The Pineys

In 1950, towards the end of Weird Tales's run, yet just before his first John the Balladeer story, Manly Wade Wellman turned to the forest for inspiration for a ghost story, "The Pineys". For amid the dense longleaf pines lives a strange folk known as the Pineys, and those who trespass into their lands vanish. The Indians who once lived around this particular pine grove say that the Pineys were there first. Some even say that the Pineys have been defending their groves since before the dinosaurs, and that their king walks among humanity, ever vigilant for those who would disturb his pine groves. What is clear, as many who live uneasily around the pines repeat, is that no one knows what the Pineys do to those who they capture.

Nothing but tall tales and campfire scares, right?

Beau Sawtelle believes so, and it is his job to survey the piney grove for logging. He's brought his niece, some men, and a local named Mac to assist him. The local tales of strange and furred creatures don't scare Sawtelle's party, but rather provide a bit of amusement as they journey deep into the forest. But as the canopy darkens overhead and the shadows grow longer, the discussion takes a more fearful turn as they discuss the Pineys' king while they make a campfire...

Some stories just ache to be told out loud, and this last gasp of a Gothic tale, stitched together from campfire recollections and short tales, sounds like the stories told late at night by a storyteller aiming for a little mischief. As mentioned, this is a ghost story, so the impact rests on the final revelation, heightened further by whom the narrator is.

All the hallmarks of a proper Wellman tale are present. Mac's voice is reminiscent of John the Balladeer, who would appear in "O Ugly Bird" a mere three months later. The Pineys themselves fit the inventive bestiary that fills Wellman's tales, and he even draws a distinct parallel to the Shonokins, a race that filled several of his earlier Weird Tales. And finally, Sawtelle's niece relies on the same European folk magic and grimoires that John the Balladeer would use to great effect in his short stories. It's easy to see "The Pineys" as a sinister rehearsal for what would John's adventures, more so that "Frogfather" or "Sin's Doorway". Just call Mac "John..."

"The Pineys" may be a simpler scare than the heyday of Weird Tales under Farnsworth Wright, but atmosphere and voice can make even the simplest tales breathe with sinister life. Fortunately, the most affordable place to find "The Pineys" is in the new reprint of Worse Things Waiting, which is still available through Amazon.

Interplanetary Graveyard and Horror on the Links

Edmond "World Wrecker" Hamilton spins a tale of space-bound graverobbers in "Interplanetary Graveyard."

With the famous last words for soldiers and sailors, "I'm going to marry her tomorrow," Mark Raymond goes on leave after a long space freighter voyage. As expected, the surprise is on Mark, who is unaware that Ardra was "taken to the Moon"--now a cemetery world--while he was gone. Even though his rival for Ardra's hand, Burke Ullman, has dropped a meteor shower of snide hints at Mark.

Grief-stricken, Mark decided to sneak into the lunar necropolis, an act forbidden on all but a few official days. Slinking through the crypts of the moon, Mark soon finds his girl Ardra's grave, freshly disturbed and empty. Mark follows the clues and finds Ardra's body--drugged, not dead--in the spaceship of the man he beat out for Ardra's hand.

Burke taunts Mark with "I am going to revivify Ardra. I am going to give you the satisfaction of seeing her in my arms. And then I am going to give you the red drug." This red drug will doom Mark to an unrousable slumber. One ensuing struggle and the villain is done in by his own scheme. The ending is too traumatic to quite be happily ever after, but Mark's certainly making good on his promise to marry Ardra.

The similarities to a Caribbean zombie story are striking, both in the use of drugs to feign death and in the intended drug-fueled servitude. The religious aspect of this kind of zombie story is not present, which is to be expected in a science fiction retelling.

The prose here, in 1940--on the eve of war, paper shortages, and Congressional censure of the pulps--is that transparent Black Mask style that will be later erroneously called "Hemingway". It's odd that the pulps have a reputation for purple prose. Some genres courted it, generally the more Gothic influenced-including the hero pulps. Hamilton, out on the edges of respectable science fiction, yet in the mass market's cross-hairs, chooses the more accessible style.

"Interplanetary Graveyard" is short, sweet, and lacks screwdrivers. Compare to "The Iron God", it is grounded in human passions instead of intellectual conceits, yet grounded science produces believable methods and settings to the clash between suitors. Hamilton certainly raises the reputation of the science fiction entries in this month's pulp survey.

