H P Lovecraft

The Thing on the Doorstep H P Lovecraft

Daniel Upton, the story's narrator, begins by telling that he has killed his best friend, Edward Derby, and that he hopes his account will prove that he is not a murderer... The Thing on the Doorstep is an important part of Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos. It is true that I have sent six bullets through the head of my best friend, and yet I hope to show by this statement that I am not his murderer. At first I shall be called a madman-madder than the man I shot in his cell at the Arkham Sanitarium. Later some of my readers will weigh each statement, correlate it with the known facts, and ask themselves how I could have believed otherwise than I did after facing the evidence of that horror-that thing on the doorstep. Until then I also saw nothing but madness in the wild tales I have acted on. Even now I ask myself whether I was misled-or whether I am not mad after all. I do not know-but others have strange things to tell of Edward and Asenath Derby, and even the stolid police are at their wits' ends to account for that last terrible visit.