I salici

The Willows is an early version of what you could call cosmic horror. It's not anything quite like what Lovecraft would do with his indifferent outer gods that wouldn't miss us if we weren't here at all, but it's not totally different from that either.

The setup for the story is great. A couple dudes going on a little cannoning trip though Europe. They arrive in a little village and get that "Oh no one goes in there, strangers. It's cursed." kind of warning from the villagers, but these are our heroes and they don't need to superstitions.

Eventually our heroes find themselves stranded on an island but, really, could be the top of a hill somewhere as the river has flooded and is raging pretty hard. They take shelter on this little landmass and that's when things start going wrong.

I don't know if this was the first story ever to have the "what sounded like claws running along the canvas of the tent" idea, but if it wasn't the first it's one of them. Our nautical pals start hearing things, not quite seeing somethings, and very obviously seeing others. They're not alone on this island and whatever else is there is very interested in them, their supplies, and their boats.

This is one of those stories that tells you about the horror but doesn't ever really let you see it, and I really want to see it from this book more than most others I've read like this. I don't know what it is about the story but I want more of the extradimensional beings. I want to learn more about them, where they're from, why they're here, and what they want.

Still, it's a really enjoyable read so long as you don't need all the answers. It's short and paced well. Great for a little afternoon on the couch kind of thing. Even better on a camping trip on a windy night.

My favorite Blackwood story (though Wendigo is a close second). It takes everything unnerving about a Lovecraftian sort of mythos and distills it into all the essential horrors. Really, this is a timeless work.

"'It's not a physical condition we can escape from by running away,' he replied, in the tone of a doctor diagnosing some grave disease; 'we must sit tight and wait. There are forces close here that could kill a herd of elephants in a second as easily as you or I could squash a fly. Our only chance is to keep perfectly still. Our insignificance perhaps may save us.'"
-pg 43

I could write an entire essay on that paragraph alone. It contains all the dread conjured up by this story. The feeling of powerlessness and of the dark part of ourselves, which might act on murderous impulse when faced with that same power. The horrors are inescapably all around us in the tale, like the endless droning of the strange willows.