The Creeper in the Crypt

"The Creeper in the Crypt" is a short story by Robert Bloch that first appeared in the July 1937 issue of Weird Tales. It is notable as one of the first stories not written by H. P. Lovecraft to be set in the Lovecraft-created town of Arkham.Sentinel Hill Press, "October-ganza 3: Day 7 – Lovecraft Country beyond HPL and Derleth", by Bret Kramer, October 7, 2016. 
The plot involves a gangster from New York coming to Arkham with a scheme to kidnap members of prominent families, since the "local coppers are all stiffs". He picks a local haunted house to use as a hideout--not realizing that in Arkham, the ghosts are real--and carnivorous.
Bloch does not explicitly name the "creeper" of the story's title, but he provides its identity in the form of an easily answered riddle: "What lurks in graveyards, ancient and unseen, then creeps from crypts to feast?" In case the reader needed another hint, when the creature finally attacks, the narrator hears a "sudden ghoulish baying that conjured up worlds of nightmare horror in my shattered brain."
The story includes a considerable amount of lore about Arkham, some borrowed from Lovecraft and other aspects invented by Bloch.
== Arkham ==
In Bloch's Arkham, "where ancient gables point like wizard’s fingers to the sky," there is "a tale for every rotting ruin, a story for every little corpse-eye window that stares out at the sea when the fog comes up." The story's narrator compares Arkham's old houses to "deserted palaces in a land where all but memories are dead," noting that "the streets of Arkham are bare at midnight, and over all hangs the age-old enchantment of days gone by."
Bloch mentions several Arkham streets, none of which appear on Lovecraft's map of the town:Cthulhu Files, "Lovecraft's Map of Arkham":
* Blascom Street, where the narrator lives in his family's place.
* Sewell Street, the location of Tarleton's party.
* Pringle Street, the address of the Chambers house.
* Old Town Street, where Cyrus Hook's mansion was burned down.
=== The Chambers House ===
The story's primary location is the Chambers house, also know as the Dark house, known as "the moldering house with the iron door in the cellar." Built on Pringle Street, it was originally owned by the colonial wizard Ezekiel Chambers, and then by the smuggler/graverobber Jonathan Dark. Dark was accused as using the door "as a passageway for bringing his stolen cadavers back to dispose of," but the door was not opened after his arrest; he made the "astounding and hideous claim that the key which locked it was on the other side." Dark also claimed that the tenants of the graveyard "would come to visit the house from below when a wizard invoked it with the proper spells and sacrifice."
=== The Graveyard on the Hill ===
Next to the Chambers house is "the old graveyard on the hill"; this corresponds to the "Wooded Graveyard" on "Hangman's Hill" that appears on Lovecraft's map. Dark claimed that below the graveyard there were "tunnels and burrows and secret vaults used in witch-days for unhallowed rites", and that these vaults had "tenants". Bloch does not specify who these tenants are, but it's clear that they are meant to be ghouls, like those that appear in Lovecraft's "Pickman's Model": bestial, anthropophagic, subterranean creatures who often dwell beneath cemeteries.
The story includes a few other Arkham landmarks, most mentioned in passing--like the Carter house, a possible reference to the house in Lovecraft's "The Unnamable". 
=== History ===
Bloch also sketches a brief history of Arkham, starting with its settlement by Sir Ambrose Abbott. In colonial times, "the King’s men cleared the town of wizardry", perhaps including Ezekiel Chambers, recalled for colonial-era "wizard tricks". 
In 1818, the new government intervened to "destroy some particularly atrocious burrows in and about some of the more ancient houses and, incidentally, to dig up a graveyard better left untouched." (The "new" government is presumably federal, since the current Massachusetts government traces back to 1629;Wikipedia, "Massachusetts General Court". in 1818, the U.S. president was James Monroe.Wikipedia, "Presidency of James Monroe".) 
A "great immigrant panic" occurred in Old Town Street in 1869, "when the moldering mansion of Cyrus Hook was burned to the ground by fear-crazed foreigners."
There have since been recurrent "scares", including the "affair of the 'witch-house'" (a reference to Lovecraft's story "The Dreams in the Witch-House") and incidents of "missing children at All-Hallows time".
At the end of the events of the story, the narrator has sought once again the help of the federal government, which has sent G-men to investigate the death of Joe Regetti--and to search for tunnels below the Arkham cemetery, though they are "usually uninterested in supernatural stories". This intervention recalls the ending of Lovecraft's "The Shadow over Innsmouth," in which Olmstead's accounts provoke a government raid on Innsmouth.
== Characters ==
=== Contemporary Arkham ===
* The Narrator: A painter who is descended from one of Arkham's founding families. He lives alone in his family's place on Bascom Street; his immediate relatives are dead, and he has few friends, though he is "socially prominent through accident of birth." Has a great fondness for "fabulous thought and imaginative morbidities". No name is given in the story, but given that his pedigree gives him social cachet, it's likely that he's a patrilineal descendant of Ambrose Abbott.
* Tarleton: An old friend of the narrator's; he throws a party at his house on Sewell Street, which the other modern Arkhamites mentioned in the story attend.
* Brent: A psychiatrist who attends Tarleton's party.
* Colonel Warren: Attends Tarleton's party.
* Harold Gauer: A college friend of the narrator's; attends Tarleton's party.
* Reverend Williams: A college friend of the narrator's; attends Tarleton's party.
=== Historical Arkham ===
* Sir Ambrose Abbott: One of the original settlers of Arkham, and an ancestor of the narrator.
* Ezekiel Chambers: The builder of the Chambers house, whose "wizard tricks" gave him an "unsavory reputation in Colonial Days."
* Jonathan Dark: The subsequent owner of the Chambers house, who was tried for smuggling not long before 1818. He was reputed to pursue "the abhorrent practice of graverobbing" in the cemetery behind his house. He died in prison while on trial, "babbling blasphemies that no man dared believe" about "what lay beneath the old graveyard on the hill; of tunnels and burrows and secret vaults used in witch-days for unhallowed rites."
* Cyrus Hook: His mouldering mansion on Old Town Street was burned to the town during the great immigrant panic of 1869.
=== Gangsters ===
* Joe Regetti: The leader of a gang from New York, he is disdainful of what he calls "balony about ghosts, or vampires". Described as "short, slim, and sallow. His hair was dark, his complexion swarthy."
* Polack: A Polish immigrant who serves as Regetti's right-hand man, described as "a big, red-faced man with the neck of a hog". He is rightly afraid of what he has heard about the Chambers house.
* Slim: One of Regetti's underlings.
* The Greek: Another member of the Regetti gang.
* Tony Fellippo: A gang leader who earlier disappeared from the Chambers house, leaving behind only a gnawed-on leg.
* Black Jim: At his place, rumours about the Chambers house are discussed.
==Publication History==
After its initial publication in Weird Tales, "The Creeper in the Crypt" was not reprinted until the Michaelmas 1983 issue of Crypt of Cthulhu (#16). It was not part of the first edition of Mysteries of the Worm (Zebra, 1981), but it was included in both Chaosium editions (1993, 2009). It was translated into French as "La crypte de l'horreur", published in L'embarquement pour Arkham (1994), the French edition of Mysteries of the Worm.Internet Speculative Fiction Database, "Title: The Creeper in the Crypt".
== External Link ==
* "The Creeper in the Crypt" full text at Cthulhu Files
==References==
Category:Robert Bloch works
Category:Lovecraft Circle Works