just for the heck of it

Brown Jenkin, Lovecraft’s least typical but possibly scariest monster. But this model misses one of the scariest features described by Lovecraft: the human hands in place of the paws.

At the close of the story, Brown Jenkin tunnels into the hero’s body, devours his heart, and then tunnels out the other side. I’ve often reflected on what makes that extra detail so horrifying. I suppose it’s because one would expect a “mission accomplished” from Brown Jenkin after eating the heart, and by the principle of economy of effort he/she/it should simply have retreated along the same route. But continuing to tunnel out the other side makes it seem like there was a spatial trajectory as a key feature of Brown Jenkin’s movement, almost as if the heart were devoured in passing, as an afterthought. (That’s not the case, of course, since the deadly attack is an act of revenge for the hero propelling Brown Jenkin into a deep abyss a bit earlier.)

Dreams in the Witch House remains a bit of an anomaly among the great tales, since as a New England witch horror story it seems only tangentially related to Lovecraft’s usual extraterrestrial creatures with barely recognizable physical shapes. He does tie them all together, of course, but it makes an awkward fit in the case of this particular story.