*****

"The Horror on the Links", by Seabury Quinn, introduces the adventures of the French occult detective, Jules de Grandin. De Grandin is a step on the progression from Semi-Dual, one of the earliest--if not *the* first--occult detective, to the weird menace of Marvel and beyond. (The Pulp Super Fan has an excellent introduction to Semi-Dual, whose Argosy stories we will see soon.) Seabury Quinn's Jules de Grandin stories were a cornerstone of Weird Tales throughout the Farnsworth Wright era. Today, however, he is overshadowed by Howard, Lovecraft, and Clark Ashton Smith.

"Physicians’ sleep is like a park—public property." With that lamentation, Dr. Trowbridge is summoned to treat the long gashed wounds of Paul Maitland, who, in his delirium, cries out about an ape-thing chasing him. Meanwhile:

"Almost entirely denuded of clothing, marred by a score of terrible wounds, her face battered nearly past recognition and her neck broken, the body of pretty Sarah Humphreys, was found lying in one of the bunkers of the dub’s golf course this morning."

Sarah's wounds are similar to Paul's/ Dr. Trowbridge, as Paul Maitland's physician is drawn into the investigation, headed by Sergeant Costello, and assisted by a criminologist, Jules de Grandin. De Grandin's renown in the scientific world is such that Trowbridge recognizes his work.

Upon questioning, Paul says he was attacked by a hairy ape near the golf course. An examination of Sarah's body confirms the unlikely story. 

"It's terrible--"  

"But certainly, One does not look to see the beautiful in the morgue. I ask for what you see, not for your aesthetic impressions."

Meanwhile, another of Dr. Trowbridge's patients, a Mr. Manly, was shot out by the same country club. De Grandin, struck by the coincidence, goes digging through the trash and discovers a shirt belonging to Manly with gorilla hair on the inside. But how to reconcile the all-too-human Manly with the ape that attacked Paul and Sarah? Or, more importantly, should Dr. Trowbridge even entertain de Grandin's apparent fancy?

The result takes a hard turn into the strange, with the sudden appearance of a mad scientist previously only known to Jules de Grandin. It's enough to make a man appreciate the rules of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction. Except for Rule #2: No supernatural/preternatural causes. This is from Weird Tales, after all.

Rule #9 is also out; Dr. Trowbridge is certainly above my station in wit, vocabulary, and observation. Have a dictionary ready. De Grandin's future assistant, Dr. Trowbridge, serves as the narrator, and he's quite fond of the more elevated English of French and Latin origin.

Returning to the case, and the strange man-ape: 

"You start, you stare. You say to yourself, 'This de Grandin he is crazy like the April-fish!'" 

Any man hunting a man-ape-thing at night by himself has to be a little mad. As for Mr. Manly's identity, history, and fate, I'll save for the reader to discover. This is a Weird Tales story, after all, and the twist should be respected.

"Horror on the Links" is more a English detective story than an American Black Mask story, and I found it helpful to know what kind of mystery Quinn was playing theme-and-variation upon. It is inspired by Agatha Christie's "The Murder on the Links", although the polite rules of the style are disrupted for a sensational tale of mad science and revenge befitting Weird Tales. The story is dense with description and plot, requiring the need to flip back and reread every few pages, something I haven't needed in Wellman's occult detective tales of John Thunstone or the Black Mask hard-boiled adventures.

Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of "Horror on the Links" is Quinn's tendency to follow the climax of the story with long passages of exposition. It's yet another cheat in the game of the English-style detective mystery, set out in part in the introduction to Dashiell Hammet's "Arson Plus":

This is a detective story you’ll have a hard time solving before the end. Form your ideas of the outcome as you go along and then see how near you guessed it.

De Grandin hides all his cards--and most of the clues--until after the very end. The result is something that's not quite a mystery and not quite a campfire ghost story that relies on sensationalism for its initial hook. It doesn't fit into the expectations of readers trained by centuries of five-act and three-act structure, nor into the four rounds of trouble in the emerging pulp master formula. It takes getting used to, so it works, but it isn't a style or format I'd recommend imitating.

But, like many of the authors from the 1920s section of this survey of pulp, I will be reading more.

The White Road

A poem from Weird Tales in 1928, and a reminder that many pulp writers were also poets:

The White Road, by Manly Wade Wellman

The desert is dun at the noon of day
And sable at noon of night;
At dawn and at dusk it is silver-gray
But the caravan route is white.
Across the sand
Like a pallid band,
The caravan route is white.

The traveler's face is drawn and pale
And he prays beneath his breath;
For the bones of Dead Things fill the trail
Like the road to the gates of Death.
Instead of stones
It is paved with bones,
Like the road to the gates of Death.

The men of Egypt, the men of Rome,
The men of many a land
Lay down to die far away from home
On the road through the weary sand.
They died, and each
Left his bones to bleach
On the road through the weary sand.

