This post is brought to you by Strange Adventures by G. W. Thomas. Enjoy stories about manly men and womenly women taking on the squidgies and evil things from the darkness? Then this is the collection for you with four tales of the Weird West, where Deputy Sheriff Brett Hope has to face off against many different things. There is also a tale of ape-men in the Alps, Canadiens against Dracula and the Adventure/Horror tales about Sandochis, woman of the Shuswap people of British Columbia, and her fellow Athenodorians taking on great evils. If your choice of ghostbreaker is one who can pound with fists or bang with a sawed-off, then look no further.
Monsters lurking in swamps or other wetlands is a Pulp classic trope. In act, “Ooze” by Anthony M. Rud was the first, being the first Pulp oozy as well as the first story to appear in Weird Tales. March 1923 saw the theme pretty much the way it always goes. Scientist creates man-eating ooze monster, loses it in the swamp, tries to bring it under control and gets eaten as well. The idea would show up in other stories, in comic books, a lotta places.
So eleven years later, Paul Ernst, a writer who had been writing Horror stories for Weird Tales since 1928, re-tells Rud’s tale but with a new perspective. Unlike Rud, Ernst isn’t really here to scare us so much as have Science, which creates the problem, solve it as well. “The Thing in the Pond” was Ernst’s rebuttal in the June 1934 issue of Astounding Stories. This is not yet the Astounding Science-Fiction of John W. Campbell but the F. Orlin Tremaine version that pre-dates Campbell. Tremaine wants Science Fiction but he isn’t quite as fussy as Campbell as to the trimmings.
Paul Ernst wrote Science Fiction for Tremaine’s predecessor, Harry Bates and the Clayton Astounding. That version of the Pulp had plenty of Horror stuff in it when Bates couldn’t get enough SF. (For Ernst’s Clayton stories, go here.) Paul would write a couple for Tremaine but he moved over to Mort Weisinger’s Thrilling Wonder for most of his SF before writing for the Shudder Pulps like Doctor Satan then becoming the man behind the Kenneth Robeson house name on The Avenger. (Go here.)
Always the professional, Paul Ernst knew how to keep an editor happy. We see that in “The Thing in the Pond”. Tremaine was selling Sci-Fi, not Weird Tales stuff. The set up is familiar but the outlook different.
The story begins with Gordon Sharpe returning to the Florida swamp where he was once a scientist’s assistant. Little has changed in the old place, with weird experiments in jars still on display including a piece of chicken heart muscle that still lives sixteen years later. If the the lab hasn’t changed, Sharpe has. He is now an African hunter, as his big-bore rifle proves. He notices first that Professor Weidbold has a new driver. Ten years ago it had been drunkard, Sam Klegg. When Sharpe sees the prof he learns that shortly after he left Klegg had been fired. As the man left, he had thrown a vat of chemicals and specimens into Greer’s Pond. These days people around the swamp say there is something living in Greer’s Pond, something big. Sharpe warns his old teacher that the newspapers have gotten wind of the story and he should expect gawkers by the thousands.
Professor Weidbold denies knowing what’s in his pond. Sharpe finds cow’s tracks leading into the water but not out. The neighbor, Raeburn, who owns the cow, is upset and accuses the prof of knowing. He better do something soon or else! Sharpe suggests it might be an alligator but Raeburn asks if anyone has been the creature basking on the shore or floating in the water? No one has.
The hunter examines the pond and thinks he can make out a shadow at the water’s center, while the whole pond seems to breath with the darkness there. He throws a hunk of bacon and another of beef into the middle of the water. Something flat and pink devours the meat as Sharpe uses his rifle to blow a hole in the unseen thing. The bullet cuts through without any real damage. This brings the monster to the bank, where he gets his first real look:
The surface of the water broke at last, almost at their feet. Something pallidly pink shone wet and sleek above the green scum. It was coming steadily through the water toward them.
It reached the shore—rather, the front of it reached the shore. The rear of it trailed back out of sight in the black water. It began with a queer hitching movement, to climb out onto the mud.
Something roughly oblong and flat, like an undulating pink blanket—something that was simply a blind, sluggish lump, without limbs or tentacles, exuding mucus to protect its tender-looking surface from twigs and pebbles in the mud.
The men back up as the thing pukes up a horn then the skull of the dead cow. The pink blanket keeps coming for them. The two men run for the house. The professor asks Sharpe what he is going to do? The hunter says he will get on the phone and get acid and dynamite. He will kill the thing in the pond.
The next day, armed with sticks of dynamite, he throws the bomb into the center of the pond. Water flies everywhere, spraying both men with chunks of pink ooze as well as bits of old victims. The pink blobs head back to the pond, where the thing will eventually reform. Sharpe will pour acid in later so the monster’s days are numbered.
And that’s it. No fully killed beastie. Worse, the splotches didn’t collect and eat those stupid enough to get showered in killer ooze. This story’s message is that Science, though it is at fault through the weakness of some men (Klegg and Weidbald), will be saved by braver men. Which, sitting in the 21st Century, seems a wee bit naive. It’s not really a Horror tale, nor is it a SF puzzle story. Mostly, it fizzles out.
Conclusion
I read this story for the first time in Helen Hoke’s Eerie, Weird & Wicked (1977). Her inclusion seems to hint that this is a Horror story, not a Science Fiction piece. C. R. Thomson’s illustration would certainly not refute that. (I see he included tentacles despite the thing not having…) This is a story where humans are in danger from squidgies. But it’s not really a Horror story, not a good one at least. There is initial spookiness that is lost after the two men run from the creature. The idea of a piece of chicken heart growing into a monster is classic if the Old Time Radio episode “Chicken Heart” from Lights Out is any measure. This is not H. P. Lovecraft, nor is it H. G. Wells. It certainly isn’t Anthony M. Rud. If only Ernst had written this for Weird Tales, we might have got that killer ending.
I also have to admit I saw Sean Bean as Gordon Sharpe because of that last name. Hey, at least he didn’t die.
More strangeness from RAGE m a c h i n e
