The Best of Weird Tales 1923 Read online

  THE BEST OF WEIRD TALES 1923

  Marvin Kaye and John Gregory Betancourt

  All stories previously appeared in Weird Tales magazine and are reproduced by the permission of the copyright holder, Weird Tales, Ltd. All stories copyright © 1923 by Rural Publications for Weird Tales magazine.

  Introduction copyright © 1997 by Marvin Kaye. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any means, electronic or otherwise, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  For more information, contact: The Wildside Press, PO Box 301, Holicong, PA 18928-0301. www.wildsidepress.com CONTENTS:

  INTRODUCTION: Back to the Haunting Past, by Marvin Kaye

  MARCH

  The Grave, by Orville R. Emerson

  The Basket, by Herbert J. Mangham

  APRIL

  Beyond the Door, by J. Paul Suter

  MAY

  The Devil Plant, by Lyle Wilson Holden

  The Purple Heart, by Herman Sisk

  JUNE

  The Well, by Julian Kilman

  JULY-AUGUST

  The Two Men Who Murdered Each Other, by Valma Clark

  SEPTEMBER

  The Dead-Naming of Lukapehu, by P.D. Gog

  The Bloodstained Parasol, by James L. Ravenscroft

  OCTOBER

  The Man Who Owned the World, by Frank Owen

  An Adventure in the Fourth Dimension, by Farnsworth Wright

  Dagon, by H.P. Lovecraft

  NOVEMBER

  Lucifer, by John D. Swain

  AFTERWORD by Marvin Kaye

  INTRODUCTION: BACK TO THE HAUNTING PAST

  I was born the same year Orson Welles panicked America. By the time I was old enough to know about events outside the Philadelphia slum block I lived in, World War II was under way and most of my uncles and cousins were in the army or the navy.

  It was a frightening time for an impressionable child. On the one hand, I yearned for gentler myths than war, yet like most children, my imagination also craved stories of danger and terror, provided they culminated in victory by moral courage, fortitude and wit, those 1940s “American” virtues practiced by such heroes as Captains Marvel and Midnight, Spy Smasher, Tom Mix and especially those three

  intrepid musketeers of radio who rushed in where Indiana Jones might fear to tread, Carlton E. Morse’s mystery-loving Jack, Doc and Reggie.

  Radio and the movie theatre across the street enthralled me, but there was another powerful stimulant in our “West Philly” household at 429 North 60th Street, a pulp magazine with eerie covers and stories that, long before I had the skill or patience to read them, fired my imagination, tales with shivery titles like “The Golden Goblins,” “Lords of the Ghostlands,” “Let’s Play Poison” or “The Music-Box from Hell”— Weird Tales, which (with minimal hyperbole) its publishers styled “The Unique Magazine.”

  I suppose it was my father who bought Weird Tales, though I never actually saw him holding or reading an issue. Copies just showed up from time to time till my mother tossed them out. My relatives and teachers regarded such literature as worthless, but I knew better. Throughout its long, interrupted history from 1923 to the present, Weird Tales has consistently presented the best (and worst) genre literature, from grisly murder stories through dark and light fantasy to occasional science-fiction, and has continued to feature a host of the finest category and “mainstream” writers living and dead.

  As I grew up, I browsed Weird Tales whenever I could, though I seldom could afford the price of a copy. I did manage to spend a large chunk of allowance (thirty-five cents!) on the September 1954

  Weird Tales, not realizing it would be the last issue to be published until Leo Margulies revived “The Unique Magazine” nineteen years later.

  The magazine died and came back to life so often that when I did a Weird Tales commemorative anthology in 1988 for the Doubleday Book and Music Clubs, I dubbed it “The Magazine That Never Dies.” The story of Weird Tales‘s many incarnations and reincarnations appears in brief in my earlier collection, and in considerably greater detail in Bob Weinberg’s essential history-appreciation, The Weird Tales Story, which Wildside Press has also reissued.

