"Local Spelunker Attacks Feral Cave-Dweller with a Rock"

Welcome to “Explain a Lovecraft Badly,” in which I summarize the works of H.P. Lovecraft in a stupid way, one story at a time.

Today I read the very first story in what I've taken to calling "The Big-Ass Eldritch Tome." The story is called, "The Beast in the Cave." Here are the headlines:

"Riddles in the Dark with no riddles, double the darkness, and twice the violence."

"A cautionary tale about the importance of Vitamin D."

We find our unnamed protagonist lost, "completely, hopelessly lost in the vast and labyrinthine recesses of Mammoth Cave." How did he get lost? Good question. He wandered off from his tour group, of course.

The Wanderer, as we will call him from now on, muses philosophically on how not-freaked-out he is as his torchlight begins to fade: "Some, I knew had gone mad under circumstances such as these, but I felt that this end would not be mine."

The next logical course of action is to call for help, which the Wanderer does, to no avail. Or so it seems at first...

The Wanderer hears soft, stealthy footfalls, sometimes on two feet, sometimes four. The sound comes steadily nearer, and as the Wanderer arms himself with nearby rocks, he considers what kind of creature this could be: "It must, I thought, be some unfortunate beast who had paid for its curiosity to investigate on of the entrances of the fearful grotto with a lifelong confinement in its interminable recesses. It doubtless obtained as food the eyeless fish, bats, and rats of the cave."

Sounds a lot like this guy, no?

The similarities continue, my Precious.

The Wanderer begins to throw rocks at the approaching creature, and one of them seems to hit its mark. At that point, our hero's philosophical musings cease and he flees blindly through the caverns until he comes across his tour guide, who has come back to retrieve his sorry wandering ass.

Overcome by curiosity and with the tour guide to back him up, the Wanderer retraces his steps to investigate.

They discover the creature: a pale, emaciated, tailless, mostly hairless, ape-like thing that emits a haunting sound and expires. The Wanderer looks on in horror as he realizes that he hasn't slain a dangerous beast, but murdered a primitive naked guy who's been living down there for ages.

This story actually really creeped me out, and I would have preferred it if the creature was a monster.

Some fun links and stuff I found down the internet rabbit hole while writing this. Because one does not simply write a blog post:

• The Complete Fiction of H.P. Lovecraft (Chartwell Classics). This is the edition of Lovecraft that I have at home, and I enjoy it immensely. It's a nice hefty tome with a beautiful illustration on the cover.

• Buzzfeed: 17 Signs You're the Gollum of the Friend Group

• Impractical Joker gets lost in a cave for 30 years!

• Science Focus: Volunteers Spent 40 Days in a Cave with No Natural Light or Clocks

• The Science Explorer: Isolation in the Dark Drives Humans to the Brink of Insanity

• 48 Hours of Isolation (clip 1). Volunteers spend 48 hours in total darkness and isolation.

• 48 Hours of Isolation (clip 2) Volunteers repeat a number of tests after spending 48 hours in total darkness and isolation. They fare much worse in memory and information processing. They also tested how suggestible the subjects were after sensory deprivation. The results of that one were most interesting...

• Isolation- Mind Field (Ep. 1)- Man informs us that less than 3 days of isolation can lead to brain damage. Proceeds to spend 3 days in isolation.