Last Light (1971)

Derleth had been married between 1953 and 1959. A daughter and a son were born in 1954 and 1956 respectively. So the 1960's found him exercising the responsibilities of a single parent, along with all his many other activities.

However, his health was not always good. He had suffered from hypertension since the 1940's. And Derleth had always enjoyed large and rich meals, and this, together with his headlong work schedule, did not help his situation. In the late 1960's, Derleth was hospitalised for a gall-bladder operation, when complications set in. After 87 days he was able to go back home again, with the recollection of a doctor's remark Jesus, he's a tough old bastard... But even so, Derleth was living on borrowed time.

His time in hospital meant that he had not been able to keep up with his writing and publishing commitments. The medical bills meant that he had to work harder than ever.

A last novella, A House Above Cuzco, appeared in 1969. Combining Derleth's interest in Peru with something of the self-confession mode of his late poetry, the story concerns the visit of a would-be biographer to the famous Midwest author Avrel Millerand. Millerand -- clearly modelled by Derleth on himself -- has gone to live in South America, far away from the landscape that had inspired his work. The biographer also wishes to solve a riddle in Millerand's writing, and ends up finding out more than he bargained for. A House Above Cuzco gave perhaps the most accurate portrait of the direction in which Derleth thought -- or hoped -- that his life would go.

By 1971 Derleth needed further surgery. He still tried to work as hard as ever, but his body began to fail him. August William Derleth died on 4 July 1971.

I walk among them, it often seems, increasingly an alien, informed by compassion and understanding, but less content among my fellow men than in the marshes or the hills, on the river or along a country road at night, where I am closer to coming full circle, to awareness of that ultimate darkness that is the merging of the self with time and the inevitable dust.