just be something they left down here and never got the chance to come back for,” said John.

            “Why would the leave it?” asked Alice.

            John handed his candle to Alice and pulled up on the box.  Hauling at it the thing eventually pulled free of the sand as he dropped back on his butt, “they left it here because it is heavy,” he said.  “They probably wanted to get a wagon or something and then just put it off.”

             “Okay, that makes sense,” Alice said nodding.  “How about we do that?”

            “What?” asked John.

            “I think we have gone far enough,” said Alice.  “And the box is too heavy to pull back with us.”

            “No, come on,” said John.  “This is an adventure, Mom and Dad would never let us do something like this again.”

            “That is one of the reasons we should go back,” said Alice.  “The other being we are going to run out of candles.”

            “Oh, yeah,” said John.  “That would be bad.  Let’s go get a lantern and tools or something.”

            “Yeah,” said Alice, in the tone that said she would not want to come back down again, whether they brought a lantern, tools, a team of dogs, or even with a bunch of grownups.

            John began to sulk as they turned back and began following back the trail of disturbed dirt and sand.  Counting the arrows and listening to the sound of the ocean start to fade.  It was of course faster to go back, knowing where you are going and not having to leave a trail is always faster, but something about it was off.  John was starting to hear the ocean louder again.

            “John,” said Alice.

            “I know,” he said.  “The ocean is getting louder.  Is the tide coming in?”

            “No, look,” Alice said, pointing to one of the arrows drawn in the sand.

            John gazed at it.  It looked wrong.  The lines were too wide, and it wasn’t as smooth as his sister’s clean lines.  They hadn’t drawn this arrow.  His eyes turned to the path.

            “This isn’t our path,” said John.

            “How could it not be?” asked Alice her voice raising and the slightest shiver in it forming.  “We made it.  It’s ours.  We are down here by ourselves.  We are by ourselves.  We’re by ourselves.” Alice started shaking and the light of her candle started to flicker.

            Alice became deathly quiet and John’s ears perked as they heard the unmistakable sound of a distant whistle.  It was clear and carried a melody that neither recognized.  The sound echoed and disappeared below the sound of the ocean.

            “What do we do?” asked Alice.  “What do we do? What do we do? What do we do?”

            “Stop,” snapped John.  The sound of the ocean was all they heard.  “Don’t follow the path.”

            “But--” Alice started to retort.

            “Listen,” said John.  “We started hearing the ocean more, so we got turned around.”

            “Okay,” said Alice, her mood cooling.  She took a deep breath and let it all out.

            “So, let’s turn around,” he said, taking Alice by the hand.  “And go away from the sound of the ocean.  We’re going home.”

            “We’re going home,” said Alice.

To be Continued in Part 2 tomorrow.

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