Randolph Carter

Randolph Carter is a fictional character created by H.P. Lovecraft. Carter appears in many of Lovecraft's writings including Through the Gates of the Silver Key, The Statement of Randolph Carter, and many of Lovecraft's Dreamlands stories.

Early Life

Carter is descended from old Arkham stock originally from Edmund Carter the wizard who fled the Salem witch trials. Edmund Carter had built a gambreled roofed homestead near the "Snake-Den," a nearby cave. During his childhood Randolph Carter visited the old homestead often, then owned by Christopher Carter, and spent much time around the hills and exploring the caves nearby including the "Snake-Den." The local farmers gossiped after Randolph's own disappeared that he had changed somehow when he was nine after spending a "memorable day" in the Snakes Den, where he said he had found a secret fissure at the back of the cave leading to a secret inner cave.

It is also known that Carter began his long experience in the Dreamlands as a childhood, visiting many places that he strove a lifetime to revisit later in life.

Disappearance

Randolph Carter disappeared on the seventh of October 1928, after visiting his ancestral Arkham home and the "Snake-Den" a strange cave near by. According to his old servant Parks, who died two years later, Carter was led by an "strangely aromatic and hideously carved box" and an old parchment and a carven key. Before leaving Carter claimed the parchment would lead him to his lost child hood, filled with dreams and peaceful adventure.

After disappearing, several of Carter's fellow mystics argued that he still lived in the Dreamlands as the king in Illek-Vad. The most prominent of these mystics, Ward Phillips, tried his best to stop Carter's heir, a distant cousin Ernest B. Aspinwall, from breaking up the Carter estate. After a long legal debate Philips, Aspinwall, the creole mystic Etienne-Laurent de Marigny and Swami Chandraputra a high-caste Brahmin met at Etienne de Marigny's home to discuss and split up the Carter estate. There the Brahmin reveled what he knew of Carter's disappearance.

According to the Swami Chandraputra Carter had followed instructions found in the Necronomicon and other books related to the key to discover a way to recover moments in time. On the day he disappeared he returned to the Snakes-Den and the secret cave behind it. There he saw for a moment a door with a hand above it, alike to the door in The pillared city of Irem. Using a ceremony with the key Carter became the Carter at nine who had visited the cave in 1883. Leaving the cave the boy went back home, had dinner with his uncle and aunt. The next day he returned to the cave and repeated the spell this time going deeper to meet the "Guide."

In the Necronomicon the mad Arab Abdul-Alhazred describes the Guide:

“And while there are those,” the mad Arab had written, “who have dared to seek glimpses beyond the Veil, and to   accept HIM as a Guide, they would
have been more prudent had they avoided commerce with HIM; for it is written in the Book of Thoth how  terrific is the price of a single glimpse.
Nor may those who pass ever return, for in the Vastnesses transcending our world are Shapes of darkness that seize   and bind. The Affair that 
shambleth about in the night, the Evil that defieth the Elder Sign, the Herd that stand watch at  the secret portal each tomb is known to have, and
that thrive on that which groweth out of the tenants within—all these Blacknesses are lesser than HE Who guardeth the Gateway; HE Who will guide
the rash one beyond all the worlds into the Abyss of unnamable Devourers.
For HE is’UMR AT-TAWIL, the Most Ancient One, which the scribe rendereth as THE PROLONGED OF LIFE.”