"The Shuttered Room"

by August Derleth
originally published The Shuttered Room and Other Pieces, Arkham House, 1959

Abner Whateley returns to Dunwich to claim the property left him by his grandfather, Luther - a cousin of Lavinia, the old wizard, and Wilbur W.  Luther was a little weird.  Years ago, he locked his daughter Sarah ("Aunt Sarey") up in a room over the mill attached to the house, and nailed the shutters over the windows.  He would not speak of her again.

Abner finds a letter from Luther instructing him to destroy the mill and the room above it, and kill anything he finds alive there.  He unlocks the mystery room, finding it with some spartan bedding, things thrown around, and smelling fishy.  He knocks out the shutters, accidentally breaking a window in the process.  He thinks he spots a frog or toad ducking into hiding, but ignores it.

In town, he meets grumpy storekeeper Tobias Whateley (who will reappear in "The Watchers Out Of Time").  Returning home, he finds his great uncle Zebulon and a young boy waiting for him.  Zebulon reveals that the Whateley family is cursed, and that "Aunt Sarey" was a Marsh, from Innsmouth.

Abner has trouble hiring workmen to demolish the mill.  And he finds wet, webbed footprints around the mill and the (formerly) shuttered room. Both outgoing and incoming.  And the incoming prints, though of the same type as the outgoing, are quite a bit larger. He finds a letter in Luther's papers concerning Innsmouth and the sordid tales of the Marsh family.  And some kind of animal has suddenly taken to killing cattle around the region - "just like that time before..."

Oh well, so what? thinks Abner, and returns to trying to find workmen to demolish the mill and poking through old Luther's papers.

Eventually he finds a rehash of the whole Deep Ones/Innsmouth thing (Zadok Allen gets a name-drop), finds that Sarah took part in some Deep One-ish rituals in Innsmouth, and came back preggers with her own cousin Ralsa's child (Ralsa, it seems, was a fishy character ... geddit?), which led to Luther locking her away in the shuttered room above the mill ... along with her offspring.

A journal in Luther's hand largely fills in the blanks - Sarah's offspring escaped and went around eating livestock and human (one of them was identified only by his remaining foot and shoe!), but was eventually lured back in and locked away, where it was kept fed on raw meat - just enough to keep it alive, but not enough to let it grow in size.  Apparently the critter didn't die, even when the food stopped.  It just shrank to small size.

The thing romps across Dunwich - one such rampage is recounted over the party line, as in "The Dunwich Horror", complete with "Oh gawd - that face!" exclamations.  Finally, Abner finds it back in the shuttered room, and nails it with a kerosene lamp (why would a wet creature burn?).  It dies screaming "Mamaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!" as Abner runs screaming into the night.

This is not a great story.  It has a nice buildup, but pretty soon you realize it's ultimately kind of a riff off "The Dunwich Horror" with some standard haunted house touches.  Derleth is good with atmosphere, and the story is engaging enough to be entertaining and fun if you're looking for a Lovecraftian fix, but the absence of HPL's originality and imagination means its nothing more than a fun read.