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 H. P. Lovecraft. He shared Lovecraft's interest in writing Sci-Fi Horror, and wrote numerous stories in that genre, being fascinated by the notion of alternate planes of existence. He wrote extensively for Weird Tales.
Among his works were:
"The Loved Dead" (short story, 1924)
This is the tale of an unnamed man, who has a decidedly-unhealthy and carnal attraction to corpses. Co-authored by H. P. Lovecraft.
- Burn the Witch!: The fate of the narrator's great-great-grand-uncle, who was supposedly a Necromancer.
- Changeling Tale: Some of the more superstitious people in his home village of Fenham claim that the narrator is a changeling child.
- Conveniently an Orphan: When the narrator's parents die, they leave him with the time and money to pursue his strange obsessions.
- Creepy Cemetery: This is the setting of the framing story in which the narrator tells the main story as a Whole Episode Flashback, and the climax.
- Creepy Child: As the story explains: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.
- Creepy Mortician: The narrator's choice of career. He becomes this, and ultimately fails at it, due to his inability to control his perverse desires.
- Dying as Yourself: 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.
- Dying Town: Appropriately, the narrator's home village of Fenham has been declining for years; when he finally returns after spending some time in Bayboro: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 ...
- Emo Teen: Description of himself at sixteen:Narrator: Anything that tended to lift me out of my habitual inertia held for me only the promise of physical and mental disquiet.
- Family Extermination: 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.
- Hereditary Curse: The origin of the narrator's I Love the Dead Nightmare Fetishist obsession is implied to be either this or In the Blood, given that he had a great-great grand-uncle burned as a Necromancer.
- High on Homicide: When the narrator decides that the recent-corpse supply, even in Bayboro, is too low for his purposes — and becomes a serial killer to increase said supply — it is obvious that he exults in murder.
- I Love the Dead: The title states this almost exactly, and the narrator is a necrophiliac.
- In Medias Res: The story begins with the narrator hiding from the law in a Creepy Cemetery, and telling the story of how he wound up in this predicament.
- In the Blood: The origin of the narrator's I Love the Dead Nightmare Fetishist obsession is implied to be either this or a Hereditary Curse, given that he had a great-great grand-uncle burned as a Necromancer.
- Life Drinker: One line near the end, after the narrator murders a whole family, implies that the narrator may have gained this power (see Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane and Unreliable Narrator):Narrator: ... a newfound stolen strength was mine.
- Lovecraft Country: The narrator is born in Fenham, a rural New England village with a somewhat creepy past, which may well be in the Cthulhu Mythos continuity, given that H. P. Lovecraft co-authored the work.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: The story never makes clear whether or not the narrator develops his nightmare fetish because of a Hereditary Curse, a genetic legacy, family tradition or something stranger. It could all simply be a coincidence.
- Necromancer: The narrator has a (long-deceased) great-great grand-uncle who was burned at the stake as a necromancer (see Clifford Martin Eddy Jr).
- Nightmare Fetishist: 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 the Great War: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.
- Serial Killer: 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 High on Homicide as well as enjoying the corpses.
- Serial Rapist: Of a peculiar variety, given that he doesn't care about gender, and only molests the victims after their deaths.
- Start of Darkness: At 16, when he views his grandfather's corpse at the funeral.
- Unreliable Narrator: 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.
- Villain Protagonist: The narrator is a necrophiliac Serial Killer.
- Whole Episode Flashback: The narrator tells the story of how he wound up in a cemetery, being hunted by the law, before he proceeds to the climax of his tale.
