"Bells of Horror"

by Henry Kuttner 

Originally published  Strange Stories, April 1939  

Ross is the secretary of the California Historical Society, and he gets an excited call one day from the society prez, Arthur Todd.  It seems they've found the long-missing bells of Mission San Xavier stuffed away in a cave.  

But these bells have a funky backstory.  It seems they were cast with the help of some native american magic, courtesy of the Mutsune tribe, and it is warned if the bells are rung it will bring "the terror of the night".  Well, fuck these native superstitions.  And fuck the fact that the local Mexicans won't get get the third bell out of the cave.   Will Ross come and help?  Sure!

But Ross finds a local Mexican kid who will give him directions but not guide him.  The kid's scared.  So Ross has to hike most of the way.  Along the trail he encounters a big toad that's somehow managed to knock one of its own eyes out on a rock.  Suddenly Ross is rubbing his own burning eyes way too hard.  

Ross arrives at the cabin just in time for a workman who's apparently gouged out his own eyes to come running out screaming and die in front of Arthur and Denton, Arthur's #2 guy.  It seems everyone's having trouble with their eyes burning so bad it's driving them insane.  They've also found a cylinder with a parchement inside.  It's a signed account by Junipero Serra requestin the bells be sent to Rome, noting that when they were rung, a demon called Zu-che-quon was released and caused all kinds of trouble.  They head out to the cave only to find Sarto, the guy they left in charge has hung the bells by a rope from some trees.  Startled by their arrival he drops the rope and gets his head bashed in by one of the falling bells.

Back in civilization the bells are scheduled to be hung.  Denton has found some correspondences to the bell legends in The Book of Iod.  But c'mon, no one believes this superstitious crap, right?  All the same, its getting really cold out.  And there's an earthquake.  But none of this will stop the bells being hung at San Xavier!

The bells are rung - and everything plunges into darkness.  And another quake.  Everyone starts to freak out.  Denton leads Ross into the museum, but a voice in his head is urging him to put out his eyes and the burning sensation is overwhelming.  Then Denton's trying to put his eyes out.  Suddenly the shaking lessens and the darkness begins to lift.  One of the bells has been silenced.

But, the curse of Zu-Che-Quon is not so easily dismissed.  Not long after, Denton is found dead with his eyes gouged out.

This is an average pulp horror story with some decidedly unpleasant elements.  Nothing special but by now Kuttner had left imitation behind and had his own voice and interests.

"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.

"The Invaders"

By Henry Kuttner  

Originally published 

Strange Stories, February 1939   

Michael Hayward is a writer.  Actually he's a riff off H.P. Lovecraft himself.  His friend Gene, a reporter and a mutual friend have come to visit him at his cottage near Santa Barbara.  And man are the seagull's noisy.  

Well the visit gets weird as Hayward is really agitated, and says he's being attacked.  Things get weirder when Gene grabs what he thinks is a weird vine outside the window and it pulls itself away from him.  It seems Hayward's place has been under siege by these things, which hang out and screetch like weird birds, and look like - well, I dunno, Kuttner describes them as obnoxious and gross beach ball monsters.  He confesses he thinks he attracted these things via his use of a drug that allows him to vividly re-experience past lives, including pre-human lives, and that its the events that he experienced under the influence that allowed him to come up with his stories.

He also tells Bill and Gene its not safe to leave.  

Well the beach balls lay siege to the house, freaking everyone out and eventually chomping down Bill before Hayward remembers an incantation that sends them back.  Then he tosses the drug into the sea.

(which doesn't sound like such a great plan)

This is a lively and entertaining little tale but Kuttner doesn't quite get the tension of the men hiding in a house under siege by alien beasties.  Also said beasties come off more comical than scary the way Kuttner describes them.  Not bad though.

"The Salem Horror"

 by Henry Kuttner  

originally published Weird Tales, May 1937

"Carson" (for once our hero has at least a partial name ... albeit this time he's not the narrator) rents an isolated, creepy old house in Salem, Mass. (not Arkham??) in order to have peace and quiet to finish his latest novel (he is an author of "light romances" - which in the 30's meant more like a humorous adventure story with some kissing, kiddies - not a Harlequin special).  

Now the creepy old house comes complete with a creepy old reputation, involving a creepy old woman named Abigail Prinn who was mobbed and hanged back in the 1690's, allegedly for being a creepy old witch.  Well anyone who rents the place never stays long and they always complain about the rats, but Carson ain't buying any of that superstitious silliness so he moves in.  

Turns out the place has rats alright - big ones!  Also at least one, curiously, doesn't seem to like the sign of the cross.  

While puzzling that mystery in the basement, Carson discovers a secret chamber, with a mosaic stone floor and an iron disk press-fit smack dab in the middle of the floor.  Not only does he think this is very cool, he also thinks its a perfect workspace (???  Kuttner must have been a little weird).  So he moves his writing setup in.

He gets a visit from occultist Michael Leigh, who asks a lot of presumptuous questions (which Carson answers anyway) and to see the secret room (which Carson lets him do), then, even more presumptuously, asks Carson if he'll get the hell out of the house or at least work in another part of it. Carson tells him no to both a lot more politely than most people would, and even agrees to contact him if he has any strange dreams that night.

Which, of course, he does.

He can't remember the dream, but it wakes him up. So he takes a wee-hours stroll and ends up passing the burial yard, where he sees a dead guy propped up against the iron rail fence, staring up at the sky with an expression of terror.

Later Leigh tells him someone opened Abigail Prinn's grave and stole her bod. Leigh offers him big bucks to clear out, going on about Abby's black magic worship, and what's under the iron disk in the secret chamber, and The Necronomicon.  Carson thinks he's a froot loop, and ejects him a lot later than most people would have.  While he's watching Leigh depart, a neighbor accosts him, saying she saw "t'e brown thing" enter his house last night.

Carson falls asleep in the secret chamber and has weird dreams, involving black liquid, amoeboid shapes zooming through the Salem streets.  He wakes up, unable to move, to find a brown, mummified creature joining him through another hitherto secret entrance.

The mummy starts incanting, and the iron disk rises, a really foul odor rising from below, followed by a bit of black liquidy gloop.  Just then Leigh rushes in with a counter-incantation, and some magic stuff in a glass vial which he throws into the emerging gloop monster.  It grabs the mummy and goes back in its hole, slamming the iron disk behind it.

Carson never finishes his book, instead writing a novel called Black God of Madness which no one will publish.  Those he tells of the experience think of it as a dream.  But he knows it wasn't.  The mummy left one of its hands behind.

This isn't a bad story, and has some genuinely eerie moments which I had forgotten (actually I'd pretty much forgotten everything about it except the entity Nyogtha being a big liquid black blob that pops up out of somewhere. It is, as others have noted, kind of a rehash of HPL's "Dreams in the Witch House" but in some ways a bit tighter and more stripped down.  Still I prefer the Lovecraft even if "Dreams" isn't his best.  Kuttner was good and solid at pulp horror, but his terrors don't cut to the quick the way HPL's do.  Once banished, his baddies are done, where HPL's lingered, rattling your back teeth for years to come. A fun read though.