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Bloch, Robert. “Beetles.” Weird Tales, December 1938, pp. 737-745.
https://archive.org/details/Weird_Tales_v32n05_1938-11/page/n53/mode/2up When Arthur Hartley, the celebrated Egyptologist, returns from an eight-month expedition to Sudan, his friends are alarmed at the change that has come over him. He formerly was a towering presence in any room, engaged socially, and eager to talk. Now he is reserved and seems haunted by inner thoughts. The narrator is worried about his friend and visits him. He finds Hartley much changed; he speaks about stealing a mummy and being subject to the curse. He has tried incense to dispel the beetles, and now he has insecticide—the power of modern science—to battle the insects. The narrator sees nothing but a man who is under a lot of stress, a friend whose grip on reality has become shaky. He vows to help Hartley and convinces his friends, a psychologist, to visit. They find Hartley dead in his own bed with the unmistakable scent of both incense and insecticide in the air. The psychologist leaves to call the police and the narrator searches for clues. He finds the pilfered mummy and opens its case. Inside, he sees deep in the bandages and at the bottom of the case the scarab beetles that the curse described. He rushes to Hartley’s bed, where he discovers that Hartley’s body has been consumed from the inside by the same beetles!
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Bloch, Robert. “The Hound of Pedro.” Weird Tales, November 1938, pp. 563-572.
https://archive.org/details/Weird_Tales_v32n05_1938-11/page/n53/mode/2up This story is set in the fictional town of Novorros, which seems to be somewhere in New Spain, in 1717. The sleepy town desert town has been invaded by Black Pedro Dominguez and his band of thugs. They demand total control and begin murdering anyone who resists, starting with the priest who graciously welcomes them to town a moment before Pedro kills him and takes the Mission compound for himself. They demand proceeds from the nearby gold mine and also women. Rumors of Black Pedro’s unspeakable deeds begin to spread through the town, and the few who resist are met with creative, humiliating, and painful deaths. At the heart of it is the dog who is Pedro’s companion. It seems to have supernatural abilities, to be able to communicate with its master, to travel quickly and silently, and to understand the speech of the local people and report back to its master. There are also terrifying monthly rituals that require a young woman who enters Black Pedro’s compound and never reemerges. Another rebellion is underway, this time more organized and led by Don Manuel Digron, a loyal subject of the Inquisition and of “the Mother Church” (569). Bloch, Robert. “The Mandarin’s Canaries.” Weird Tales, September 1938, pp. 316-.
https://archive.org/details/Weird_Tales_v32n03_1938-09_ATLPM-Urf/page/n61/mode/2up Mandarin Quong is an artist, and his medium is pain. He rules absolutely over his domain, having taken power from his brothers and father, each of whom died violently. Quong is the head of state and also of the judiciary. He amasses wealth by convicting wealthy people of crimes and the confiscating their property. The sentence is always the same: they are to die in the most painful way possible: they are tied to a tree, and an expert archer shoots them with arrows starting in places such as the ankle and wrist and gradually moving closer and closer to vital organs. When the victim is finally dead, Quong summons his flock of thousands of canaries to clean the bones. These are merely birds, the Mandarin explains. All of the superstition about them devouring souls is nonsense. The expert archer in Quong’s employ is married to a beautiful woman. Quong becomes smitten and takes her for himself. He soon grows tired of her, kills her, and feeds her to his birds. The archer, enraged, attacks Quong, who, in a dying blow, manages to stab the archer with such force that he is pinned to the killing tree. Both men are dying when the canaries arrive. The Mandarin relishes the sight of the archer being devoured until he witnesses something strange. One single bird, a female, remains on the fleshless skeleton. From within the ribcage, a new bird—a male—emerges. Could it be the soul of the archer now in bird form? The two lead the ravenous canary flock from the trees and onto the terrified Quong. Bloch, Robert. “Secret of the Observatory.” Amazing Stories, August 1938, pp. 6-31.
