Horror Review: "The Survivor" by H.P. Lovecraft and August Derleth (1957, Arkham House)

The Survivor & Others is a collection, reconstruction, and compilation of seven pieces of short fiction left incomplete by Lovecraft. After his death in 1937, August Derleth inherited Lovecraft's literary estate, where he discovered a trove of manuscripts for stories Lovecraft was in the process of writing and revising, and notes of ideas for tales Lovecraft had yet to pen.

Derleth took it upon himself to complete and/or bring to life these tales, and in 1957 published the collection in hardcover under his Arkham House imprint. The cover image you see here comes from the 1971 Ballantine paperback reprint. This is the edition I'm currently reading, which is why I used it for the header of this review. Of the seven stories in the collection, five of them were new to market; The Survivor appeared in the July 1954 issue of "Weird Tales" magazine, and The Gable Window saw print in the sci-fi/fantasy pulp mag "Saturn", but under the title of "The Murky Glass".

This review is only for the first story in the collection, "The Survivor". Reviews for the other stories will appear as I complete them.

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The literary style which bears his name uses many easily-identifiable tropes, but the most common among the Lovecraftian genre of horror and suspense revolves around otherwise ordinary men being exposed to extraordinary things man was not meant to know. Lovecraftian stories often have a very gothic feel to them, with unknowing individuals coming into possession, via inheritance or coincidence, of books, homes, and/or land which were previously unfamiliar, but now command the attention of the protagonist. Such is the case with The Stranger, where protagonist Alijah Atwood , an antiquarian of ordinary means, makes a visit to Providence, Rhode Island on his way to New Orleans, only to be struck by the sight of a strange old house.

Intrigued for both historical and personal reasons, Atwood makes inquiries and learns the old Charriere house has sat empty, in need of a tenant, for three years now following the death of Dr. Charriere, the man who lent the house its name, in 1927. A local friend in the same line of work explains that a family rented out the property once, but they left after only a month, complaining of odd odors and an ever-pervasive dampness which could not be tamed. Local lore has it that Charriere's home is haunted, but Atwood is stricken with the notion to rent the place, despite protestations from his colleague to leave Charriere's house alone.

Since we wouldn't have a story if Atwood had followed his friend's advice, it doesn't take long before Atwood's setting up shop in his new place. Several things strike Atwood as odd about the place, but two stand out in his mind. First, for a home which has been without a tenant for nearly three years, Charriere's house is strangely clean and free from the accumulations of dust, cobwebs, and grime one would expect. Second, prior to his death, Charriere made provisions to pay the taxes associated with the home and its land for a period of fifty years after his demise on the chance that a distant relative, currently residing in French Indochina (modern-day Vietnam), might arrive in the US to make a claim on the property.

It isn't until Atwood moves in and begins researching the Charriere family that things begin to take a turn for the weird. There is nothing in modern-day records concerning Dr. Charriere or his family. Despite inquiring with friends and colleagues not just locally but in Paris, London, India, and Canada, Atwood can find no mention of Charriere's date of birth. Even the gravestone in the garden, where the doctor had made arrangements to be interred, bears only his name and the year of his death. There is the record of a birth of one Jean-Francois Charriere in southern France, but in 1636, nearly three centuries prior. The most recent information available on that Charriere was that he'd practiced as a surgeon in Quebec for six years until 1691, then departed the country for regions unknown and was never heard from again. Clearly he was responsible for building the house which bore the Charriere name, but that's where the trail stops. There's record of neither wife nor children continuing on the family line, yet the recent demise of the elderly doctor clearly points to offspring carrying on the family name, if nothing else. Conversations with the locals are equally as unproductive, with most of the people who knew Charriere describing him as old and reclusive, though one elderly neighbor notes he reminded her of a snake, and that strange noises unknown to her ears as being from any ordinary animal often emanated from the property at odd hours. The woman's daughter nevertheless tells Atwood not to put much stock in her mother's tales, as she's an old woman now prone to fits of fancy.

Perhaps stranger still are the notes Atwood discovers while examining the house. Charriere, it seems, was extremely interested in the study of reptiles, especially crocodiles and alligators. His interest appeared to be specifically their longevity as a species, as his notes trace some lineages back to the Jurassic age, but nothing in the notes suggests much of anything beyond an historical study.

It isn't until a stranger breaks into the home in the middle of the night, making off with some of Charriere's papers from his study, that Atwood starts to suspect things might not be quite as they seem, and prepares for a second confrontation with an intruder that will conclude with him wishing he'd never laid eyes on the old Charriere's house.

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To say I enjoyed this story would be an understatement. While Derleth's prose cannot hope to compare with Lovecraft's exceptional grasp of the English language, it's still a reasonable facsimile thereof and the plot is suitably creepy to inspire the reader to push forward towards the conclusion which is likely both what the reader is expecting and unexpected at the same time. It's a short tale, only around 20 pages, and thus does not overstay its welcome while also having sufficient time to build up the background stories like this thrive on.

Lovecraftian horror is all about atmosphere: there's very little of what would be considered traditional horror elements like violence and gore, and what little there is will usually be quickly described but not dwelt upon in the text, leaving it up to the reader's imagination to connect the dots. The Survivor fits the mold well, for while there is a fight in the story's closing pages, it is not a long battle, and it's hard to conclude the winner actually won anything other than the remainder of a life plagued by nightmares.

If you're a reader who needs everything explained, if you thrive on blood and guts, or if you need stories with a modern-day setting told in modern-day snappy prose, Lovecraft and his contemporaries who write in his style will not hold your attention for long. There are no teenagers humping, no machete-wielding madmen, and no creepy clowns stalking the pages. If, on the other hand, you can project yourself back to a time when there was no internet, where libraries still held sway over the world's knowledge, where hand-written letters, not the telephone, were the common means of keeping in contact with others, The Survivor will keep you very much entertained. Like all weird fiction, it is slow going, rising up in your mind like fog drifting up from a misty field to enfold the grass. It demands you slow down and enjoy each bite. This is 'Sunday afternoon with the window open' reading at its best. Turn off your phone and check it out:

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Four strange, groaning sounds in the night out of five.

Best scene:

One evening, while pouring over Charriere's notes, Atwood feels his 'sixth sense' trigger: he feels he's being watched. But rather than whip around quickly to confront a would-be stalker, he instead maintains the presence of mind to pull out his pocket watch, flip it open, and use the reflective surface on the inside of the case as a makeshift mirror so he can glance behind him without causing suspicion. It's little touches like these that make Lovecraftian horror so tense, and it's a sensibility all but lost on both modern-day authors and audiences.