All the bones were gnawed, mostly by rats, but somewhat by others of the half-human drove. Many were of higher grade, and a very few were the skulls of supremely and sensitively developed types.

They were mostly lower than the Piltdown man in the scale of evolution, but in every case definitely human. Trask, the anthropologist, stooped to classify the skulls, he found a degraded mixture which utterly baffled him. The creature I had killed, the strange beast of the unfathomed cave was, or had at one time been, a MAN!!! As I looked more closely, I saw that they were set in a face less prognathous than that of the average ape, and infinitely more hairy. Like those of other cave denizens, they were deeply sunken in their orbits, and were entirely destitute of iris. They were black, those eyes, deep, jetty black, in hideous contrast to the snow-white hair and flesh. The hands or feet were not prehensile, a fact that I ascribed to that long residence in the cave which, as I before mentioned, seemed evident from the all-pervading and almost unearthly whiteness so characteristic of the whole anatomy. Its hair was snow-white, a thing due no doubt to the bleaching action of a long existence within the inky confines of the cave, but it was also surprisingly thin, being indeed largely absent save on the head, where it was of such length and abundance that it fell over the shoulders in considerable profusion.įrom the tips of the fingers or toes long nail-like claws extended. Most of the time, the tread seemed to be that of a quadruped, walking with a singular lack of unison betwixt hind and fore feet, yet at brief and infrequent intervals I fancied that but two feet were engaged in the process of locomotion. They are described as white semi-humanoid creatures with long clawed nails. They are believed to be the inbred descendants of cannibalistic cave-dwelling humans. Howard Phillips Lovecraft Cave beasts are a species of humanoid creatures in the Cthulhu Mythos.

Rat in the wall lovecraft