Through the Gates of the Silver Key
()
About this ebook
Howard Phillips Lovecraft
H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) was an American author of science fiction and horror stories. Born in Providence, Rhode Island to a wealthy family, he suffered the loss of his father at a young age. Raised with his mother’s family, he was doted upon throughout his youth and found a paternal figure in his grandfather Whipple, who encouraged his literary interests. He began writing stories and poems inspired by the classics and by Whipple’s spirited retellings of Gothic tales of terror. In 1902, he began publishing a periodical on astronomy, a source of intellectual fascination for the young Lovecraft. Over the next several years, he would suffer from a series of illnesses that made it nearly impossible to attend school. Exacerbated by the decline of his family’s financial stability, this decade would prove formative to Lovecraft’s worldview and writing style, both of which depict humanity as cosmologically insignificant. Supported by his mother Susie in his attempts to study organic chemistry, Lovecraft eventually devoted himself to writing poems and stories for such pulp and weird-fiction magazines as Argosy, where he gained a cult following of readers. Early stories of note include “The Alchemist” (1916), “The Tomb” (1917), and “Beyond the Wall of Sleep” (1919). “The Call of Cthulu,” originally published in pulp magazine Weird Tales in 1928, is considered by many scholars and fellow writers to be his finest, most complex work of fiction. Inspired by the works of Edgar Allan Poe, Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, and Lord Dunsany, Lovecraft became one of the century’s leading horror writers whose influence remains essential to the genre.
Read more from Howard Phillips Lovecraft
The Weiser Book of Horror and the Occult: Hidden Magic, Occult Truths, and the Stories That Started It All Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Call of Cthulhu and Other Stories Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Greatest Ghost and Horror Stories Ever Written: volume 4 (30 short stories) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5At the Mountains of Madness Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Christmas Library: 250+ Essential Christmas Novels, Poems, Carols, Short Stories...by 100+ Authors Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Terrible Old Man Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Best of H. P. Lovecraft Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Gothic Novel Collection Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Call of Cthulhu (Serapis Classics) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Festival Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Shadow of Innsmouth Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Weird Tales: Best of the Early Years 1926-27: Best of the Early Years 1926-27 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe New Annotated H. P. Lovecraft (The Annotated Books) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Dream Cycle Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Greatest Ghost and Horror Stories Ever Written: volume 1 (30 short stories) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Temple Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Cthulhu Mythos MEGAPACK®: 40 Modern and Classic Lovecraftian Stories Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5H. P. Lovecraft: The Collection Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hellbent Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGothic Classics: 60+ Books in One Volume Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBrooklyn Noir 2: The Classics Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Horror Megapack: 25 Classic and Modern Horror Stories Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5
Related to Through the Gates of the Silver Key
Related ebooks
Even Death May Die: The Collected Works of H.P. Lovecraft Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Colour Out of Space Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Diary of Alonzo Typer (Fantasy and Horror Classics): With a Dedication by George Henry Weiss Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Shadow Out of Time Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Thing on the Doorstep Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Master of the Asteroid Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAt the Mountains of Madness, The Call of Cthulhu and The Music of Erich Zann Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Best of Jeffrey Ford Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAt the Mountains of Madness Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The 7th Golden Age of Weird Fiction MEGAPACK®: Manly Banister Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHauntings: (Fantasy and Horror Classics) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Ninth Skeleton Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Dunwich Horror Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Dark Issue 79: The Dark, #79 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMetaphorosis March 2019 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Wraiths of Will and Pleasure: The Wraeththu Histories, #1 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Frank Mildmay Or, the Naval Officer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Exploring Dark Short Fiction #1: A Primer to Steve Rasnic Tem Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Good Lady Ducayne Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Whisper in the Dark: Twelve Thrilling Tales by Louisa May Alcott Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPhoenix Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Greatest Ghost and Horror Stories Ever Written: volume 2 (30 short stories) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings#31Days: A Collection Of Horror Essays, Vol. 2 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSherlock Holmes: Cthulhu Mythos Adventures: Sherlock Holmes Adventures in Time & Space, #2 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTatters from a Royal Yellow Robe - Tales of the King in Yellow Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOmoo by Herman Melville - Delphi Classics (Illustrated) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsJake's Monthly- Lovecraftian Horror Anthology Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLast Burn in Hell: Director's Cut Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Ghost Stories of Ambrose Bierce Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Medusa's Coil Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5
