H. P. Lovecraft was born in the USA in 1890 but had a difficult childhood because his father went mad and spent the rest of his life in a mental hospital. The young Lovecraft lived with his grandfather who taught him to love reading – especially horror stories. Sadly, his mother became mad soon after his grandfather’s death, and died in the same hospital as her husband
H.
P. Lovecraft was born in the USA in 1890 but had a difficult childhood because
his father went mad and
spent the rest of his life in a mental hospital. The young Lovecraft lived with
his grandfather who taught him to love reading – especially horror
stories. Sadly, his mother became mad soon after his grandfather’s
death, and died in the same hospital as her husband.
Lovecraft’s marriage was unsuccessful
(but friendly). He never had much money and did not become well-known for
his books. He died in 1937 of cancer and hunger. Since his death,
Lovecraft’s horror stories have become famous all over the
English-speaking world.
The Terrible Old Man
Ricci,
Joe and Manuel plan to see the Terrible Old Man. He lives all alone in a very
old house on Water Street near the sea. Everyone thinks that he is both very
rich and very weak; which is interesting to men of Joe’s, Ricci’s and
Manuel’s profession, because that profession is robbery.
The people of Kingsport say and think many things about the Terrible Old Man,
which usually keep him safe from men like Mr. Ricci and his friends, because he
hides a lot of money somewhere about his dirty, ancient home. He is,
in fact, a very strange person, a ship’s captain when he was younger;
so old that no-one can remember when he was young, and so secret that very few
people know his real name. Among the trees in the front garden of his neglected home, he has some
large stones, oddly grouped and painted.
These scare away most of the small boys who make fun of the Terrible
Old Man’s long white hair and beard, or break the windows of his house; but
there are other things which scare the older people who sometimes go
to the house to look in through the dirty windows. These people say that on a
table in an empty room on the ground floor are many special bottles
and the Terrible Old Man talks to these bottles, and gives them names.
People who watch the Terrible Old Man
in these strange conversations do not watch him again. But,
Ricci and Joe and Manuel were not from Kingsport town; and they saw in the
Terrible Old Man only a very elderly man who could not walk without
his stick, and whose thin, weak hands shook helplessly. They are
really quite sorry for the lonely, old man that everybody avoids and
all the dogs bark at. But business is business, and to a
robber a very weak, old man who has no bank account, and who pays for his
shopping with Spanish gold and silver made two hundred years ago, is very
interesting.
Ricci, Joe, and Manuel chose the night
of April 11th for the robbery. Ricci and Manuel were to talk to the poor
old man, while Joe waited for them and the money in Ship Street, by the wall of
the Terrible Old Man’s garden.
As
they agreed, the three men started out separately so that people
would not remember them as a group. Ricci and Manuel met in Water Street by the
old man’s front gate, and although they did not like the way the moon
shone on the painted stones through the trees, they had more important things
to think about than superstitions. They were worried it might not be
easy making the Terrible Old Man tell them where he hid his gold and silver,
for old sea-captains are known to be stubborn. Still, he was very old and very weak,
and there were two men. Ricci and Manuel were experienced in making
people talk by force, and the screams of a weak man can be
easily covered. So they moved up to the one lighted window and heard the
Terrible Old Man talking childishly to his bottles. Then they put on their
masks and knocked on the door.The wait seemed very long to Joe as he
moved in the car by the Terrible Old Man’s back gate in Ship Street.
He was more kind-hearted than the others, and he did not like
the screams he had heard in the old house just after the hour planned
for the robbery. He had told his friends to be as kind as possible with
the old sea-captain. Very nervously he looked at
that gate in the high, white stone wall. Again and again, he checked
his watch, and wondered why they were late. Had the old man died
before telling them where his money was hidden, and did they need to look for
the gold and silver? Joe did not like to wait so long in the dark. But then he
heard a soft noise on the path and saw the heavy door open. And in the light of
the street-lamp he hurt his eyes looking for what his friends had brought out
of that house. But when he looked, he did not see what he had expected; for his
friends were not there at all, but only the Terrible Old Man smiling. Joe had
never before seen the colour of that man’s eyes; now he saw that they were
yellow.
Little
things make a lot of news in little towns, which is the reason that Kingsport
people talked all that spring and summer about the three unidentifiable bodies,
badly cut with many knives, and badly broken, which the sea washed in. And some
people even spoke of things as small as the car found in Ship Street,
or inhuman cries, probably of an animal or bird, heard in the night
by people still awake. But the Terrible Old Man took no interest at all in this
village gossip. The old sea-captain had seen many,
many strange things in the far-off days of his
forgotten youth.