“The Being in the Moonlight”: HP Lovecraft; story and analysis

“The Being in the Moonlight”: HP Lovecraft; story and analysis.

The Thing in the Moonlight It is a horror story by the American writer J. Chapman Miskeoriginally published in the January 1941 issue of the pulp magazine Bizarre Magazine, and later reissued by Arkham House in the 1944 anthology: Marginalia (Marginalia).

The interesting thing about Being under the moonlight is that it is based on a letter from HP Lovecraft to Donald Wandrei, dated November 24, 1927, where the author of Providence relates a particularly horrifying dream.

In this context, Being under the moonlight includes, word for word, all descriptions made by HP Lovecraft in that letter, making him an involuntary co-author of the story.

The protagonist of Being under the moonlight, Morgan, is an illiterate man who suddenly feels forced to write the facts of a dream he has never dreamed. That dream piece actually belongs to a guy named Howard Phillips—clearly Lovecraft—, whose address is 66 College Street, Providence, Rhode Island.

The dream occurs in a remarkably strange place, very worthy of the best stories of HP Lovecraft’s Dream Cycle.

Being under the moonlight.
The Thing in the Moonlight, HP Lovecraft-J. Chapman Miske.

Morgan is not a literate man; in fact, his English lacks the slightest hint of coherence. That’s why I’m fascinated by the words he wrote, even though others have found them ridiculous.

I was alone that night when it happened. Suddenly he was overcome by an uncontrollable desire to write, and taking his pen he wrote the following:

My name is Howard Phillips. I live at 66 College Street, Providence, Rhode Island. On November 24, 1927 (I don’t even know what year it is) I fell asleep and had a dream. Since then it has been impossible for me to wake up.

My dream begins on a wet, swampy, reed-covered wasteland, under a gray, autumnal sky, with a steep cliff of moss-covered rock. Stimulated by a vague curiosity, I climbed a crack or crevice in said precipice, then contemplating that on both sides of the walls opened the black mouths of numerous burrows that went into the depths of the rock.

In several places, the passage was closed by the narrowness of the upper vault of the fissure; In these places, the darkness was notable, and any burrows that might have been there could not be distinguished. In one of those shady stretches a gripping fear assailed me, as if a disembodied and subtle emanation from the abysses took possession of my spirit; but the blackness was too dense to discover the source of my alarm.

Finally, I emerged on a plateau covered with damp rock, illuminated by a weak moon that had replaced the dying star of the day. I looked around and saw no living thing; However, I perceived a strange agitation below, there among the sighing reeds of the pestilential swamp that I had recently abandoned.

After advancing a few meters, I came across some rusty tram tracks, and worm-eaten poles that still supported the limp and warped cable of the trolley. Continuing along these roads, I quickly came to a yellow car bearing the number 1852, with a coupling bellows, of the double wagon type, in vogue between 1900 and 1910. It was empty, although evidently about to start; I had the trolley attached to the cable and the air brake snorted from time to time under the floor of the car. I got on it, and looked around in vain trying to discover a light switch… then I noticed the absence of the control lever, which indicated that the driver was not there. I sat in one of the cross seats. Then I heard the sparse grass rustling to the left, and saw the dark silhouettes of two men silhouetted in the moonlight. They were wearing the company’s regulation caps, and I understood that they were the conductor and the driver. Then, one of them sniffed the air, breathing hard, and raised his face to howl at the moon. The other got down on all fours ready to run towards the car.

I jumped up, frantically got out of the car and ran leagues and leagues across the plateau, until exhaustion forced me to stop… I fled, not because the conductor got down on all fours, but because the driver’s face was a mere white cone that narrowed into a blood-red tentacle.

I realized that it had been just a dream; However, that did not calm me down.

Since that horrible night all I want is to wake up… but I still haven’t been able to!

On the contrary, it has been revealed to me that I am an inhabitant of this terrible dream world! That first night gave way to dawn, and I wandered aimlessly through the lonely marshy lands. When night came he was still wandering, waiting to wake up. But suddenly I pushed aside the undergrowth and saw the old tram before me… Next to it was a being with a conical face that raised its head and howled strangely in the moonlight!

Every day the same thing happens. The night always traps me in that place of horror. I have tried not to move when the moon rises, but I must walk in my dreams, because I wake up with the terrifying being howling before me at the pale moon; Then I turn around and start running wildly.

My God! When will I wake up?

That’s what Morgan wrote. I would like to go to 66 College Street in Providence; But I’m afraid of what I might find there.

HP Lovecraft.
J. Chapman Miske.

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