The Dark Demon

"The Dark Demon" is a short story by Robert Bloch that first appeared in the November 1936 issue of Weird Tales. It features a reclusive writer of weird fiction who is a thinly veiled portrait of H. P. Lovecraft.
The story's main character is Edgar Henquist Gordon, "the strange dark genius whose eldritch tales were once so popular among fantasy-lovers everywhere." 
His "later work...alienated the public" with its "nightmare hints and outlandish fancies.... Many people branded the extravagantly worded tomes as the work of a madman." He is "a tall, thin, angular man with the pale face and deep-set eyes which bespeak the dreamer."
The narrator is "a hopeful (and at times, hopeless) amateur writer" who is "the last of all of [Gordon's] friends." Describing Lovecraft's relationship with Bloch, the story reports that Gordon exchanged letters with authors and editors all over the country; would-be writers, aspiring journalists, and thinkers and students everywhere.... What Edgar Gordon did for me in the next three years can never adequately be told. His able assistance, friendly criticism and kind encouragement finally succeeded in making a writer of sorts out of me.Gordon confides to the narrator that his stories--with titles like The Soul of Chaos and The Principle of Evil--all come from his dreams. In sleep, he a has repeatedly visited the "[m]ountains of black stalagmites; peaks and cones amidst crater valleys of dead suns; [and] stone cities in the stars" the reoccur in his dreams. He admits that his stories echo "descriptive passages in such books as the Necronomicon, the Mysteries of the Worm, and the Book of Eibon," but insists that he had prior knowledge of Azozath [sic] and Yuggoth before learning that they appeared in such books, and could describe Nyarlathotep and Yog-Sothoth from "actual dream contact with these allegorical entities."
The narrator becomes concerned when Gordon becomes obsessed with an entity known as "the Dark One", the Demon Messenger, who has chosen Gordon "to be the Messiah; the messenger of His word." (As any fan of the Cthulhu Mythos would, the narrator wonders if this character is "remotely connected with the Nyarlathotep fable.") The Dark One appears to Gordon as "looking like Asmodeus--black all over, and furry, with green eyes, hog snout, and the claws and fangs of some wild beast." Gordon declares he has been promised that "I shall become incarnate with him!"
Increasingly worried for his friend, the narrator goes to his house on Cedar Street (in an unnamed city) to insist that he get help. He carries a revolver, with a premonition he "might meet with a violent response." Instead, he finds asleep on the couch--transformed into the hog-snouted form of the Dark One. He shoots him three times; the police find only his empty clothes, and declare him a missing person.
Category:Robert Bloch works
Category:Lovecraft Circle Works