Men turn from the path when daylight dies;
For after the sun is ser
The ghosts of the Dead Things stir and rise
To travel the roadway yet.
Dead beasts and men
Are alive again,
To travel the roadway yet.

The desert is dun at the noon of day
And sable at noon of night;
At dawn and at dusk it is silver-gray
But the caravan route is white.
The silent dead
Build a road of dread--
The caravan route is white.

The Rats Spread...

Earlier, I recalled how Hugo the Rat ripped off his writers. Unfortunately, I have to share the same about the far more beloved Weird Tales.

E. Hoffman Price, in his The Book of the Dead, shared a conversation between Price and Robert Howard's father, Dr. I. M. Howard, in April 1934:

"[Farnsworth Wright] and [William Sprenger] and the rest of those sons of bitches are no dealing rightly with Robert. How are they treating you?" 

"Doctor, we are all getting screwed. No one is discriminating against Bob. Business really is bad, damn bad. Well...yes sir, Wright and Sprenger are getting their pay checks regularly." 

"Then why don't those bastards see that you and Robert get paid regularly," he demanded. 

Dr. I. M. Howard's bedside manner was superb: a patient would be afraid not to recover.
"Editors and business managers walk out if they're not paid. Writer who don't do likewise aren't showing good judgement. Bob has a lot of good markets. All I have is crime stuff. When I get into a few other fields, I am through with Weird Tales.

A good many year after this dialog, I learned from an employee of the bank which had handled W. T. funds from the beginning and on until another outfit bought the magazine, that the publisher had money by the ream. The outfit had always pleaded poverty, and had found "The Great Depression" a handy device to exploit writers who could not, or fancied that they could not write salable yarns for any other than W.T. I learned from another source that when R.E.H. died, the "Unique Magazine" owed him $1300. It is only fair to add that the most W.T. owned me at any time was never in excess of $300. This peak was achieved only because of a two-parter, and a short. They were not favoring me. When their indebtedness reached a certain point, they got no more scripts from me. My production went to cash customers. Belatedly, Howard, on his own initiative, adopted the same approach.

While Weird Tales' chiseling did not reach to the same six-figure extent as Hugo Gernsback, Wright and Sprenger stiffed a close friend and occasional editor for the magazine in Price. No wonder many writers tried to break through into the more lucrative slicks.

A Reading of "Song in a Minor Key" by C. L. Moore

This, unfortunately, is not a full short story, let alone a novel-- it is a vignette from an apparently never-completed Northwest Smith tale.

Teotihuacan

When browsing through SFFaudio.com's excellent collection of public domain works, I discovered two important aspects to Weird Tales that I had previously glossed over. First, the magazines featured a startling amount of poetry compared to these more prose-bound days. Second, much of it was written by women, and a significant fraction more than the pulp prose works. As poetry slowly vanished from popular literature, many of these women fantasists disappeared from the collective memory of readers and fandom.

I was drawn to "Teotihuacan" by Alice I'Anson (pronounced "ianson") by the subject material. Weird Tales loved the exotic but gravitated towards chinoiserie, no doubt influenced by E. Hoffmann Price and other Asiatic scholars writing for and editing the Unique Magazine. Finding a poet fascinated by the Aztecs, and writing in the shadow of their pyramids, ran counter to the normal trend.

Deep is the womb of Time in which I see
The drama of a dead Idolatry!--
I hear old voices chanting now in me
--The mystic Song of Teotihuacan

The poem, written in stanzas of three rhyming lines and refrain of "the song of Teotihuacan" focuses on the human sacrifices conducted in the Aztec capital. The poet revels in the barbarism of such an act and song of Teotihuacan has an almost ecstatic cultic glee in its description of the acts. Blood for the Blood God, indeed. But the barbarism and imagery drew R. E. Howard's appreciation. To me, it's more an acquired taste, but I also find most written poetry flat compared to the same poem performed out loud. The air of dread and melancholy that lingers in the best of Weird Tales' fantasies is present, even in still text.

"Teotihuacan" was the first of Alice I'Anson's poems to appear in Weird Tales. She would pass away within a year, but not before writing five more, many of which were published posthumously, including "Shadows of Chapultepec".

The Third Cry of Legba

The glare and the clatter died at the same time throughout the Club Samedi. Even the buzzing crowd-noise suspended in expectation. Behind the orchestra sounded a gong. Once. Twice. Thrice...

The master of ceremonies intoned:

'Midnight. The witching hour. And Illyria!'

The gong chimed on to twelve and stopped.

