Hydra (short story)

"Hydra" is a short story by American author and friend of H. P. Lovecraft's Henry Kuttner, originally published in 1939.
==Synopsis==
Two amateur occult enthusiasts, Paul Edmond and Robert Ludwig, stumble upon a pamphlet with instructions on astral projection; their experiment results in Kenneth Scott, their mentor in the supernatural, being captured by a transdimensional entity. A rescue attempt results in Ludwig's being trapped by the same creature; when Edmond refuses to put his own soul at risk to save Scott, the elder occultist returns to our plane of reality to wreak a hideous revenge.
==Characters==
*Kenneth Scott, a "noted Baltimore author and occultist" who "possessed one of the best occult libraries in America". A "strange man" who "spent most of his time in an old brownstone house in Baltimore", he is described as "slender, sharp-eyed, and taciturn". He becomes a victim of Hydra as a result of Ludwig's and Edmond's experiment.
*Robert Ludwig, a young man whose "correspondence with Scott was well known in literary circles". He appears to live in New York City. Like his friend Edmond, he is a dabbler in witchcraft and demonology; on a visit to California to visit Edmond, he purchases On the Sending Out of the Soul in a San Pedro bookstore. He becomes a second victim of Hydra.
*Paul Edmond, another occult dilettante who lives in Hollywood. He keeps a diary that describes many of the events of the story. He is killed not by Hydra but by Scott's decapitated head.
*Russell Hodgkins, "California’s most noted bibliophile", who insists that On the Sending Out of the Soul is not a real book.
*Perry L. Lewis, a professor and a "recognized expert on dream-phenomena". He provides a psychological explanation for the experiences described in Edmond's diary.
==Mythos Entities==
The story describes two godlike beings who are disastrously encountered through astral projection:
*Hydra, a "vampiric entity, living not on the blood of its victims but on their heads—their brains." It appears as a "sea of gray slime, protoplasmic and featureless," whose "fluctuating leaden surface was dotted and speckled with round dark blobs," which are the innumerable heads, of human and inhuman form, that have been incorporated into the being. This entity is generally distinguished from the Mother Hydra worshiped by the Deep Ones.The Encyclopedia Cthulhiana, Second Edition, "Hydra," by Daniel Harms (Chaosium, 1998). 
*Azathoth, the "Lord of All Things," through whose thoughts "all that exists was created." The slightest glimpse of this entity "would mean utter and complete destruction to the beholder."
==Publication History==
First published in the April 1939 edition of Weird Tales, "Hydra" was not reprinted again (except for a 1979 French translation) until 1986, when it appeared in the Lammas 1986 issue of Crypt of Cthulhu (#41). It was subsequently included in two Chaosium books from 1995, The Azathoth Cycle: Tales of the Blind Idiot God and The Book of Iod.
The story is also found in the collections Henry Kuttner (Centipede Press, 2011) and The Watcher at the Door: The Early Henry Kuttner, Volume Two (Haffner Press, 2016). It is available in The Second Cthulhu Mythos Megapack (Wildside Press, 2016).
"Hydra" has been translated into French as "L'hydre" (1979) and into Italian as "L'idra" (1987).Internet Speculative Fiction Database, "Title: Hydra."
==Trivia==
*"Hydra" features the first appearance of the occult text On the Sending Out of the Soul.
==References==
Category:Lovecraft Circle Works
Category:Henry Kuttner works