"Cool Air" is a delightfully creepy little short story by H. P. Lovecraft. The story was written in 1926 but was not published until 1928, where it appeared in an issue of the short-lived publication "Tales of Magic and Mystery". It was originally submitted to "Weird Tales", Lovecraft's usual outlet, but for one reason or another, was rejected. Though nothing has ever been confirmed, there has been speculation over the years that that the magazine's editor, Farnsworth Wright, was worried that the story would draw censorship as a result of its morbid content.
The plot revolves around an unnamed writer who moves into a dodgy apartment building in New York. Over time, he befriends his mysterious upstairs tenant, an old, reclusive physician who never leaves his room, which he keeps at a perpetual 55-56°. In spite of this newfound friendship, the narrator nevertheless finds something unsettling about the peculiar old man, who has a rather disconcerting obsession with the subject of death...
To say much more would spoil the fun. The story can be read online here
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Provides examples of:
- Absurd Phobia: Played for Horror as the story explains exactly why the narrator is afraid of the cold.
- Adaptation Expansion: The Dark Adventure version adds a Framing Story about the narrator discussing the incident with her husband because their baby has died of an illness and she plans to use Muñoz's research to revive him.
- Ambiguously Brown: Dr. Muñoz is mentioned having an aquiline nose, which the narrator mentions makes him look vaguely middle-eastern. However, it never becomes relevant, as Muñoz is such a pleasant person that the character forgets his own racism around him.
- Body Horror: The learned doctor rots. He's actually been dead for years.
- Chill of Undeath: Dr. Muñoz technically died 18 years before the story began, but has preserved a semblance of life in his body using various advanced medical techniques, and relies on an air-conditioning system to keep his apartment at a low temperature in order to prevent decay. When the air-conditioner breaks, death catches up with him and he decomposes within several hours.
- Comic-Book Adaptation: There have been several: the most notable include EC Comics' "Baby... It's Cold Inside!" (Vault of Horror #17, Feb/March 1951), drawn by Graham "Ghastly" Ingels, and a closer adaptation by Warren Comics (Eerie #62, Jan 1975), drawn by Bernie Wrightson.
- Creepy Good: Dr. Muñoz frightens people with his appearance and is technically undead, but is an excellent doctor and quite happy to treat people in need.
- Creepy Monotone: Dr. Muñoz's voice is described as "finely modulated though oddly hollow and timbreless." The sentences roll out so smoothly that he doesn't seem to breathe. Not that he needs to anymore.
- Cryonics Failure: The conflict of the story is that Dr. Muñoz's primitive air conditioner broke down, and he needs to be very cold due to a health condition: being dead. The AC isn't fixed in time, leading to the good doctor rotting to death.
- Dead All Along: It turns out that Dr. Muñoz died 18 years earlier, and had been finding ways to continually prolong his undeath this entire time.
- Eye Scream: Towards the end, Muñoz undergoes a terror-induced spasm and clutches his eyes. He retreats to the bathroom and emerges with a bandage over his face. The narrator specifically says that he never saw the man's eyes again. The ending implies that he was in the early stages of decomposition, and that, in his terror, his eyeballs actually fell out of his skull.
- Foreshadowing: While the doctor fixes up the narrator, he quips that with the right technology and skill he could teach him how to beat death and live forever.
- Friendly Zombie: Dr. Muñoz is an excellent physician, and a generally kindly, hospitable and well-educated man. Also, he died 18 years prior and has been since sustaining his un-life through special chemicals and extremely low temperatures.
- Funetik Aksent: Lovecraft being Lovecraft, the protagonist provides an unflatteringly exaggerated transcription of his Hispanic landlady's accent.
- Gender Flip: The protagonist is often portrayed as female in adaptations, such as Night Gallery, and the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society's Dark Adventure Radio Theatre.
- Gory Discretion Shot: The protagonist refuses to describe what he finds on the couch in the aftermath of Dr. Muñoz's body rotting into sludge.
- Inciting Incident: The narrator notes that he may never have known Dr. Muñoz if he didn't experience a sudden heart attack one day and, with the knowledge that he once helped an injured workman, seek out some medical assistance from him.
- Inhuman Human: Dr. Muñoz had revived himself after being dead, but unless he "lives" at low temperature, below 56 °F (13 °C), his body will decompose like a corpse, and even during this "life" there is something repugnant in his appearance. He eventually dies a second death when his refrigeration system breaks down, but for many months before his appearance had already become frightening to people and his mind drifted.
- Living on Borrowed Time: When the cooling unit breaks down, it's revealed that Dr. Muñoz died 18 years previously but managed to sustain himself through unknown means, relying on refrigeration to keep himself from rotting away.
- Most Writers Are Writers: Like so many of Lovecraft’s protagonists, the narrator is a writer who, down on their luck, rents a room in a cheap boarding house.
- The Needless: Implied with Dr. Muñoz, who the narrator notes doesn't seem to breathe when he speaks and who makes no mention of him eating at any point. Not that he needs to do either, given that he's undead.
- No Name Given: The protagonist is never named, although it should perhaps be noted that he shares more than a little in common with Lovecraft himself.
- Our Liches Are Different: Dr. Muñoz is a presumably science-fictional variant, having somehow cheated death through his medical knowledge, but at the cost of being dependent on low temperatures to prolong his un-death.
- Promoted to Love Interest: Adaptations often portray the protagonist developing romantic feelings for Muñoz, emphasizing the tragic nature of his disability and eventual demise. Providence, meanwhile, depicts him and the landlady in a relationship.
- Screaming at Squick: The man the narrator hires to bring ice only makes a single trip into the apartment and then runs screaming from the building. The landlady and other tenants do the same when they open the apartment at the end.
- Smells of Death: As his body slowly begins to break down, Dr. Muñoz starts filling his apartment with spices and Egyptian incenses to cover up the stench, and taking regular chemical baths. This only works for so long, and eventually the musty smell becomes noticeable even to the rest of the boarding house. When the narrator returns with some workmen to fix his cooling unit, a horrible smell is the first sign that something's happened to him.
- Uncanny Valley: Doctor Muñoz looks normal and even handsome except for a pallid complexion, a chill, and a slightly hollow voice, but the narrator is instinctively revolted by the sight of him. No wonder, since the man's body is long dead.
- Who Wants to Live Forever?: The old man is terrified of death, and works tirelessly to ensure its prevention. As it turns out, he actually did find a way to cheat death, and has been living in an undead state for almost two decades. The problem is that the process of prolonging this state has rendered his quality of living dubious at best. He lives the life of a recluse, never venturing outside of the building and rarely leaving his room in general. He also has to endure frigid temperatures to prevent decomposition, and all it took was his machine to break down one time for him to finally meet his gruesome and long-overdue end. And even then, it's implied that he had been starting to decline before then, so even if his plan had gone off without a hitch it still likely wouldn't have been enough for him to live forever anyway.
- You Are a Credit to Your Race: The narrator specifically notes that the doctor is pleasant, well mannered, and extremely intelligent... not like those other Hispanics living there.
