“The Suicide in the Study” (Weird Tales, June 1935)

James Allington is a modern-day “wizard” whose shelves are filled with volumes such as the Necronomicon, Mysteries of the Worm, Black Rites, and Cultes des Goules. As the story opens, he is on the brink of putting his life’s work into motion: separating the good and evil sides of himself into separate beings that he could control. In short, he’d have two bodies that would be governed by one brain. The experiment succeeds—partly. He does, indeed, split himself into pieces, but he discovers that his “good side”—where his consciousness resides—is a tiny, helpless being and that he cannot control his “evil” side. There seems to be some attempt at conservation of mass here with the two separate beings splitting the bulk of the original Allington. His “evil” side is a hideous monster, a “stark, staring nightmare—a monstrous, hairy figure; huge, grotesque, simian-a hideous travesty of all things human. It was black madness; slavering, mocking madness with little red eyes of wisdom old and evil; leering snout and yellow fangs of grimacing death. It was like a rotting, living skull upon the body of a black ape.” The monster proceeded to stab the shrunken and weak “good” Allington in the heart. The police called it a suicide even though they could not explain the presence of fingerprints that most closely resembled those of a giant ape.

Only a few stories into his career, Bloch has developed the shorthand of naming the books on the shelf nearest to a character to reveal traits. This practice would continue for many years to come. In Psycho, for example, as Lila investigates Norman’s house, she names several books that she finds on his shelves. The first three are all actual books:

• A New Model of the Universe (1917) by Pyotr Ouspensky (1878-1947), a book that attempts to link the most recent developments in physics with esoteric teachings and Theosophy;
• The Extension of Consciousness (1932) by C. W. Olliver (dates unknown), a book that studies the mind and consciousness linking the metaphysical realms to work by Freud, Jung, and others;
• The Witch-Cult in Western Europe (1921) by Margaret Murray (1863-1963), a folklorist and anthropologist whose book was a seminal and problematic study of secret societies and their connections to groups that were said to practice magic;
• Dimension and Being, which may be Bloch’s invention
• Plus one other that Lila labels “pathologically pornographic” (167).

This story is a bit strangely constructed as it has three and possibly four narrative points of view. The first is told by an observer who does not interact with the Allington but simply observes him in his study. The second section comes to us through Allington’s journal entries. The main action of the story is told in the third person limited and focused on Allington. The final section might be more of the same, or it might return to the observer from the first section or it might represent a completely new point of view. In any case, this marks the first time that Bloch would shake free of a significant narrative convention (single POV in the case) in the name of experimentation. Such a fun story!