Our narrator has struck up a friendship, of sorts, with one Andrew Carter. He doesn't entirely trust Carter (seems shady), and Carter seems to be scared of an old house that he's in the process of inheriting.
It seems that seven years ago, Andrew came to visit his old Uncle Arthur, a "queer old stick" who lived in a musty house full of old books and oddities. It seems, too, he was alleged to have a fortune in gold stashed away in his place somewhere. Oh, and he ate spaghetti all the time.
Anyway, Uncle up and disappeared seven years ago. But Carter's been searching the house for the gold ever since. He also has some obstacles, cause the house doesn't legally become his for two more weeks. AND it's going to be demolished to make room for new construction. He wants our narrator to help him tear the place up in search of gold, in exchange for which, he'll give him a cut.
Oh, and he still keeps finding strands of spaghetti around the place.
So they go about tearing up the place, without a lot of luck. The narrator does find a medallion with an octopoid figure on it, and a copy of the Dohl Chants, and tries figuring some of it out. Particularly the part that appears to be a spell he thinks will help him locate the gold (which he intends to cheat Carter out of, natch).
PS he too keeps finding strands of spaghetti around the house.
Long story short - narrator tries the spell with interesting results. Unc's body turns up in a cisten in the attic, where Carter presumably dumped him. The strands of spaghetti were strips of his undead flesh (gross!!) Unc comes back to life, EC-style. Narrator runs for it.
Ah, the Lum is at it again. This little bon-bon is nothing special, but Lum's at his best when he's going for the gross and his tongue is planted in his cheek. There's plenty of atmosphere and, while the "spaghetti" bit makes zero sense, there's a nice M.R. James-meets-EC comics feel to the conclusion. It's light years beyond his early Mythos embarassments.
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