Fantasy For You
This Is How You Lose the Time War Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fellowship Of The Ring: Being the First Part of The Lord of the Rings Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Empire of the Vampire Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fairy Tale Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Tress of the Emerald Sea: Secret Projects, #1 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Galatea: A Short Story Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Nettle & Bone Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Priory of the Orange Tree Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sarah J. Maas: Series Reading Order - with Summaries & Checklist Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Silmarillion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Warrior of the Light: A Manual Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Phantom Tollbooth Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Assassin and the Desert: A Throne of Glass Novella Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Slewfoot: A Tale of Bewitchery Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Piranesi Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Daughter of the Forest: Book One of the Sevenwaters Trilogy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Assassin and the Empire: A Throne of Glass Novella Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mistborn: Secret History Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Don Quixote: [Complete & Illustrated] Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Black Sun Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wizard's First Rule Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The City of Dreaming Books Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Assassin and the Pirate Lord: A Throne of Glass Novella Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Eyes of the Dragon Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Immortal Longings Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Through the Gates of the Silver Key
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Through the Gates of the Silver Key - Howard Phillips Lovecraft
KEY
Chapter One
In a vast room hung with strangely figured arras and carpeted with Bonkhata rugs of impressive age and workmanship, four men were sitting around a document-strewn table. From the far corners, where odd tripods of wrought iron were now and then replenished by an incredibly aged Negro in somber livery, came the hypnotic fumes of olibanum; while in a deep niche on one side there ticked a curious, coffin-shaped clock whose dial bore baffling hieroglyphs and whose four hands did not move in consonance with any time system known on this planet. It was a singular and disturbing room, but well fitted to the business then at hand. For there, in the New Orleans home of this continent’s greatest mystic, mathematician and orientalist, there was being settled at last the estate of a scarcely less great mystic, scholar, author and dreamer who had vanished from the face of the earth four years before.
Randolph Carter, who had all his life sought to escape from the tedium and limitations of waking reality in the beckoning vistas of dreams and fabled avenues of other dimensions, disappeared from the sight of man on the seventh of October, 1928, at the age of fifty-four. His career had been a strange and lonely one, and there were those who inferred from his curious novels many episodes more bizarre than any in his recorded history. His association with Harley Warren, the South Carolina mystic whose studies in the primal Naacal language of the Himalayan priests had led to such outrageous conclusions, had been close. Indeed, it was he who — one mist-mad, terrible night in an ancient graveyard — had seen Warren descend into a dank and nitrous vault, never to emerge. Carter lived in Boston, but it was from the wild, haunted hills behind hoary and witch-accursed Arkham that all his forebears had come. And it was amid these ancient, cryptically brooding hills that he had ultimately vanished.
His old servant, Parks — who died early in 1930 — had spoken of the strangely aromatic and hideously carven box he had found in the attic, and of the indecipherable parchments and queerly figured silver key which that box had contained: matters of which Carter had also written to others. Carter, he said, had told him that this key had come down from his ancestors, and that it would help him to unlock the gates to his lost boyhood, and to strange dimensions and fantastic realms which he had hitherto visited only in vague, brief, and elusive dreams. Then one day Carter took the box and its contents and rode away in his car, never to return.
Later on, people found the car at the side of an old, grass-grown road in the hills behind crumbling Arkham — the hills where Carter’s forebears had once dwelt, and where the ruined cellar of the great Carter homestead still gaped to the sky. It was in a grove of tall elms nearby that another of the Carters had mysteriously vanished in 1781, and not far away was the half-rotted cottage where Goody Fowler, the witch, had brewed her ominous potions still earlier. The region had been settled in 1692 by fugitives from the witchcraft trials in Salem, and even now it bore a name for vaguely ominous things scarcely to be envisaged. Edmund Carter had fled from the shadow of Gallows Hill just in time, and the tales of his sorceries were many. Now, it seemed, his lone descendant had gone somewhere to join him!
In the car they found the hideously carved box of fragrant wood, and the parchment which no man could read. The silver key was gone — presumably with Carter. Further than that there was no certain clue. Detectives from Boston said that the fallen timbers of the old Carter place seemed oddly disturbed, and somebody found a handkerchief on the rock-ridged, sinisterly wooded slope behind the ruins near the dreaded cave called the Snake Den.
It was then that the country legends about the Snake Den gained a new vitality. Farmers whispered of the blasphemous uses to which old Edmund Carter the wizard had put that horrible grotto, and added later tales about the fondness which Randolph Carter himself had had for it when a boy. In Carter’s boyhood the venerable gambrel-roofed homestead was still standing and tenanted by his great-uncle Christopher. He had visited there often, and had talked singularly about the Snake