Howard Phillips Lovecraft - The Horror at Martins Beach, HP Lovercraft
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The Horror at Martin's Beach
Lovecraft, Howard Phillips
Published:
1923
Categorie(s):
Fiction, Horror, Short Stories
Source:
1
About Lovecraft:
Howard Phillips Lovecraft was an American author of fantasy, horror
and science fiction. He is notable for blending elements of science fiction
and horror; and for popularizing "cosmic horror": the notion that some
concepts, entities or experiences are barely comprehensible to human
minds, and those who delve into such risk their sanity. Lovecraft has be-
come a cult figure in the horror genre and is noted as creator of the
"Cthulhu Mythos," a series of loosely interconnected fictions featuring a
"pantheon" of nonhuman creatures, as well as the famed Necronomicon,
a grimoire of magical rites and forbidden lore. His works typically had a
tone of "cosmic pessimism," regarding mankind as insignificant and
powerless in the universe. Lovecraft's readership was limited during his
life, and his works, particularly early in his career, have been criticized as
occasionally ponderous, and for their uneven quality. Nevertheless,
Lovecraft’s reputation has grown tremendously over the decades, and he
is now commonly regarded as one of the most important horror writers
of the 20th Century, exerting an influence that is widespread, though of-
ten indirect. Source: Wikipedia
Also available on Feedbooks for Lovecraft:
•
(1926)
•
(1931)
•
(1928)
•
(1934)
•
(1931)
•
(1936)
•
(1930)
•
(1927)
•
(1938)
•
(1932)
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I have never heard an even approximately adequate explanation of the
horror at Martin's Beach. Despite the large number of witnesses, no two
accounts agree; and the testimony taken by local authorities contains the
most amazing discrepancies.
Perhaps this haziness is natural in view of the unheard-of character of
the horror itself, the almost paralytic terror of all who saw it, and the ef-
forts made by the fashionable Wavecrest Inn to hush it up after the pub-
licity created by Prof. Ahon's article "Are Hypnotic Powers Confined to
Recognized Humanity?"
Against all these obstacles I am striving to present a coherent version;
for I beheld the hideous occurrence, and believe it should be known in
view of the appalling possibilities it suggests. Martin's Beach is once
more popular as a watering-place, but I shudder when I think of it.
Indeed, I cannot look at the ocean at all now without shuddering.
Fate is not always without a sense of drama and climax, hence the ter-
rible happening of August 8, 1922, swiftly followed a period of minor
and agreeably wonder-fraught excitement at Martin's Beach. On May 17
the crew of the fishing smack Alma of Gloucester, under Capt. James P.
Orne, killed, after a battle of nearly forty hours, a marine monster whose
size and aspect produced the greatest possible stir in scientific circles and
caused certain Boston naturalists to take every precaution for its taxi-
dermic preservation.
The object was some fifty feet in length, of roughly cylindrical shape,
and about ten feet in diameter. It was unmistakably a gilled fish in its
major affiliations; but with certain curious modifications such as rudi-
mentary forelegs and six-toed feet in place of pectoral fins, which
prompted the widest speculation. Its extraordinary mouth, its thick and
scaly hide, and its single, deep-set eye were wonders scarcely less re-
markable than its colossal dimensions; and when the naturalists pro-
nounced it an infant organism, which could not have been hatched more
than a few days, public interest mounted to extraordinary heights.
Capt. Orne, with typical Yankee shrewdness, obtained a vessel large
enough to hold the object in its hull, and arranged for the exhibition of
his prize. With judicious carpentry he prepared what amounted to an ex-
cellent marine museum, and, sailing south to the wealthy resort district
of Martin's Beach, anchored at the hotel wharf and reaped a harvest of
admission fees.
The intrinsic marvelousness of the object, and the importance which it
clearly bore in the minds of many scientific visitors from near and far,
combined to make it the season's sensation. That it was absolutely
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unique - unique to a scientifically revolutionary degree - was well under-
stood. The naturalists had shown plainly that it radically differed from
the similarly immense fish caught off the Florida coast; that, while it was
obviously an inhabitant of almost incredible depths, perhaps thousands
of feet, its brain and principal organs indicated a development startlingly
vast, and out of all proportion to anything hitherto associated with the
fish tribe.
