“The Sorcerer’s Jewel” (Strange Stories, February 1939)

Bloch, Robert [Tarleton Fiske]. “The Sorcerer’s Jewel.” Strange Stories, February 1939, pp. 87-96. https://archive.org/details/StrangeStoriesV01N01193902/page/86/mode/2up 

The story begins with two men, one of whom is an adventurous spirit, a photographer who is dissatisfied with the technology at his disposal, cameras that can take pictures of things as they are. The other man is a dreamer, less concerned with the verifiable and tangible, one for whom the world of the occult is a distant, frightening, alluring dream. The photographer wants to use his technology to peer beyond the veil, to penetrate past what is observable and obvious. His friend suggests using ancient stones to amplify his range of vision, stones long rumored to provide access to hidden realms. Both men look through the stone and see flickers of strangeness: shapes that move and colors that take the form of geometric shapes. Working solo the next day, the photographer uses it to augment his camera. The second man is late to his studio and finds it empty. He develops the final few photographs taken by the camera, images of a world beyond our own. In the final image, the photographer has somehow been taken out of time and space from our realm into the monstrous elsewhere to be mangled and killed.  

Such a fun story! It mixes early Lovecraft with late Lovecraft., there are echoes of “From Beyond,” for sure, with a camera and not a “resonance wave” that allows access to elsewhere. The tentacled creatures certainly are straight out of Lovecraft. It is all a bit of a muddle, however, and the fact that the friend of the photographer knows all of the answers about elementals, extradimensional beings, etc., and relates this blasphemous taxonomy in a matter-of-fact way makes the story seem more of an outline than something that worked on its own. It feels as if Bloch might have thought this would turn into something that it did not end up being. On the other hand, Tarleton Fiske was a bit of a hack, to be brutally honest 😊