If you missed the last one…
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August Derleth keeps pumping out the short short stories for Weird Tales in 1928. Eight of them (and nary an illustration!) shows that Farnsworth Wright saw potential in this guys from Wisconsin and his collaboration partners. There are a few unusual moments amongst these traditional and somewhat predictable tales. One tale shows Derleth moving closer to writing in the Lovecraftian mode. Derleth also has a second writing partner, though he does two tales with Marc R. Schorer, he also does one with Carl W. Ganzlin, a local newspaperman.
“The Tenant” (Weird Tales, March 1928) has Gerald Paxton come to visit his old friend, the writer Michael Sansbury at the house the author inherited from his grandfather. Paxton learns that the old relative is Roxy Camburn, a man reputed to have been involved in the deaths of several local children. Sansbury admits the old fellow wasn’t half bad but there were some unexplained incidents. For more information, Sansbury tells Paxton to bug Sansbury’s valet and general dogsbody, Jenkins.
From Jenkins, Paxton is filled in on the old grandfather’s history as a scientist, one who studied bacteria. Camburn lost all credibility when he claimed that bacteria could grow to any size if fed enough. His work was lost after his death though there had been veiled references to a “pet”. Jenkins believes the pet still resides in the house, calling it “The Tenant”. While Sansbury is off selling a book, Jenkins and Paxton explore the cellar and find a newer wall. They break into it and discover a pit filled with nasty slime. They place the removed bricks back but do not cement them in.
That night, after Michael’s return, Paxton is awakened to gunshots. Michael tells Paxton that Jenkins has chased a wet thing to the cellar. Paxton goes after Jenkins but only finds his slime covered gun. He tells his friend that they must seal up the cellar and leave the house forever. “The Tenant” has eaten Jenkins.
A petty typical slime story in the “Oooze” tradition begun with the very first issue of Weird Tales (March 1923) by Antony M. Rud. A small reference to vampires in connection with the missing children is reminiscent of “Bat’s Belfry”. The editors ruined the story’s surprise with the stupidest header: “The Tale of a Gigantic Bacterium”. Of course, this was the same magazine that retitled Lovecraft’s “Arthur Jermyn” as “The White Ape”.
“The Riders in the Sky” (Weird Tales, May 1928) with Marc R. Schorer may be one of Derleth’s first Lovecraftian tales. Again we get the tale within a journal, one written by Fenton. He describes the expedition of Dr. Marlowe to the site of Ur in Mesopotamia. The Englishmen plan to dig up the temple of Sin, the Babylonian god of the Moon. Their native helpers all abandon the team and refuse to go into Ur. With only white workmen, they remove the sand around the temple, finding an ancient altar.
When this altar mysteriously resurrects itself in the night, the team find a treasure in silver and gold bowls. The remaining helpers revolt, after being accused of raising the altar, then hearing strange hoofbeats and wings in the night. The workers depart with the treasure. Only Fenton and Marlowe are left behind. Further listening at night leads to seeing the things making the sound:
…The crescent of Sin on the high altar shone like fire, and before it were the purple things, undulating in a great mass of fearful grostesques, neither men nor beasts, but a horrible mixture of both, with awful travesties on human faces. They had no arms, but great wings like bats, with long tendrils lashing to and fro like gigantic cilia. Backward and forward this formless mass undulated amid a low throbbing murmur, worshipping the shining crescent of the Moon God, Sin. A number of the grotesque creatures slithered over the sacrificial stone, and sank down upon its surface in fleshless masses.
The second night the two men watch again, but this time Marlowe is called to the altar and shot up into the sky to join Sin. Fenton is still writing this down but he too gets hypnotized and declares he doesn’t want to write anymore. We can assume he joins Marlowe up in the sky. There is a final note on the journal saying no really believes what Fenton wrote but Marlowe’s watch was found, broken, as if dropped from a very great height.
This would have been a Mythos story if it appeared twenty years later. It would be no great effort to substitute Nyarlathotep or some other Myths deity for Sin. The tentacular arms and the wings through space are quite Lovecraftian. There are other small touches here that will show up in The Trail of Cthulhu in the 1940s. The watch dropped from above is reminiscent of Algernon Blackwood’s “The Wendigo”, a story Derleth would write a sequel to in the next decade.
“The Philosopher’s Stone” (Weird Tales, June 1928) is another Italian contre cruel. Messer Orsini receives the Philosopher’s Stone in a long, glass bottle. He must wait until Midnight to open it. While he waits a message comes from his cousin, the Duke Ercola de Orsini. A plot to kill Cesar Borgia is at hand. Midnight arrives and Orsini cracks open the bottle. A poisonous dust flies from the vessel. He reads the document inside as he dies: “With the compliments of Cesar Borgia!”
Not much different than the previous Italian tales, though the Philosopher’s Stone is quite famous as a magic item. Even fans of Harry Potter can tell you that is can be used to create a potion of immortality.
