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Title: The black kiss

Author: Robert Bloch
Henry Kuttner

Illustrator: Margaret Brundage
Virgil Finlay

Release date: July 3, 2025 [eBook #76435]

Language: English

Original publication: Indianapolis, IN: Popular Fiction Publishing
Company, 1937

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/76435

Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BLACK
KISS ***

The Black Kiss

By ROBERT BLOCH and HENRY KUTTNER

Two popular writers of weird fiction join forces to produce
one of the eeriest sea-stories ever written—a story of the
thing that swam in the black waters off California, and
called itself Morella Godolfo.

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Weird Tales June 1937.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

They rise in green robes roaring from the green hells of the sea,
Where fallen skies and evil hues and eyeless creatures be.

—Chesterton: Lepanto.

1. The Thing in the Waters
Graham Dean nervously crushed out his cigarette and met Doctor Hedwig's
puzzled eyes.
"I've never been troubled like this before," he said. "These dreams are so
oddly persistent. They're not the usual haphazard nightmares. They seem—I
know it sounds ridiculous—they seem planned."
"Dreams planned? Nonsense." Doctor Hedwig looked scornful. "You, Mr.
Dean, are an artist, and naturally of impressionable temperament. This
house at San Pedro is new to you, and you say you've heard wild tales. The
dreams are due to imagination and overwork."
Dean glanced out of the window, a frown on his unnaturally pale face.
"I hope you're right," he said, softly. "But dreams shouldn't make me look
like this. Should they?"
A gesture indicated the great blue rings beneath the young artist's eyes. His
hands indicated the bloodless pallor of his gaunt cheeks.
"Overwork has done that, Mr. Dean. I know what has happened to you
better than you do yourself."
The white-haired physician picked up a sheet covered with his own scarcely
decipherable notes and scrutinized it in review.
"You inherited this house at San Pedro a few months ago, eh? And you
moved in alone to do some work."
"Yes. The sea-coast there has some marvelous scenes." For a moment
Dean's face looked youthful once more as enthusiasm kindled its ashy fires.

Then he continued, with a troubled frown. "But I haven't been able to paint,
lately—not seascapes, anyway. It's very odd. My sketches don't seem quite
right any more. There seems to be a quality in them that I don't put there
——"
"A quality, did you say?"
"Yes. A quality of malignness, if I can call it that. It's indefinable.
Something behind the picture takes all the beauty out. And I haven't been
over-working these last weeks, Doctor Hedwig."
The doctor glanced again at the paper in his hand.
"Well, I disagree with you there. You might be unconscious of the effort you
expend. These dreams of the sea that seem to worry you are meaningless,
save as an indication of your nervous condition."
"You're wrong." Dean rose, suddenly. His voice was shrill.
"That's the dreadful part of it. The dreams are not meaningless. They seem
cumulative; cumulative and planned. Each night they grow more vivid, and
I see more of that green, shining place under the sea. I get closer and closer
to those black shadows swimming there; those shadows that I know aren't
shadows but something worse. I see more each night. It's like a sketch I'd
block out, gradually adding more and more until——"
Hedwig watched his patient keenly. He suggested "Until——?"
But Dean's tense face relaxed. He had caught himself just in time. "No,
Doctor Hedwig. You must be right. It's overwork and nervousness, as you
say. If I believed what the Mexicans had told me about Morella Godolfo—
well, I'd be mad and a fool."
"Who is this Morella Godolfo? Some woman who has been filling you with
foolish tales?"
Dean smiled. "No need to worry about Morella. She was my great-great-
grand-aunt. She used to live in the San Pedro house and started the legends,
I think."
Hedwig had been scribbling on a slip of paper. "Well, I see, young man!
You heard these legends; your imagination ran riot; you dreamed. This
prescription will fix you up."

"Thanks."
Dean took the paper, lifted his hat from the table, and started for the door. In
the doorway he paused, smiling wryly.
"But you're not quite correct in thinking the legends started me dreaming,
Doctor. I began to dream before I learned the history of the house."
And with that he went out.

