As Roger ate his third Al’s New York System weiner, proving once again that all Cross-country runners are bottomless pits, I introduced him to a certain gabled New England colonial on Benefit Street. “The Shunned House” was the abode of a buried vampire in HPL’s creepy yarn. Then, after devouring one of Newport Creameries’ Awful Awful Sundaes, I pointed out the steeple of that church on Federal Hill where a dreaded winged monster perched in yet another of the Master’s hair-raising tales.

After running Blackstone Boulevard, we jogged and then slowed to a stroll to enter Swan Point Cemetery, where the cliffs look out over the Seekonk River, toward where the excavations were just starting into a recently discovered cave in the steepest part of the cliff face. I’d read about it in the papers and knew that it was sponsored by some wealthy guy who was convinced that the ancient Chinese had landed here a century before Columbus. Our Narragansett Tribal Council had been concerned that the cave might contain some ancestral graves. But the people in charge had assured them that they were certain the cave wasn’t the site of any Indian burials. As if we’d never heard that before. Any time archaeologists start digging up the ground here in New England, they usually come across Indian burial sites. Over the last few years, our people had managed to put a stop to much of this. My dad had been very involved. We’d also been able to get back a lot of the bones of our ancestors from museums and colleges so they could be decently reburied.

Roger and I walked past the graves of Rhode Island Volunteers who gave their lives in the Civil War.

And then we came at last to the grave. Howard Phillips Lovecraft’s last resting place. H. P. Lovecraft, author of some of the most chilling Gothic tales of ancient evil ever written. 1890–1937. Roger went down on one knee, and his long fingers traced the letters on the stone.

“‘I am Providence,’” he read aloud—with no trace at all of that weird New Orleans accent that sounds like you put a street kid from Brooklyn into a bottle with a Georgia Cracker and then shook it. And then that smile came over his face.

The same smile was on Roger’s face now as he looked at the words “I am here” on my door.