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Bloch, Robert, and Henry Kuttner. “The Black Kiss.” Weird Tales, June 1937, pp. 978-690.
https://archive.org/details/WeirdTalesV29N06193706/page/678/mode/2up The story opens with a young artist named Graham Dean visiting a doctor’s office for advice on the disturbing dreams he has been having. He has moved into his family’s house perched on a cliff overlooking the ocean in California. The doctor is of very little help, hustling to a diagnosis and ignoring most of what Dean has to say about the “planned” nature of his dreams, how they seem to him to be malign and filled with meaning. The doctor does little more than pat him on the head and send him out with a prescription. Dean goes home thinking about the family lore, how one of his ancestors seemed to have an unhealthy and even occult relationship with the sea. He finds a telegram from a distant uncle, an expert in occult lore, warning him to vacate the house immediately and visit a different doctor. Dean ignores the warning and falls asleep in his chair. He dreams of nightmarish sea creatures that lure him out into the depths. The dream shifts to a cave where he meets a strange woman who kisses him until her image dissolves into one of the hideous sea creatures.
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Bloch, Robert. “The Mannikin.” Weird Tales, April 1937, pp. 441-452.
https://archive.org/details/Weird_Tales_v29n04_1937-04_sas/page/n57/mode/2up The unnamed narrator, on a break between semesters at then university where he teaches, vacations in Bridgetown, which is known for its natural beauty and excellent fishing. He bumps into an old familiar from his own college days, Simon Maglore, a friend whom he has not seen in years. Maglore seems friendly enough, but he has aged poorly. The physical deformity on his back has grown immensely, and his face reflects accumulated stress. The narrator is worried for his friend and decides to visit him. At the door, Maglore angrily shouts at him to leave, his whole bearing agitated and alarming. The narrator asks around town about him, and most people there hold a very low opinion of Maglore, saying he and his family are involved in all manner of occult activities. Bloch, Robert [Nathan Hindin]. “Fangs of Vengeance.” Weird Tales, April 1937, pp. 470-481.
https://archive.org/details/WeirdTalesV28N04193611/page/n65/mode/2up The story is set during the winter quarters of a circus. During the seasonal break, managers of circuses find new acts for the coming season, and fine-tune the offering so that once the season begins, the show will be running smoothly. Animal trainers have gone somewhat out of fashion, and so the Stellar Brothers Circus was happy to land Captain Zaroff, a big cat trainer, as a featured act. General Zaroff had uncanny mastery over the leopards in his charge. He controlled them without the aid of a chair or a gun. They seemed to fear him and his whip desperately. The narrator, one of the managers of the circus, began to grow suspicious. Strange things began to happen. A troupe of African show people arrived and immediately quit the show once they learned of General Zaroff’s methods. Bloch, Robert. “The Brood of Bubastis.” Weird Tales, March, 1937, pp. 274-284. https://archive.org/details/WeirdTalesV29N03193703/page/n19/mode/2up
The story opens with the unnamed narrator ruing his decision to visit his old college friend, Malcolm Kent, at his friend’s ancestral estate in Cornwall, England. He presents his regrets about the visit as a suicide note that explains the haunting events that led to the decision to end his life. It all started off well enough. Kent was the same as he ever was, except that his library of occult books had grown during the intervening years. As the night deepens, Kent reveals that he has made some amazing discoveries that he will share with the narrator in the morning. They embark on a sunrise hike, and Kent tells of his discovery of ancient Egyptian explorers who had visited Cornwall millennia ago. As they clamber down a cliffside, Kent shows the narrator an opening in the rock. Inside, he says, is unmistakable evidence of the Egyptian presence. Indeed, they find hieroglyphics and other evidence of ancient occupation. Bloch, Robert. “Mother of Serpents.” Weird Tales, December 1936, pp. 563-569. https://archive.org/details/WeirdTalesV28N05193612/page/562/mode/2up
I want to include an accurate summary of this story, but it all just blurred for me with the layers of “octaroons” and the main character’s disdain for anything “savage “ or “dark” makes me want to just put this story down and move onto other, less “of its time” stories. The narrator here presents himself as a researcher and scholar. I am a huge fan of zombie movies, but the story he tells of the President of Haiti trying to rein in the forces of voodoo in the rural areas of his country just does not work at all. On the other hand, this story has been reprinted and translated many times, so what do I know? Bloch, Robert. “The Dark Demon.” Weird Tales, November, 1936, pp. 449-456. https://archive.org/details/WeirdTalesV28N04193611/page/n65/mode/2up
