Tales of the marvellous and the ridiculous: Don't Dream - The Collected Horror and Fantasy of Donald Wandrei

Painting by Clem Haupers

In addition to Dead Titans, Waken! and The Web of Easter Island, I read a third book of weird stories in the last 2 weeks:

Don't Dream: The Collected Horror and Fantasy Fiction of Donald Wandrei

Wandrei, like Derleth, is an important historical figure in the Lovecraft literary sub-genre not because he was a great writer. Wandrei and Derleth were the field's pioneers in publishing and canon formation. They also served as a guide in business to all the guerilla publishers, vanity publishers, and self-publishers to come.

But enough griping about the post-Lovecraft-industrial publishing-complex. You will be here all afternoon clawing at the doors if I spread myself on that topic.

*

Does Wandrei in Don't Dream give us meaningful work to be read and enjoyed? Yes, provided you persevere. I've highlighted my own favorites.

I will begin with acknowledging the misfired tales which comprise the first 118 pages of Don't Dream. These are tyro works full of rhetorical bombast and stylistic flourishes that drown the reader in esoteric leagues of purple.


A Fragment of a Dream • (1926)

....And the tower of flame which had hung still for a moment leaped upward toward the eternal was blackness overhead. But the wanderer stood motionless. And the thundering, madly rushing gales vengefully swept downward and about him. He felt torn by a million waters fighting, smashing, and the noise of all enormous washing seas filled his ears. And he stumbled, battered by angry pounding winds.

“Loma! Loma!”


The Shadow of a Nightmare • (1929)

....The more tales of terror you read, the more inured you become. There is always the thrill of the first few horror stories, of course, but indifference comes quickly. Life is so comprehensive that little can be new; but the unknown, the utterly unknown, is the essence of terror.

....One of the first things he did was to show me some recent additions to his queer library. He had acquired some Latin works on demonology, among them a rather gruesome Sixteenth Century volume that contained several of Brueghel the Elder’s nightmare-compositions, engraved, I think, by Cock. There was also a manuscript of great age which evidently fascinated him. He handled it with a mixture of like and dislike for some minutes while we were looking at his new volumes, and seemed half reluctant, half glad, to leave it....


The Green Flame • (1930)

....the emerald was aflame, and its heart was aflame, and its surface was aflame, and inside it was all fire, and from it poured that dreadful wave of glory And in the core of the jewel, a great burning stream arose, and with its rise and fall, the hellish fire shone forth and the sinister blaze burst out as if long pent up, to swell the ebb and flow of flame across the table. And the fire blazed from one emerald!


The Tree-Men of M'Bwa • (1932)

[Here We have the first story with an inkling of narrative juice. The final line is a corker, and deserved a better tale.]

....“We made our way up the Congo all right, and a devilish trip it was. I’ve always hated jungles—everything unhealthy seems to grow in them—snakes that strike without warning, flesh-eating plants, and more poisonous insects and deadly vegetation than science yet knows about...."

When the Fire Creatures Came (n.d.)
[A series of coincidences that beggar narrative belief.]

....“You probably have read something about recent investigations into electrical energy, cosmic rays, and potential origins of life. According to the latest discoveries, what we call life is a kind of electro-genetic flow or current, somewhat like that in a mechanical battery but vastly superior to anything that man himself has devised. We die just as a battery does when our cells wear out, or are smashed, or develop flaws, or are not replaced...."


The Lives of Alfred Kramer (1932)

“From early childhood,” he commenced, “I was inquisitive into the world around me. I seem to have been born with a scientific and inventive bent. At the same time I was a dreamy child. My nights were vivid with a constant stream of images. Sometimes these were pleasant, often they were terrifying. I saw scenes and had strange experiences that I could not explain on the basis of anything I had read, or witnessed, or heard...."

"....the average human being requires the services of only a few thousand cells during his lifetime. The remaining cells apparently are capable of storing up facts but simply are not called on except by individuals who pursue knowledge inexhaustibly. It was my belief that this enormous number of unused cells retained, but ever so slightly, impressions of the dominant incidents which had affected the lives of all one’s forebears...."


The Fire Vampires • (1933)

....prevailing chaos in which lawlessness, disorder, crime, and vice of every sort were universal. Scientists, it is true, worked feverishly in efforts to devise new weapons of destruction, to break down the atom, to control the laws of stellar mechanics, to invent space transports which in a last resort might convey the population of Earth to another planet. But the time was too short. Throughout the period, a tremendous exodus from America was under way, resulting in serious overpopulation of the nearest countries, and causing almost continual riots, struggles, and intermittent warfare.


Spawn of the Sea • (1933)

“‘Shut it! Shut it!’ Bill screamed, and we hurled ourselves against the door, fastening it securely. Down in the hold we had seen a vast, shapeless mass of undulating greenish-white stuff, thick as skin, with a beating motion like a pulse. The revolting odor came from that mass, but what terrified us most was the way that pulpy substance leaped up at us when we opened the hatch! Leaped, like an unknown animal after prey, with a furious beating of the pulse, its surface writhing into tentacles that flung at us, and a hiss like an inarticulate cry.


The Lady in Gray • (1933)

I have been, I repeat, subject since early childhood to hideous dreams. Disembodied heads that rolled after me; cities of colossal and alien statuary; fire that burned and beasts that leaped; falls downward from titanic precipices; falls skyward up from pits of ancient evil; the old ones, waiting and waiting; flights through eternal blackness from nothing or something I only sensed; the grind of infernal torture machines against my flesh; monsters all of flowers and animals, fish and birds and stones, wood and metal and gas united incredibly; the pale avengers; descent into necrophilic regions; the leering of a bodiless eye in the midst of vast and forlorn plains; a corpse that rose and turned upon me the visage of a friend, with tentacles and ribbons of tattered black flesh writhing outward as though blown by gusts of wind; the little ones who pattered toward me with strange supplications; sunlight upon an oak-covered hill, sunlight whose malignance, nameless color, pulse, and odor instilled in me the unreasoning hate that is allied with madness; orchids lifting blooms like children’s faces, and sipping blood; the dead ones who came, and came again; that awful moment when I drowned, and a fat thing swam out of the sea-depths to nibble; mewing blades of grass which purred avidly as my feet trod upon them; these and countless other such nightmares, inflicted through slumber as far back as I can remember, bred in me a deep and rooted aversion to sleep.

The Man Who Never Lived (1934)

“We recall what we have learned of the past, and it lives forever in the mind of the race. But the author of Revelations looked into the future and foretold some of the realities of today. Today, there are those who peer into the future and forecast the realities of tomorrow.”

....“Paul, I cannot stop. I infringed on the supreme mind, and I am lost. Can you hear me? I will tell what I see for as long as I can. Everything happens in an instant. I can only give you the highlights. Swifter than I can speak, entire lives and events flow backward, tracing the completed parts of the mind. I am fighting it, but I cannot win. I am only a fragment, and it is all.”

***

Wandrei's style and content coalesced in 1934-1935. The next sequence of works, granted occasional slips and regressions, were more assured and relaxed in tone, often leveraging a Twin Cities milieu.