*     *     *      *      *

From his table on the floor of the Club Samedi, John Thunstone watches an authentic voodoo dance with his date, Sharon, Countess Montesco. Rowley Thorne, another occult enthusiast, introduces himself to Thunstone and Sharon. He declares himself to be patron of the voodoo dance, an invocation to the gateway god Legba. It's a polite introduction, but while Thorne dances with Sharon, Thunstone slips away to question the dancer Illyria. Her account of Thorne's patronage aroused Thunstone's suspicions. He returns the next night, and at the stroke of midnight, Illyria dances again, but she is not alone. Some thing dances with her in the shadows. After the strange ritual, Thorne lets slip that he has designs on Sharon. Furthermore, Thunstone is studied enough in the occult to recognize that Legba is never summoned alone. Strange plans are underfoot, and Thunstone must ready himself for the third cry to Legba.

The Book of the Dead: Farnsworth Wright and the Slush Pile

Finally getting around to E. Hoffman Price's Book of the Dead, a memoir of sorts covering his interactions with many authors and editors at Weird Tales. Just scratching the surface, and already it has proven its worth in entertainment and in advice.

For example, E. Hoffman Price recounts a lesson he learned from Weird Tales editor Farnsworth Wright after reading through the slush pile on a sleepy day:

One day after an unusually long night shift, I was too groggy to do justice to a script. I told him so. 

Farnsworth said, "You're quite wrong. We do have many quick witted readers, very much alert. But most of them are dull, really thick headed. If you're fifty per cent below par, it'll take a solid impact to make an impression on you. Anything that stirs you now is sure to make the standard reader sit up and take notice." 

Though I had my doubts, I nodded and blinked my way through half a dozen scripts. some were well written, aptly phrased, nicely composed. Finally, I said, "This isn't working out at all. I'm too dopey to follow the stuff. It's good material, some of it is, but I'm damned if I can keep my eyes open." 

"Go ahead," he persisted. "I'll check them later." And then, "You'd be surprised if you realized how very alert you were when you tried to convince me that you were in a stupor, open eyed sleep." 

Another half dozen scripts, purely soporific--ranging from sedative to outright anaesthetic. Then came one which brought me to my feet with a whoop. Farnsworth had been right, was right! Vitality made the thing sparkle. The "good ones" which had put me to sleep had everything except life. All they needed was embalming.

Farnsworth chuckled. "It's not necessary to read a dud all the way to the end. If a script doesn't show life within the first two pages, it'll prove out to be a zombi to the finish. 

After reading a hundred or more impossibles to the final line, I knew he was right. The duffer who grimly, laboriously or hastily and sloppily, composes a couple of stories annually is inclined to feel that every line deserves careful reading, no matter how much of the reader's effort is required. The stern and dedicated novice has the notion that it's a reader's duty to have comparable fortitude. It never occurs to the self centered blockhead that it is his job to win and hold the reader's interest: and regardless of whether that reader is a dull witted clod or a bright person weary from a long day's work, he is entitled to entertainment. 

Much of the time which Wright saved through realistic refusal to wade through dull verbiage was devoted to analyzing living yarns which, although not acceptable, could be made so if the author cared to revise his good start. All too often, Wright's effort got him a reply packed with the indignation and fury of a "sincere and sensitive artist" who would not cater to any "crass and mercenary" editor.

PulpFest 2015 - Weird Editing at "The Unique Magazine"

A look at the oddities and foibles of Weird Tales editor Farnsworth Wright--and the longsuffering authors who submitted to him.

The Terrible Parchment: Review

Our look at Sin's Doorway and Other Ominous Entrances by Manly Wade Wellman continues with his Lovecraft tribute,"The Terrible Parchment." The text can be found here.

***

The Terrible Parchment 

Summary: A wife surprises her husband with an early copy of the next month's Weird Tales. However, the couple quickly finds out that it is a copy of the Necronomicon instead. As they leaf through it, the Latin and Arabic inside shifts to English text. A spell to summon Chthulhu begs to be read.

***

This is a fan's tribute to the Lovecraft Mythos, a tongue-in-cheek story that quickly turned dark. It's a fun little popcorn read that's a in-joke with legs. Unfortunately, I'm not familiar enough with the Mythos to appreciate it on a level beyond a couple discovers a creepy dark artifact with a mind of its own and must resist it.

The Pulp Elements:

Action:  The Necronomicon is alive, and stalks the couple. The couple runs, hides, and tries to pin the book in place.

Impact:  If read aloud, the Necronomicon will summon Chthulhu.

Moral Peril:  As usual, if Wellman is not writing a morality play, moral peril is  replaced with mortal peril. 

Romance:  Although the wooing is long in the past, the couple still does little things for each other. Unfortunately, sinister forces took advantage of this natural affection.

