The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the ability to order books online. One can avoid all manner of ghastliness. The public library usually furnishes whatever queer and misbegotten tome I’ve gone in search of, but too often it furnishes darker things besides—such eldritch sights as one might fear from a place with rules against “being less than fully clothed” and “misusing” the restroom “including [by] bathing.” Although used bookstores yield the odd treasure, I am by no means one of those antiquarians who finds himself, tentacles—er, spectacles—askew, intoxicated by a pungent bouquet of spores, molds, and fungus. Chain bookstores provide their own species of the unspeakable. Last time I went to Barnes & Noble, I saw a sign advertising Teen Paranormal Romance. As some might say: Oh my Elder Gods.

Back when “romance” meant an altogether different thing, these shelves would have groaned beneath the weight of books by Wilkie Collins, E. T. A. Hoffmann, Matthew “The Monk” Lewis, Ann Radcliffe, and Bram Stoker. Now it’s Stephenie Meyer, she of Twilightfame, and a clutch of parasitic imitators. It may seem that the uncanny is now the exclusive purview of teens and of those trying to make a fast buck off of them. Quite to the contrary, writers for adult audiences are still answering the call of the creepy, making inroads into the blasted heath of the collective unconscious. Perhaps there’s something in the air—the Mayan doomsday prophecy, or the more plausible threat