"The Unspeakable Betrothal"

 

by Robert Bloch

originally published Avon Fantasy Reader No. 9, 1949

Avis Long is a young woman, living in her childhood home which she inherited from the aunt and uncle who raised her.  Ever since she was a small child, Avis has been haunted by vivid dreams and an awareness of other worlds, and other entities which live in those worlds, which could reach out to her via a small round window above her bed.  She came to prefer these dreams to her everyday reality, and the entities to human contact.

Once, as a child, Avis was found more than halfway out the round window, onto the roof.  Her guardians had it boarded up, and after that, the dreams, visions, and voices stopped and Avis grew up into a normal life, even becoming engaged to the literal boy next door, Marvin Mason.

However, with the house now to herself, fiancee out of town, and aunt and uncle gone, Avis has unboarded the window, and now the voices, visions and dream are back, talking to her of this other world "beyond the sky", and Avis now wants to do nothing but lie around her bed in the dark, listening to them and watching, and begging them to take her away with them, something they say they can do, but only if they change her.  Avis is more than willing.

 Marvin and Avis' former guardian, Dr. Clegg, cluck-cluck over her situation and talk about locking her up.  Clegg urges Marvin to draw her out with love.  Marvin attempts to talk to her but when she informs him she isn't going to marry him, Marvin goes into a full fit of 1949-style manliness, informing her that she WILL marry him and she WILL live happily ever after whether she damn well likes it or not, and that he's going to close the round window while he's at it.  When he tries, Avis loses it and starts choking him.  Doc Clegg puts her out with a tranquilizer.

Clegg and Marvin agree to spend the night taking shifts keeping an eye on Avis.  Clegg also confesses that Avis did not sleepwalk out that window as a kid, as it was impossible.  It seems she was somehow levitated there.

Later, they hear breaking glass.  Doc and Marvin hightail it upstairs to find Avis' face still laying on her pillow, but her body gone.

I remember coming across this one in a Bloch collection, Such Stuff As Screams Are Made Of, at 16 or so and being really surprised by the references to Yuggoth et al which make its Mythos-iness clear.  At the time time I wasn't that impressed by the tale but now I find it terrifically atmospheric and effective.  It also prefigures Ramsey Campbell stories such as "Napier Court" with their self-obsessed, neurotic protagonists.

All in all this odd, eerie little gem is one of Bloch's best, Lovecraft-influenced or otherwise.