The Nerveless Man • (1934)

[n.b. A superb weird medical horror story. Strongest story in the collection so far.]

....Diochloresthane is revealed as one of the most potentially powerful and efficient agencies ever known in offensive warfare. Shall I turn my discovery’ over to the government? Shall I release it for use on those suffering from incurable afflictions? Or shall I adhere to my recent decision and destroy the formula because of its disastrous, antipreventive effects as in the case of Leeds?

....April 3—To date, twenty-three intravenous injections of diochloresthane in rats, dogs, and cats have been completely successful. No loss of awareness evident, no sense of pain detectable in any of the experiments, in spite of incisions, excisions, vivisections, et cetera. New anaesthetic appears to paralyze all nerves. Wonder if human beings would give similar reaction? Complete anaesthesia without loss of consciousness has never occurred in medical history so far as I know, excepting of course, cases where hypnosis, dementia, shock, or other abnormal conditions were present.

....new anaesthetic not only paralyzes nerves but also causes intense molecular cohesion of blood on exposure to air, or else expedites coagulation. Further research necessary on this point Proceeded with vivisection of animal. Finished in two hours, when animal died, with no indication of pain, after removal of heart.

....Nature has always used pain as a warning that some part of the body is not functioning properly. You will no longer have that warning.

....Through swollen, seared lips, it gibbered: “You don’t need to tell me; I can see it in your face! I’m dying, and I don’t know it! I can’t feel; I can’t feel pain! But you’re going to feel all the pain that I can’t, and I’ll watch you writhe and roast yourself, damn you!”

It bounded toward me through the evil smoke like a thing of nightmare horror. I crashed the table against it. It leaped around, covering the door so that I could not escape.


The Chuckler • (1934)

“The grave robber’s at it again,” he muttered to himself, “but he won’t get away this time.” He suddenly caught his breath. “Lord, if it isn’t the Walton crypt! I’ll bet he’s after the emerald they say Walton liked so well that he had it buried with him!”


A Scientist Divides • (1934)

....Perhaps one might take cells and subject them to enzymatic, metabolistic, biochemical, or other changes that would convert them into what might be called homoplasm.”

“Homoplasm?” I queried.

“To distinguish it from protoplasm. And here it is.”

....A butcher in Chillicothe left his store one noon to deliver an order around the corner. When he returned, he saw a strange little naked boy climbing out a window. He ran shouting toward his store and asserted that a gang of the brats swarmed from every opening. His narrative would also have been met with disbelief except for the fact that not an ounce of meat remained in his shop, with one exception. Cuts, loins, quarters, whole carcasses, liver, even suet, were stolen. Only sausage in the new, permanently protective casings was left. He thought he had recently seen a picture of the first youth, but he could not remember where....


The Destroying Horde • (1935)

[n.b.  This is an utterly charming weird science thriller of the 'monster on campus' variety. Wandrei is clearly fascinated by the horror possibilities inherent is large, self-dividing blobs of ravenous protoplasm.]

....From an open window on the second floor, a great, roundish, jelly-like thing, the size of a bushel basket, had emerged and was clinging to the sill As the policeman stared at it in consternation, it slid over the edge of the sill and half dropped, half crawled to the ground down the side of the building.

....He didn’t have long to wait before obtaining an altogether too clear idea of what the curious beast was going to do. For barely an instant he was able to survey it while it lay supine a dozen yards away from him on the grass next to the animal biology building. It had a kind of iridescent shimmer, and seemed semi-liquid, or like a jelly-fish in consistency, thick and viscid. It was approximately spherical, seemed to possess no limbs or appendages, and looked a kind of pale, dirty gray in color, with a faint tinge of rose suffusing its mass.

....But the policeman’s eyes were fixed on the co-ed who had stepped around the corner of the animal biology building, unwittingly into the path of the spheroid mass at the moment when he had fired. A blank look transformed her features and she fainted. The object rolled toward her, and upon her. There was a curious contraction and quivering of the heap. Visibly, before the policeman’s eyes, the limp body was absorbed, consumed, digested, by the creature.


The Monster from Nowhere  (1935)

[n.b. The plot here is very close to that classic of Cold War UFO lore which usually goes by the name "The Flatwoods Monster."]

....I thought momentarily that Kurt Jensen had somehow met his death accidentally from the explosive force that checked the torpedo’s descent. But he had phoned me after the craft landed. Again, there was no sign of any opening large enough for even a snake to pass. If anyone had been inside the torpedo, he could not get out. And if he had gotten out, I was faced with the mystery of how. Anything small enough to emerge through the aft or tail orifices certainly could not have made the heavy crashing I heard in the woods. As I reconstructed events, Kurt had seen the torpedo land, or had stumbled across it. He had then telephoned me, and while he awaited my arrival, something had distracted him.

....I have called the thing a monster. I said that it frightened and revolted me. But when I tried to comprehend it, to put myself in its place, another disagreeable thought occurred to me. The thing, if it possessed intelligence of an advanced order, probably regarded our life as something horrible, incomprehensible, and enigmatic. Our appearance and our characteristics probably astonished it, or scared it, just as much as its presence affected us. In its view, we were the monsters.

....“I watched the papers for a week in the vague hope that I might hear of peculiar happenings elsewhere that would signify the return of the invader. I felt a sense of guilt over not having prevented the thing from taking its captives along. I still do not see how I could have acted effectively, but I was the only person with opportunity to intercede. But I have seen and heard nothing further. The projectile is gone. I will never view it again.

“Somewhere out in the great black voids of space, the astroplane is rocketting onward to an unknown goal, or returning to whatever part of the cosmos spawned it. Perhaps it is already there. Perhaps the entity had knowledge of forces and powers that enabled it to warp through space or curve across time. I do not know. But I visualize it travelling down the nights and down the months and down the years upon its colossal Odyssey across the universe. And secretly I respect it, for its fearless courage, its resources, its titanic initiative, its thirst for knowledge, the magnitude of its voyage, and the sufficiency that urged it on, alone for an incalculable period on a journey that must have been beset by perils of unimaginable scope....


The Witch-Makers • (1936)

[A Yankee trader steals a cursed idol while in darkest Africa. The curse is fulfilled in the form of experimentation by two fugitive scientists.]

"....For weeks and months, Travers, we’ve torn spirit and flesh asunder. Here in fifty square miles that contain almost every kind of the climate and life of Africa, we’ve learned more about animal behavior during our three months than all mankind learned in three thousand years. We’ve stolen a march on evolution. We’ve knocked the natural selection of species into a cocked hat.

“Why can’t we do the same with the spirit of man? Maybe we can’t, but we won’t know till we’ve tried. And if we try and succeed, would you even attempt to estimate how much we’ll enrich man’s imagination and add to his knowledge? Think of what it would mean if we enabled man to look at the world through the eyes of his pets, a dog, or a cat, or a horse! Wouldn’t he have a more tender feeling toward them and a more profound appreciation of his capacities? Isn’t it possible that, in course of time, his pets would acquire a new intelligence of the order of humanity?