Driving back to San Pedro, Dean tried to understand what had happened to
him. But always he came up against a blank wall of impossibility. Any
logical explanation wandered off into a tangle of fantasy. The one thing he
could not explain—which Doctor Hedwig had not been able to explain—
was the dreams.
The dreams started soon after he came into his legacy; this ancient house
north of San Pedro, which had so long stood deserted. The place was
picturesquely old, and that attracted Dean from the first. It had been built by
one of his ancestors when the Spaniards still ruled California. One of the
Deans—the name was Dena, then—had gone to Spain and returned with a
bride. Her name was Morella Godolfo, and it was this long-vanished
woman about whom all the subsequent legends centered.
Even yet there were wrinkled, toothless Mexicans in San Pedro who
whispered incredible tales of Morella Godolfo—she who had never grown
old and who had a weirdly evil power over the sea. The Godolfos had been
among the proudest families of Granada, but furtive legends spoke of their
intercourse with the terrible Moorish sorcerers and necromancers. Morella,
according to these same hinted horrors, had learned uncanny secrets in the
black towers of Moorish Spain, and when Dena had brought her as his bride
across the sea she had already sealed a pact with dark Powers and had
undergone a change.
So ran the tales, and they further told of Morella's life in the old San Pedro
house. Her husband had lived for ten years or more after the marriage, but
rumors said that he no longer possessed a soul. It is certain that his death

was very mysteriously hushed up by Morella Godolfo, who went on living
alone in the great house beside the sea.
The whispers of the peons were hereafter monstrously augmented. They
had to do with the change in Morella Godolfo; the sorcerous change which
caused her to swim far out to sea on moonlit nights so that watchers saw her
white body gleaming amidst the spray. Men bold enough to gaze from the
cliffs might catch glimpses of her then, sporting with queer sea-creatures
that gamboled about her in the black waters, nuzzling her with shockingly
deformed heads. These creatures were not seals, or any known form of
submarine life, it was averred; although sometimes bursts of chuckling,
gobbling laughter could be heard. It is said that Morella Godolfo had swum
out there one night, and that she never came back. But thereafter the
laughter was louder from afar, and the sporting amidst the black rocks
continued, so that the tales of the early peons had been nourished down to
the present day.

"Watchers saw her white body gleaming amidst the spray."

Such were the legends known to Dean. The facts were sparse and
inconclusive. The old house had fallen into decrepitude, and was only
occasionally rented through the years. These rentals had been as short as
they were infrequent. There was nothing definitely wrong with the house
between White's Point and Point Fermin, but those who had lived there said
that the crashing of the surf sounded subtly different when heard through
windows that overlooked the sea, and, too, they dreamed unpleasantly.
Sometimes the occasional tenants had mentioned with peculiar horror the
moonlit nights, when the sea became altogether too clearly visible. At any
rate, occupants often vacated the house hastily.

Dean had moved in immediately after inheriting, because he had thought
the place ideal for painting the scenes he loved. He had learned the legend
and the facts behind it later, and by this time his dreams had started.
At first they had been conventional enough, though, oddly, all centered
about the sea which he so loved. But it was not the sea he loved that he
knew in sleep.
The Gorgons lived in his dreams. Scylla writhed hideously across dark and
surging waters, where harpies flew screaming. Weird creatures crawled
sluggishly up from the black, inky depths where eyeless, bloated sea-beasts
dwelt. Gigantic and terrible leviathans leapt and plunged, while monstrous
serpents squirmed a strange obeisance to a mocking moon. Foul and hidden
horrors of the sea's depths engulfed him in sleep.
This was bad enough, but it was only a prelude. The dreams began to
change. It was almost as though the first few formed a definite setting for
the greater terrors to come. From the mythic images of old sea-gods another
vision emerged. It was inchoate at first, taking definite form and meaning
very slowly over a period of several weeks. And it was this dream which
Dean now feared.
It had occurred generally just before he awoke—a vision of green,
translucent light, in which dark shadows swam slowly. Night after night the
limpid emerald glow grew brighter, and the shadows twisted into a more
visible horror. These were never clearly seen, although their amorphous
heads held a strangely repellent recognizable quality for Dean.
Presently, in this dream of his, the shadow-creatures would move aside as
though to permit the passage of another. Swimming into the green haze
would come a coiling shape—whether similar to the rest or not Dean could
not tell, for his dream always ended there. The approach of this last shape
always caused him to awake in a nightmare paroxysm of terror.
He dreamt of being somewhere under the sea, amidst swimming shadows
with deformed heads; and each night one particular shadow was coming
closer and closer.

