The Basilisk in the Walls?

***** SPOILER ALERT ******

Good questions, Matthew.

I’ve been thinking about those rats, whether they’re real, or ghost rats, or both and neither, something more interesting than either, a symbol and a signpost to the mystery of the ancient cannibalistic cult.

That they had physical existence at some point, there is no doubt: when the De Poere cult members were killed by their relative in the early 17th century, hordes of ravenous rats escaped from the pits to the countryside, devouring all they found. They also appear to have munched on the people in the pens and this, I think, is corroborated by the learned witnesses who come down into the caverns with the narrator.

That no one except the narrator – and the cats – can see them now is equally certain.

So what are they now?

A lot of evidence suggests that they are spirit guides, sent by the blind mad god who lives at the center of the earth, to bring one of the last surviving de la Poers back to his ancestors’ spiritual beliefs and practices.

The evidence includes the fact that the scurrying – inaudible to all except the narrator (and the cats)- stops when he finds the crack in the wall that leads to the subterranean grotto. This is supported by Thornton’s view that:

“I had now been shown the thing which certain forces had wished to show me.”

Once in the caverns, the narrator speaks of:

” (It was) the eldritch scurrying of those fiend-born rats, always questing for new horrors, and determined to lead me on even unto those grinning caverns of earth’s centre where Nyarlathotep, the mad faceless god, howls blindly in the darkness to the piping of two amorphous idiot flute-players.”

And finally:

“They must know it was the rats; the slithering scurrying rats whose scampering will never let me sleep; the daemon rats that race behind the padding in this room and beckon me down to greater horrors than I have ever known; the rats they can never hear; the rats, the rats in the walls.”

Does calling the rats them spirit guides grant them an existence outside of the protagonist’s imagination? Not necessarily. He could, it’s possible, have imagined them, and that would make for a fascinating story, but I don’t think that was the story HPL meant to tell. The definitive proof, I think, is the behaviour of the cats, especially the unfortunately named “Nigger-Man”. They hear the rats, so there is independent corroboration. The protagonist didn’t imagine the rats, although only he could hear them.

I think that the themes of evil and grief are bound together in this story. The protagonist is not evil – he seems to lead a blameless life, and spends two years caring for his invalid son. The family trait – if wanting to worship dark gods can be called a trait – lies dormant in him. It is called out only when he’s at the entrance to the blind god’s temple, and made possible – that is the implication – by his grief and anger at the losses in his life. And one more thing: the unfairness of life. I liked this progression very much; the “good” de la Poers try to make a blameless life for themselves, putting aside their cult-worship. Yet life – the destruction of their home by the war, the death of a son due to another war – pushes them back to the old way. The last straw, the straw that breaks this camel’s back, is the fact that a Norrys now owns most of the de la Poer lands and, unforgivably, survived the war that killed de la Poer’s son.

This also brings up another fascinating question: did the protagonist have a choice? Could he have walked away from the evil? The narrator of Innsmouth didn’t really have that choice, what he became was bred in the bone. But de la Poere does have a choice.

After the initial discovery of the crack in the wall of the crypt:

“we paused in doubt whether to abandon our search and quit the priory forever in superstitious caution, or to gratify our sense of adventure and brave whatever horrors might await us in the unknown depths.”

I was struck by that. The protagonist doesn’t rush headlong into the dark – that comes later – he stops to consider. And then does the wrong thing, out of a sense of “adventure”.

The second possible point where he can turn back is when they’re in the grotto. He sees the dark carverns beyond:

‘We shall never know what sightless Stygian worlds yawn beyond the little distance we went, for it was decided that such secrets are not good for mankind.’

But he does go on, because he hears a sound. The sound of the rats. The sound draws him not so much physically further into the caves, but back into the past, and the old ways.

Exit poor, plump Norrys.