Dagon by H.P. Lovecraft, 1919
The magic trick:
Setting huge expectations early in the story for huge terror
This is going to sound like a criticism – and I suppose it is.
“Dagon” strikes me as yet another Lovecraft story that oversells its own terror. The narrator makes clear at the outset that he has chosen suicide (after he finishes telling us his story) over continuing to live with the knowledge of what he’s learned.
It’s such a bold maneuver by the author and one that is admittedly appealing. How can we not read on to find out what horrible thing this man has experienced?
So, kudos on the framework. Disappointment – from this reader at least – on the reveal.
And that’s quite a trick on Lovecraft’s part.
The selection:
I have said that the unbroken monotony of the rolling plain was a source of vague horror to me; but I think my horror was greater when I gained the summit of the mound and looked down the other side into an immeasurable pit or canyon, whose black recesses the moon had not yet soared high enough to illumine. I felt myself on the edge of the world; peering over the rim into a fathomless chaos of eternal night. Through my terror ran curious reminiscences of Paradise Lost, and of Satan’s hideous climb through the unfashioned realms of darkness.
As the moon climbed higher in the sky, I began to see that the slopes of the valley were not quite so perpendicular as I had imagined. Ledges and outcroppings of rock afforded fairly easy foot-holds for a descent, whilst after a drop of a few hundred feet, the declivity became very gradual. Urged on by an impulse which I cannot definitely analyse, I scrambled with difficulty down the rocks and stood on the gentler slope beneath, gazing into the Stygian deeps where no light had yet penetrated.
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