Hydra
A unique tale of the fourth dimension, a dangerous experiment
in occultism, and the ghastly horror that reached back
from that other plane of space
— Arthur Machen.
TWO men died; possibly three. So much is known. The tabloids ran flaming headlines telling of the mysterious mutilation and death of Kenneth Scott, noted Baltimore author and occultist, and later, they capitalized similarly on the disappearance of Robert Ludwig, whose correspondence with Scott was well known in literary circles. The equally strange and even more ghastly death of Paul Edmond, while separated from the scene of the Scott horror by the width of a continent, was clearly connected with it. This was shown by the presence of a certain much-discussed object which was found clutched in Edmond's rigid hands — and which the credulous claim caused his death. While this solution is improbable, it is nevertheless true that Paul Edmond bled to death because his carotid artery was severed, and it is also true that there are features about the case difficult to explain in the light of present-day science.
The tabloids made a great deal of Edmond's diary, and even conventional papers found it difficult to handle that unusual document in a fashion that would not lay them open to the charge of yellow journalism. The Hollywood Citizen-News solved the problem for its contemporaries by quoting the least fantastic portions of the diary, and hinting plainly that Edmond had been a fiction writer, and that the man's notes had never been intended as a truthful summary of events. The privately printed pamphlet, On the Sending Out of the Soul, which played so important a part in the diary, seems to be of purely fictional origin. None of the local booksellers has heard of it, and Mr. Russell Hodgkins, California's most noted bibliophile, declares that the title and the volume must have originated in the mind of the ill-fated Paul Edmond.
Yet, according to Edmond's diary and certain other papers and letters discovered in his desk, it was this pamphlet which caused Ludwig and Edmond to undertake the disastrous experiment. Ludwig had decided to visit his California correspondent, making a leisurely voyage from New York by way of the Panama Canal. The Carnatic docked on August 15th, and Ludwig spent several hours wandering through San Pedro. It was there, in a musty "swap shop," that he bought the pamphlet, On the Sending Out of the Soul. When the young man arrived at
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