On the morning of July 20 the sensation was increased by the loss of
the vessel and its strange treasure. In the storm of the preceding night it
had broken from its moorings and vanished forever from the sight of
man, carrying with it the guard who had slept aboard despite the threat-
ening weather. Capt. Orne, backed by extensive scientific interests and
aided by large numbers of fishing boats from Gloucester, made a thor-
ough and exhaustive searching cruise, but with no result other than the
prompting of interest and conversation. By August 7 hope was aban-
doned, and Capt. Orne had returned to the Wavecrest Inn to wind up his
business affairs at Martin's Beach and confer with certain of the scientific
men who remained there. The horror came on August 8.
It was in the twilight, when grey sea-birds hovered low near the shore
and a rising moon began to make a glittering path across the waters. The
scene is important to remember, for every impression counts. On the
beach were several strollers and a few late bathers; stragglers from the
distant cottage colony that rose modestly on a green hill to the north, or
from the adjacent cliff-perched Inn whose imposing towers proclaimed
its allegiance to wealth and grandeur.
Well within viewing distance was another set of spectators, the loun-
gers on the Inn's high-ceiled and lantern-lighted veranda, who appeared
to be enjoying the dance music from the sumptuous ballroom inside.
These spectators, who included Capt. Orne and his group of scientific
confreres, joined the beach group before the horror progressed far; as did
many more from the Inn. Certainly there was no lack of witnesses, con-
fused though their stories be with fear and doubt of what they saw.
There is no exact record of the time the thing began, although a major-
ity say that the fairly round moon was "about a foot" above the low-lying
vapors of the horizon. They mention the moon because what they saw
seemed subtly connected with it - a sort of stealthy, deliberate, menacing
ripple which rolled in from the far skyline along the shimmering lane of
reflected moonbeams, yet which seemed to subside before it reached the
shore.
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Many did not notice this ripple until reminded by later events; but it
seems to have been very marked, differing in height and motion from
the normal waves around it. Some called it cunning and calculating. And
as it died away craftily by the black reefs afar out, there suddenly came
belching up out of the glitter-streaked brine a cry of death; a scream of
anguish and despair that moved pity even while it mocked it.
First to respond to the cry were the two life guards then on duty;
sturdy fellows in white bathing attire, with their calling proclaimed in
large red letters across their chests. Accustomed as they were to rescue
work, and to the screams of the drowning, they could find nothing famil-
iar in the unearthly ululation; yet with a trained sense of duty they ig-
nored the strangeness and proceeded to follow their usual course.
Hastily seizing an air-cushion, which with its attached coil of rope lay
always at hand, one of them ran swiftly along the shore to the scene of
the gathering crowd; whence, after whirling it about to gain momentum,
he flung the hollow disc far out in the direction from which the sound
had come. As the cushion disappeared in the waves, the crowd curiously
awaited a sight of the hapless being whose distress had been so great;
eager to see the rescue made by the massive rope.
But that rescue was soon acknowledged to be no swift and easy mat-
ter; for, pull as they might on the rope, the two muscular guards could
not move the object at the other end. Instead, they found that object
pulling with equal or even greater force in the very opposite direction,
till in a few seconds they were dragged off their feet and into the water
by the strange power which had seized on the proffered life-preserver.
One of them, recovering himself, called immediately for help from the
crowd on the shore, to whom he flung the remaining coil of rope; and in
a moment the guards were seconded by all the hardier men, among
whom Capt. Orne was foremost. More than a dozen strong hands were
now tugging desperately at the stout line, yet wholly without avail.
Hard as they tugged, the strange force at the other end tugged harder;
and since neither side relaxed for an instant, the rope became rigid as
steel with the enormous strain. The struggling participants, as well as the
spectators, were by this time consumed with curiosity as to the nature of
the force in the sea. The idea of a drowning man had long been dis-
missed; and hints of whales, submarines, monsters, and demons now
passed freely around. Where humanity had first led the rescuers, wonder
kept them at their task; and they hauled with a grim determination to
uncover the mystery.
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