Each day, now, when he awoke with the cold sea-wind of early dawn
blowing through the windows, he would lie in a lazy, languid mood till long
past daybreak. When he rose these days he felt inexplicably tired, and he
could not paint. This particular morning the sight of his haggard face in the
mirror had forced him to visit a physician. But Doctor Hedwig had not been
helpful.
Nevertheless Dean filled the prescription on the way home. A swallow of
the bitter, brownish tonic strengthened him somewhat, but as he parked his
car the feeling of depression settled down on him again. He walked up to
the house still puzzled and strangely afraid.
Under the door was a telegram. Dean read it with a puzzled frown.
JUST LEARNED YOU ARE LIVING IN SAN PEDRO
HOUSE STOP VITALLY IMPORTANT YOU VACATE
IMMEDIATELY STOP SHOW THIS CABLE TO
DOCTOR MAKOTO YAMADA 17 BUENA STREET SAN
PEDRO STOP AM RETURNING VIA AIRPLANE STOP
SEE YAMADA TODAY
MICHAEL LEIGH

Dean read the message again, and a flash of remembrance came to him.
Michael Leigh was his uncle, but he had not seen the man for years. Leigh
had been a puzzle to the family; he was an occultist, and spent most of his
time delving in far corners of the earth. Occasionally he dropped from sight
for long periods of time. The cable Dean held was sent from Calcutta, and
he supposed that Leigh had recently emerged from some spot in the interior
of India to learn of Dean's inheritance.
Dean searched his mind. He recalled now, that there had been some family
quarrel about this very house years ago. The details were no longer clear,
but he remembered that Leigh had demanded the San Pedro house be razed.
Leigh had given no sane reasons, and when the request was refused he had
dropped out of sight for a time. And now came this inexplicable cablegram.
Dean was tired from his long drive, and the unsatisfactory interview with
the doctor had irritated him more than he had realized. Nor was he in the
mood to follow his uncle's cabled request and undertake the long journey to

Buena Street, which was miles away. The drowsiness which he felt,
however, was normal healthy exhaustion, unlike the languor of recent
weeks. The tonic he had taken was of some value after all.
He dropped into his favorite chair by the window that overlooked the sea,
rousing himself to watch the flaming colors of the sunset. Presently the sun
dropped below the horizon, and gray dusk crept in. Stars appeared, and far
to the north he could see the dim lights of the gambling-ships off Venice.
The mountains shut off his view of San Pedro, but a diffused pale glow in
that direction told him that the New Barbary was wakening into roaring,
brawling life. Slowly the face of the Pacific brightened. A full moon was
rising above the San Pedro hills.

For a long time Dean sat quietly by the window, his pipe forgotten in his
hand, staring down at the slow swells of the ocean, which seemed to pulse
with a mighty and alien life. Gradually drowsiness crept up and
overwhelmed him. Just before he dropped into the abyss of sleep there
flashed into his mind da Vinci's saying, "The two most wonderful things in
the world are a woman's smile and the motion of mighty waters."
He dreamed, and this time it was a different dream. At first only blackness,
and a roaring and thundering as of angry seas, and oddly mingled with this
was the hazy thought of a woman's smile ... and a woman's lips ... pouting
lips, softly alluring ... but strangely the lips were not red—no! They were
very pale, bloodless, like the lips of a thing that had long rested beneath the
sea....
The misty vision changed, and for a flashing instant Dean seemed to see the
green and silent place of his earlier visions. The shadowy black shapes were
moving more quickly behind the veil, but this picture was of but a second's
duration. It flashed out and vanished, and Dean was standing alone on a
beach; a beach he recognized in his dream—the sandy cove beneath the
house.
The salt breeze blew coldly across his face, and the sea glistened like silver
in the moonlight. A faint splash told of a sea-thing that broke the surface of
the waters. To the north the sea washed against the rugged surface of the

cliff, barred and speckled with black shadows. Dean felt a sudden,
inexplicable impulse to move in that direction. He yielded.
As he clambered over the rocks he was suddenly conscious of a strange
sensation, as though keen eyes were focussed upon him—eyes that watched
and warned! Vaguely in his mind rose up the gaunt face of his uncle,
Michael Leigh, the deep-set eyes glowing. But swiftly this was gone, and he
found himself before a deeper niche of blackness in the cliff face. Into it he
knew he must go.
He squeezed himself between two jutting points of rock, and found himself
in utter, dismal darkness. Yet somehow he was conscious that he was in a
cave, and he could hear water lapping near by. All about him was a musty
salt odor of sea-decay, the fetid smell of sunless ocean caves and holds of
ancient ships. He stepped forward, and, as the floor shelved sharply
downward, stumbled and fell headlong into icy, shallow water. He felt,
rather than saw, a flicker of swift movement, and then abruptly hot lips
were pressed against his.
Human lips, Dean thought, at first.
He lay on his side in the chill water, his lips against those responsive ones.
He could see nothing, for all was lost in the blackness of the cave. The
unearthly lure of those invisible lips thrilled through him.
He responded to them, pressed them fiercely, gave them what they were
avidly seeking. The unseen waters crawled against the rocks, whispering
warning.
And in that kiss strangeness flooded him. He felt a shock and a tingling go
through him, and then a thrill of sudden ecstasy, and swift on its heels came
horror. Black loathsome foulness seemed to wash his brain, indescribable
but fearfully real, making him shudder with nausea. It was as though
unutterable evil were pouring into his body, his mind, his very soul, through
the blasphemous kiss on his lips. He felt loathsome, contaminated. He fell
back. He sprang to his feet.
And Dean saw, for the first time, the ghastly thing he had kissed, as the
sinking moon sent a pale shaft of radiance creeping through the cave mouth.
For something rose up before him, a serpentine and seal-like bulk that
coiled and twisted and moved toward him, glistening with foul slime; and

