The Seed from the Sepulchre

by Clark Ashton Smith

Deep in the sweltering jungles of South America, two explorers — Falmer and Thone — stumble upon a forgotten ruin, hidden beneath centuries of tangled growth and silence. Within its shadowed chambers lies an ancient tomb, undisturbed, its secrets sealed in stone and time. But something lingers in the sepulchre.



Something old.



Something alive.



Something that does not sleep.



As one of the men becomes obsessed with a strange, unidentifiable seed found within the tomb, the boundary between plant and predator, dream and nightmare, begins to rot and dissolve. What blooms from ancient soil may not be content to remain buried.



A lush, unsettling blend of botanical horror and lost-world myth, The Seed from the Sepulchre is Clark Ashton Smith at his most vivid and uncanny — a tale of beauty, dread, and the terrible persistence of life.



This edition includes a version with fully immersive sound production by the Russian Comic Book Geek.

Genres: Horror, Fiction, Short Stories

15 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1982

About the author

Clark Ashton Smith was a poet, sculptor, painter and author of fantasy, horror and science fiction short stories. It is for these stories, and his literary friendship with H. P. Lovecraft from 1922 until Lovecraft's death in 1937, that he is mainly remembered today. With Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard, also a friend and correspondent, Smith remains one of the most famous contributors to the pulp magazine Weird Tales.

His writings are posted at his official website.

Reviews

[Lizz · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don’t write reviews.

This is one of the scariest stories I’ve ever read. Rereading doesn’t diminish the horror either. I’ve always found fleshy flowers like orchids to be sickening. This story was most definitely used by Scott Smith to create his book, The Ruins.

[PinkPanthress · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was, emhhh,… wow? I loved³ this short read/listen!

Listen to the Seed from the Sepulchre by Clark Ashton Smith or Read the Seed from the Sepulchre by Clark Ashton Smith

Let's be honest, this short, weird story was published in 1933 and I've known/read horror stories published almost 100 years later which are not as half as good as this one!!

We have two english speaking gentlemen, we have weird plants, we have the Orinoco, we have disloyal Indians (you bad Natives you!) and an extensive use of beautiful british-english words. :)

The two main protagonists Falmer and Thone are professional Orchid Hunters, isn't that quaint? Gallivanting through the venezuelan Jungle as weird events unfold. *bäm*

It's a short story so I will shut up and let you enjoy it by yourself without spoiling you.
(Btw, love how often I used the word weird here… weird, isn't it?)

[Tim Pendry · Rating 4 out of 5]

The 'Seed from the Sepulchre' appeared in Weird Tales in 1933 and is a tale of alien vegetable body horror that reminds one of Ballard, albeit Ballard is writing two or three decades later. Others might compare the 'monster' to Wyndham's Triffid, also much later in publication.

The story plays on popular stories of man-eating plants in the then still unexplored darker reaches of the south American jungle but Ashton Smith's peculiarly fertile imagination takes it a stage further with a grim pathology where you feel something of the desperation of the protagonists.

Once again, Ashton Smith offers something just a cut above most pulp fiction.

[Mark Tallen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a Clarke Ashton Smith story that is pitch perfect. It doesn't get bogged down in anyway whatsoever in excessive description of flora and fauna, not to say that CAS has done that within the small amount of work that I've so far written by him, but this just works as a well written short story. This is a short story that comes highly recommended.

[Melanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Listened to here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeTbZ...

Everyone should listen to this. Then y'all might want to get rid of your indoor plants

Thank-you M.E. for that little nightmare :)

[Lynsey Walker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cthulhu bless Mr Ashton-Smith, he is indeed one of the greats of weird fiction.

This is a perfect little weird tale, that morphs into disturbing body horror and mind control. God help the characters in his works as they are going to need it.

And my lord, the ending.

Applause

[Filipe Passos-Coelho · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mesmerizing and enthralling, the tale threads like the namesake seed: unsurprising, but inexorably. Does Body horror very well.
My HEART: THE CITY BENEATH players won't know what hit them...
8/10

[Per · Rating 3 out of 5]

https://archive.org/details/Weird_Tal...
http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/...

[Marie Helene · Rating 5 out of 5]

You can find this short story on the web and it is printable:
http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/...

In a nutshell: when hunting for orchids in the Venezuelan jungle, never try to find the burial pit of the Indian legend.

[Jeff Tankersley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Two professional orchid hunters are traversing the jungles of Venezuela seeking an ancient Indian burial pit that is rumored to hold great treasures of gold, silver, and jewels. When Thone falls ill along the journey, Falmer goes ahead to investigate the pit, then returns to his fallen partner and says he found it but there was no treasure in it. When Thorne recovers they set off once again, but this time Falmer starts to feel ill.

This tale quickly gets scary as hell.

"The Seed from the Sepulcher" (1933) is my first attempt at a Clark-written short story and I can see a lot of similarity to the HP Lovecraft stories I read last year; the two horror authors were close friends. This story is included in the Otto Penzler-edited "the Big Book of Adventure Stories" that I am working my way through.

Verdict: A wonderful and frightening gothic nature short horror tale.

Jeff's Rating: 4 / 5 (Very Good)
movie rating if made into a movie: PG-13

[JoeK · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you're looking to avoid spoilers, don't read the original source material in Weird Tales, because the illustration for the narrative gives the whole story away.

A typical story of alien horror somehow transplanted from space to Earth. I did find that Smith writes in a way that starts to curdle my blood in a way very few horror writers can do (in my case at least). As with most older horror stories, I find that I've been already exposed to similar stories already which removes a lot of surprise and shock that these stories should be eliciting, especially since these are the original tales that influenced the creation of the later so-so stories that I've read in the past. It's a shame that you can't always be exposed to some concepts chronologically.

[Pritom Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

জীবের প্রধান ধর্মই বংশ বিস্তার করা।
ধীরে ধীরে অভিযোজন এর খাড়াই পথ বেয়ে এগিয়ে যাওয়া।কিন্তু এই উত্তরনের সংকীর্ণ পথে যদি দুটি জীব একে অপরের পথে বাঁধা হয়ে দাড়ায় !..
তাহলে যুদ্ধ তো আসন্ন হয়ে পড়ে।সে যুদ্ধের প্রস্তুতি কি আমাদের আছে?
বিশেষত যে জীবকুল এর উপর নির্ভর করে এগিয়েছি আমরা
তাদের বিরুদ্ধে লড়াই কি সম্ভব?

[luiloth · Rating 5 out of 5]

http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/...
https://archive.org/details/Weird_Tal...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5S9Ws... narrated by Edward E. French

[Nick LeBlanc · Rating 5 out of 5]

Primo weird fiction. Distrust of the natural world, fear of foreign lands, pretty gross and explicit body horror, an unexpected threat beyond comprehension. There's a great short film in here for someone who loves practical VFX.

[Forked Radish · Rating 5 out of 5]

C.A.S.'s Little Shop of Horrors.

[Fatima · Rating 3 out of 5]

What a strange short science fiction, quite enjoyed this one!

[Flora · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderfully grotesque, really enjoyed it. Curious if it may have inspired Scott Smith's The Ruins?

[Tony Ciak · Rating 5 out of 5]

weird horror tale by a master.

[Angelasdawn · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you liked The Ruins, this one is for you.