After "The Music of Erich Zann", I would cite "The Rats in the Walls" Actually, I very nearly voted it first place because it achieves a pitch of sheer grisly horror which exceeds the taut terror of "The Music of Erich Zann." On the other hand, it does not possess quite the same degree of purity and compression. But it is a masterpiece of its type, and again I can think of no Lovecraft story after "The Music of Erich Zann" which equals it. As a matter of fact, one almost feels that Lovecraft has gone too far in this particular story. Something inside one rebels as the ghastly eldrich grottos reveal their loathsome secrets. Perhaps it is simply that one instinctively refuses to believe that homo sapiens could ever descend to such a hellish sub-level. But this is a philosophical comment, not a criticism of the story.
"The Rats in the Walls" begins in the somewhat leisurely manner which has come to be associated with rather old-fashioned gothic ghost stories, and for some little time nothing really hair-raising happens. But once the full horror comes to light, it simply overwhelms us. We see at once that the leisurely start was intended to lull us a little. Certainly it kept us interested enough to continue, and we did perhaps expect some pretty formidable horrors--but nothing like what we finally encounter! For sheer inhuman horror those twilit grottos under the evil foundations of Exham Priory have yet to be surpassed.
In his introduction to "Best Supernatural Stories of H. P. Lovecraft", August Derleth states: "It has been said of "The Outsider" that if the manuscript had been put forward as an unpublished tale by Edgar Allan Poe, none would have challenged it." Perhaps this is not literally true, but I agree with the spirit of it. "The
