Warning

WARNING! These reviews all contain SPOILERS!!!!

Thursday, October 22, 2020

"The Suicide in the Study"

 

by Robert Bloch

originally published Weird Tales June 1935

James Allington, a modern-day wizard (well, by 1935 standards), lies dead in his library.  How come?  Well, it seems he was using self-hypnosis to isolate his evil side (ala Mr, Hyde) and further cause it to manifest in a physical form separate from Allington's own bod.  

Now I happen to know a fair bit about hypnosis, and that would be an impressive trick!

In any case, first Allington finds himself having shrunk to a significantly smaller size - AND there's now a huge ape-like thing running around in his library with him!  It seems his evil side was the bigger half of him!  Not seeing any other choice, Allington grabs a letter-opener to try to kill the monkey with.  

They find Allington dead, with the letter-opener buried in his chest.  But the prints on the handle are those of a great ape.

People thought apes were really scary in the 30's.  Seriously.




1 comment:

  1. "People thought apes were really scary in the 30's. Seriously."

    Well in defense of this, the ape-like evil side of James Allington -who probably was inspired by the "popular culture" view of Mr. Crowley back then- has a decayed zombie-style face:

    "It was like a rotting, living skull upon the body of a black ape. It was grisly and wicked, troglodytic and wise."

    I don't know, but compared to Bloch's other very early stories, I always found this to be one of his most tongue-in-cheek. And for what concerns to apes in the 30s: I think they were more highly regarded as sinister henchmen or villains, in part because were considered more aggressive and intelligent than they really are.

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