“The Bottomless Pool” (Strange Stories, April 1939)

Bloch, Robert, and Ralph Milne Farley. “The Bottomless Pool.” Strange Stories, April 1939, pp. 101-109.
https://archive.org/details/Strange_Stories_v01n02_1939-04/page/n97/mode/2up 

The story presents itself as the statement of a desperate man who implores the authorities to close access to Prichard’s Woods, which is just outside of Concord, Massachusetts. It seems as if something terrible has happened to his friend, Martin Ayelthorp, a writer in a “slump period” whom the narrator had invited for a long visit. Martin’s creativity came back to him during long tramps through the woods, and his physical health was returning, as well. Soon, he was telling fantastic stories about a bottomless pool he had found deep in a nearby swamp. The two went to investigate, and they discovered a strange lizard floating near the shore. The narrator picked it up and saw it was connected to a wire. Suddenly, the wire jerked taught, and a hidden hook buried itself into the narrator’s side. he was being dragged into the water! Together, they freed the narrator, but they were both shaken. They devised a plan to catch whatever it was below the surface that seemed to be “fishing” for people. Martin could not wait, however, and he went alone to the pond sometime during the night, The narrator discovered evidence that he had been dragged into the depths. 

He set up the windlass and tugged on the lizard. The tug came back and the narrator connected the hook to the winch. Slowly, he drew the angler to the surface where ti revealed itself to be a horror “It was a head shaped by horror’s dreams alone. Not human, not reptilian, not frog-like — it was nevertheless featured with great staring yellow eyes, snouted like a saurian, and covered with a greenish batrachoidid skin that glistened slickly against the yellow light. The monstrous bulging eyes rolled wildly and dilated in agony as the creature opened its great slitted mouth in a soundless, choking gasp. I stared into a red maw that was fanged in a manner unknown to any beast still roaming earth — and as I did so a sickening realization swept over me. This was the Fisher!” The narrator cuts the wire in horror, grabs the hook, and flees the scene. His mind reels as he imagines what other horrors must be below. As he studies the hook, he discovers etched into its surface is the image of a feast—the beasts eating humans.
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This is a strange mix of things. The setting is Massachusetts, and there is a comparison of the story’s pond in “Prichard’s Woods” and Thoreau’s Walden. Interestingly, this is a real place., Thoreau himself surveyed the pond and its surroundings, reporting that Moses Prichard’s tract of trees “skirted the river and were furnished with winding walks and rustic seats in order to form an attractive and cool retreat” (Moss). I just lost about a half hour in Google Maps trying to pin down this location. It is somewhere near the Concord River near Thoreau Street and the Emerson Playground. Not that Bloch had ever ventured to Massachusetts. But had his cowriter, Roger Sherman Hoar, otherwise known by his penname of Ralph Milne Farley? Most certainly. Hoar was born and raised near Boston and came out to Milwaukee to teach at Marquette University. I the early 1930s, he fell in with the Milwaukee Fictioneers, the writing group that adopted Bloch while he was still a teenager. Even though Farley was considerably older than Bloch—Farley was born in 1887 and Bloch in 1917—they became collaborators, at least for this single story. A new feature on the Robert Blog: the word of the day. Today’s word is “batrachoidid,” which appears in the long quote above. It means of or pertaining to toadfish or frogfish which are members of the Batrachoididae family. If you know these horrendous little beasts, you’ll know the kind of effect Bloch was aiming for in his description of the Fisher.