SOURCE: "The Red Hand" (Chapman’s Magazine of Fiction, December 1895) by Arthur Machen

DESCRIPTION: "'You do not wonder that I did not stay long in a place where those who live are a little higher than beasts, and what you have seen is surpassed a thousandfold?'" ("The Red Hand" by Arthur Machen)

NOTES: The People of the Red Hand (also known as the Keepers of the Treasure) are a prehistoric survival of great obscenity. Mr. Selby spends his entire life tracking down the meaning of the inscriptions on the "black heaven" tablet which gives directions to the treasure, only to come away with only one piece of treasure, a piece of artwork known as "The Pain of the Goat". The sculpture, like the People themselves, is wholly obscene.

HISTORY: Machen never really reveals what the people are, only that they are terrible to look upon. They may be the same troglodytes featured in other stories like "The Novel of the Black Seal" or "The Shining Pyramid". There isn't enough to really say. "The Red Hand" is more a Sherlockian Mystery than a Lovecraftian piece. Only the final solution of the treasure is tainted with supernatural evil. This story showed that Machen was quite capable of writing in the A. Conan Doyle mode of Mystery writers but also his love of the supernatural simply could not be abandoned.