The Challenge from Beyond

"The Challenge from Beyond" is a 1935 horror short story written by Howard Phillips Lovecraft, Frank Belknap Long, Robert E. Howard, C. L. Moore, and Abraham Merritt. It was published in Fantasy Magazine and is part of the Cthulhu Mythos.
This is actually the second of two round-robin stories named "The Challenge from Beyond", both commissioned by editor Julius Schwartz and published in the same issue of Fantasy Magazine, in September 1935. The first "Challenge" was written by Stanley G. Weinbaum, Donald Wandrei, E. E. Smith, Harl Vincent and Murray Leinster, and focuses more on science fiction, whereas the "Challenge" written by Moore, Merritt, Lovecraft, Howard and Long is more fantasy-oriented (although both contain elements from both genres).
==Summary==
On an August night, a man named George Campbell was camping out in a Canadian forest until he heard a faint noise, and attempted to throw a rock at the creature. But he stopped and saw that the rock he picked up was a cube-shaped quartz crystal that held a disc inside inscribed with peculiar cuneiform writing. He began to think to himself where this unusual crystal came from, possibly from the times of Sumeria or back further, until he decided to get some rest, even when putting out the light revealed the crystal's own afterglow for a brief moment. However, the thought kept him awake. After hours unable to sleep, he saw that the crystal was still showing luminescence and felt like it was drawing him in. The crystal's markings began to change, and a voice was heard luring George in. Sounds were heard from it and with all the curious nature, he decided to gaze upon it for any change. Upon applying torchlight, the cube's cuneiform markings formed the shape of objects, music was heard, and the cube started slowly melting, and the disc was growing. Panicked, George attempted to look away but was dragged into the disc that had now become a globe.
He found himself sucked into the unknown grey misty void produced by the globe, and woke up in an incorporeal form unable to touch or feel cold. However, his thinking capability was heightened, as he recalled reading about clay fragments called Eltdown Shards from Pre-Carboniferous strata in southern England thirty years before, earning their name for how it baffled their discoverers for predating humanity and looking artificial. He then recalled a time in 1912 when Arthur Brooke Winters-Hall, an occultist Sussex clergyman, had identified the Eltdown Shards as consistent with 'pre-human hieroglyphs' cherished in certain mystical circles, publishing a translation that told a story about a race of worm-like beings with nigh-unlimited nature control, mastered interstellar travel very early, and inhabited every habitable planet in their galaxy while exterminating every other race they found. However they could not go beyond their galaxy in person, and discovered they could transfer their minds beyond their galaxy with the use of energized crystals containing hypnotic talismans that could form ethereal bridges for mental communication, and when applied light and attention could activate it.
Upon this, the individual would be sent to the worms' homeworld and become incorporeal inside a machine connected to the cubes until examination, getting the machine pumped of its contents and being interrogated via mind interchange, as the worm would then occupy the individual's own unconscious body and explore the individual's world, and then return via the same transfer process when exploration is concluded with no harm to the individual. But in some cases, the worms would capture and annihilate races capable of space travel. In other cases, they would permanently inhabit planets in other galaxies after exterminating their occupant beings, but they could never replicate their own homeworld due to the lack of proper materials, as the cubes could only be made on their own planet. But the process by which outer individuals came across the cubes were so rare that only three accounts of this had occurred, counting the one that arrived on Earth 150 million years ago.
Dr. Winters-Hall wrote that the Earth was once occupied by cone-shaped aliens which had mentality so advanced they could mentally expand across time and space as well. The race's leader recognized the danger and had the possessed individuals destroyed, regardless of the well-being of the displaced lost occupant minds. They dubbed the cube a menace, and hid it away at a special shrine posing as a relic, not destroying it due to seeing experimental possibilities. The worms attempted a counter-strike for their lost explorers, but it never came to pass as the cube was lost during a war that destroyed the polar city holding it, while the race itself would flee due to a threat from inner-earth.
Having trouble processing this situation, Campbell found himself in the body of one of these alien worms as he was strapped inside of a lab to be examined by another, as he struggles with his new body's alien physiology. However, he soon pondered the endless possibilities and how immortal a consciousness could be while the body it inhabits is finite and could be cast off for another, soon coming to embrace the new planet that he discovered was called Yekub through the mind-exchange of the consciousness who currently had his human body: Tothe. He had all of Tothe's memories of this planet, and it changed his perception. He understood the Yekubians' language as the entering Yekubian, Yukth the Supreme Lord of Science, but he attacked him with his own scientific equipment, killing him. He ran and found himself quickly accustomed to his new body thanks to Tothe's memories. 
He entered a domed room with livid blue lights, an iridescent metal floor, and a structure with tiers of vivid colors that housed a translucent ivory-like sphere, whom Campbell knew was the God of Yekub Juk-Shabb, whose reasons for fear was lost to time. He was met by a Yekubian priest who was horrified that Campbell touched Juk-Shabb's spire, something unheard of in Yekub culture, and Campbell abruptly killed him. Blinded by his sudden lust for power, Campbell climbed the tiers and disturbed Juk-Shabb, grabbing the sphere intent on gaining its power, turning it blood-red, escaping outside with it. He crawled onto a large throne and proudly held the sphere. Juk claimed that a human body was too primitive for a Yekubian mind to control and only a human conscious could balance it out, and any worm who inhabits a human body will be victimized by feral primitive predatory instinct. Campbell began to rule wisely with the power he now possessed.
Back on Earth, Tothe, inside Campbell's body, walked out of the tent and saw the night sky and Aurora Borealis. However, he could not accommodate to the human body as he drooled amber saliva, and while he soon learned to stand erect, it was not in a consistent manner and he regressed into a feral monstrous form. He found himself trying to kill a silver fox instinctively as food, dying and washing out into a lake to be found by a lost trapper man.
Category:C. L. Moore works
Category:Robert E. Howard works
Category:Frank Belknap Long works
Category:Abraham Merritt works
Category:H. P. Lovecraft works
Category:Lovecraft Circle Works