“The Brood of Bubastis” (Weird Tales, March, 1937)

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.

Kent goes further into his story, his manner becoming more intense and disturbed. The priests of Bubastis, the cat goddess, set up a temple in this spot. There is evidence that hundreds of people once lived in this subterranean maze. The narrator wonders how they fed themselves so deep underground, and, at this, Kent mentioned that Bubastis was a ghoul goddess, and the “priests and worshippers emulated her” (281). They discover evidence of horrifying human-animal hybrids as they descend. Finaly, they reach an altar where the scattered bones are unmistakably fresh. Kent says they have reached the temple of Bubastis and that the narrator is far from the first person he has brough to this spot. Kent attacks the narrator, attempting to get him onto the altar stone for sacrifice. Instead, the narrator overpowers Kent and runs for the exit tunnel. As he looks back, he sees “the chewer of corpses” (284) emerge from the depths and snatch Kent into the air like “a broken doll” (284). The narrator, now back in the present day, says he cannot live with the memory of his friend being thus devoured by what was unmistakably “the Cat-goddess of Bubastis” (285).

This is such a fun story, if not wholly predictable. It has a framing story familiar to readers of early Bloch and Lovecraft; it is told by a haunted survivor who needs to finally tell someone about the terrors he witnessed. It features ancestral decadence mixed with Mythos elements: a well-crafted mashup of Poe and Lovecraft. It has not been republished often. Indeed, it took more than fifty years for this story to see the light of day again in Fear and Trembling (1989).