“The Three-Storied House” (Weird Tales, July 1928) has a lodger in a three-story house that never sees the people on the second floor. The old lady who runs the boarding house refuses to do anything about the noise these lodgers cause at night because they are lifetime renters. One night, the narrator can’t take it anymore so he goes to the second floor to see if his key will work on the locked door. It does. On that floor, he sees nothing but dust.
It’s a short one. You suspect the sounds are being made by ghosts. The denouement seems a little underwhelming. Some hint to why they have been trapped their may have served better.
“The Owl on the Moor” (Weird Tales, September 1928) with Marc R. Schorer has a traveler, Harcourt, enjoying the moors of Egdon Heath. There he finds a lonely shack by a remote swamp. He asks around town about the place but locals are reticent. With plenty of prodding, he learns that the place is inhabited by a strange old woman. Folk have been found dead nearby, their faces locked in terror, bearing strange scratches.
The visitor avoids the place but eventually grows bolder. He enters the house when he hears moaning. He discovers the building has no bed, no food. Only when he looks up does he find the source of the moaning. There is a large owl in the rafters. He flees. Looking back, it is not an owl but the old woman in the doorway.
Later, after reading several books on witchcraft, Harcourt puts his pistol in his pocket and heads for the shack. He comes across a man being attacked by a gigantic owl. He shoots the bird. The man is unharmed but next to him is the body of a dead, old woman. Another fairly predicable tale, though I like the were-owl. Like the last one, I feel it would have been longer in the hands of an August Derleth of the future.
“The Conradi Affair” (Weird Tales, October 1928) with Carl W. Ganzlin is another ooze tale with a tedious diary of Dr. Conradi as he feeds and starves his experimental germs. No surprise, he disappears when the experiment gains some self-control. I’m surprised, if Carl Ganzlin came up with this one, that Derleth hadn’t told him it was pretty old-hat. It adds nothing new to the Slime Monster legacy of Anthony M. Rud.
“The Tenant at Number Seven” (Weird Tales, November 1928) is another fairly traditional ghost story. John Paddon is an antique dealer with an old Roman medallion. He has a strange looking customer who wants to buy the item for five pounds, a price too low for Paddon. He declines the offer. On his way home, the dealer sees the customer, feels he is being followed but he disappears upon arriving at St. John Wood.
The next day the man is back. Paddon relents and sells him the coin. He asks for the man’s name and address. He is Benjamin Gaunt, Seven, St. John Terrace. Ten minutes later another customer comes for the coin. He is James Conroyd. Conroyd tells a tale of having bought the coin from Gaunt for five pounds many years ago. The coin disappeared. He also mentions that Gaunt died five years ago. Paddon agrees to go with Conroyd to St. John Terrace. They find a dilapidated old house. Inside, the coin is sitting on a table along with Gaunt’s strange apparel. Not much new here.
“The Statement of Justin Parker” (Weird Tales, December 1928) is a convoluted tale of a man, Justin Parker, who sees his good friend, Michael Salisbury, on the train. Salisbury has moved to the Veldt in Africa so Parker is surprised to see him. Michael makes a joke of trying to slip away from his servants before disappearing again. Later Parker goes to the Veldt himself and receives an invitation to visit Salisbury’s place, a house draped in black curtains. Michael looks strange, bearded, dressed all in black. He babbles on about the length of shadows.
Eventually Salisbury explains it all to his friend. He has stolen a diamond from a band of pigmies. These little fellows use blowguns that shoot a ball of waxy plasm that eats a man away like acid. One scientist called it “The Gray Death”. It can eat anything that is not glass or metal. All the black clothing and hangings are to dissuade the use of the blowguns that aim using a method of measuring the length of shadows. Michael shows Parker the diamond, locked safely away in a wall safe.
Then Michael disappears, along with the diamond. Parker searches for him. He looks in a tumble-down church that has a massive gray ooze on its floor. Here is the secret source of the pigmies’ “Gray Death”. He also finds Michael Salisbury’s glasses floating in the slime.
Another ooze story though this one has a very Lovecraftian title. “The Statement of Randolph Carter” appeared in Weird Tales in February 1925. It would be tempting to say the Gray Death was somehow related to shoggoths but those creatures won’t see print for another three years.
Conclusion
We continue to see Derleth using certain tropes and techniques over and over. The diary or letter tale is common. He also likes to have two friends involved, one telling the other of strange events. This may have been natural when working with another writer. His toolkit is dominated by old ghost stories, which works well for Weird Tales. This also limits his markets but since Wright is buying everything, there is no need to innovate yet. That may not happen until Derleth decides to try Science Fiction. His Solar Pons stories are Sherlock Holmes pastiches, so again, a story shape borrowed from the Victorians.
Onto 1929…
Mythos Horror at RAGE m a c h i n e
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