The Children of the Night is a 1931 short story by Robert E. Howard, belonging to the Cthulhu Mythos. It was first published in the pulp magazine Weird Tales in the April/May 1931 issue.
Plot[]
The story starts with six people sitting in John Conrad's study: Conrad himself, Clemants, Professor Kirowan, Taverel, Ketrick and the narrator John O'Donnel. O'Donnel describes them all as Anglo-Saxon with the exception of Ketrick. Ketrick, although he possesses a documented pure Anglo-Saxon lineage, appears to have slightly Mongolian-looking eyes and an odd lisp that O'Donnel finds distasteful.
Initially the group discusses anthropology but begin to talk about Conrad's collection of books, which includes a copy of Von Junzt's Nameless Cults. This brings Clemants to discuss the Cult of Bran, mentioned in Nameless Cults and by his former University roommate in his sleep. The cult worships the Dark Man, an ancient king of the Picts called Bran Mak Morn. The others are skeptical but Conrad brings up a flint mallet found recently in the Welsh hills which is "obviously of no ordinary Neolithic make" - it is too small but still heavy, with odd shape and balance. While others handle the mallet, Ketrick accidentally strikes O'Donnel on the head and knocks him unconscious.
O'Donnel wakes in a forest wearing deer skins. He calls himself "Aryara" of the Sword People, one of the Aryan tribes of the time. His hunting party have been killed by a group of "Children of the Night", snake-like people the Aryans consider vermin. He kills several of them and follows a trail back to their village where he again attacks and kills many more. Aryara is killed in the process.
O'Donnel wakes up again back in Conrad's study but still remembering his life as Aryara. On seeing Ketrick he becomes enraged, believing him to be a descendant of the Children of the Night. The others restrain him and think he has gone mad with exclamations such as "You fools, he is marked with the brand of the beast--the reptile--the vermin we exterminated centuries ago! I must crush him, stamp him out, rid the clean earth of his accursed pollution!"
Ketrick leaves, but O'Donnel swears to hunt him down and kill him while, as is his habit, he is walking the moors alone at night, even if he will be hanged for it.