Shambler

The plot of “Shambler” is pretty simple. Bloch, writing about himself in a thinly veiled personae, is a Horror writer who becomes intrigued by the true occult. He searches for a real volume of magic in bookshops and jumble sales until he locates a copy of De Vermis Mysteriis. The book is written in Latin, so he takes it to his old friend (a thinly disguised HPL) who can translate the language. His friend unwisely reads an incantation aloud and summons an invisible monster… “Slowly but surely the dim outlines of a Presence came into view; the blood-filled outlines of that unseen shambler from the stars. It was red and dripping; an immensity of pulsing, moving jelly; a scarlet blob with myriad tentacular trunks that waved and waved. There were suckers on the tips of the appendages, and these were opening and closing with ghoulish lust… The thing was bloated and obscene; a headless, faceless, eyeless bulk with the ravenous maw and titanic talons of a starborn monster. The human blood on which it had fed revealed the hitherto invisible outlines of the feaster. It was not a sight for sane eyes to see.”