  In Weird Tales, the Magazine that Never Dies, I offered an assortment of forty-five selections from the magazine’s seven distinct editor/publisherships. In this generous-sized volume, I included selections by many of Weird Tales‘s popular contributors, including such important fantasists as, for example, Robert Bloch, Ray Bradbury, Fredric Brown. Hugh B. Cave, L. Sprague de Camp & Fletcher Pratt, August Derleth, Robert E. Howard, Fritz Leiber, Jr., Frank Belknap Long, H. P. Lovecraft, Richard Matheson, Seabury Quinn, Clark Ashton Smith and Theodore Sturgeon, as well as interesting pieces by other less-familiar authors … yet I was then and am now keenly aware of how much “good stuff” I reluctantly had to omit.

  As a collector, I’ve always wanted to own a complete run of Weird Tales (I’m halfway there). Thus, I heartily endorsed the suggestion of my friend and associate John Betancourt to publish a selection drawn from the first year of “The Unique Magazine” which, if successful, will be followed by similar year-by-year anthologies.

  With patience, luck and the generous assistance of several collectors, notably Graham Holroyd, Bob Madle, Bob Weinberg, and Jon White, I tracked down and read every issue of Weird Tales published in 1923 and discovered that though “The Unique Magazine” did not hit its stride for several months, more good fiction appeared in the opening year than I’d expected to find. My initial fear that there wouldn’t be enough first-rate material to fill a modest-sized volume not only proved unfounded, but instead, I again was faced with the frustrating task of eliminating worthwhile stories, some because they were too long, some by authors already represented (each writer was restricted to a single entry).

  The thirteen tales I chose represent some of the best—and often, some of the least-known—tales to appear in the first year of “The Unique Magazine.” At least one piece from each issue has been included. Month-by-month prefatory rubrics provide further comment.

  Now, to paraphrase a popular rock group, welcome back, my friends, to the magazine that never ends: Weird Tales, the Beginning!

  —Marvin Kaye

  New York 1995

  MARCH 1923

  In 1922, Jacob C. Henneberger, of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and John Lansinger created Rural

  Publications, Inc., to publish three magazines, Mystery Stories, Real Detective Tales and Weird Tales.

  The first issue of Weird Tales, edited by Edwin Baird, appeared in March, 1923, ran 192 pages, measured 6” by 9”, cost a quarter, and had a cover by R. R. Epperly illustrating Anthony M. Rud’s

  “Ooze.” The editorial column was dubbed “The Eyrie.” One of Baird’s staff, Otis Adelbert Kline, contributed “The Thing of a Thousand Shapes,” first of a long series of serials to appear subsequently in Weird Tales. Another editor, Chicago music critic Farnsworth Wright, wrote “The Closing Hand,” the first of five stories he penned for the magazine in 1923. The following year, Wright assumed editorship and fashioned Weird Tales into America’s most important genre magazine.

  Volume I, Number 1 contains twenty-six stories that run the gamut from plain-awful through competent but predictable to a modest number of well-written, memorably gruesome tales. Kline’s novella has been reprinted elsewhere, as has been Hamilton Craigie’s “The Chain” and Rud’s title story, but I thought the latter pair poorly written and also was disappointed with “Hark! The Rattle!” a purple exercise by Joel Townsley Rogers, who produced far better work in The Red Right Hand, featured in the 1950s in Dell’s Great Mystery Library series. The first issue�
��s lead-off story by Julian Kilman is excellent (see Afterword), but he is represented later in this volume, so I chose, instead, Orville R.

  Emerson’s horrific “The Grave” and Herbert J. Mangham’s “The Basket,” a hauntingly understated vignette that reminds me of the bleak existential fiction of Albert Camus.

  THE GRAVE

  ORVILLE R. EMERSON

  The end of this story was first brought to my attention when Fromwiller returned from his trip to Mount Kemmel, with a very strange tale to tell, indeed, and one extremely hard to believe.

