The Rats in the Walls
| "The Rats in the Walls" | |
|---|---|
| Author | H. P. Lovecraft |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Horror short story |
| Published in | Weird Tales |
| Media type | Print (Magazine) |
| Publication date | March, 1924 |
"The Rats in the Walls" is a short story by American author H. P. Lovecraft. Written in August–September 1923, it was first published in Weird Tales, March 1924.
Set in 1923, "The Rats in the Walls" is narrated by the descendant of the De la Poer Family, who has moved from Massachusetts to his ancestral estate in England, the ruined Exham Priory. To the dismay of nearby residents, he restores the Priory. After moving in, the protagonist, and his cat, frequently hear the sounds of rats scurrying behind the walls. Upon investigating further and through recurring dreams, he learns that his family maintained an underground city for centuries, where they raised generations of "human cattle"—some regressed to a quadrupedal state—to supply their taste for human flesh. Maddened by the revelations of his family's past and driven by a hereditary cruelty, the narrator attacks one of his friends in the dark of the cavernous city and begins eating him. He is subsequently subdued and placed in a mental institution. At least one other investigator, Thornton, has gone insane as well. Soon after, Exham Priory is destroyed. The narrator maintains his innocence, proclaiming that it was "the rats, the rats in the walls," who ate the man. He continues to be plagued by the sound of rats in the walls of his cell.
Long after writing "The Rats in the Walls", Lovecraft wrote that the story was "suggested by a very commonplace incident — the cracking of wall-paper late at night, and the chain of imaginings resulting from it." Another entry in Lovecraft's commonplace book also seems to provide a plot germ for the story: "Horrible secret in crypt of ancient castle—discovered by dweller."
Steven J. Mariconda points to Sabine Baring-Gould's Curious Myths of the Middle Ages (1862–68) as a source for Lovecraft's story. The description of the cavern under the priory has many similarities to Baring-Gould's account of St. Patrick's Purgatory, a legendary Irish holy site, and the story of the priory's rats sweeping across the landscape may have been inspired by the book's retelling of the legend of Bishop Hatto, who was devoured by rats after he set fire to starving peasants during a famine. See the story of the Mouse Tower of Bingen.
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