The Sealed Casket

"The Sealed Casket" is a horror short story by Richard F. Searight, first published in the March 1935 issue of Weird Tales.
This story is notable for introducing the Eltdown Shards, although they are only mentioned in the opening quote, which the original publication omitted altogether. The Shards would later be incorporated into the Cthulhu Mythos by H. P. Lovecraft in "The Challenge from Beyond", and would also be mentioned in Searight's own Mythos story "The Warder of Knowledge".
==Synopsis==
The story opens with a passage from the Eltdown Shards, which tells of an ancient entity named Avaloth, who threatened to cover the world with ice, but was seemingly defeated by the wizard Om Oris. Other wizards have prophesied that Avaloth would one day be destroyed by "a great heat".
In the present day, a man named Wesson Clark inherits a relic called the coffer of Alû-Tor from his recently-deceased archaeologist friend, Martucci. The coffer is a small casket made of an unknown metal and inscribed with unknown glyphs. Martucci has never opened the seal, and asked Clark not to do it. Clark is convinced that Martucci never found out about the affair that Clark had with Martucci's wife, and dismisses the dead man's insistence in leaving the seal intact as pure eccentricity. Believing that there might be something valuable inside the casket, Clark locks himself in his own study and opens it.
Despite the uncomfortably hot temperature inside the room, Clark feels a draft of cold air emanating from the seemingly empty casket, along with a putrid odor. He then hears the rustling sound of some invisible creature moving about the study, positioning itself between Clark and the door. The temperature drops perceptibly and the odor intensifies, as he feels the invisible being's tentacles coiling around his body.
As it turns out, the reason why the room was so hot in the first place is that Clark's servant, Simpkins, had forgotten to close the drafts of the furnace, and the house was engulfed by flames. Witnesses talk about hearing the high-pitched sound of a creature screaming in agony. Clark's body is found burned, but the coroner is unable to explain why his bones are all broken, as if he had been constricted to death by several snakes, or why his body has been completely drained of blood.
==Characters==
*Wesson Clark: An amateur archaeologist and shameless womanizer.
*Martucci: An eccentric archaeologist with great knowledge, but a dubious reputation. Clark befriended him, but had an affair with his wife, which he believes Martucci was oblivious to. Martucci left the casket to Clark after death, possibly as a form of revenge.
*Simpkins: Clark's careless, forgetful old servant.
*Avaloth: An eldritch creature imprisoned inside the casket by the wizard Om Oris. Its name and backstory are revealed only in the opening quote, which was omitted by Weird Tales.
*An unnamed coroner, baffled by the circumstances of Clark's death.
==Publication History==
"The Sealed Casket" has been republished numerous times since its first appearance in Weird Tales, having been included in works such as the Yuletide 1982 edition of Crypt of Cthulhu, The Yith Cycle (2010), and Those Dreadful Eltdown Shards (2016). It has also been translated into German and Spanish "The Sealed Casket" at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database.
==References==
Category:Lovecraft Circle Works
Category:Richard F. Searight works
Category:Mythos-Adjacent Works