Now it may be that I’m fresh off of “The Call of Cthulhu” but the reference to “ idols in some Eastern Temple” peaked my spidey senses. Property which is neglected with “ gnarled trees” and “ …a strange collection of large stones, oddly grouped and painted so that they resemble the idols in some obscure Eastern Temple.” It’s believed that the Terrible Old Man was “.a captain of East India clipper ships.” and through his captaincy developed a “.fortune of indefinite magnitude…” which he houses on his property. So why do these three men want to visit with him? Because thier “ …profession was nothing less dignified than robbery.” It makes sense that they’d go after what they thought, being new to Kingsport, would be easy pickings. Quickly we are told, “ This old man dwells all alone in a very ancient house on Water Street near the sea, and is reputed to be both exceedingly rich and exceedingly feeble…” The tale begins with three immigrant men, one of Italian descent, one of Portuguese, and one of Polish, who decide to call on the Terrible Old Man. We revisit Kingsport a few more times, and we even get to meet up with the Terrible Old Man again in another story, but more on that later. This short story feels a bit more like an introduction to Kingsport, one of Lovecraft’s infamous coastal cities, than a fully thought out story a kind of a character study if you will. My intention is to finish on the last longer pieces “The Shadow out of Time” and “The Whisperer in the Darkness.” I chose this one because I wanted a bit of a reprieve from the magnitude of Call of Cthulhu and I wanted to get some of these shorter stories out of the way. Welcome back to another Blind Read! This week we’re talking about “The Terrible Old Man”, a wonderful short story, but seemingly short on depth. “ Little things make considerable excitement in little towns, which is the reason that Kingsport people talked all that spring and summer about three unidentifiable bodies, horribly slashed as with many cutlasses, and horribly mangled as by the tread of many cruel boot-heels, which the tide washed in.“
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