"Witnesses said it had long hair and the shape of a rat, but that its sharp-toothed, bearded face was evilly human while its paws were like tiny human hands. It took messages betwixt old Keziah and the devil, and was nursed on the witch's blood, which it sucked like a vampire."
H.P. Lovecraft, Dreams In the Witch-House
Another one where I like my original design but fixed the linework, color & rendering.
Brown Jenkin or the rat thing is HPLs version of a witch's familiar. And it's not too far off from what were historically thought of as witch's familiars. I've drawn a few and they're weird (here, here and here)!
When Dreams In the Witch-House was originally published in July 1933 issue of Weird Tales there was no illustration of the rat thing. However, the Spanish language edition of La Casa Della Streghe features Brown Jenkin with art by Oliviero Berni as does the John Holmes cover for At The Mountains Of Madness and Other Tales Of Terror.
Stuart Gordon also did a direct adaptation of the story for his entry in Masters Of Horror. And while it's been a while since I've seen it, I remember it being pretty good and faithful (though minus the elder things). The Brown Jenkin in that is just a man with rat teeth and some whiskers, not nearly as horrible as it could've been.
Stay tuned for another
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