Dean screamed and turned to flee with nightmare fear tearing at his brain,
hearing behind him a quiet splashing as though some bulky creature had
slid back into the water....

2. A Visit from Doctor Yamada
He awoke. He was still in his chair before the window, and the moon was
paling before the grayness of dawn. He was shaken with nausea, sick and
shuddering with the shocking realism of his dream. His clothing was
drenched with perspiration, and his heart hammered furiously. An immense
lethargy seemed to have overwhelmed him, making it an intense effort to
rise from the chair and stagger to a couch, on which he flung himself to
doze fitfully for several hours.
A sharp pealing of the door-bell roused him. He still felt weak and dizzy,
but the frightening lethargy had somewhat abated. When Dean opened the
door, a Japanese standing on the porch began a bobbing little bow, a gesture
that was abruptly arrested as the sharp black eyes focussed on Dean's face.
A little hiss of indrawn breath came from the visitor.
Dean said irritably, "Well? Do you want to see me?"
The other was still staring, his thin face sallow beneath a stiff thatch of gray
hair. He was a small, slender man, with his face covered with a fine-spun
web of wrinkles. After a pause he said, "I am Doctor Yamada."
Dean frowned, puzzled. Abruptly he remembered his uncle's cable of the
day before. An odd, unreasonable irritation began to mount within him, and
he said, more bruskly than he had intended, "This isn't a professional call, I
hope. I've already——"
"Your uncle—you are Mr. Dean?—cabled me. He was rather worried."
Doctor Yamada glanced around almost furtively.
Dean felt distaste stir within him, and his irritation increased.
"My uncle is rather eccentric, I'm afraid. There's nothing for him to worry
about. I'm sorry you had your trip for nothing."

Doctor Yamada did not seem to take offense at Dean's attitude. Rather, a
strange expression of sympathy showed for a moment on his small face.
"Do you mind if I come in?" he asked, and moved forward confidently.
Short of barring his way, Dean had no means of stopping him, and
ungraciously led his guest to the room where he had spent the night,
motioning him to a chair while he busied himself with a coffee-pot.
Yamada sat motionless, silently watching Dean. Then without preamble he
said, "Your uncle is a great man, Mr. Dean."
Dean made a noncommittal gesture. "I have seen him only once."
"He is one of the greatest occultists of this day. I, too, have studied psychic
lore, but beside your uncle I am a novice."
Dean said, "He is eccentric. Occultism, as you term it, has never interested
me."
The little Japanese watched him impassively. "You make a common error,
Mr. Dean. You consider occultism a hobby for cranks. No"—he held up a
slender hand—"your disbelief is written in your face. Well, it is
understandable. It is an anachronism, an attitude handed down from the
earliest times, when scientists were called alchemists and sorcerers and
burned for making pacts with the devil. But actually there are no sorcerers,
no—witches. Not in the sense that man understands these terms. There are
men and women who have acquired mastery over certain sciences which
are not wholly subject to mundane physical laws."
There was a little smile of disbelief on Dean's face. Yamada went on
quietly. "You do not believe because you do not understand. There are not
many who can comprehend, or who wish to comprehend, this greater
science which is not bound by earthly laws. But here is a problem for you,
Mr. Dean." A little spark of irony flickered in the black eyes. "Can you tell
me how I know you have suffered from nightmares recently?"
Dean jerked around and stood staring. Then he smiled.
"As it happens, I know the answer, Doctor Yamada. You physicians have a
way of hanging together—and I must have let something slip to Doctor
Hedwig yesterday." His tone was offensive, but Yamada merely shrugged
slightly.

