Line #16 Creator/CliffordMartinEddyJr


1	[[quoteright:200:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/c__m__eddy_jr.jpg]]
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3	Writing under the name "C. M. Eddy," '''Clifford Martin Eddy, Jr. (Jan 18 1896 - Nov 21 1967)''' was born in Providence RI, and was a personal friend of Creator/HPLovecraft. He shared Lovecraft's interest in writing SciFiHorror, and wrote numerous stories in that genre, being fascinated by the notion of alternate planes of existence. He wrote extensively for Magazine/WeirdTales.
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5	!!Among his works were:
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7	[[folder:"The Loved Dead" (short story, 1924)]]
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9	This is the tale of an unnamed man, who has a decidedly-unhealthy and carnal attraction to corpses. Co-authored by Creator/HPLovecraft.
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11	* BurnTheWitch: The fate of the narrator's great-great-grand-uncle, who was supposedly a {{Necromancer}}.
12	* ChangelingTale: Some of the more superstitious people in his home village of Fenham claim that the narrator is a changeling child.
13	* ConvenientlyAnOrphan: When the narrator's parents die, they leave him with the time and money to pursue his strange obsessions.
14	* CreepyCemetery: This is the setting of the framing story in which the narrator tells the main story as a WholeEpisodeFlashback, and the climax.
15	* CreepyChild: As the story explains:
16	-->'''Narrator:''' My early childhood was one long, prosaic and monotonous apathy. Strictly ascetic, wan, pallid, undersized, and subject to protracted spellsof morbid moroseness, I was ostracized by te healthy, normal youngsters of my own age. They dubbed me a spoilsport, and "old woman," because I had no interest in the rough, childish games they played, nor any stamina to particpate in them, had I so desired.
17	* CreepyMortician: The narrator's choice of career. He becomes this, and ultimately fails at it, due to his inability to control his [[ILoveTheDead perverse desires]].
18	* DyingAsYourself: Villainous version. Rather than face execution, incarceration in an asylum, or life in prison for his multiple murders and other crimes, the narrator chooses to take one last life at the end: his own.
19	* DyingTown: Appropriately, the narrator's home village of Fenham has been declining for years; when he finally returns after spending some time in Bayboro:
20	-->'''Narrator:''' Vacant, dilapidated farmhouses lined the adjacent roadsides, while the years hd brought equal retrogression to the town itself. A mere handful of the houses were occupied ...
21	* EmoTeen: Description of himself at sixteen:
22	-->'''Narrator:''' Anything that tended to lift me out of my habitual inertia held for me only the promise of physical and mental disquiet.
23	* FamilyExtermination: The narrator murders a whole family near the climax. Since they were living in his old house, they may even have been his ''blood relatives''.
24	* HereditaryCurse: The origin of the narrator's ILoveTheDead NightmareFetishist obsession is implied to be either this or InTheBlood, given that he had a great-great grand-uncle burned as a {{Necromancer}}.
25	* HighOnHomicide: When the narrator decides that the recent-corpse supply, even in Bayboro, is too low for his [[ILoveTheDead purposes]] -- and becomes a serial killer to increase said supply -- it is obvious that he ''exults'' in murder.
26	* ILoveTheDead: The title states this almost exactly, and the narrator is a necrophiliac.
27	* InMediasRes: The story begins with the narrator hiding from the law in a CreepyCemetery, and telling the story of [[HowWeGotHere how he wound up in this predicament]].
28	* InTheBlood: The origin of the narrator's ILoveTheDead NightmareFetishist obsession is implied to be either this or a HereditaryCurse, given that he had a great-great grand-uncle burned as a {{Necromancer}}.
29	* LifeDrinker: One line near the end, after the narrator murders a whole family, implies that the narrator may have gained this power (see MaybeMagicMaybeMundane and UnreliableNarrator):
30	-->'''Narrator:''' ... a newfound stolen strength was mine.
31	* LovecraftCountry: The narrator is born in Fenham, a rural New England village with a somewhat creepy past, which may well be in the Franchise/CthulhuMythos continuity, given that Creator/HPLovecraft co-authored the work.
32	* MaybeMagicMaybeMundane: The story never makes clear whether or not the narrator develops his [[NightmareFetishist nightmare fetish]] because of a HereditaryCurse, a [[InTheBlood genetic legacy]], family tradition or something stranger. It could all simply be a coincidence.
33	* {{Necromancer}}: The narrator has a (long-deceased) great-great grand-uncle who was burned at the stake as a necromancer (see FridgeLogic/CliffordMartinEddyJr).
34	* NightmareFetishist: The narrator is drawn to, and aroused by death, decay and corpses. This includes embracing them, and (perhaps most horribly from the POV of 1924) his experience in [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarI the Great War]]:
35	-->'''Narrator:''' Four years of blood-red charnel hell . . . sickening slime of rain and rotten trenches . . . deafening bursting of hysterical shells . . . monotonous droning of sardonic bullets . . . smoking frenzies of Phlegethon's fountains . . . stifling fumes of murderous gases . . . grotesque remnants of smashed and shredded bodies . . . four years of transcendent satisfaction.
36	* SerialKiller: As his horrific lust builds, the narrator realizes that people aren't dying fast enough for his purposes even in Baysboro, so he takes a personal hand in increasing the death rate, and finds he gets HighOnHomicide as well as [[ILoveTheDead enjoying the corpses]].
37	* SerialRapist: Of a peculiar variety, given that he doesn't care about gender, and only molests the victims after their deaths.
38	* StartOfDarkness: At 16, when he views his grandfather's corpse at the funeral.
39	* UnreliableNarrator: There are a couple of hints that the narrator may be a naturally-gifted but untutored {{Necromancer}}, but given that he's also demonstrably ''insane'' by then, it's unclear what to make of this.
40	* VillainProtagonist: The narrator is a [[ILoveTheDead necrophiliac]] SerialKiller.
41	* WholeEpisodeFlashback: The narrator tells the story of [[HowWeGotHere how he wound up in a cemetery, being hunted by the law]], before he proceeds to the climax of his tale.
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Context Creator / CliffordMartinEddyJr