  But I believed it enough to go back to the Mount with “From” to see if we could discover anything more. And after digging for a while at the place where “From’s” story began, we made our way into an old dugout that had been caved in, or at least where all the entrances had been filled with dirt, and there we found, written on German correspondence paper, a terrible story.

  We found the story on Christmas Day, 1918, while making the trip in the colonel’s machine from

  Watou, in Flanders, where our regiment was stationed. Of course, you have heard of Mount Kemmel in Flanders; more than once it figured in the newspaper reports as it changed hands during some of the fiercest fighting of the war. And when the Germans were finally driven from this point of vantage, in October 1918, a retreat was started which did not end until it became a race to see who could get into Germany first.

  The advance was so fast that the victorious British and French forces had no time to bury their dead, and, terrible as it may seem to those who have not seen it, in December of that year one could see the rotting corpses of the unburied dead scattered here and there over the top of Mount Kemmel. It was a place of ghastly sights and sickening odors. And it was there that we found this tale.

  With the chaplain’s help, we translated the story, which follows:

  “For two weeks I have been buried alive! For two weeks I have not seen daylight, nor heard the sound of another person’s voice. Unless I can find something to do, besides this everlasting digging, I shall go mad. So I shall write. As long as my candles last, I will pass part of the time each day in setting down on paper my experiences.

  “Not that I need to do this in order to remember them. God knows that when I get out, the first thing I shall do will be to try to forget them! But if I should not get out … !

  “I am an Ober-lieutenant in the Imperial German Army. Two weeks ago my regiment was holding Mount Kemmel in Flanders. We were surrounded on three sides, and subjected to a terrific artillery fire, but on account of the commanding position we were ordered to hold the Mount to the last man. Our engineers, however, had made things very comfortable. Numerous deep dugouts had been constructed, and in them we were comparatively safe from shellfire.

  “Many of these had been connected by passageways so that there was a regular little underground city, and the majority of the garrison never left the protection of the dugouts. But even under these conditions our casualties were heavy. Lookouts had to be maintained above ground, and once in a while a direct hit by one of the huge railway guns would even destroy some of the dugouts.

  “A little over two weeks ago—I can’t be sure, because I have lost track of the exact number of days—the usual shelling was increased a hundred fold. With about twenty others, I was sleeping in one of the shallower dugouts. The tremendous increase in shelling awakened me with a start, and my first impulse was to go at once into a deeper dugout, which was connected to the one I was in by an underground passageway.

  “It was a smaller dugout, built a few feet lower than the one I was in. It had been used as a sort of a storeroom and no one was supposed to sleep there. But it seemed safer to me, and, alone, I crept into it.

  A thousand times since I have wished I had taken another man with me. But my chances for doing it were soon gone.

  “I had hardly entered the smaller dugout when there was a tremendous explosion behind me. The ground shook as if a mine had exploded below us. Whether that was indeed the case, or whether some extra large caliber explosive shell had struck the dugout behind me, I never knew.

  “After the shock of the explosion had passed, I went back to the passageway. When about halfway along it, I found the timbers above had fallen, allowing the earth to settle, and my way was effectually blocked.

  “So I returned to the dugout and waited alone through several hours of terrific shelling. The only other entrance to the dugout I was in was the main entrance from the trench above, and all those who had been above ground had gone into dugouts long before this. So I could not expect anyone to enter while the shelling continued; and when it ceased there would surely be an attack.

  “As I did not want to be killed by a grenade thrown down the entrance, I remained awake in order to rush out at the first signs of cessation of the bombardment and join what comrades there might be left on the hill.

  “After about six hours of the heavy bombardment, all sound above ground seemed to cease. Five minutes went by, then ten; surely the attack was coming. I rushed to the stairway leading out to the air.

  I took a couple of strides up the stairs. There was a blinding flash and a deafening explosion.

  “I felt myself falling. Then darkness swallowed everything.

  How long I lay unconscious in the dugout I never knew.

