The Recluse
A short story.
"The Recluse" is a Cthulhu Mythos short story in the tradition of H. P. Lovecraft. My goal in writing it - aside from creating an entertaining work of fiction - was to have a character that is mysteriously isolated from other humans (much like the narrator of Lovecraft's "The Outsider") discover in his family background an extraterrestrial horror (such as that revealed in Lovecraft's "Fungi From Yuggoth".) In blending themes borrowed from "The Outsider" and "Fungi From Yuggoth", I hoped to create an original weird tale of generational horror.
Most of my horror stories are Lovecraftian in concept and technique, but are not explicitly Cthulhu Mythos stories. This one is an exception, being an overt Mythos tale.
4,200 words.
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David Barker
David Barker has been a hardcore Lovecraft fan since his college days. He began writing short horror fiction in the mid-1980s, publishing widely in that era's small-press magazines, and edited three of his own Lovecraftian journals before leaving the field in the '90s to focus on literary fiction and poetry. In 2011, his comic surreal novel, Death at the Flea Circus, was published, and in 2012, David returned to horror with the publication of a serialized novel, Electro-Thrall Zombies. David lives in Oregon with his wife and has four grown daughters and two grandsons.
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