....“Do not be alarmed. Whatever seems incredible to you is really very simple. We have discovered how to separate the life-stream or consciousness or whatever you want to call it from the body to which it belongs, and to effect an exchange with some other body. Thus far we have worked only with the lower vertebrates. In your case, your chances for survival as Leif Abbot were so small that we operated upon the six layers of your cerebral cortex and transferred your identity to the body of a strong and healthy black panther. The panther’s identity now occupies your own sick and weakened body. By this interchange we hope to strengthen your body sufficiently so that your identity can later be restored to it, with better chances for your recovery and survival.

“In the meantime the door to your cage is open behind you. Go into the jungle, if you like. You probably will be better off there. You have all the intelligence of man and all the senses and instincts of the big cats. You should be able to avoid any danger and survive any attack.”


The Eye and the Finger • (1936)

....The mirror, stripped of the coating of black paint, disclosed a flat desert, a wilderness unbroken by stone, dune, bush, stream, or creature, a void that stretched endlessly in all directions. Upon that desolation stood only the cave, a horseshoe in shape, tunneling to the far distance. And from the cavern emerged a figure, dimly outlined save for its face which reflected the lumino....

The Painted Mirror (1937)

….Nicholas patiently dragged the screens and windows aside in order to get at the mirror. It must be a very special mirror or it would not have been so well concealed.

With the last of the frames removed, he felt a pang of disappointment.

A coat of black paint covered the entire face of the mirror.

Nicholas remembered that a can of black paint, partly used, and a brush caked with black paint lay in another part of the attic. Some previous occupant, then, had taken pains to render the mirror useless. Why? It would have been much simpler to shatter the glass. Why had someone avoided breaking the mirror, but at the same time destroyed its value?

Here was mystery, adventure, beckoning him. He went back to the workbench and picked out a chisel. The chisel had an almost blunt edge, but it served well enough for scraping the paint off the mirror.

The black coating cracked away in tiny flakes. At the end of an hour’s hard work, he had cleaned an area somewhat larger than his two hands. He toiled for another hour before his arms grew tired.

A feeling of excitement had come over him, for this was, indeed, a magic mirror. He knew that already by the surface he had exposed, now as big around as a plate.

The mirror, as all mirrors should, reflected an image. But that image was not Nicholas, nor any object in the attic, nor any part of the attic! He could not make out more. He could not determine the true nature of the image. He had only a tantalizing glimpse of a portion of that imprisoned reflection….

Uneasy Lie The Drowned (1937)

....The water itself, leaf-green at mid-afternoon, darkened as the sun disappeared. The green turned to a sodden blue, and went down to a dull black. And far under that black, four hundred feet and more, lay the solid rock that formed the deep-gouged bed of all these northern lakes. Rock, and the sediment of centuries, saturated logs, perhaps the wrecks of sunken boats and bodies of the drowned for the pike and the muskel-lunge to forget.

Even the stillness had given way to disturbing sound. The constant, quiet slur of waters divided by the canoe became a slap, at irregular intervals, and with mounting force. The canoe, no longer gliding at even balance, began to rise a little, dip a little, and the lake smacked the fore keel. From the far distance came the advance echo of a mighty rushing howl. The dark mass of pine and spruce that lined the shore, now less than two miles ahead, stirred with a mournful unrest. The air grew colder.

Giant-Plasm (1939)

....The sea boiled and stewed in huge bulges of waves. I’ve never seen anything like it before. I didn’t notice any wind, and yet by the dim light of the waning crescent moon the Pacific looked as if somebody down below had lighted a whopping big fire and the whole damned ocean was beginning to boil. But the water didn’t feel any too warm when I got dunked. I came up beside the Hall woman, and somebody hauled both of us into the dory after we yelled awhile.

So that’s all I’ll ever know about it, except the stink—phooey, what a stink! Enormous bubbles kept floating up to the surface and going plop! Then we’d get a whiff of what smelled like a mixture of sulphur fumes and rotten eggs.

I suppose Glenk’s guess is as good as anybody’s. He thinks a submarine explosion of some sort created a tidal wave or a series of conflicting tidal waves that caught the Reva in the heart of the disturbance. The first push was the one that tossed me out of my bunk. Then the others rocked the ship, stood her on end so that the cargo shifted, and started her down. Probably the boilers blew at that stage and finished her.

Don’t Dream (1939)

“Killed his wife.” Henty mopped his streaming face. “Guess the heat got him. First he chokes her to death. Then he drills her twice in the head and once in the heart. Funny thing is, we didn’t find a gun or any slugs. Then he heaves her off a fifth-floor fire escape.

“God, how he must’ve hated her,” he said, marveling. “He wasn’t satisfied with all that. He goes tearing down the fire escape, hauls the body all the way up again, and heaves it over a second time. He must’re run down and up like a monkey. Leastwise, nobody saw it happen.” Fosterbrow looked dubious. “It doesn’t seem possible, for such a little man.”

It Will Grow On You (1942)

....He unwound the last of the tape. A pillow case lay underneath, twisted around the thigh. His breathing had a hoarser sound, a rasp and a catch. He loosed the corners of the pillow case and flung it aside with a jerky but practised motion that left both hands cupped, veins bulging up.

There was a great purplish splotch on the skin. The ankles were rooted in its center, tiny ankles that flowed into the rudiments of feet that merged with the flesh. She could not have been more than a foot tall, a miniature and sinuous Venus, a perfect figurine, exquisitely formed in each minute detail, like a doll, but perilously alive with a vitality all her own. In the light of late afternoon her body seemed at moments nut-brown, then changing to a sort of metallic sheen, the color of old bronze overlain with a patina of verdigris. Her eyes were closed. Her face had the vacant repose of an idiot child.

She opened her eyes and looked at the doctor.

He got up and walked over to the window. There came a foolish little twittering from behind. Some force stronger than his will turned him around. The small horror was talking in a language that he did not know. She was cooing upward at her host with mindless adoration, and straining tautly upon her rooted feet as though attempting to leap into his arms.

“What is she—what is it—saying?” he asked in a faraway tone.

“I do not hear anything.”

"Strange Harvest" is Wandrei's supreme work of Minnesota horror, and deserves to be quoted at full mirthful length. It is a masterpiece of weird folklorish summer horror. Anyone who ever worked on a farm will delight in its topping of one madcap absurdity with another.

Strange Harvest • (1953)

….Old Emily Tawber fussed with her darning until mid-morning before laying it aside. “Jed can wait for his socks,” she muttered crossly. “I can’t cook and sew and tend to the crops all at once, and them watermelons ripe for market.”

She put her mending back in the big wicker basket, pulled a vast-brimmed straw hat over her head, and went out in an old rag dress that she used for chores.

She stomped across the yard and through her flower garden to the melon patch. There were about fifty big melons ready for picking. She would pile them up alongside the path for Jed to load and take to market in the morning.

“Land’s sakes, I never see such melons in all my born days.” Old Emily stuck her arms on her hips and surveyed the green ovals. These were giant watermelons, three and four feet long, weighing a hundred pounds or more. She had been surprised throughout the summer by their growth.