  “But after what seemed like a long time, I practically grew conscious of a dull ache in my left arm. I could not move it. I opened my eyes and found only darkness. I felt pain and a stiffness all over my body.

  “Slowly I rose, struck a match, found a candle and lit it and looked at my watch. It had stopped. I did not know how long I had remained there unconscious. All noise of bombardment had ceased. I stood and listened for some time, but could hear no sound of any kind.

  “My gaze fell on the stairway entrance. I started in alarm. The end of the dugout, where the entrance was, was half filled with dirt.

  “I went over and looked closer. The entrance was completely filled with dirt at the bottom, and no light of any kind could be seen from above. I went to the passageway to the other dugout, although I

  remembered it had caved in. I examined the fallen timbers closely. Between two of them I could feel a slight movement of air. Here was an opening to the outside world.

  “I tried to move the timbers, as well as I could with one arm, only to precipitate a small avalanche of dirt which filled the crack. Quickly I dug at the dirt until again I could feel the movement of air. This might be the only place where I could obtain fresh air.

  “I was convinced that it would take some little work to open up either of the passageways, and I began to feel hungry. Luckily, there was a good supply of canned foods and hard bread, for the officers had kept their rations stored in this dugout. I also found a keg of water and about a dozen bottles of wine, which I discovered to be very good. After I had relieved my appetite and finished one of the bottles of wine, I felt sleepy and, although my left arm pained me considerably, I soon dropped off to sleep.

  “The time I have allowed myself for writing is up, so I will stop for today. After I have performed my daily task of digging tomorrow, I shall again write. Already my mind feels easier. Surely help will come soon. At any rate, within two more weeks I shall have liberated myself. Already I am halfway up the stairs. And my rations will last that long. I have divided them so they will.

  “Yesterday I did not feel like writing after I finished my digging. My arm pained me considerably. I guess I used it too much.

  “But today I was more careful with it, and it feels better. And I am worried again. Twice today big piles of earth caved in, where the timbers above were loose, and each time as much dirt fell into the passageway as I can remove in a day. Two days more before I can count on getting out by myself.

  “The rations will have to be stretched out some more. The daily amount is already pretty small. But I shall go on with my account.

  “From the time I became conscious I started my watch, and since then I have
kept track of the days. On the second day I took stock of the food, water, wood, matches, candles, etc., and found a plentiful supply for two weeks at least. At that time I did not look forward to a stay of more than a few days in my prison.

  “Either the enemy or ourselves will occupy the hill, I told myself, because it is such an important position. And whoever now holds the hill will be compelled to dig in deeply in order to hold it.

  “So to my mind it was only a matter of a few days until either the entrance or the passageway would be cleared, and my only doubts were as to whether it would be friends or enemies that would discover me.

  My arm felt better, although I could not use it much, and so I spent the day in reading an old newspaper which I found among the food supplies, and in waiting for help to come. What a fool I was! If I had only worked from the start, I would be just that many days nearer deliverance.

  “On the third day I was annoyed by water, which began dripping from the roof and seeping in at the sides of the dugout. I cursed that muddy water, then, as I have often cursed such dugout nuisances before, but it may be that I shall yet bless that water and it shall save my life.

  “But it certainly made things uncomfortable; so I spent the day in moving my bunk, food and water supplies, candles, etc., up into the passageway. For a space of about ten feet it was unobstructed, and, being slightly higher than the dugout, was dryer and more comfortable. Besides, the air came in through the crack between the timbers, and I thought maybe the rats wouldn’t bother me so much at night. Again I spent the balance of the day simply in waiting for help.

  “It was not until well into the fourth day that I really began to feel uneasy. It suddenly became impressed on my consciousness that I had not heard the sound of a gun, or felt the earth shake from the force of a concussion, since the fatal shell that had filled the entrance. What was the meaning of the silence? Why did I hear no sounds of fighting? It was as still as the grave.

  “What a horrible death to die! Buried alive! A panic of fear swept over me. But my will and reason reasserted itself. In time, I should be able to dig myself out on my own efforts.