"Do you know your Homer?" he asked, apparently irrelevantly, and at
Dean's surprized nod went on, "And Proteus? You remember the Old Man
of the Sea who possessed the power of changing his shape? I do not wish to
strain your credulity, Mr. Dean, but for a long time students of the dark lore
have known that behind this legend there exists a very terrible truth. All the
tales of spirit-possession, of reincarnation, even the comparatively
innocuous experiments in thought-transference, point to the truth. Why do
you suppose folklore abounds with tales of men who have been able to
change themselves into beasts—werewolves, hyenas, tigers, the seal-men of
the Eskimos? Because these tales are founded on truth!
"I do not mean," he went on, "that the actual physical metamorphosis of the
body is possible, so far as we know. But it has long been known that the
intelligence—the mind—of an adept can be transferred to the brain and
body of a satisfactory subject. Animals' brains are weak, lacking the power
of resistance. But men are different, unless there are certain circumstances
——"
As he hesitated, Dean proffered the Japanese a cup of coffee—coffee was
generally brewing in the percolator these days—and Yamada accepted it
with a formal little bow of acknowledgment. Dean drank his coffee in three
hasty gulps, and poured more. Yamada, after a polite sip, put the cup aside
and leaned forward earnestly.

"I must ask you to make your mind receptive, Mr. Dean. Don't allow your
conventional ideas of life to influence you in this matter. It is vitally to your
interest that you listen carefully to me, and understand. Then—perhaps
——"
He hesitated, and again threw that oddly furtive glance at the window.
"Life in the sea has followed different lines from life on land. Evolution has
followed a different course. In the great deeps of the ocean, life utterly alien
to ours has been discovered—luminous creatures which burst when exposed
to the lighter pressure of the air—and in those tremendous depths forms of
life completely inhuman have been developed, life forms that the
uninitiated mind may think impossible. In Japan, an island country, we have

known of these sea-dwellers for generations. Your English writer, Arthur
Machen, has told a deep truth in his statement that man, afraid of these
strange beings, has attributed to them beautiful or pleasantly grotesque
forms which in reality they do not possess. Thus we have the nereids and
oceanids—but nevertheless man could not fully disguise the true foulness
of these creatures. Therefore there are legends of the Gorgons, of Scylla and
the harpies—and, significantly, of the mermaids and their soullessness. No
doubt you know the mermaid tale—how they long to steal the soul of a
man, and draw it out by means of their kiss."
Dean was at the window now, his back to the Japanese. As Yamada paused
he said tonelessly, "Go on."
"I have reason to believe," Yamada went on very quietly, "that Morella
Godolfo, the woman from Alhambra, was not fully—human. She left no
issue. These things never have children—they cannot."
"What do you mean?" Dean had turned and was facing the Japanese, his
face a ghastly white, the shadows beneath his eyes hideously livid. He
repeated harshly, "What do you mean? You can't frighten me with your tales
—if that's what you're trying to do. You—my uncle wants me out of this
house, for some reason of his own. You're taking this means of getting me
out—aren't you? Eh?"
"You must leave this house," Yamada said. "Your uncle is coming, but he
may not be in time. Listen to me: these creatures—the sea-dwellers—envy
man. Sunlight, and warm fires, and the fields of earth—things which the
sea-dwellers cannot normally possess. These things—and love. You
remember what I said about mind-transference—the possession of a brain
by an alien intelligence. That is the only way these things can attain that
which they desire, and know the love of man or woman. Sometimes—not
very often—one of these creatures succeeds in possessing itself of a human
body. They watch always. When there is a wreck, they go there, like
vultures to a feast. They can swim phenomenally fast. When a man is
drowning, the defenses of his mind are down, and sometimes the sea-
dwellers can thus acquire a human body. There have been tales of men
saved from wrecks who ever after were oddly changed.
"Morella Godolfo was one of these creatures! The Godolfos knew much of
the dark lore, but used it for evil purposes—the so-called black magic. And

it was, I think, through this that sea-dweller gained power to usurp the brain
and body of the woman. A transference took place. The mind of the sea-
dweller took possession of Morella Godolfo's body, and the intelligence of
the original Morella was forced into the terrible form of that creature of the
abyss. In time the human body of the woman died, and the usurping mind
returned to its original shell. The intelligence of Morella Godolfo was then
ejected from its temporary prison, and left homeless. That is true death."
Dean shook his head slowly, as though in denial, but did not speak. And
inexorably Yamada kept on.
"For years, generations, since then she has dwelt in the sea, waiting. Her
power is strongest here, where she once lived. But, as I told you, only under
unusual circumstances can this—transference take place. The tenants of this
house might be troubled with dreams, but that would be all. The evil being
had no power to steal their bodies. Your uncle knew that, or he would have
insisted that the place be immediately destroyed. He did not foresee that
you would ever live here."
The little Japanese bent forward, and his eyes were twin points of black
light.
"You do not need to tell me what you have undergone in the past month. I
know. The sea-dweller has power over you. For one thing, there are bonds
of blood, even though you are not directly descended from her. And your
love for the ocean—your uncle spoke of that. You live here alone with your
paintings and your imaginative fancies; you see no one else. You are an
ideal victim, and it was easy for that sea horror to become en rapport with
you. Even now you show the stigmata."