The story opens with a narrator who should be familiar to readers of Lovecraft: the survivor who has an impossible story to tell. In this case, it is about Edgar Gordon, a writer and mentor who has disappeared under mysterious circumstances. The narrator wants to tell the story so that people will know the truth. He never had much of an audience for his fiction, but as his writing got more and more strange, demand for his work dried up completely. He tells the narrator that he no longer cares if anyone reads his work. He says that his work always originated in his dreams but that now his writing was being dictated to him by creatures that closely resemble those horrors found in eldritch books such as the Necronomicon and Mysteries of the Worm. https://archive.org/details/Weird_Tales_v28n03_1936-10/page/n21/mode/2up
Sir Ronald Barton is an Egyptologist of ill-repute who is looking for his own big score in the relic-stealing business. His son, Peter, accompanies him on his latest expedition, the excavation of a well-hidden vault deep beneath the desert sands of Egypt. Sir Ronald relies on prophecy and papyrus parchments that guide him to the correct place and instruct him, for example, to sacrifice three jackals and feed them to bats. They enter the outer vault and find statues of the “seven principal Egyptian gods—Osiris, Isis, Ra, Bast, Thoth, Set, and Anubis” (283). Bloch, Robert. “The Grinning Ghoul.” Weird Tales, June, 1936, pp. 720-727. https://archive.org/details/WeirdTalesV27N06193606/page/n81/mode/2up
(Many of these early stories are available via archive.org, so I will include a link—if one is available—to make it easy for someone to read along.) A psychiatrist tells his own story that begins with his own institutionalization—a development he disagrees with thoroughly. The story begins with his defense of his own sanity. He met professionally with a man named Professor Alexander Chaupin who began to talk unguardedly about his dreams. He went each night to the same cemetery and to the same locked tomb, entering it confidently and without difficulty. He delved deep underground where he sees strange and horrific creatures that ignore his presence. He calls them ghouls. He then told of discovering the actual location where his dreams were set and learning about ghouls from ancient books such as Mysteries of the Worm and the Necronomicon. The psychiatrist remained in control, pointing out that his research was undoubtedly influencing his dreams and making him anxious about nothing. Bloch, Robert. “The Faceless God” Weird Tales, May 1936, pp. 565-576. https://archive.org/details/Weird_Tales_v27n05_1936-05_sas/page/n53/mode/2up
The story opens with Doctor Stugatche torturing a helpless man who is strapped to a table. He seeks information about an idol, and he thinks the man at the tip of his knife has information. The doctor is an Egyptologist of ill repute, one who has been banished from respectable academic circles and who is now in it for the money. He heard indirectly about an immense idol that a passing caravan stumbled upon and hurriedly abandoned out of fear. Dr. Stugatche has no such fear. He wants to know the location so that he can plunder the treasure for himself. He sees it as a certain path to riches and fame. Armed with the torture-wrought information, he assembles a small band and finds the idol. It is described as “monstrous, both in subject and in execution. He saw the writhing, worm-like shapes of primal monsters, and headless, slimy creatures from the stars. There were bloated beasts in the robes of men, and ancient Egyptian gods in hideous combat with squirming demons from the gulf. Some of the designs were foul beyond description, and others hinted of unclean terrors that were old when the world was young. Bloch, Robert. “The Druidic Doom” Weird Tales, April, 1936, pp. 472-485. https://archive.org/details/WeirdTalesV27N04193604/page/n89/mode/2up
The story opens with a “proud and wilful [sic] man” named Sir Charles Hovoco moving to the estate at Nedwick; he paid for it with wealth that he “trampled” into after growing up poor in the city. He disliked anything wasteful, and so he set his sights on clearing his land for farming and profit. To do so, he would need to remove a hilltop grove of ancient trees that surround an altar. Of course he is warned by his neighbors, notably a skeptical bartender, and the local priest who provides him with an exhaustive history of the altar in question but also the history of settlement in the area starting with long before the Romans arrived. The clergyman ended his history with an earnest warning to stay away from the altar. Sir Charles was not deterred. When none of the local workers agree to help, he enlists help from the city. It takes them half a day to excavate the giant stone altar, and when they do they discover that beneath it is a hole unfathomably deep. The stench of death emanating from it was intense. Although he had a strong instinct to restore the altar to its place, he resisted. |
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