Mystery:  Is it really the Necronomicon? How can we stop it?

Structure:  A shorter version of Lester Dent's Pulp formula, with only two twists and an escalation.

Short Fiction: The Terrible Parchment

(A part of the ongoing look through the short fiction of Manly Made Wellman's collection, Sin's Doorway. This tale was found online, at one of the more reputable sources for public domain fiction.)

The Terrible Parchment

(To the memory of H. P. Lovecraft, with all admiration)

by Manly Wade Wellman

***

"Here's your Weird Tales," smiled my wife, entering the apartment.

"Thanks, Gwen," I said, rising and taking the magazine she held out. "But surely it's not the first of the month."

"Not for two days yet," Gwen assured me. "But just as I came to the front door, a funny old man bobbed up with an armful of magazines — advance copies, I guess. He stuck a copy of WT. right under my nose. I gave him a quarter and — oop!"

I had opened the magazine and a page fluttered to the floor. We both stooped for it, both seized it, and we both let go-Gwen gasped and I whistled. For that fallen page had a clammy, wet feel to it. Dank is the word, I think. Still stoop- ing, we grimaced at each other. Then I conquered my momentary disgust, picked up the page, and held it to the light of my desk lamp.

"It's not paper," Gwen said at once.

No more it was, and what could it be doing in Weird Tales'! Though it looked weird enough. It was a rectangle of tawny, limp parchment, grained on the upper side with scales, like the skin of some unfamiliar reptile. I turned it over. The other surface was smoother, with pore-like markings and lines of faint, rusty scribbling.

"Arabic," I pronounced. "Let's phone for Kline to come over. He reads the stuff."

"There's a Greek word," Gwen said. Her pink-tipped finger touched the string of capitals at the upper edge:

ΝΕΚΡΟΝΟΜΙΚΟΝ

"Necronomicon," she spelled out. "P would be rho in Greek. Sounds woogey."

"That's the name of H. P. Lovecraft's book," I told her.

"Book? Oh, yes, he's always mentioning it in his stories."

"And lots of WT. authors — Clark Ashton Smith and Robert Bloch and so on — have put it into their stories," I added.

"But Lovecraft imagined the thing, didn't he?"

I laid the parchment on the desk, for my fingers still rebelled at its strange dankness. "Lovecraft describes it as the work of a mad Arab wizard, Abdul Alhazred, and it's supposed to contain secrets of powerful evils that existed before the modern world. It's become legendary."

Gwen stared at it, but did not touch it. "Is it some sort of Valentine or April Fool's joke, stuck in to thrill the sub- scribers? If so, it's cleverly made. Looks a million years old."

We pored over the rusty scrawl of Arabic, our heads close together. If it was a fake, there was every appearance of dimmed old age about the ink.

"Kline must have a look at it," I said again. "He may know what it's doing in Weird Tales."

Gwen studied the last line of characters.

"That part isn't faked," she said suddenly. She paused a moment, translating in her mind. "It says, 'Chant out the spell and give me life again."' She straightened. "Let's play some cribbage."

We both felt relief as we turned away. Light as had been our talk, we had been daunted by a sense of prodding mystery. I got out the board and the cards and we began to play on the dining table.

Ten minutes later, I turned suddenly, as if a noise had come to my mind's ear. The parchment was no longer on the desk.

"It's blown off on the floor," said Gwen.

I rose and picked it up. It felt even more unpleasant than before, and this time it seemed to wriggle in my hand. Perhaps a draft had stirred it. Dropping it back on the desk, I weighted it with an ash tray and went back to the game.

Gwen beat me soundly, adding to her household money thereby. I taunted her with suggestions of a girlhood misspent at gaming-tables, then turned idly toward the desk. I swore, or so Gwen insists, and jumped over to seize it.

"This is getting ridiculous," said Gwen, fumbling nervously with the cards.

I studied the thing again. "You said the last line was in Latin," I remarked.

"It is in Latin."

"No, in English." I read it aloud. "Chant out the spell and give me life again." And the next to the last line was in English, too, I realized. It also was written with fresh ink, in a bold hand:

Many minds and many wishes give substance to the worship of Cthulhu.

Gwen looked over my shoulder. "You're right, dear, 'Many minds and . . . ' — what does Cthulhu mean? Anything to do with the chthonian gods — the underground rulers the Greeks served?"

"I shouldn't be surprised," I said, and it sounded even drier than I had intended. "Cthulhu's a name that Lovecraft and Smith and the others used in their yarns. A god of old time, and a rank bad one at that."

Gwen shuddered, and turned the shudder into a toss of her shoulders. "Maybe the many minds and wishes gave substance to this page of the Necronomicon."

