"The Hunt"

By Henry Kuttner

 Originally published Strange Stories, June 1939  

Alvin Doyle, a crooked little creep, has sought out his cousin Will Benson, with the intent of bumping him off.  It seems Benson is heir to a fortune, and Alvin is the next in line.  If Benson goes...

Well fortunately (sorta) Will Benson is a froot loop who lives in an isolated cabin in the middle of nowhere and spends all his time studying creepy old occult books and trying to conjure up spooks.  And Alvin arrives, with a gun in his pants, just in time to help out Will in the process of calling up Iod, Hunter of Souls.

Well they go through the process until Alvin sees an opportunity and shoots Will, steals a bunch of stuff, messes things up so it looks like burglars broke in, and takes off, dreaming of his big fat inheritance to come.

Buuut, he gets so tired he pulls over and falls asleep in his car.  And dreams he's back in the cabin, having just killed Will, and a glowing green shape and some black, ropy thing are coming toward him.

He tries to run away and finds himself in an alien world, of crystalline shapes, and then another, a forest of living plants, and then a coliseum full of monsters, then a planet of black goop, then a planet of hard earth, then ice or glass, and finally an alien city full of monstrosities.  All the time pursued by the glowing shape.

He wakes up in his car.  Momentarily relieved, unti he sees the glow is still after him, and now he's definitely not dreaming.  He gets a good look at the glowing shape, which is so horrible it takes Kuttner three adjective-laden paragraphs to not actually describe it.  In any case it sucks Alvin's soul out, which leaves his body lifeless but his consciousness still in it.  Which means he gets to experience being found, pronounced dead, and buried.

Well, it couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

This isn't a bad story but its a bit slight.  It's as much as crime story as it is supernatural horror, and written as such, which makes it kind of an odd and interesting hybrid.  There's not a lot to it and Kuttner was still finding his legs with handling some of the more Lovecraft-y touches, but it's a fun read.