“Well, the bigger they be, the more they’ll fetch,” she decided and went after the first one.

It must have been on a slope for it rolled away as she approached.

“Well, I swan!” said old Emily. “Things is gettin’ to a pretty pass when you can’t get at your own seedin’s.”

She walked after the watermelon. It rolled farther. Old Emily became flustered. She increased her stride. The melon bumped unevenly in a wide circle around the vine-root. Old Emily panted after it and it wobbled crazily always just ahead of her.

Old Emily began to feel dizzy. She guessed the sun was too much for her. She wasn’t as spry as she used to be. The world reeled around. The melon kept going, while she paused for breath, then it rolled all the way around, came toward her, and crashed into her ankles. The blow sent her sprawling. This was when peril first entered her thoughts. She staggered to her feet and from the patch.

“Watermelon won’t get me,” she crooned. “Watermelon run along but he won’t get me. Don’t let old watermelon get me.” This was all that anyone heard her say during the rest of her earthly existence.

....Shawtuck Center grew more and more restless as the afternoon waned and farmers arrived with newer and wilder accounts of the pranks that nature was playing. Andy’s general store buzzed with anxious and angry voices. The population of Shawtuck County was made up almost exclusively of hard-headed Dutchmen, Scandinavians, and Germans who had settled through the Midwest during the great immigration waves of the late nineteenth century. They were a conservative, strong-working, sturdy lot. They clung to past customs, and some of the superstitions learned in the Old Country. The town simmered with tales of witchcraft and hauntings, of the Little People, of goblins and evil spirits.

What caused this strange revolt of the plant kingdom at Shawtuck Center? Nothing of the sort seemed to be afflicting the outside world. And what possible action could he take? He could at least make a field inspection for a special crop report....

Nightmare • (1965)
[n.b. A regression to the "pastels in prose" gout-inspiring rich style of juvenile prose poetry.]

The Crater • (1967)
....While he watched the entrance to the room, a head rolled out and spun to the middle of the floor. It regarded him intently, with deliberate malice. The head gave him a shock of fright. However, it also gave him a faint suggestion of memory, of pseudo-recognition. He stared back at it while his mnemonic faculties surged, and subsided. The features looked familiar, but he could not think of a name.

Delirium of the Dead
....There were dead eyes on the bed, and darker night though all the room was ghastly in the pale moonlight.

After "Strange Harvest” and a few late minor stories briefly noted above, the collection Don't Dream begins over again with Wandrei's  adolescent and adult prose poems and poetry. Wandrei clearly thought a poem required steadiness and flights of abstractly high-flown and esoteric vocabulary, which means most of his verses are unreadable today.

The Messengers • (1926)

....Perhaps they were the offering of some ultra-stellar king, richer than the richest dream, who wooed the stately, marmoreal queen of Polaris; or the spoils of an interplanetary war raging unquenchable among the Titans of star and star; or the tribute of a captive world sent to the conqueror across the deep. Illumined by the rays of the westering sun, the envoys and their burthen passed-—richly figured tapestries, gold, and green, and purple, stuffs woven by the velvet-fingered artisans of Aura; great jewels—emeralds, and rubies, and opals, and precious gems never known to man; rare perfumes gathered from the flower that blooms only in the inaccessible vales of Aldebaran; strangely carven ebony; slaves, and queer beasts, and indescribable priceless things from emperors and planets of the remoter infinite.

The Pursuers • (1926)

....Prophetic was the portent of that silent passing in the dull, burning sky, a portent of cosmic evil sent abroad. In the fascination of fear, I watched the monsters rush by, monsters the tongue affords no terms to describe, beasts whose name would sicken horror, loathsome, loathly entities that tore adown the dim-felt trail in fury. And there were some I could not see, that could not be seen, but the air thickened where they travelled, and the shapes were indescribable.

The Woman at the Window • (1938)

....And when the window began to glow at twilight, and the scarlet rays swept across its surface and turned it into a sheet of blazing red, a strange transparency crept into it, and the window dripping intangible blood limned with a hellish indistinctness the face of a woman peering out. Her eyes were fixed on the motionless sun; in the minute at dusk when it halted, and all the strange land was a study in reds and shades of red, and the sky itself the color of liver and the realm livid with blood red rot in its length and breadth, the face became visible at the window while curious and exceptional rays left the sun and turned the window into fire. But no illumination ever reached the face of the woman who stared, and at the end of the twiligit moment, when the crimson fire duskened on the pane, her countenance slowly disappeared into the mysterious and phantasmal gloom that filled the interior. For, even as the sun sent livid waves across the window, her face became visible, motionless and gazing into the west; but eternally dark and indistinguishable though the scarlet rays made efforts to illumine and outline it; and when the baffled sun retreated, the face of the woman at the window was reclaimed again by the guardian shadows that came from the remote recesses of the castle.

The Purple Land • poem by Donald Wandrei

....And lo, a stream flows by murmuring like forgetful Acheron. And when I came, the gloom was thick upon the valley, and all was still. But a faint wind had begun to lull the flowers with an eldritch whisper, and from the slow waters rose a low, lone chant. And the flowers in a voiceless antiphony swayed rhythmic: the eldritch wind played upon the flowers of death a dirge, and the dirge was like the cry of a damned thing lost or a lost thing damned, damned and lost through all eternity.

Black Flame • poem by Donald Wandrei

....after stupendous toil through epochs and epochs of time returning in recurrent cycles to her of the immortal loveliness and the terrible beauty in the shifting chorus and response of flame and blackness. But the radiance wherein she stood enshrined and untouched withered like a furious blast from furnaces infernal at my approach, and all my huge labor was in vain; and the gulfs in unison resolved together, flame to ebony and ebony to flame, flowing as one inseparable back to the choral cosmic harmony of dust and dreams.

The Shrieking House • poem by Donald Wandrei

....And ever the shriek swelled to the dead sky, pouring from the house in one incessant sound that coursed through my brain with a horrible, torturing monotony. And I turned in despair to the street, but there were no passersby, and the street, and the house, and the sky were black, all black, and dead.

The Phantom City • poem by Donald Wandrei

....if you like the wretched buildings of downtown St. Paul, and the wretched buildings and still more miserable streets of Minneapolis, enjoy them; if you like the hideous noises of automobiles, streetcars, factories, trains, school children, and numerous other things, the constant smells of smoke, gas, and gasoline, the sight of too many unpleasant objects to enumerate, and the beautiful Mississippi with a great variety of detestable things above it, on it, in it, and along it, take as much pleasure as you wish. To me, the Twin Cities are a pestilence on the weekdays, an abomination on Sundays, a limbo in summer and a nuisance in winter, during the day. But I shall always have for St. Paul the highest respect, for if it had been beautiful in my eyes, I might have been content with my lot; if it had offered me pleasure, I should not have created worlds of my own, and I should not have known St. Paul by night.

There are many, many more poems in the book.

***

By far the strangest and most compelling story in Don't Dream is non-fiction. It is D.H. Olson's essay “Of Donald Wandrei, August Derleth and H. P. Lovecraft.”