"Nonsense, the Necronomicons only Lovecraft's imagination."

"Didn't you say it had become a legend?" she reminded, utterly serious. "What's the next step after that?"

"What you suggest," I said, trying to be gaily scornful, "is that so many people have thought and talked about it that they've actually given it substance."

"Something like that," she admitted. Then, more brightly: "Oh, it'll turn out to be a joke or something else anticlimactic."

"Right," I agreed. "After all, we're not living in a weird tale."

"If we were, that would explain things." She warmed to the idea. "It was turning deliberately into language we could read. When we hesitated over the Latin — "

"It accommodatingly turned into English," I finished.

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamed of in your philosophy."

"Trite but true. Still, my name's not Horatio, and it's bedtime. Let's not dream any philosophies that'll turn into nightmares." Once more I picked up that clammy parchment. "I'm putting this under stoppage."

Opening the dictionary on the stand beside my desk, I laid the parchment inside and closed the heavy book on it. "There it stays until we get Kline here tomorrow. And now to bed."

To bed we went, but not to sleep. Gwen squirmed and muttered, and I was weary in every portion of my body except the eyelids. We got up once for sandwiches and milk, and again for aspirin. A third time we lay down and I, at least, dozed off.

I started awake to the pressure of Gwen's fingers on my shoulder. Then I heard what she had heard, a faint, stealthy rustle.

I reached for the light chord above the bed. The room sprang into radiance, and through the open door I could see the living room. I sat up in bed, staring.

Something hung down from between the leaves of the dictionary by the desk, something that moved. Something that would be rectangular if laid flat, but which now seemed to flow from its narrow prison like a trickle of fluid filth.

"It's going to come here for us," breathed Gwen, almost inaudibly.

The parchment worked free and dropped to the floor with a fleshy slap, as though it had soft weight. It began to move across the rug toward the bedroom door. Toward us.

Perhaps I might describe painstakingly how it looked as it moved, how it humped up in the middle and laid its corners to the floor like feet. But how can I convey the horrid nastiness of it, how visualize for you the sense of wicked power that it gave off in waves almost palpable? You might get an idea by draping a sheet of brown paper over a creeping turtle . . . no, that sounds ludicrous. There was nothing funny in the way that parchment moved, not an atom of humor.

Gwen crouched, all doubled up and panicky, against the headboard. Her helpless terror nerved me. Somehow, I got out and stood on the floor. I must have looked unheroic with my rumpled hair and my blue pajamas and my bare feet, but I was ready to fight.

Fight what? And how?

It came hunching over the door sill like a very flat and loathly worm. I saw the writing on it, not rusty-faint but black and heavy Snatching a water glass from the bedside table, I hurled it. The foul thing crumpled suddenly sidewise. The glass splintered on the floor where it had been. The parchment came humping, creeping toward my bare toes.

"Smash it," wailed Gwen. She must have been ready to faint.

Against a chair leaned her little parasol, with a silken tassel at its handle and a ferrule of imitation amber. I seized it and made a stab at the invader. The point thrust the center of it against the floor, pinning it there for a moment. Then I saw in what manner it had changed.

At the top ΝΕΚΡΟΝΟΜΙΚΟΝ still stood in aged ink, but the Arabic writing was transformed into English, large and gold and black as jet. Stooping to pin it, I read at a glance the first line.

A thousand times since I have yearned to speak that line aloud, to write it down, to do something to ease my mind of it. But I must not, now or ever.

Who shaped so dreadful a thought? Abdul Alhazred is a figment of Lovecrafr's imagination. And Lovecraft is human; he could never have dreamed those words that lie on my mind like links of a red-hot iron chain. And they were but the start of the writing. What could it have been like in full?

I dare not surmise. But suddenly I knew this for truth, as I tried to crush the parchment beneath the inadequate parasol — the formless evil of centuries had taken form. An author had fancied the book; others had given it being by their own mental images. The legend had become a fearsome peg on which terror, creeping over the borderland from its forbidden realm, could hang itself, grow tangible, solid, potent.

"Gwen," I called, "hide your eyes. Don't look. Don't read."

"What?" Her pale face moved close as she leaned across the bed.

"Don't read!" I yelled at her.

The parchment squirmed from under the tip of the parasol. It reached my foot, it was climbing my leg.

Would it scale my body drape itself upon my face, force its unspeakable message into my mind? Because then I'd have to speak.

The burden would be too great. My lips would open to ease the torture. "Chant out the spell ..." and the world would be crushed under the fearsome feet of Cthulhu and his brother-horrors. What sins and woes would run loose? And it would be I, I who spoke the words to release them.

