Any magazine-cover hack can splash paint around wildly and call it a nightmare, or a witches sabbath or a portrait of the devil; but only a great pai… - H. P. Lovecraft

The Silver Key:
I.
In the first days
of his bondage
he had turned
to the gentle churchly
faith endeared to him
by the naive
trust of his fathers,
for thence stretched
mystic avenues
which seemed to promise
escape from life.
II.

Only on closer view
did he mark the starved
fancy and beauty, the
stale and prosy
triteness, and the
owlish gravity
and grotesque
claims of solid truth
which reigned bore somely
and overwhelmingly
among most
of its professors;
or feel
to the full
the awkwardness
with which
it sought to keep
alive as literal
fact the outgrown
fears and guesses
of a primal
race confronting

This time I did not have to question the source of his snarls and hisses, and of the fear which made him sink his claws into my ankle, unconscious of their effect; for on every side of the chamber the walls were alive with nauseous sound - the verminous slithering of ravenous, gigantic rats.

What I now heard so graphically at first-hand, though it was really no more than a detailed confirmation of what my uncle had written, excited me afresh; for I felt sure that I was on the track of a very real, very secret, and very ancient religion whose discovery would make me an anthropologist of note. My attitude was still one of absolute materialism, as l wish it still were, and I discounted with almost inexplicable perversity the coincidence of the dream notes and odd cuttings collected by Professor Angell.