The Room in the Castle

"The Room in the Castle" is a short Cthulhu Mythos story by British author Ramsey Campbell.
==Synopsis==
A Londoner on an errand to the British Museum for a sick friend happens across the legend of a fearsome creature imprisoned beneath an ancient castle in the Severn Valley. Despite warnings from his friend about the danger he is putting himself in, he decides to travel to the castle and take a look for himself, not really believing that he would find anything.
Upon reaching the castle, the man, stumbling across a hidden room beneath the ruined structure, inadvertently awakens the sleeping behemoth Byatis, which has lain undisturbed for countless years. He is lucky to escape with his life.
Resolving to fix his mistake, he returns the following day equipped with several containers full of petrol, dumping them through the trapdoor and setting Byatis ablaze. However, a strange shape in the smoke may indicate that the entity did not perish as planned…
==Characters==
*Parry, a well-educated man with an interest in English folklore.
*Scott, Parry's friend, a former sceptic now convinced of the existence of otherworldly forces in the Severn Valley.
*Sir Gilbert Morley, a long-dead practitioner of black magic.
==Publication History==
"The Room in the Castle" was first published in the Arkham House collection The Inhabitant of the Lake and Less Welcome Tenants in 1964. It has since been reprinted in several volumes of Campbell's work, including Cold Print (1985) and Die Offenbarungen des Glaaki, a German-language collection of translations of several of his stories.
==Trivia==
*The wizard Morley was said to have trapped Byatis in order to use its essence as a link to the "sendings" of Cthulhu, Glaaki, Daoloth, and Shub-Niggurath.
Category:Ramsey Campbell works
Category:Expanded Mythos Works