Dizzy and faint, I ripped the thing from my leg. It clung, as though with tendrils or suckers, but I dragged it free and dashed it into a metal waste basket, among crumpled bits of paper. It tried to flop out again. I snatched my cigarette lighter from the bedside table. It worked; it burst into flames and I flung it into the basket.

The mass of paper kindled into fire and smoke. Up from it rose a faint, throbbing squeak, to be felt rather than heard, like a far-off voice of a bat. Deeper into the little furnace I jabbed the outcast messenger of destruction. It crinkled and thrashed in the flames, but it did not burn.

Gwen was jabbering into the telephone.

"Father O'Neal!" she cried. "Come quick, with holy water."

Then she hung up and turned to me. "He'll be here in two minutes." Her voice quavered. "But what if the holy water doesn't work?"

It did work. At the first spatter, the parchment and its gospel of wickedness vanished in a fluff of ashes. I pray my thankfulness for that, every day I live. But what if the holy water hadn't worked?

Among Those Present

"Among Those Present", by Manly Wade Wellman

"Moonlight mean romance to me then, and nothing else. I got a girl and went walking by the river, collegian-fashion; she was a Liberal Arts sophomore. There was a sort of sandy jut out into the water, and we loitered out there. Something I said made her laugh, with her face turned up to me in the mmoonlight. Then she stopped laughing, and her mouth twisted like a snake when you tread on it."

Summary: Mr. Craw is introduced to the narrator by a pair of socialites as a man who claims to be a werewolf. He freely spills his story, from silly medical experiments with pre-Rennaisance potions, to a murder under the moonlight. After many attempts to cure himself, Mr. Craw has come to the socialites' house for another cure, but both he and the narrator think that the couple just wants a bit of fun at his expense.  The narrator quickly leaves.  The Next morning, he reads in the paper about the slaughter of the socialites' party.

***

A shorter story than most in the Sin's Doorway collection, "Up Under the Roof" demonstrates the Hitchcockian wisdom in not showing the monster. Nothing that the  boy would have found up under the roof would have been more terrifying than what the reader might imagine was present. The decision to not encounter the monster at all was a brave one, for some readers may feel cheated. But the story was about a beaten down boy summoning the courage to challenge his circumstances, and not the monster under the roof.

The Pulp Elements:

Action:  While the story itself is nothing more than the confession of Mr. Craw, his account hinges on his first murder and his escape from the asylum.

Impact:  Each action is irreversible, from the making and use of the devil-ointments to the murders that follow Mr. Craw in his path.

Moral Peril:  Mr. Craw damned himself by using the ointment he made from rendered baby fat. He escaped prison through lies. By inviting Mr. Craw over for a bit of fun at his expense, the socialites sealed their fates. By fleeing from Mr. Craw, the narrator allowed him to kill the socialites' party. Once again, Wellman tells a story of the costs of moral failures.

Romance:  Mr. Craw ends the life of a young woman quite taken with him, as the moonlight turns him from man to beast.

Mystery:  Is Mr. Craw telling the truth about being a werewolf?

Structure:  Story within a story. The narrator's tale acts as a framing story to Mr. Craw's account. It also provides the obligatory revelation and punch line that characterizes pulp short fiction.  Mr. Craw's account once again follows the five act structure.  The inciting action is the choice to experiment with the devil ointments.  The turning point is Mr. Craw's move to quiet his frightened date.  And the resolution is his decision to lie to earn his freedom from jail.

In response to the "Larroes Catch Meddlers" review, Kevyn Winkless pointed out:

I'd go a step further and note that the image you use to illustrate the structure is particularly apt because the reason for the difference between "Larroes Catch Meddlers" and a typical pulp story is that most pulp stories are heroic, while this one is a tragedy - and the plot structure you've offered is the Elizabethan tragedy structure.

The key difference is that heroic action is driven by the heroes' virtues; tragedy is driven by the protagonists' failings.

Mr. Craw's story, like "Larroes Catch Meddlers" is driven by his failings - and the failings of the narrator.  Thus the use of the tragedy structure comes as no surprise.

Wellman's The Undead Soldier

Summary: A man takes shelter from a blizzard in an old abandoned cabin.  Looking for fuel for a fire, he pulls up the carpet and finds a bundle of papers.  Inside, he finds an article about a cannibal soldier caught and executed by the Army during the Mexican-American War.  Later on in his reading, he finds more articles, this time about a blood drinking soldier executed in 1879.  He then comes face to face with the revelation that the two soldiers were the same man...