Dean was silent, his face a pale shadow amidst the darker ones in the
corners of the room. What was the man trying to tell him? What were these
hints leading up to?
"Remember what I have said." Doctor Yamada's voice was fanatically
earnest. "That creature wants you for your youth—your soul. She has lured
you in sleep, with visions of Poseidonis, the twilight grottoes in the deep.

She has sent you beguiling visions at first, to hide what she was doing. She
has drained your life forces, weakened your resistance, waiting until she is
strong enough to take possession of your brain.
"I have told you what she wants—what all these hybrid horrors raven for.
She will reveal herself to you in time, and when her will is strong upon you
in slumber, you will do her bidding. She will take you down into the deep,
and show you the kraken-fouled gulfs where these things bide. You will go
willingly, and that will be your doom. She may lure you to their feasts there
—the feasts they hold upon the drowned things they find floating from
wrecked ships. And you will live such madness in your sleep because she
rules you. And then—then, when you have become weak enough, she will
have her desire. The sea-thing will usurp your body and walk once more on
earth. And you will go down into the darkness where once you dwelt in
dreams, for ever. Unless I am mistaken, you have already seen enough to
know that I speak truth. I think that this terrible moment is not so far off,
and I warn you that alone you cannot hope to resist the evil. Only with the
aid of your uncle and me——"
Doctor Yamada stood up. He moved forward and confronted the dazed
youth face to face. In a low voice he asked, "In your dreams—has the thing
kissed you?"
For a heart-beat there was utter silence. Dean opened his mouth to speak,
and then a curious little warning note seemed to sound in his brain. It rose,
like the quiet roaring of a conch-shell, and a vague nausea assailed him.
Almost without volition he heard himself saying, "No."
Dimly, as though from an incredibly far distance, he heard Yamada suck in
his breath, as if surprized. Then the Japanese said, "That is good. Very good.
Now listen: your uncle will be here soon. He has chartered a special plane.
Will you be my guest until he arrives?"
The room seemed to darken before Dean's eyes. The form of the Japanese
was receding, dwindling. Through the window the surf-sound came
crashing, and it rolled on in waves through Dean's brain. In its thunder a
thin, insistent whispering penetrated.
"Accept," it murmured. "Accept!" And Dean heard his own voice accept
Yamada's invitation.

He seemed incapable of coherent thought. That last dream haunted him ...
and now Doctor Yamada's disturbing story ... he was ill—that was it!—very
ill. He wanted very much to sleep, now. A flood of darkness seemed to wash
up and engulf him. Gratefully he allowed it to sweep through his tired head.
Nothing existed but the dark, and a restless lapping of unquiet waters.
Yet he seemed to know, in an odd way, that he was still—some outer part of
him—conscious. He strangely realized that he and Doctor Yamada had left
the house, were entering a car, and driving a long way. He was—with that
strange, external other self—talking casually to the doctor; entering his
house in San Pedro; drinking; eating. And all the while his soul, his real
being, was buried in waves of blackness.
Finally a bed. From below, the surf seemed to blend into the blackness that
engulfed his brain. It spoke to him now, as he rose stealthily and clambered
out of the window. The fall jarred his outer self considerably, but he was on
the ground outside without injury. He kept in the shadows as he crept away
down to the beach—the black, hungry shadows that were like the darkness
surging through his soul.

