Robert Bloch is best known as the author of Psycho, but his career began in the pulp horror and weird fiction tradition of the 1930s, writing for Weird Tales under the mentorship of H. P. Lovecraft. The Black Kiss is an early short work from this period — dark, atmospheric, and characteristic of the pulp horror tradition that shaped Bloch’s development as one of America’s most influential horror writers.
A piece of genuine interest to horror history enthusiasts, this early Bloch story is freely available as a public-domain EPUB at Better Gutenberg.