The article details year-by-year the quixotic lawsuit brought by Wandrei against the Estate of August Derleth. Nothing in Dickens’ Bleak House can compare with it.

There are three or four outstanding stories in Don't Dream. As stated above, I particularly prize the weird and mirthful “Strange Harvest.” It depicts a part of the upper midwest Wandrei knew well.

Jay
12 August 2017

The green stone that ate Willy: The Web of Easter Island and Dead Titans, Waken! by Donald Wandrei

The Web of Easter Island is a 1948 revision by Donald Wandrei of his unpublished 1932 novel Dead Titans, Waken!

In the last two weeks I have read both novels. They are the first novels by Wandrei I have read. (I also read His collected weird fiction, Don't Dream.)

The revisions from the 1932 book to the 1948 book are not major changes to the story. Easter Island has reduced Wandrei's orgy of pseudo-scientic jargon on display in Titans. This 1932 passage:

....I wish I could grasp the abstract principles of mathematics that are now current, and which are as far beyond Einstein as he was beyond Euclid. An understanding of them might go a long way toward a clarification of the farrago. According to this system, the geometry of solids is based upon three tangibles: length, breadth, and thickness; and two intangibles: time, and omega; the omega representing a fourth dimension which is the totality of the universe, obtained by the triunarization of infinite space, this hypothesis being that all matter is both infinite and eternal because its line of direction is so curved that it reverses upon itself and can be conceived as elliptical. Thus comets follow ellipses, planets have ovoidal orbits, straight lines become reversibles at omega, and an expanding universe such as Jeans and Eddington postulated in my period would ultimately be a contracting universe. Furthermore, relativity is integral to this mathematics. There is no specific, ultimate, fixed absolute in any of the tangibles or intangibles. Each bears a fluctuable relation to the four other elements of the mathematics, and to any observer at any point in the universe, observer, point, and universe themselves being fluctuant. “Among the corollaries of this mathematics is the assertion that the three tangibles expand to a lesser organism than man, but the two intangibles contract; and that, to a higher organism than man, the three tangibles contract, while the two tangibles expand. Thus, to a little ephemeris fly, length, breadth, and thickness are enormities; but time and omega are brevities, for its entire existence is consummated in fulness in a single day; but to a hypothetical super-organism, length, breadth, and thickness would be trifles, while time and omega would be concepts of mind-surprassing magnitude.

“Another corollary is that, if any consciousness could be transferred to the condition of a lesser or greater organism, its perspective and relationships likewise would violently change.

is now reduced to this 1948 passage:

The new mathematics, however, was so abstract, so far advanced even from the level of Einstein, Whitehead and Russell, that he realized he would never comprehend it. It was based on five dimensions; to length, breadth, thickness, and time, a fifth dimension called Ru had been added. Graham not only did not learn the laws of the five-dimensional mathematics; he did not succeed in obtaining more than a vague notion about the dimension called Ru. For Ru, as a tool for measurement like the other dimensions, differed from them in being of itself measureless; it was a fluctuation, a changeable, representing the continuous mutability of observer, object, and universe each in relation to the other. Farther than this Graham could not follow; decades of study might provide him the background for understanding, but he did not even have days remaining, if his fears were correct.

The character Dan Farrell appears in both novels, though to more dramatic advantage in Easter Island.

When Wandrei's protagonist Carter E. Graham is injured during a trainwreck, Farrell swipes his valise and flees the scene. (In Titans Farrell is a thief on the run. In Easter Island, a wife-murderer.)

In Titans, Farrell boards a clipped flying to New York. In Easter Island, he boards a passenger ship. On each trip, he opens Graham's valise and finds the pan-dimensional idol Graham discovered in the Devil's Graveyard in Isling.

Farrell has an erotic encounter in each version. In Titans, it is with a stewardess.  In Easter Island, it is with a fellow passanger; ironically for Farrell, he reminds her of the husband she murdered a year before.

At which point, Wandrei disposes of Farrell. Which is too bad; he is a much more compelling make protagonist than Graham. We could have had a Tom Ripley versus the Titans were Wandrei a cannier and more patient writer.

Carter E. Graham is a prig. In the course of Easter Island he gets two colleagues killed, which hardly phases him. Waking in hospital after the train wreck that nearly kills him, he has this interaction:

....He estimated he had been conscious for at least fifteen minutes, since it seemed like hours. He raised himself cautiously again to see if he could reach the service-bell without another wave of nausea. He managed to press the button, though fiery lancers dueled in his brain. After a few minutes a nurse entered. She possessed a plain, cheerful face, and tawny blonde hair the color of taffy.

Nature had assembled her lavishly. She bore an impressive superstructure and an equally prominent extension in the opposite direction; assets and attributes that overbalanced her, coming and going, but not without attraction of a massive kind.

Graham mused, “Outstanding examples of developments that are both steatopygous and mammosus.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“The Greeks and the Romans had words. The Anglo-Saxon equivalents, while pungent, are less esthetic.”

The nurse looked blank. “Did you ring?”-

“No, the bell did,” he responded with a trace of brusqueness. He hated superfluous questions, especially those of feminine origin.

She smiled like a tooth-paste ad at his unexpected reply and retorted, “If I were to answer in kind, I’d say that Sir Warren left a piece of his own mind, such as it is, in you.”

“Sir Warren?”

“Yes, the surgeon, Gifford. He operated on you yesterday for skull fracture and concussion of the brain. A minor operation, of course.”

One chapter in The Web of Easter Island, recapitulating part of "The Call of Cthulhu," finds Graham collating media reports of mass outbreaks of global insanity as the Titans' advent approaches.

(Wandrei seems to have an understanding of Africa copied from Sanders of the River).

A dispatch from Cape Town announced:

NATIVE UNREST SPREADS

The outbreak of violence among tribes of the interior is spreading rapidly. First reported last week from Rhodesia and the Transvaal, the uprisings have now extended to Tanganyika, the Congo, and other areas as far north as the Sudan.

Authorities have as yet taken no repressive measures. It is felt in official circles that the natives are participating in tribal ceremonies of ritual importance. However, it is understood that troops are available in case counter-action becomes necessary.

There is some doubt as to the exact cause and nature of the unrest which has made the drums beat incessantly day and night throughout all Africa.

Lt. Col. James Mulreavy, returning from Tanganyika, states that the natives there are at the wildest pitch of excitement he has ever seen. He believes that the witch doctors are responsible. Every sort of black magic is being practised. Human sacrifices, he declares, have been made in large numbers. Flagellation, torture, and primitive rites of a degrading nature are common. He adds that the witch doctors claim they are preparing for the return of their gods.

According to another observer, Mr. T. H. Wilson-Grant, a licensed trader at Mepli, the tribes have developed a kind of group madness. He says that weird images and objects have suddenly appeared in great quantity, that the natives are in a dangerous state of revolt, and that the witchmen are using fear and superstition to inflame the tribes. He reports also that they are proclaiming the visitation of some monstrous deity from the skies.



