Newsgroups: alt.horror.cthulhu
From: piharris@cix.compulink.co.uk (Philip Harris)
Subject: No subject 
Reply-To: piharris@cix.compulink.co.uk
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 23:08:00 +0000

A STORY

This is the first part of a story I've recently finished, let me know
what you think.


EPITAPH

I can still remember the first time. The first time I read a
Lovecraft story that is. The Haunter of the Dark it was called. I was
lent the book by an old man, Mr Tomlinson. He owned a tiny bookshop
in Church Lane, just off the high street. The shop had once been a
second hand shop, then a travel agents, then Mr Tomlinson had bought
it and filled it to overflowing with dust covered books of every
description.

The walls were covered with shelves stacked high with every sort of
book you can imagine. There must have been thousands of books,
hardbacks and paperbacks, from romance novels to the Observer Book of
Cars. The condition of the books varied, although most were second
hand. New books would arrive almost daily and each one would
carefully be priced, then squeezed onto the shelves.

Mr Tomlinson's real love was horror. A large proportion of the books
in the shop were horror tales of one sort or another, and he once
showed me his personal collection which consisted of hundreds of mint
condition paperbacks and first edition hardbacks, including the
entire Pan book of Horror series, each one signed by all the
contributors.

It was this love of horror that brought the two of us together. I was
one of his first customers and after a couple of visits he soon
noticed that I spent most of my time rooting around for horror
stories that I hadn't read. We got talking and he proved to be a very
knowlegable and interesting fan of the macabre.

Every Saturday I would run down to the shop, and sit and chat about
Poe, King, Barker or some other horror writer. Often he would
recommend a book or two to me and I would eagerly part with my cash
and take them home to read. It was during one of these chats that he
mentioned HP Lovecraft. That day he lent me a copy of an omnibus
containing The Haunter of the Dark and I read the first story that
afternoon.

I was fourteen at the time and despite having read every kind of
horror, from ghost stories to splatterpunk I was totally unprepared
for what awaited me. Despite the intensely difficult writing style I
was drawn right into the midst of the story, I could see the dark
gloomy tower. I could see the twisting maze of streets, and feel the
characters fear. That night I slept with the light on, not really
sure what I was afraid of, but afraid all the same.

I read the other stories in the book the next day and I was hooked.
Each one seemed to be part of a much larger story, just one brief
episode in a tale that might never be told as a whole. The next day,
Monday, I missed one of my lessons to go and visit the bookshop.

Mr Tomlinson didn't seem particularly surprised to see me, or that
I'd finished the book already and he happily directed me to another
couple of books containing some of Lovecraft's stories. I just had to
have them and I spent the money my mother had given me for my lunch
on all three books, stashed them in my bag and left for school. I got
halfway there before deciding that I might as well nip down to the
river and read a couple of stories before returning to school. I
didn't go back that day. By the time I arrived home I had read all
the stories once, and some of my favourites twice. It was the
beginning of my obsession.

And it was an obsession, every weekend I would make my way down to Mr
Tomlinson's bookshop in the hope that he had found a new Lovecraft
volume. I quickly collected all of his stories and moved on to
writers whose stories built on the Lovecraft mythos. Within a couple
of months I had over twenty books and the number rose every week.

As I got older new books became harder to get by so I widened my
search to magazines, collecting old copies of Wierd Tales with
Lovecraft stories in. After that source of new material dried up I
began collecting different editions of Lovecraftian stories, even
different printings of the same book. I collected no less than eleven
copies of The Haunter of the Dark, from various sources. My
collection continued to grow, including fanzines, letters, artwork
and even role playing material.

When I moved to university I started a world wide Lovecraft fan club,
attracting several of the big name writers as members. We swapped
snippets of information and I continued to spend money on Lovecraft
memorabilia, including some very obscure material, pens he used,
photographs of him and his parents, even an old writing desk that he
owned when he wrote The Haunter of the Dark. I can safely say that I
had the largest collection of Lovecraft material in the world.

I say 'had' because I no longer have any of it, I burnt it all.

To be continued....

     **********************
     *                    *       .... TERROR IN THE UK ....
     *    Philip Harris   *       
     * Born Oct 15th 1969 *    Barker....Campbell....Herbert...
     * Died Feb 25th 1973 *
     *                    *       .... TERROR IN THE UK ....
     **********************