Pulp criteria using Misha Burnett's Pillars of Pulp and Lester Dent's Master Formula:

Action:  The story is a simple one: a man takes refuge in a cabin and discovers the identity of its owner.  So, there's no action by the narrator.  However, the first article contains a campfire-like retelling of the hunt for the Devil of the Fort through Indian territory, complete with gun battles between the Army and the Indians.  So, action does exist, even though the narrator has no hand in it.

Impact: The narrator's decisions to shelter in the cabin and to snoop through the newspapers prove to be lethal.  The relationship between the cannibal soldier and the blood-drinker also hinges on the failure of the Army to carry out his final request: burn his body.

Moral Peril: Absolutely none.  Wellman's Weird Tales stories tend to rely on mortal peril instead.

Romance: None.  Here, romance would be extraneous to the heart of the story.

Mystery: In spades.  The story is an investigation of the owner of the cabin.  The narrator attempts to figure out the common thread between the articles.  That thread relies on a little known aspect of werewolf lore.

Master Formula: The narrator was not in danger until the very end of the story, so the formula does not apply.  However, the structure of "The Undead Soldier" shares aspects with it.  The mystery is introduced immediately.  Also, "The Undead Soldier" follows a series of twists before ending with the revelation and the punchline, similar to the Master Formula.

The first soldier, a cannibal with a taste for hearts and livers, was buried unburnt.  The second soldier, the blood drinker, shared the same appearance as the first.  The two men are the same man, for an unburned werewolf will turn into a vampire when killed.  The punchline - more of a gotcha moment - is that the vampire had returned to the cabin while the narrator was reading...

Impressions: A solid story to open the collection, "The Undead Soldier" introduces us to two of Wellman's trademarks: the South and supernatural legends  While it doea not stand out like the John the Balladeer stories, it's an enjoyable read that questions some the the assumptions I am using to criticise pulp.

"Ancient legends were not legends, they were truth, denied by fear." - Manly Wade Wellman, "The Undead Soldier"

Observations on Weird Tales

***

I have been listing to recordings of various panels from Pulpfest, a convention for pulp enthusiasts and collectors.  While the convention focuses more on the hero pulps like Doc Savage and the Shadow, a groups of panels focused specifically on the horror, fantasy, and science fiction pulps that birthed the modern genres, Appendix N, and gaming of all stripes.  The king of these pulps was Weird Tales.

Writers who got their start in this magazine include H. P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert Bloch, Robert E. Howard, Tennessee Williams, Edmund "World Wrecker" Hamilton, Ray Bradbury, Manly Wade Wellman, Fritz Leiber, Henry Kuttner. C. L. Moore, Theodore Sturgeon, Margaret St. Clair, and August Derlith. Weird Tales published or had the right of first refusal to a majority of Appendix N authors and works, with most of the exceptions writing before or after the magazine's run. It represents the foundational pulp magazine against which the other horror, fantasy, and science fiction pulps reacted. Initially, these magazines would pick up stories rejected by the whims of Farnsworth Wright. Later, in Joseph Campbell and the Futurian editors, they would reject Weird Tales' pulp sensibilities for the frontiers of hard SF and social SF. Over time, it is those styles of pulp fiction, championed by NYC publishers and fan clubs like the Futurians and the Hydra Club, which claimed to be the mainstream of science fiction and the Golden Age. However, the shadow cast upon genre fiction by Weird Tales reaches to the present day:

"To this day, all horror writers take something out of somebody in Weird Tales. Whether it be Clive Barker or Steven King, who is very vocal about his admiration for it. Any of them you can name - Dean Koontz - they all received their education from Weird Tales. Think of Weird Tales as the doctoral thesis you have to read to enter the college." - Frank Schildiner 

I also noticed that Weird Tales and many of its authors were centered around Chicago instead of New York City. It is curious that these Chicago authors, without links to NYC fandom circles, were the ones who have slid into obscurity, just like pulpier Campbellian writers outside that clique have as well.

Finally, meet the character that was too pulp even for Weird Tales: Doctor Satan. A villain in the vein of Fu Manchu or Fantomas, he reled on a mixture of science and the occult to aid his crimes. Unfortunately, it was the readership, not the editors, who forced Weird Tales to cancel his stories, as they did not want to read hero pulp stories in Weird Tales. This might be one of the first anti-pulp revolts in the history of science fiction and fantasy. With a readership one-sixth of hero pulps like Doc Savage or The Shadow, Weird Tales was eager to please its audience, which was writing to the magazine and pledging to cancel their subscriptions. This revolt certainly precedes Campbell's revolution by a couple years. A suspicious soul might even wonder if New York fandom voices were loud in that tumult, just like they were in later anti-pulp movements.