As fans of horror- fantasy fiction, all of us are called on from time to time to swallow greater or lesser implausibilities. After all, why quibble if Wilmarth can quote verbatim entire letters from memory in "The Whisperer in Darkness"? Even gross physiological impossibilities such as the "change' undergone by the Innsmouth folk from mammals to amphibians can be swept under the rug with only a wink, and the chances of Wilbur Whateley's ever finding clothes that fit? What the heck! But at some point we really have to draw the line. And what more needful place than at a particular device for ending stories? We refer, of course, to those which break off in midscream with the narrator's grisly doom. There is nothing untoward about such a device per se, but these narrators seem to be as addicted to writing as we are to reading. They perish pen in hand, their death rattle committed to paper. A few examples will demonstrate how horror shades unwittingly into humor:
"The end is near. I near a poise at the door, as of some immense slippery body lumbering against it. It shall not find me. God, that hand! The window! The window! " — H. P. Lovecraft, "Dagon."
"Not long to go now; even the stone walls shudder to the monstrous weight pressing upon them — The window!— Merciful God, that FACE! Can anything that lives be so huge — " —Lin Carter, "The Dreams in the House of Weir."
"But now — something — Great God! Wings! What beings at the window! la! la! Hastur fhtagn . . . !" —August Derleth, "The ' House on Curwen Street."
"It is as if the walls of the house fell away, as If the street too, were gone, and for a fog— something in that watery fog, like a giant frog with tentacles — like a — Great God! What horror! !a! !a! Hastur! " —August Derleth, "The Watcher from the Sky."
"How hard it is for me to fight, while all the while it' is commanding me to put down my pen and tear this up! But I will fight — I must, until I can tell you what the creature told me— what it plans to let loose on the world when it has me utterly enslaved. ... I will tell. , , . I can't think. . . . will write it. . . . damn you! stop. ... No! Don't do that! Get your hands—" —Robert Bloch, "The Mannikin."
"Black marks two feet wide, but they aren't just marks. What they really are is fingerprints! The door is busting o — " —Robert Bloch, "Notebook Found in a Deserted House,"
"... too late — cannot help self — black paws materialize — am dragged away toward the cellar. — H.P. Lovecraft, "The Diary of Alonzo Typer."
Are we supposed to imagine poor Typer writing this onto the floorboards he is being dragged across? No, because according to the story's "frame," the narrative is all contained in his diary. And this is the problem with all these story endings. They are part of written documents. And even if someone were writing when some horror came upon him, he would drop quill or Bic long before these narrators do. The silliest of the bunch, and therefore the best example, is the ending of Frank Belknap Long's "The Hounds of Tindalos":
"God, they are breaking through! They are breaking through! Smoke is pouring from the corners df the wall. Their tongues — ahhh — ."
Ahhh indeed.
