Short Fiction · Chapter
II explained
After returning to England, the narrator and St.
What happens
After returning to England, the narrator and St. John experience increasingly disturbing supernatural phenomena in their isolated manor, including nocturnal fumblings, a disembodied laugh, and a mysterious baying. The horror escalates when St. John is killed by a winged entity, whispering of the amulet. The narrator flees to London, then to Holland, but the amulet is stolen. Returning to the churchyard grave, he finds the corpse animated and holding the amulet, driving him to madness and suicide.
Themes in this chapter
Forbidden Knowledge and Occultism
The narrator and St. John delve into the Necronomicon and perform rituals, unleashing a curse tied to the stolen amulet.
Horror of the Unknown
The narrative is driven by unseen, malevolent forces—a disembodied baying, invisible entities, and a reanimated corpse—that defy rational explanation.
Characters to notice
- Unknown Narrator
The narrator recounts the escalating supernatural horrors, the death of St. John, and his own descent into madness.
- St. John
St. John is killed by a winged entity after the theft of the amulet; his dying words implicate the amulet.
Key passages
“We lived as recluses; devoid of friends, alone, and without servants in a few rooms of an ancient manor-house on a bleak and unfrequented moor”
We lived in isolation, without friends or servants, in a few rooms of an old manor on a desolate moor.
Establishes the isolated setting.
“The jade amulet now reposed in a niche in our museum, and sometimes we burned strangely scented candles before it.”
We placed the jade amulet in a niche in our museum and occasionally burned oddly scented candles in front of it.
Highlights the occult practices surrounding the amulet.
“My friend was dying when I spoke to him, and he could not answer coherently. All he could do was to whisper, 'The amulet—that damned thing—.'”
My friend was dying and could only whisper, 'The amulet—that damned thing—.'
St. John's dying words directly link the amulet to the horror.
“For crouched within that centuried coffin, embraced by a closepacked nightmare retinue of huge, sinewy, sleeping bats, was the bony thing my friend and I had robbed; not clean and placid as we had seen it then, but covered with caked blood and shreds of alien flesh and hair, and leering sentiently at me with phosphorescent sockets and sharp ensanguined fangs yawning twistedly in mockery of my inevitable doom.”
Inside the coffin, surrounded by sleeping bats, was the skeleton we had robbed, now covered in blood and gore, grinning at me with glowing eyes and bloody fangs.
The climax reveals the animated corpse as the source of the curse.
“Madness rides the star-wind … claws and teeth sharpened on centuries of corpses … dripping death astride a bacchanale of bats from night-black ruins of buried temples of Belial.”
Madness comes on the wind, with claws and teeth honed on ancient corpses, and death rides a frenzy of bats from dark ruins.
The narrator's final descent into madness is expressed in poetic, fragmented imagery.