Rain in the skies and "Rats in the Walls"

Dripping black clouds blanket the sky, snuffing the normal morning daylight and replacing it with a twilit gloom. A bone-aching dampness pervades the house as a ferocious rain obliterates the neighborhood scenes outside my window...
Sounds like the perfect atmosphere for reading some H. P. LOVECRAFT!
I have always been drawn to the criminally under-appreciated -- in music, cinema and literature -- and Lovecraft certainly fits that bill, at least during his lifetime.
I find it absolutely absurd that a writer whose imagination could render the memorably chilling "Call of Cthulhu" (the most frightening story I have ever had the morbid pleasure to read) had to sell his works for a pittance to pulp magazines -- pulp magazines that for the most part didn't even give him the honor of a cover story!
I think I most adore Lovecraft's work because so often it leaves the lingering impression of a sinister dream populated by vaguely remembered but soul-disturbing imagery. I also like the idea that there are aspects of the universe that humans don't know -- and that we cannot know -- because that knowledge would be so beyond out comprehension as to be overwhelmingly horrible.
This morning I read "The Rats in the Walls," a perfectly paced Lovecraft short story that appeared in the March 1924 edition of "Weird Tales" -- only after it had been rejected by another magazine called "Argosy All-Story Weekly."
In "The Rats in the Walls," a man restores his ancestral home, only to find it harbors secrets -- and genetically predisposed and immoral culinary habits -- too horrific to fully comprehend.
"The Rats in the Walls" is a good place to start if you consider reading Lovecraft's work -- perfect for a gloomy rainy day like today.
I wouldn't recommend starting with "The Call of Cthulhu" -- that never ceases to completely frighten me, even on the most beautiful, cloudless day.