"The Shuttered Room" is a short story by August Derleth, presented as a "posthumous collaboration" with H. P. Lovecraft. It first appeared in The Shuttered Room and Other Pieces, an anthology published in 1959 by Arkham House.
Synopsis[]
The story tells of Abner Whateley, a member of the Dunwich Whateleys who has long lived abroad, coming back to the old Massachusetts town because his grandfather, Luther Whateley, dies and left him the old family home on the Miskatonic River as inheritance, including an attached mill. In a letter found in the house, Luther urges him to destroy the mill and kill anything that he finds in it, "no matter how small". While investigating the mill, and in particular a shuttered room where his Aunt Sarah was kept locked up following her visit with relatives in Innsmouth, Abner catches sight of a "long-legged frog or toad". However, he makes no effort to kill it, despite his grandfather's admonition. Instead, he kicks open the shutters to let in fresh air, in the process breaking a small hole in a window pane.
After further warnings from Tobias Whateley, his distant cousin who runs Dunwich's general store, and from Zebulon Whateley, Abner discovers tracks around the window of the (formerly) shuttered room; tiny tracks leading out of the room, and slightly larger tracks leading back in. Both tracks resemble those made by miniature human hands and feet, but with webbing between the fingers and toes.
Abner finds an old correspondence to Luther from a cousin, Ariah, who relates what he has heard about their mutual cousin from Innsmouth, Obed Marsh, from H.P. Lovecraft's "The Shadow Over Innsmouth". Ariah relates the lore about Innsmouth's Human/Deep One hybrids, which Luther evidently dismisses as rigmarole grounded in racism, because Ariah replies:
| “ | Luther, you may be right in this matter of race prejudice as responsible for the feeling against the Marshes. I know how people here feel about other races. It is unfortunate, perhaps, but such is their lack of education that they find much room for such prejudices. But I am not convinced that it is all due to race prejudice. I don’t know what kind of race it is that would give the Marshes after Obed that strange look. | „ |
Ralsa Whateley
Abner also finds notes from Luther about "punishing" Sarah following her visit to Innsmouth, where she had dallied with her cousin Ralsa Marsh, said to be "probably the most repellent of all the family". Luther also writes about a mysterious "R." who was "out again". The papers include the observation that "size commensurate with amt. of food." There are references to disappearing sheep and cows, and later people; Ada Wilkerson and Howard Willie, whose shoe was found with a foot still in it. The account concludes with: “R. back at last.... Nailed the shutters to the windows of Sarah’s room.... Once he has lost weight, he must be kept on a careful diet and to a controllable size.”
Meanwhile, animals begin disappearing in Dunwich again. There are also signs that something large is moving in and out of the once-shuttered room. Abner overhears a desperate phone call on the party line from his neighbor, Luke Lang, attacked and presumably killed by "some unairthly thing...a-hoppin’ raoun’."
Despite getting a rock thrown through his window with a note "Git out before ye get kilt!", a "well-intentioned warning" from Tobias, Abner resolves on staying to "make a final attempt to fathom the riddle Luther Whateley had left behind". The answer comes later that night when Abner finds, upon returning to the shuttered room which was his home, a "monstrous, leathery-skinned creature that was neither frog nor man"—his cousin Ralsa, the Deep One hybrid offspring of his Aunt Sarah and Ralsa Marsh. Abner sets fire to the creature with a kerosene lamp and then flees from Dunwich.
Setting[]
Derleth describes the landscape of the Dunwich setting he has borrowed from Lovecraft's "The Dunwich Horror":
| “ | At dusk, the wild, lonely country guarding the approaches to the village of Dunwich in north central Massachusetts seems more desolate and forbidding than it ever does by day. Twilight lends the barren fields and domed hills a strangeness that sets them apart from the country around that area; it brings to everything a kind of sentient, watchful animosity—to the ancient trees, to the brier-bordered stone walls pressing close upon the dusty road, to the low marshes with their myriads of fireflies and their incessantly calling whippoorwills vying with the muttering of frogs and the shrill songs of toads, to the sinuous windings of the upper reaches of the Miskatonic flowing among the dark hills seaward, all of which seem to close in upon the traveller as if intent upon holding him fast, beyond all escape. | „ |
The village itself is described through the returning Abner Whateley's eyes:
| “ | Dunwich, he saw as he drove through the cavernous covered bridge, had not changed; its main street lay under the looming mound of Round Mountain, its gambrel roofs as rotting as ever, its houses deserted, the only store still in the broken-steepled church, over everything the unmistakable aura of decay. | „ |
The main addition Derleth makes to the Dunwich setting is the house and mill of Luther Whateley:
| “ | He came within sight of the great old house with the mill wheel on the riverside.,,, The house appeared to be unchanged. The river-side of the house was given over to the mill, which had long ago ceased to function, as more and more of the fields around Dunwich had grown barren; except for one room above the mill-wheel—Aunt Sarey’s room—the entire side of the structure bordering the Miskatonic had been abandoned even in the time of his boyhood.... A verandah, fallen in at the corner of the house, circled that part of the structure used as a dwelling; from the lattice-work under the eaves great cobwebs hung, undisturbed by anything save the wind for years. | „ |
Chronology[]
The story is set sometime after 1928, because there are references to both the federal raid on Innsmouth and the death of "loathsome cousin Wilbur and his terrible twin brother" from "The Dunwich Horror". The latter seems to have happened some time ago, since the Whateley family is said to have grown more isolated since that event.
Sarah's visit to Innsmouth and its aftermath are said to have happened "decades" before 1928.
Critic Bret Kramer speculates that Abner was born around 1900.[1]
Characters[]
- Abner Whateley, a Whateley who returns to Dunwich to claim an inheritance
- Luther Whateley, Abner's grandfather
- Obed Marsh, the patriarch of the Marsh family from "The Shadow Over Innsmouth", who is revealed to be a cousin of the Whateleys
- Libby Whateley, Abner's mother and Luther's daughter
- Sarah Whateley, Luther's daughter
- Ralsa Marsh, Sarah's cousin and lover from Innsmouth, a great-grandson of Obed Marsh and a human/deep one hybrid
- Ralsa Whateley, Sarah and Ralsa's child, a human/deep one hybrid
- Tobias Whateley, a cousin who runs the general store in Dunwich
- Zebulon Whateley, Luther's brother and the last surviving member of his generation
- Jeremiah Whateley, Abner's father and Libby's husband and cousin
- Ariah (Whateley?), a cousin of Luther who writes to him about the Marsh family's deep one connection
- Ada Wilkerson, a victim of Ralsa Whateley before he is confined to the shuttered room
- Howard Willie, another victim of Ralsa before his confinement
- Luke Lang, a victim of Ralsa after he is accidentally released by Abner
- Wilbur Whateley, Abner's "loathsome" cousin, who died on Sentinel Hill with his "terrible twin brother"
External Links[]
- Tor.com, The Lovecraft Reread, "We Are All Completely Batrachian — I Mean Normal: August Derleth’s 'The Shuttered Room'", by Anne M. Pillsworth and Ruthanna Emrys, March 23, 2016
- Sentinel Hill Press, Derleth Country #4, "The Shuttered Room", by Bret Kramer, March 26, 2016
References[]
- ↑ Sentinel Hill Press, Derleth Country #4, "The Shuttered Room", Bret Kramer, March 26, 2016.