The Were-Snake

"The Were-Snake" is a horror short story by Frank Belknap Long, published in the September 1925 issue of Weird Tales. It briefly mentions "the mad Arab Alhazred", a character created by Long's friend H. P. Lovecraft in "The Nameless City".
==Synopsis==
An archaeologist named Arthur, accompanied by his lady friend Miss Beardsley and a local guide, explores a temple of the ancient goddess Ishtar, which he identifies as the Magna Mater, the mother goddess known throughout several parts of Asia as Inanna, Astarte, and other names. Arthur is a skeptic, but believes that superstitions must be investigated, and that spending the night inside a supposedly haunted temple will give him prestige. Miss Beardsley is reluctant, but willing to stay with him, while the guide believes mysticism to be a more prudent attitude than materialism, and advises Arthur to keep a knife close by to protect himself. Arthur would prefer a gun, but the guide insists that bullets would be useless, whereas a knife wouldn't.
At night, Arthur falls asleep and dreams of ancient sacrifices made to Ishtar, who took on the form of an impossibly beautiful woman, the mere sight of which would reduce men to submissive worshipers. When he wakes up, he sees two glowing eyes in the darkness and is convinced that someone is trying to frighten him. He yells at the unseen figure, threatening to go to the American consul and expose the hoax. When he approaches, however, he notices that the glowing eyes are compound, like an insect's. Frightened, he shoots at the monster several times, to no avail. The creature crawls towards him, and just as he's about to surrender to Ishtar's mental influence, he hears the voice of Miss Beardsley. He warns her not to approach, but the monster captures her and drags her away.
With no light to guide him, Arthur desperately stumbles through the interior of the temple, at one point coming in contact with the slime trail left by the entity, and follows it into a long tunnel. He calls out to Miss Beardsley, who shouts out that the creature is squeezing her, like a constricting snake.
Arthur crawls through the tunnel until he sees the beast. Its head is dog-like, but covered in reptilian scales, and its serpentine body is coiled around Miss Beardsley. When he finally manages to dominate his fear, Arthur decapitates the beast with a sharp stone and urges Miss Beardsley to leave the temple for a romantic breakfast. At noon, they meet the guide again, who tells them that a strange scene was found inside the temple: the decapitated body of a woman, and the head of a hooded cobra. The guide thanks Arthur for freeing the people from Ishtar.
==Behind the Mythos==
The goddess Ishtar (a deity worshiped in real-world ancient Mesopotamia) is identified as being the same as Astarte and the Magna Mater. The latter would be referenced in Lovecraft's "The Rats in the Walls" and Henry Kuttner's "Hydra", and interpreted in the expanded Mythos as an avatar of Shub-Niggurath. Lovecraft also compares Shub-Niggurath to Astarte in The Mound, although he doesn't necessarily suggest that they are the same.
Ishtar is also a widely-worshiped goddess of the Hyborian Age in the Conan stories of Robert E. Howard.
==Trivia==
*Due to its reference to the mad Arab Alhazred, "The Were-Snake" might have been the first story written by an author other than Lovecraft to incorporate one of Lovecraft's creations.
Category:Lovecraft Circle Works
Category:Frank Belknap Long works