The Room: On Worms

Someone has left a glass decanter along with a series of mismatched glassware at the corner of the marble bar. The fire is casting more light than before. More wood? Bigger fireplace? Less in the way? It doesn’t matter. Several chairs have been arranged in close quarters, unoccupied, nearby. There is a dampness to the air, like fresh rain, though the floor is dry. Thing wisps of smoke wander lazily about.

THOMPSON: Somebody explain to me why Howard’s worm draft is four pages of him refusing to look at the worm.

LOVECRAFT: It is called restraint. A thing fully described is a thing diminished. I leave the dimensions to the reader’s imagination, where they may fester appropriately.

THOMPSON: You left everything to the reader’s imagination. The kid, the hooks, the ride — it’s all happening in a fog bank. I’ve had hallucinations with better staging.

LOVECRAFT: I do not doubt it.

ADAMS: (not looking up) To be fair, Howard, you did describe the sand as having “subtly incorrect geometry.” Which is a lovely phrase for a dune.

LOVECRAFT: Thank you.

ADAMS: It wasn’t entirely a compliment. It’s a desert. The geometry is sand.

LOVECRAFT: Something arranges it.

THOMPSON: Something arranges it. He says that about everything. Howard thinks something arranges the cutlery.

LOVECRAFT: (quietly) Something does.

WODEHOUSE: I thought it was rather good, personally. Bit thick on the dread, but I once spent a whole novel on a man trying to return a cow creamer, so I’m in no position to throw stones at pacing.

ATTENBOROUGH: (mildly, from the end of the table) May I say something?

THOMPSON: Please. God. Somebody.

ATTENBOROUGH: The trouble isn’t the prose. The prose is marvellous. The trouble is that Howard is frightened of it. And you mustn’t be frightened of it. It’s an animal. A very large animal doing a very large thing, with no interest in us whatsoever.

LOVECRAFT: It is a blasphemy older than the cities of—

ATTENBOROUGH: It’s a Tuesday, Howard.

Silence.

LOVECRAFT: …A what.

ATTENBOROUGH: For the worm. It’s a Tuesday. It isn’t haunting anyone. It’s simply very large and going somewhere, and a small clever creature has worked out how to go along with it. That isn’t horror. That’s one of the most elegant arrangements in all of nature.

THOMPSON: See, that I’d read.

WODEHOUSE: Hear, hear.

LOVECRAFT: You wish to take my worm—

ATTENBOROUGH: Only the same scene. The same beat, exactly. You’ve done yours. I’d simply like to show what it looks like with the lights on.

LOVECRAFT: (darkly) The lights are how they find you.

ADAMS: David, give it a go. Howard, you can keep your version — nobody’s deleting the fog bank. We’ll run them side by side. Same worm, two universes. The readers can decide which one they’d rather be eaten in.

THOMPSON: Or not eaten in. That’s sort of David’s whole point.

LOVECRAFT: (retreating to the corner with his pages) It was never going to eat him. That was never the horror. The horror is that the natives have a liturgy.

ATTENBOROUGH: (rolling up his sleeves, kindly) Yes, Howard. It’s called a rite of passage. They’re rather touching, actually.

He begins. LOVECRAFT watches from behind a chair he has positioned, for reasons of his own, between himself and the window.