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I'm trying to remember the title of a short story I've read in a fantasy/horror anthology in the late 80's (the story itself may be older, though)

What I remember from the plot:

A man (the narrator) goes to visit a friend that claims to have found a way to enter another world, normally inaccessible to man, by means of a combination of drugs and maybe a machine that gives a person access to normally dormant senses.

Initially, the narrator dismisses his friend's story as an hallucination, until he shows him an object he brought back from the other world (I think it was a feather or a stone of a strange, other-worldly color).

Convinced, the narrator and his friend make a short trip together to the almost paradisiac world without a problem, then he leaves, promising he will return prepared for a longer expedition.

When he returns, however, the friend is dead, after leaving a note for the narrator instructing him to burn everything, and to wear gloves while doing so, since the other world was not the paradise it seemed to be, and some evil entity managed to get attached to him and crossed to our world.

The narrator complies, but afterwards

he notices that one of his hands is turning black, so he realizes that the entity was not destroyed, but is now attached to him.

PS: this story has a Lovecraftian feeling, but it is not Lovecraft's "From beyond"

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At first I thought your description fit "Through the Dragon Glass" by Abraham Merritt to a tee.

http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0601921h.html

However, the part about the note and the hand turning black doesn't match. Could it be possible that you're accidentally combining details from two different stories?

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  • Although there are some common elements with the story I'm looking for, "Through the Dragon Glass" isn't it. Good one, though.
    – x86tux
    Sep 1, 2014 at 2:55

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