"The Beast in the Cave" is a short story by American horror fiction writer H. P. Lovecraft.

[1] It was first published in the June 1918 issue of the amateur journalism publication The Vagrant,[1][2][3] this being the equivalent of a well-edited fanzine today.

In the 1930s Lovecraft sometimes sent a copy of the typescript to his promising young correspondents, as an example of what he had produced at their age, and also as a first exercise in re-writing.

His torch expires and he is giving up hope of finding a way out in the pitch dark when he hears strange non-human footsteps approaching him.

Thinking it to be a lost mountain lion or another such beast, he picks up some stones and throws them toward the source of the sound.