3. Three Dreadful Hours
With a shock, he was himself once more—completely. The cold water had
done it; the water in which he found himself swimming. He was in the
ocean, borne on waves as silver as the lightning that occasionally flashed
overhead. He heard thunder, felt the sting of rain. Without wondering about
the sudden transition, he swam on, as though fully aware of some planned
destination. For the first time in over a month he felt fully alive, actually
himself. There was a surge of wild elation in him that defied the facts; he no
longer seemed to care about his recent illness, the weird warnings of his
uncle and Doctor Yamada, and the unnatural darkness that had previously
shadowed his mind. In fact, he no longer had to think—it was as though he
were being directed in all his movements.
He was swimming parallel with the beach now, and with curious
detachment he observed that the storm had subsided. A pale, fog-like glow

hovered over the lashing waters, and it seemed to beckon.
The air was chill, as was the water, and the waves high; yet Dean
experienced neither cold nor fatigue. And when he saw the things that
waited for him on the rocky beach just ahead, he lost all perception of
himself in a crescendo of mounting joy.
This was inexplicable, for they were the creatures of his last and wildest
nightmares. Even now he did not see them plainly as they sported in the
surf, but there were dim suggestions of past horror in their tenebrous
outlines. The things were like seals; great, fish-like, bloated monsters with
pulpy, shapeless heads. These heads rested on columnar necks that
undulated with serpentine ease, and he observed, without any sensation
other than curious familiarity, that the heads and bodies of the creatures
were a sea-bleached white.
Soon he was swimming in among them—swimming with peculiar and
disturbing ease. Inwardly he marveled, with a touch of his former feeling,
that he was not now horrified by the sea-beasts in the least. Instead, it was
almost with a feeling of kinship that he listened to their strange low
gruntings and cackles—listened and understood.
He knew what they were saying, and he was not amazed. He was not
frightened by what he heard, though the words would have sent abysmal
horror through his soul in the previous dreams.
He knew where they were going and what they meant to do when the entire
group swam out into the water once more, yet he did not fear. Instead, he
felt a strange hunger at the thought of what was to come, a hunger that
impelled him to take the lead as the things, with undulant swiftness, glided
through the inky waters to the north. They swam with incredible speed, yet
it was hours before a sea-coast loomed up through the murk, lit by a
blinding flare of light from offshore.
Twilight deepened to true darkness over the water, but the offshore light
burned brightly. It seemed to come from a huge wreck in the waves just off
the coast, a great hulk floating on the waters like a crumpled beast. There
were boats gathered around it, and floating flares of light that revealed the
scene.

As though by instinct, Dean, with the pack behind him, headed for the spot.
Swiftly and silently they sped, their slimy heads blurred in the shadows to
which they clung as they circled the boats and swam in toward the great
crumpled shape. Now it was looming above him, and he could see arms
flailing desperately as man after man sank below the surface. The colossal
bulk from which they leaped was a wreck of twisted girders in which he
could trace the warped outline of a vaguely familiar shape.
And now, with curious disinterest, he swam lazily about, avoiding the lights
bobbing over the water as he watched the actions of his companions. They
were hunting their prey. Leering muzzles gaped for the drowning men, and
lean talons raked bodies from the darkness. Whenever a man was glimpsed
in shadows not yet invaded by rescue-boats, one of the sea-things craftily
snared his victim.
In a little while they turned and slowly swam away. But now many of the
creatures clutched a grisly trophy at their squamous breasts. The pale white
limbs of drowning men trailed in the water as they were dragged off into the
darkness by their captors. To the accompaniment of low, carrion laughter
the beasts swam away, back down the coast.
Dean swam with the rest. His mind was again a blur of confusion. He knew
what that thing in the water was, and yet he could not name it. He had
watched those hateful horrors snare doomed men and drag them off to the
deep, yet he had not intervened. What was wrong? Even now, as he swam
with frightening agility, he felt a call he could not fully understand—a call
that his body was answering.
The hybrid things were gradually dispersing. With eery splashings they
disappeared below the surface of the gelid black waters, pulling with them
the dreadfully limp bodies of the men, pulling them down to the blackness
biding beneath.
They were hungry. Dean knew it without thinking. He swam on, along the
coast, impelled by his curious urge. That was it—he was hungry.
And now he was going for food.