Another story came from Calcutta:

PRANJHIPOK QUIET
UNDER MARTIAL LAW

The rioting that swept Pranjhipok last night has been brought under control by national police. More than two thousand Moslems, Hindus, Sikhs, and foreigners were killed during the outburst of violence that came shortly after sunset.

Armed with knives, daggers, pistols, and rifles, the population suddenly ran amok, attacking each other as well as occupants of the European quarter. In addition to the known dead, several thousand were injured. Serious fires are still burning in many parts of the city but have begun to subside. Widespread looting that accompanied the violence ended with the imposition of martial law. Property damage is estimated in the millions.

The reason for the rioting has not yet been established, but religious mania is believed responsible. Shrines, temples, and holy men were literally besieged by mobs. There is some obscure rumor current to the effect that ancient gods are about to be reincarnated.

The Moslems claim that Mohammed is ready to make his second appearance on earth. The Buddhists, Brahmans, Tsao-ists, and members of other sects assert that their respective deities are returning.

Additional troops are en route to Pranjhipok from Calcutta and Bombay.



Of a different kind was a feature that originated in New York:

KALEN TAXES OWN LIFE
Artist Leaps From
Park Avenue Studio

The body of Glen Kalen, internationally famous painter and sculptor, was found yesterday at 4:15 p.m. in the courtyard of the Wilmyn Arms, where he had resided for the last three years.

He left two short notes in his studio. One to a friend identified as Marva said, “Good-bye, dear, join me as soon as you can. I would rather take my own life than be taken by them.”

The second note was addressed to an unidentified “Septhulchu.” It merely said, “When you come, I at least will be gone.”

In Kalen’s studio were found a number of remarkable paintings which experts say are among his best works, though all are highly fantastic. One of them is strikingly three-dimensional, entirely in shades of green, and depicts a kind of luminous fog or sea through which terrifying shapes are beginning to emerge. A startling piece of sculpture also was discovered. This bore some resemblance to an Easter Island statue, and showed a demonic creature engulfing a mass of tiny human beings.

Kalen’s friends reported that his behavior had been very unusual recently, and that he seemed worried, although he had ample means and no known illness or personal problems. According to them, he had become depressed after complaining of being disturbed by remarkable dreams. These nightmares persisted so vividly that he attempted to capture them in his work. He made references to a great calamity that he asserted would overwhelm mankind.

While no witnesses have been found, police are convinced that in a fit of despondency or temporary insanity he leaped from his studio window on the eighth floor.



The next addition to the batch of clippings originated in San Francisco:

SLAYER KILLS 9TH VICTIM

The body of Jane Dorel was discovered early this morning in Oakland Bay, the ninth victim of the maniac who has spread a reign of terror in the San Francisco area. Three children, two men, and four women have been murdered in the past ten days.

An autopsy disclosed that the 19-year-old blond had been dead at least forty-eight hours. Like the other victims of the slayer, she had been murdered and the body then mutilated. The murderer made more than one hundred gouges before pushing the body into the Bay.

Police are without clues to the slayer, and have not yet located the actual site of the killings and mutilations.

“The murders are completely senseless,” according to Police Chief Heggens. “None of the victims was tortured, and none of the women attacked or raped. The only thing that the killings have in common is that each victim was strangled with piano wire and that the bodies were then gouged or pitted in the same gruesome manner. Obviously they are the work of a homicidal maniac.”



A curious item from an obituary page related to the death of Aubrey Lellith, a young poet who had died by his own hand, leaving behind him no explanation for his act, except a fragment of a poem which he had left unfinished. The fragment in its entirety consisted of only a half-dozen lines:

The titans will waken on valley and highland,
When four-dimensioned vaults dissolve and open wide;
They will spew from the void and advance from Easter Island,
From time-gulfs and planes of space they will glide.
The titans have prophecied the day of returning
When the stars have attained the positions they proclaimed
And skies turn to flame



Another news feature concerned a catastrophe in Bavaria:

A general alarm has been broadcast throughout Bavaria warning the inhabitants that more than twenty of the insane who escaped yesterday are still at liberty.

A full account of the disaster has now been pieced together, after thorough investigation by Dr. Hugo Brauning, superintendent of the Heussen State Hospital for Criminal Insane. At sundown a spontaneous uproar swept the whole asylum where approximately three hundred dangerously insane inmates were confined. They screamed of impending doom and wingy things coming down from above.

Reserve guards were immediately ordered on duty, but attempts to quiet the inmates failed. Five men in the left wing rushed two guards who opened fire, killing three of the maniacs. The remaining two overpowered and fatally injure! both guards.

During the assault the rear wing had been set afire. The fire spread beyond control while other guards were herding the inmates to the recreation area. A general riot ensued.

Thirty-eight inmates died in the holocaust, seventy-one were injured, five guards were killed and nine others wounded. About thirty-five inmates escaped, of whom only a dozen have been recaptured.

On the walls of the charred cells the search parties found remains of many weird drawings that had an unusual similarity. These portrayed monsters crushing or sweeping away or digesting human figures. Dr. Brauning states that an identical obsession, a mass madness, appears to have seized the inmates….

*

Wandrei did not publish Dead Titans, Waken! in his lifetime, and he showed good judgment in not doing so. It is uneven, to speak politely. Wandrei whipsaws chapter by chapter from surprising strength and concision to self-indulgent post-Lovecraft Lovecraftian rhetorical overkill.

The Web of Easter Island reduces excessive quotation from Graham's diary and increases the use of third-person narration. This is particularly seen in the last chapter, when Graham finds he has been catapulted off the Easter Island of his own day and into year one million, five hundred thousand. To his horror, Graham quickly realizes the techno-utopia he discovers is doomed.

....All over the world, there had come a sharp rise in the numbers resorting to the Towers of Departure. The world capital, the largest of all communities, a city with a population of 30,000 in the Andean approaches of what had once been Brazil, reported forty-one exits in one day compared to its statistical average of nineteen one-hundredths, or .19, daily.

Other localities showed similar increases. Graham did not understand many passages in the council spokesman’s report, for he had only a rudimentary knowledge of the new language. He did, however, catch an allusion to a phenomenon taking place over ocean waters; if the location was given, he missed that detail also. But he did not need it; only one small area of earth could produce a phenomenon of a kind that would substantiate his fears. He waited until the spokesman ended her official report, when the unitel automatically reverted to individual control. He then closed the contact and began moving the selector needle toward the south Pacific.

As the needle moved, he glanced at the screen from time to time; and in the progress of the needle, he caught glimpses of many aspects of this civilization, quite by chance: a food specialist preparing nutrient solutions; startling paintings in an art gallery; a machine scooping up dirt and transforming it to tunics, wire, and energy; a technician inseminating a chosen mother by the insertion of an analyzed and prepared sperm on a sterile injector; two children playing an intellectual game by rearranging the yellow, blue, and red cubes in a three-dimensional suspension; a clump of strange white trees, with branches drooping like the strands of an inverted mop, that lifted their roots and walked away from a region of drought toward a mountain lake.