https://archive.org/details/Amazing_Stories_v12n04_1938-08/page/n5/mode/2up The novella opens with a journalist named Marlin and his friend, Hughes, sneaking up a Canadian mountain trail toward an observatory, careful not to be seen in the twilight. Marlin gives a bit of the reason for their clandestine journey: Dr. Okida and a group of Japanese men calling themselves “scientists” have occupied the place. Marlin and his newspaper editor are convinced they are there for nefarious purposes. When they get close enough, Marlin reveals his invention: the “Argus Eye,” a device capable of taking photographs through solid walls. They set themselves up to get images of what is happening inside the fortified building. They manage to take photos of most of the building before the shooting starts. They run down the mountain lugging the strange camera with them, but they are intercepted at the bottom by more gunmen. Hughes is killed, and Marlin becomes enraged. He chases one of the assailants, who is revealed to be a beautiful woman who seems to be American and not Japanese. Marlin brings her back to his rooming house where they talk. She is also trying to reveal the secret of the observatory; Marlin doesn’t quite believe her despite her charm and beauty. Bloch, Robert. “Return to the Sabbath.” Weird Tales, July 1938, pp. 95-104.
https://archive.org/details/Weird_Tales_v31n06_1938-06_sas/page/n61/mode/2up The story begins on a hot day in Hollywood with two movie producers looking for a cool place to rest for the afternoon. The find a theater that is showing the usual mix of live acts and films. The first movie shocked them into wakefulness. It depicted a horrifying monster emerging form a grave and crawling its way to a terrifying Satanic ritual. The producers were riveted. Not only that, but they had a horror movie to cast, and the star of this film would be perfect. it took some doing, but they finally discovered that the Austrian actor, Karl Jorla, was a complete unknown. They set him a contract, and he left for the United States immediately. Upon arrival, his strange behavior alarmed the producers and the crew. Jorla was secretive and insisted on no publicity at all for his presence I the film. He talked about the previous film, the one that got him noticed, and said it was all true that the black mass actually happened. He also said that the film’s release was accidental and that the participants in the film were being hunted by those involved in the back mass. Bloch, Robert. “Slave of the Flames.” Weird Tales, June 1938, pp. 700-712.
https://archive.org/details/Weird_Tales_v31n06_1938-06_sas/page/n61/mode/2up The story opens with Abe, a boy who has an unusual hobby: he is an artist whose medium is fire. Wherever he went, he imagined the whole place burning. He lost his job as a farm worker due to his hobby, and he moved to Chicago where his experiments continued. He set fire to a building to see what would happen: “It was creeping toward a second house now—no, it was holding out its arms on both sides to embrace two houses at once. It must keep feeding and growing if it would leap like that; leap swiftly as it now leapt at the other buildings. […] All red and glowing and alive against the black sky; beautiful beast eating ugly frame houses. It had put its fingers on the roof-tops now and tossed a shower of red-hot roses to the sky. Happy monster!” (702). He thrilled to the commotion that the fire caused and watched intently as his monsters did battle with the firefighters. When the fire was out, he was met by a man who brought him to a dark house where he met a man whose “great barrel-body was clothed in a long white robe” (704). The others called him “Divinity.” Bloch, Robert. “The Eyes of the Mummy.” Weird Tales, April 1938, pp. 424-434. https://archive.org/details/Weird_Tales_v30n05_1937-11_ATLPM-Urf/page/n65/mode/2up Surprisingly enough, the protagonist from “The Secret of Sebek” returns in this story which was published only five months later. Remember that he is an Egyptologist who travels to New Orleans to do some writing and is caught up in Mardi Gras. He meets a few strangers who turn out to be acolytes of the Egyptian god, Sebek, who have a fresh mummy that they want the protagonist to tell them about. Curses being what they are, Sebek arrives to exact vengeance on those who defiled his burial place. Despite the evidence of his eyes and hands, which touched the reptilian snout of the crocodile go, he still does not completely believe in the curse or anything else supernatural. He speculates early in “The Eyes of the Mummy” about how the realistic crocodile mask might have been constructed, how the jaws might have been built to open and close as he saw that they did. He blames alcohol from clouding his senses and confusing his judgment. When one of the survivors comes to him soon thereafter with an offer to travel to Egypt for an easy in and out plunder of ancient riches, the protagonist cannot say no. They arrive with no fanfare and venture out into the desert where they find the crypt entrance exactly as predicted.
