Mad people going mad. Don't run. Because it will do no good. Just let it coat you and pull you down. Relish in the madness. ( )

I'm a weenie when it comes to scary stories, reliably hearing ominous creaks and other peculiar noises in my quiet house while reading about horrors stalking the unwary, but, not having inherited an ancestral mansion with a shadowed past (and if I did I sure's heck wouldn't excavate the sub-sub-basement!), I found “Rats in the Walls” not scary and... well, campy good fun! Lovecraft's lurid prose and slow reveal of the Ancient and Inescapable Horror (the opening reminded me very much of du Maurier's “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.”) makes this a quick and compelling story. On reading

”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,”

we wonder, “Will our narrator, a hitherto sensible older gentleman, listen to the warnings of 'superstitious caution'?” Not a chance! And thank goodness, because things would go better for him but be pretty dull for us then, wouldn't they? Our non-superstitious narrator comes back with a crack team and opens “the gate to a new pit of nameless fear.” And discoveries ensue! ( )