The Lock Up

The words of the harrowing figure of Quaid in Clive Barker's "Dread" continues to sketch with gloomy chiaroscuro a dreadful something - of pure discarnate fear yet to be realized - in my imagination. I think of Quaid, as a revered caricature of Lovecraft the story-teller subliminally endorsing, in effect harking back with his emphatic words to that original story of the Lovecraftian "beast" of fear:

"I fear, you fear, we fear," Quaid was fond of saying. "He, she or it fears. There's no conscious thing in the face of the world that doesn't know dread more intimately than its own heartbeat."

... sounds like Lovecraft himself in Supernatural Horror in Literature. However, Quaid out-Lovecrafts Lovecraft with his twisted invention. He conducts what might only be imagined as a cruel, terrorizing, Pavlovian trial on his opposing classmate, and later mistress, Cheryl. He tells Stephen (the narrator):

"I locked her away you see, Steve." Quaid was as unemotional as a newsreader. "To see if I could needle her into showing her dread a little bit."

Then Quaid shows him the whole slew of photos taken during the experiment of Cheryl's degenerative and eventual break down - how he compelled Cheryl, a strict vegetarian, to consume a rancid old piece of meat. Where I stopped reading tonight ... with much suspense ... Stephen was captured and locked up by Quaid.