The selector needle left the coast of Chile; and now the screen showed only the vacant waters of the Pacific. Graham remembered the latitude and longitude of Easter Island, and brought the selector to that area. He saw Easter Island again, though its highest peak lay a hundred yards below the ocean surface. He saw it, for the vast column of alien energy had returned, driving the waters away. And in the crater of Rano Raraku, at the base of the implacable pillar, squatted the Keeper of the Seal, the green little statuette in a fury of mutation, pulsing and rioting through its cycle of expansions beyond the cosmos and contractions from other-time and other-space. Graham looked at the screen with a dullness of despair. By the state of the pillar, he knew that at least another day would pass before the link was completely open for the titans to enter. He could, if he wished, fly to Easter Island and challenge the Keeper again.

He visualized himself engulfed once more by that abysmal force, to be hurled farther and farther onward in leaps of one and one-half million years, until he receded into conjectural vistas of vanishing time. For the measureless column, like the corridor at Stonehenge, was a time-trap, though of different kind; and unless the inventors of it, from their abode in the hyper-time and the hyper-space above and beyond the universe, chose to alter its function and the function of the Keeper, Graham could for ever take the action that would defer the completion of the link. And for ever and forever he would be projected, in steps of one and one-half million years, intervals of absence and return, sliding down the utmost recesses of the future....

The Web of Easter Island, though superior to Dead Titans, Waken!, is not adequate to the promise of its material and scope. Quotations I have selected are from the novel's strongest moments.

But by far the best is the story embedded in chapter one. After several pages recounting the benighted history of the village of Isling, about ten miles from Stonehenge, Wandrei gives us a potent tale, graphic and pungent as folklore:

….in the late afternoon of a muggy July day, eleven-year-old Willy Grant returned to his cottage and proudly showed a little object he had found.

“What is it?” asked his mother, blinking her weary eyes as she turned from cutting a few selected roses in her flower garden.

“I dunno. Me an’ Bill an’ Jack found it, but I got it first, so it’s mine.”

“Where did you find it?”

The boy hesitated a minute. “Oh, we all went into the old graveyard when Bill dared us an’ I saw it stickin’ in the ground so I pulled it out an’ brought it along.”

“Give it to me,” she commanded in that final tone of voice with which there is no arguing. Reluctantly, Willy handed it over. She immediately hurled it toward the roadway. “Tomorrow,” she continued in the same tone, “you take it back where it came from and throw it over the hedge. Then, if you ever go near that graveyard again, you’ll get the strapping of your life. Now into the house with you.”

Willy whined and pleaded, but his mother would not listen. Superstitious Mrs. Grant repeated that if he ever went near the graveyard again or had anything more to do with the object, he would be whipped blue.

Near nightfall, John Grant came home from the day’s toil of delivering mail. While he took off his heavy walking shoes, Mrs. Grant scurried around preparing the evening meal. She said nothing to her husband about Willy’s discovery. Perhaps she had forgotten about it already, nor did she notice that the boy had slipped away for a minute and returned to his room furtively carrying something.

After the meal, the rest of the evening passed with the small talk that had concluded their every monotonous day for a dozen years. At nine-thirty sharp, Willy was sent to bed, and at ten John and Madge Grant followed, in the unvarying routine of their existence. The night hung still, but hot and damp. John Grant, a tiredness in his legs, quickly dropped off to sleep. His wife lay restless, and for a long time remained awake, but towards midnight she too finally sank into a troubled slumber.

For the first time in many months, she dreamed a dream; and her dream had an extraordinary and terrifying nature such as she had never before experienced. She thought she went walking past a graveyard where hundreds of old, white tombstones rose eerie everywhere. She wanted to run away, but the mesmeric power of dreamland held her. While she watched, a curious small gray thing with the face of her son scuttled across the burial ground and pulled a carven image from the earth. As it did so, the white tombstones suddenly turned into carven images and soared skyward until an army of colossal, implacable monsters stood before her. And beneath their feet, the tombs opened up and discovered vast corridors leading into the bowels of earth, and from their immeasurable depths rose the stench of ancient corruption. The thing with the face of Willy scampered away bearing its prize. She tried to cry out and warn it to drop its burden, but no sound came from her throat. The little beast scurried toward the safety of a blob of devouring darkness. Now the titans moved with great strides, to block that escape, until they formed a circle around the gray creature. Slowly, slowly, the giant limbs closed inexorably on the captive, the ring became smaller, impassive Gargoyle faces stared on the animal that whimpered wildly around trying to escape. She saw it forced toward the rim of a bottomless corridor, nearer, nearer-

From the realms of sleep, John Grant and Madge Grant awoke at the same instant, their ears filled with a shriek of terror. John Grant leaped from his bed and raced to Willy’s room while old Madge lighted a lamp with trembling hands and followed. She heard her husband call, “What is it, son?” But she heard no answer. She brought him the lamp, and together they looked in.

John Grant gave a hoarse gasp, but his wife made no sound as she slumped to the floor. The lamp crashed, and tongues of flame began to dance. Faced with a choice of the living from the dead, he carried his wife to safety. The grotesque form on the bed, of changing outline and phosphorescent shine, green and pitted as if some enormous worm had gnawed, bore little resemblance to the Willy who had been theirs; and the black, liquid eyes that stared blindly at them were never those of their son. John Grant gave silent prayer as the cottage burned to the ground.

Old Madge was Mad Madge when she became conscious. She mumbled of a “green little big stone that ate Willy”, and the neighbors shook their heads pityingly. She took to wandering along the Vadia, and prowling around the graveyard, with her hair matted and her eyes glary. If asked what she sought, she would answer that she was hunting for the green stone that ate Willy. Had she not been insane, her reply might have drawn persistent questions from the curious; but they considered her words the raving of a demented woman. John Grant remained taciturn. He chose to let the villagers think that his son had died in an unfortunate but accidental fire.

The days slipped by, one torpid afternoon following another as July drew to a close. A fortnight after the tragedy some of the neighbors saw Mad Madge running down the Vadia in the early twilight. She carried an object wrapped with her shawl, and gasped as if she had run far. She turned from the roadway and stumbled toward the vacant cottage which she and her husband were temporarily occupying.

As she entered the house, she found her husband already waiting. He looked at her with surprise and pity, noticing her disheveled appearance and the bundle she hugged tightly.

“What is it, Madge? What is it you have there?” he asked kindly.

She sucked the air and raved incoherently that she had found Willy. A weird light of madness and joy glittered in her eyes, she clutched the shawl closer to her breast, she crooned meaningless phrases over it. John tried to see what it was that she carried, but she backed away snarling and hugged the object still more tightly. The shawl became loosened momentarily when she sat in a chair, but all he could see of what she held was that it seemed gray, or possibly greenish. She rocked back and forth, back and forth incessantly, talking and muttering to herself. John heard a phrase that got on his nerves, “The little green stone that ate Willy,” repeated over and over, together with mumbled pleas that something would “Please give back Willy, he didn’t mean any harm by it.”