Hours of steady swimming southward. Then the familiar beach, and above
it a lighted house which Dean recognized—his own house on the cliff.
There were figures descending the slope now; two men with torches were
coming down to the beach. He must not let them see him—why, he did not
know, but they must not. He crawled along the beach, keeping close to the
water's edge. Even so, he seemed to move very swiftly.
The men with the torches were some distance behind him now. Ahead
loomed another familiar outline—a cave. He had clambered over these
rocks before, it seemed. He knew the pits of shadow that speckled the cliff
rock, and knew the narrow passage of stone through which he now
squeezed his prostrate body.
Was that someone shouting, far away?...
Darkness, and a lapping pool. He crawled forward, felt chill waters creep
over his body. Muffled by distance came an insistent shouting from outside
the cave.
"Graham! Graham Dean!"
Then the smell of dank sea-foulness was in his nostrils—a familiar, pleasant
smell. He knew where he was, now. It was the cave where in his dream he
had kissed the sea-thing. It was the cave in which——
He remembered now. The black blur lifted from his brain, and he
remembered all. His mind bridged the gap, and he once again recalled
coming here earlier this very evening, before he had found himself in the
water.
Morella Godolfo had called him here; here her dark whispers had guided
him at twilight, when he had come from the bed at Doctor Yamada's house.
It was the siren song of the sea-creature that had lured him in dreams.
He remembered how she had coiled about his feet when he entered, flung
her sea-bleached body up until its inhuman head had loomed close to his
own. And then the hot pulpy lips had pressed against his—the loathsome,
slimy lips had kissed him again. Wet, dank, horribly avid kiss! His senses
had drowned in its evil, for he knew that this second kiss meant doom.
"The sea-dweller will take your body," Doctor Yamada had said.... And the
second kiss meant doom.

All this had happened hours ago!
Dean shifted around in the rocky chamber to avoid wetting himself in the
pool. As he did so, he glanced down at his body for the first time that night
—glanced down with an undulating neck at the shape he had worn for three
hours in the sea. He saw the fish-like scales, the scabrous whiteness of the
slimy skin; saw the veined gills. He stared into the waters of the pool then,
so that the reflection of his face was visible in the dim moonlight that
filtered through fissures in the rocks.
He saw all....
His head rested on the long, reptilian neck. It was an anthropoid head with
flat contours that were monstrously inhuman. The eyes were white and
protuberant; they bulged with the glassy stare of a drowning thing. There
was no nose, and the center of the face was covered with a tangle of wormy
blue feelers. The mouth was worst of all. Dean saw pale white lips in a dead
face—human lips. Lips that had kissed his own. And now—they were his
own!
He was in the body of the evil sea-thing—the evil sea-thing that had once
harbored the soul of Morella Godolfo!
At that moment Dean would gladly have welcomed death, for the stark,
blasphemous horror of his discovery was too much to bear. He knew about
his dreams now, and the legends; he had learned the truth, and paid a
hideous price. He recalled, vividly, how he had recovered consciousness in
the water and swum out to meet those—others. He recalled the great black
hulk from which drowning men had been taken in boats—the shattered
wreck on the water. What was it Yamada had told him? "When there is a
wreck they go there, like vultures to a feast." And now, at last, he
remembered what had eluded him that night—what that familiar shape on
the waters had been. It was a crashed zeppelin. He had gone swimming into
the wreckage with those things, and they had taken men.... Three hours—
God! Dean wanted very much to die. He was in the sea-body of Morella
Godolfo, and it was too evil for further life.
Morella Godolfo! Where was she? And his own body, the shape of Graham
Dean?

A rustling in the shadowy cavern behind him proclaimed the answer.
Graham Dean saw himself in the moonlight—saw his body, line for line,
hunching furtively past the pool in an attempt to creep away unobserved.
Dean's flippered fins moved swiftly. His own body turned.
It was ghastly for Dean to see himself reflected where no mirror existed;
ghastlier still to see that in his face there no longer were his eyes. The sly,
mocking stare of the sea-creature peered out at him from behind their fleshy
mask, and they were ancient, evil. The pseudo-human snarled at him and
tried to dodge off into the darkness. Dean followed, on all fours.
He knew what he must do. That sea-thing—Morella—she had taken his
body during that last black kiss, just as he had been forced into hers. But
she had not yet recovered enough to go out into the world. That was why he
had found her still in the cave. Now, however, she would leave, and his
uncle Michael would never know. The world would never know, either,
what horror stalked its surface—until it was too late. Dean, his own tragic
form hateful to him now, knew what he must do.
Purposefully he maneuvered the mocking body of himself into a rocky
corner. There was a look of fright in those gelid eyes....
A sound caused Dean to turn, pivoting his reptilian neck. Through glazed
fish-eyes he saw the faces of Michael Leigh and Doctor Yamada. Torches in
hand, they were entering the cave.
Dean knew what they would do, and he no longer cared. He closed in on the
human body that housed the soul of the sea-beast; closed in with the beast's
own flailing flippers; seized it in its own arms and menaced it with its own
teeth near the creature's white, human neck.
From behind him he heard shouts and cries at his very back, but Dean did
not care. He had a duty to perform; an atonement. Through the corner of his
eye, he saw the barrel of a revolver as it glinted in Yamada's hand.
Then came two bursts of stabbing flame, and the oblivion Dean craved. But
he died happy, for he had atoned for the black kiss.

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