The Rats in the Walls

Delapore restores his ancestral seat, Exham Priory, and cannot sleep for the sound of rats running in the walls where no rats can be. Following them down, he and his cat uncover the truth his family buried: a vast subterranean city beneath the house, and the bones of generations kept and fattened there for a purpose no civilised tongue will name.

The deeper he goes, the further back his own mind slips, through the centuries of his blood, until the last page dissolves into older and older speech. It is Lovecraft at his most claustrophobic, a descent that is also an inheritance, the horror of what runs in a bloodline waking up when the floor is finally lifted. The Archive renders the scurrying as rhythm, a blues that never stops moving under the boards.