Throughout the evening, heat lightning flickered in the sky, the air hung sultry and heavy. Clouds were piling up from the west, and it seemed as if a dry spell of weeks at last would be broken. Just after nightfall, the first big drops fell. There followed a minute’s hush, then the wind arose, and gusts of rain whipped against the windows.

At bedtime, Mad Madge let herself be led away, carrying the object still wrapped in the shawl. John made another half-hearted attempt to discover its nature and take it from her, but decided rather to humor her, when she drew her lips back like an animal at his slightest gesture toward the shawl.

She held the bundle even in bed, like a child with its doll. John heard her talking for a long time, till her voice finally died out. He lay awake a while after, thinking back on the mysterious death of Willy, and what to do with Madge. He wondered if it might not be that both of them were mad, and the whole occurrence merely a dream of delirium. What power could have caused so malignant and monstrous a change in Willy? Perhaps it resulted from some dreadful disease that gave no warning symptoms until it had progressed beyond hope of cure. He would never know, now; only that it must have been for the best that death came quickly. The ways of the Lord proved inscrutable.

The wind prowled around the house and whooped through the trees. Invisible fingers moved the shutters. Squalls of rain from time to time swirled against the windows. To the accompaniment of these elemental sounds, John was dozing off when he heard his wife begin to mumble again. He looked at her during a brief lightning flare. Though her eyes remained closed, her lips moved.

“N’ga n’ga rhthl’g clr’tl—”

What fantastic gibberish was this that came from Madge? It seemed meaningless. He could not recognize a single familiar word in that harsh jargon of consonants and breathings, nor did the low voice sound like that of his wife as it went on in a kind of rhythmic chant, “—ust s g’lgggar septhulchu nyrcg—”

During the night, giant bolts of lightning fissured the sky. Disturbed by the violence of the storm, a Mrs. Sayres whose home lay nearest to the temporary quarters of the Grants awakened just in time to see a dazzling flare envelope their house with a crash as of bursting worlds. She thought she saw a vast green smudge sprawl off the roof. During the intensity of blackness that followed, she stood with nose flattened against her window till the lightning crackled anew. The sky’s reflected glare showed the house still standing, and no trace of that strange, great shadow, though she convinced herself that the previous bolt had struck the house by the Vadia. A furious downpour now completely obscured her view. Satisfied no harm had befallen the Grants, since she had not detected a sign of fire or visible damage, and deterred by the wild night, she returned to bed.

John Grant did not appear at work the following day. Nor did Mad Madge come forth. In any small town or village the world over, the neighbors’ affairs are a vital part of everyone’s existence; and when no sign of life became evident in the Grants’ home by mid morning, idle curiosity developed into more immediate concern.

Several gossips remembered having seen mad Madge run down the Vadia clutching some object tightly.

“And you know,” said garrulous Mrs. Dakin, “Jack said he and Willy Grant and the Stacy boy went into the graveyard, let me see now, it must have been a fortnight ago, or maybe three weeks. Well, and they found something, that is, Willy did, and took it home with him, and Jack says it wasn’t like anything he ever saw before, a funny little stone man only it wasn’t a man at all. I always did say no good came out of the old graveyard, and now here it’s proved before our eyes, the Lord’s got his curse against it. Why you know their cottage burned to the ground that very night and poor Willy with it, and John had a great to-do to get Madge out in time, and now there’s no telling what’s happened to the both of them, poor souls. Something dreadful, you may be sure.”

“Maybe they’re dead,” added Mrs. Sayres helpfully. “When I saw that big bolt strike, I says to myself, says I, ‘It’s a good thing it wasn’t you that it hit,’ meaning me, of course. Like as not both got killed or hurt bad, and they’re up there now waiting for somebody to come after them.

“Of course,” she tacked on apologetically, “I couldn’t go out in that terrible storm, there’s no saying what might have happened to me, it was that bad.”

“It’s just possible,” put in one of the more intelligent townsmen, “that Mad Madge got terrified of the storm and ran off, with John out searching for her. You never know about those things. Seems to me we ought to wait a while. I don’t like to put my nose in other folk’s troubles.”

“Well, I don’t like the looks of it,” went on Mrs. Dakin, “and if I had my way I’d have been gone from Isling all these years just to get away from that Devil’s Graveyard. Why, the storm woke me up last night and made such a racket you never heard in all your born days, and I thought somebody was shouting outside but I couldn’t understand a word of it. I never did like these foreigners, anyway, English is good enough for me and it’s good enough for anybody, I think.”

It was finally agreed that an investigation ought to be made. Three men elected to find out what had happened, or whether the Grants needed aid.

They walked up to the house and pounded on the door, but only the echo of their knocking answered them. They shouted to John and Madge, inquiring if they wanted assistance, but no voice came back to them. In the pause that followed they held a short consultation and agreed that duty now required them to enter.

The door had not been locked. They opened it, to be met by a heavy, nauseating stench that forced them to retreat until the foul air had partly cleared away. When they finally re-entered, the sickening odor compelled them to breathe through handkerchiefs.

A hurried search of the ground floor disclosed nothing amiss. They halted again at the entrance for breaths of fresh air, then climbed to the bedroom. Its door was closed. They pushed it, but though unlocked, it did not yield. A weight lay against it from the inside. With growing suspicions of what they might find, they put their shoulders against it and heaved it open far enough to enter. They could hear the weight dragging as they shoved it back.

In the room they found one body half-fallen from bed, and another that seemed to have been clawing at the door which provided no escape. Madge’s shawl lay empty on the floor; whatever she had wrapped in it had vanished.

Mad Madge and John Grant were dead, if indeed those forms had been theirs. For in that mass of greenish corruption, gouged and pitted, remained little of human resemblance. Before their horrified eyes, the bodies gave the illusion that they underwent a final transformation, as though shimmering in heat-waves, melting and changing from flesh to a less stable state, from man to beast to stone, a strange and awesome impression that sent the three searchers running downstairs.

An inquest was held; the verdict returned, “Death by lightning.” Unanswerable questions went unasked. How could lightning have caused so profound a change? Why had not the bodies charred or burned? What was it that Mad Madge held as she ran down the Vadia? Whose voice had rumbled guttural syllables while the storm raged? And if death had not resulted from lightning, what unimaginable agency wrought that metamorphosis of flesh? Nothing known to man could have brought about so rapid and total an alteration in the very organic structure of the two corpses. Against his will to believe, the village doctor denied that Madge and John might have fallen victims to disease. In his practice, in his experience, and in his medical studies, he had never encountered a case that bore the slightest relation to the baffling condition of the bodies.

The absence of strangers in Isling did not preclude, but argued against, a theory of homicidal attack. The absence of any known motive or any possible motive served only to make the riddle more inexplicable. For the analysis indicated many violences: exposure to heat of the order of suns, and to cold of the intensity of absolute zero; subjection to pressures as high as the bottom of oceans, and to vacuum as complete as the far spaces between stars.

Death by lightning seemed reasonable for the record, though it offered no explanation to those four who had viewed the bodies. Isling accepted this substitution of the familiar for the incredible. But the legends of the past lived again; and the new riddle provided a basis for legends to haunt the future….


Jay
12 August 2017