The Terror from the Depths

"The Terror from the Depths" is a short story written by Fritz Leiber, part of the Cthulhu Mythos genre of horror fiction. It was begun in 1937 but not finished until 1975; it was first published in the anthology The Disciples of Cthulhu in 1976.

Summary

The story begins with a note that this manuscript was found in a container which was sold in an auction. The story's narrator is Georg Reuter Fischer who was born in 1912 in Louisville, Kentucky. Fischer's father is a mason and stonecutter and moves his family to Vultures Roost, California near Hollywood. There Fischer's father builds a home with strange stonecarvings. Georg however is troubled by strange dreams where he is in a tunnel as a blind wormlike being. In one of his nightmares Georg realizes he's one of the monsters and in another dream Georg sees himself being eaten by those monsters. Georg manages to stop those dreams. During a hike with Georg and his father, Georg's father is killed when he falls off a cliff. Years later when Fischer goes to Miskatonic University he's forced to leave the college soon after due to a combination of factors including nervousness, homesickness, actual ailment, increased hours of sleep, and sleepwalking.