“Beetles” (Weird Tales, December 1938)

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!

This is such a fun story. Bloch’s compassion and connection to others shines through here; the three characters in the story all look to deepen connections among themselves. Even Hartley, in his doomed madness, longs for a way back to reality, for a way to undo his crime: “I read the Curse of the Scarabaeus — sacred beetle, you know — and I did it anyway. I couldn’t guess that it was true. I was a skeptic; everyone is skeptical enough until things happen. Those things are like the phenomenon of death; you read about it, realize that it occurs to others, and yet cannot quite conceive of it happening to yourself. And yet it does” (741). Hartley is a sympathetic character despite being a grave-robbing, antiquities-looting, rich white guy. The narrator is consumed by concern for Hartley, as is Dr. Sherman. And yet there is nothing to be done to stave off the curse. This is one of the final stories that Bloch turned into a teleplay. In 1987, it appeared as an episode of Tales from the Darkside. I wrote about that adaptation in my book, part of which goes like this:
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"The difference fifty years later is in the social context for Hartley’s actions. In the short story, we have what might be a Lovecraftian narrator, one on the outside of the action who has a vested interest, even a friendship with the doomed main character, a voice that is close to the strange doings but at the same time not directly involved. In so many of Lovecraft’s stories, a haunted character similar to Hartley meets his end as an observer with only partial understanding acts as a witness and scribe. In the case of this adaptation, there is no observer. Television viewers see what Hartley sees; his isolation is profound. One side note: the final scene of the episode features Colm Meaney, who was then on the brink of being cast in Star Trek: The Next Generation as Miles O’Brien."