Bloch, Robert. “Fane of the Black Pharaoh.” Weird Tales, December 1937, pp. 665-676. https://archive.org/details/Weird_Tales_v30n05_1937-11_ATLPM-Urf/page/n65/mode/2up Captain Carteret is an Egyptologist in Cairo who is approached by a strange man who offers him the chance to explore the heretofore undiscovered crypt of Nephren-Ka, an ancient sorcerer king devoted to Nyarlathotep. Even though he senses he is being manipulated and possibly even coerced, Carteret cannot resist the offer. He explains all he knows to the mysterious stranger who then escorts him across Cairo and into the catacombs beneath the city. Nephren-Ka was gifted with prophecy, and he spent his final years inscribing onto the walls of his temple a history of Egypt and the world for all time to come. Lest they be rendered insane, the high priest of the temple reveals only one day at a time to followers. The rest—the future of humanity—is concealed behind a heavy curtain. As they make their way through this long tunnel, Carteret resists looking at the walls. He knows that if the account of the prophecy were true, then all of the horrific lore associated with it must also be true. Finally, his will breaks, and he studies the wall. All of history is revealed, all the work of a single hand, a single artist. Just before the concealing curtain, he seems an image of himself escorted by the stranger—the high priest of Nephren-Ka—into the secret great hall. The priest tells him that midnight has arrived, and it is now time to reveal the events of the new day. The image revealed himself being killed by the priest of Nephren-Ka exactly at the moment when the fatal knife plunged into this back.
Bloch, Robert. “The Secret of Sebek.” Weird Tales, November 1937, pp. 576-587.
https://archive.org/details/Weird_Tales_v30n05_1937-11_ATLPM-Urf/page/n65/mode/2up This story is set during Mardi Gras in New Orleans. An outsider, a writer, spends Mardi Gras feeling alienated and alone amongst the celebrating crowds in New Orleans. While research ancient Egypt for a writing project, he decides to get drunk so he can feel a bit of the revelry that others seem to be enjoying. He meets a man dressed as an ancient Egyptian priest who invites him to a party. There are costumed attendees who do not impress him, but he is invited into the inner circle of true believers and is asked his opinion on some artifacts that they reveal to him. The relics all concern Sebek, an ancient god of fertility who has the body of a man and the head of a crocodile. The man, still drink from his earlier excesses, sees someone in the assembly dressed as this god, but the person disappears from view. The inner circle reveals the mummy of a priest of Sebek and also the warning they found in the burial chamber promising death to anyone who defiles the grave. Soon the man dressed as the priest of Sebek is attacked and devoured by the partygoer with the crocodile head. The incident so unnerved him that he fled the party and New Orleans without contacting the police or seeking any further information. in the story’s final moment, he relates that when he tried to intervene in the murder, he felt not a costume, not a crocodile mask, but the actual, living reptile flesh of the incarnated god. 7/2/2026 2 Comments “What Every Young Ghoul Should Know” (Amateur Correspondent, September-October 1937)Bloch, Robert. “What Every Young Ghoul Should Know.” Amateur Correspondent, September-October 1937, pp. 12-14. https://fanac.org/fanzines/Amateur_Correspondent/Amateur%20Correspondent%202%20Stickney,%20Corwin%20F.1937-09%20US.pdf
This is a piece of comedy by Bloch that chronicles the mysterious disappearance of fantasy-magazine editors, many of them, such as “Farnsworth Wrong,” easily connected to their real-world origin (in this case, Farnsworth Wright). Bloch’s fictitious magazine titles alone are worth the price (ten cents) of the magazine: Flabby Stories, Monstrous Yarns, Asinine Tales, Worried Tales, Awful, Putrid, and Pleurisy. After having his work rejected by several editors, the antagonist and narrator builds a rocket, kidnaps all of the editors, and sends them to the moon. Soon thereafter, he contacts them by radio expecting them to beg for forgiveness. Instead, they tell the narrator that they have found the people of the moon to be avid readers, and they have already established a new magazine on the moon for them. The narrator is heartbroken: I sat aghast. I'm always a little aghast after meals. A fine revenge this turned out to be! I send them to the moon, and they immediately start science-fiction magazines up there! It just ghost to show how uncooperative some people will be” (14). |
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