ARTHUR LEO ZAGAT “Bride of the Winged Terror.” First published in Dime Mystery Magazine, November 1936, writing as Grendon Alzee. (In the same issue is “Terror Beneath the Streets,” by Arthur Leo Zagat.) Also available online and in ebook form.

   â€œThese hillbillies hate furriners worse’n poison …” ex-mountain man Fred Harris warns his private detective buddy Dick Mervale as their roadster tackles the dangerous winding roads of Buzzard Mountain where a picture in a circular has led the two to believe bank embezzler Gorham Carstairs has been hiding lo these many years.

   Capturing Carstairs would not only me a big reward and much needed publicity for the low rent sleuths out of Louisville (presumably Kentucky, it is never made clear), but also the gratitude and business of the Bank Association, so they are willing to risk a great deal to capture Carstairs.

   And it becomes clear how much when a bullet from a high powered rifle punches a hole in Fred’s head.

   That doesn’t slow down Dick Mervale, who quickly covers up Fred’s body with rocks, spying a huge vulture as he does so, and makes his way up to the town of Winburg where he is met by armed citizens. They aren’t after Dick though. A child, a young girl has been murdered, horribly mangled by a “big black bird.”

   Dick manages to get out of Winburg and reach the top of Buzzard Mountain where he plans to wait until daylight, but he spies the giant black bird, and seconds later hears a woman’s cry. Racing to her rescue he encounters a leathery black winged monster with a “human face” attacking a young woman “… her gauzy frock … ripped in the struggle…” revealing “…white satiny skin seeming to glow from some inner light and the swelling firm curves of just budding womanhood.”

   And wouldn’t you know it, this is Elise Carstairs the mountain-raised daughter of the man he is after, who promptly shows up with a shotgun.

   From that point on the action literally races to its conclusion, piling horror on horror until the naked Elise is in Dick’s protective arms and the mystery of the winged terror (she isn’t its bride, in fact there is no bride — she’s the monsters niece and no hint of incest appears) and why Carstairs embezzled the money in the first place is laid to rest along with Carstairs and his brother.

   If you don’t recognize the basics of a typical Weird Menace story from what Robert Jonas labeled “The Shudder Pulps” in his excellent book on the subject then you likely don’t know you pulps. These were the ones with the gaudy covers of scantily clad women being tortured and murdered by looming madmen in the most suggestive way with a heroic male usually helplessly watching nearby.

   A variety of pulp authors contributed to the genre, which was one step up from the Spicy genre where the sex was a bit more obvious and the nudity considerably so, including some notable names like Norvel Page, Cornell Woolrich, and Richard Sale, but the genre had its own stars, and one of them was the prolific Arthur Leo Zagat, best known for his fantasy horror Drink We Deep.

   For all the nudity and strange psycho-sexual tortures out of de Sade by way of Kraft-Ebling featured on the covers and in the stories virtue prevailed as did virginity for both hero and heroine. In most cases, as here, a logical (if you can call it that) explanation was swiftly tacked on in the final paragraphs to assure the reader nothing supernatural had happened, though once in a while a whiff of sulfur and brimstone would linger.

   The stories vary in quality as you might expect, from say a minor Universal Horror film to one of those independent productions with the likes of George Zucco, Lionel Atwill, or Bela Lugosi where the sets look like someone’s three bedroom house.

   This one is absurd, even by the standard of the genre, but Zagat was a master of empurpled prose and swelling horrors (sounds like a bad diagnosis doesn’t it?) who could do better and did elsewhere, and this is actually quick fun to read with the caveat you don’t dare stop and think about it. If slavering mad monsters with foetid breath, reddened claws, and hideous eyes are your cuppa, this more than delivers.

   They don’t write ’em like this anymore — well, they do, , but now they are themselves swollen monsters of 500 plus pages and with considerably less virtuous characters, and what logic there once was has gone the way of the pulps themselves. There is something almost innocent about the Weird Menace genre, in a slightly disturbing way, but I wouldn’t suggest you delve too deep.

   Some things are better left alone.

JOYCE CAROL OATES “Did You Ever Slip on Red Blood?” Originally published in Harper’s Magazine, April 1972. Reprinted in Urban Horrors, edited William F. Nolan & Martin H. Greenberg (Dark Harvest, hardcover, 1990; Daw, paperback, 1993).

   One thing that can be undoubtedly said for Joyce Carol Oates is that she is, and continues to be, a prolific writer and an important voice in American letters. Another thing that can be stated is that she is an expert wordsmith, one whose writing is replete with sentences that appear to flow together effortlessly and naturally.

   At least that’s the case for “Did You Ever Slip On Red Blood?” a haunting work of literary horror that originally appeared in the pages of Harper’s. Written in an experimental style with a non-linear timeframe, the story recalls the life and times of one Robert Severin, a counterculture political activist.

   As the story unfolds, the reader begins to learn that somehow, in some manner, Severin is the link that binds together two people who otherwise wouldn’t have met: a stewardess named Marian and her lover named Oberon. Rather than tell the story with in straightforward linear manner, Oates begins the story at the ending and then goes back to the beginning – or, more accurately, a series of beginnings – and then finally recounts the moment in which Marian and Oberon met face to face.

   As it turns out, what brought these two lovers together was a scenario that would have been a very believable one to urban readers in 1972, the year the story first appeared in print. Severin, the reader learns, was acquitted of one crime, but went on to engage in a far more serious crime; namely, hijacking an airliner. It was there that Severin and Marian first met and where Marian would end up slipping in red blood. “Did You Ever Slip on Red Blood?” traverses genre categories. It’s a thriller, a work of crime fiction, and urban horror fiction.

   Recommended.

JACK LONDON “The Enemy of All the World.” First published in Red Book, October 1908. First collected in The Strength of the Strong (Macmillan, 1914). Anthologized several times, including The Science Fiction Stories of Jack London (Citadel Press, hardcover, 1993). Available online by following the link above.

   Jack London’s “The Enemy of all the World” reads more like a work of journalism than a work of fiction. That itself shouldn’t be surprising, given London’s journalism background and extensive corpus of non-fiction writings. What makes this particular short story worth reading, however, is that it’s a work of “journalistic science fiction,” an imaginative recounting of future events from the perspective of the then present.

   Published in the October 1908 issue of Red Book, “The Enemy of All the World” unfolds in purely narrative form. Absent is any dialogue or a writing style that would automatically give it away as a work of fiction. The anonymous, distant narrator recalls the life and times of one Emil Gluck, a neglected child who grew up into a vengeful mad genius and who was executed in 1941. Much like a villain in Jules Verne’s works, Gluck is a scientist socially cut off from a society that scorns him.

   Also similar to those madmen depicted in Verne’s fiction, Gluck utilizes technology to wage a one-man war against the world. Emil Gluck, dastardly villain that he is, utilizes electro-plating – his “apparatus” to wreak havoc with modern technology:

   In the meanwhile Emil Gluck, the malevolent wizard and arch-hater, left no trace as he traveled his whirlwind path of destruction. Scientifically thorough, he always cleaned up after himself. His method was to rent a room or a house, and to secretly install his apparatus— which apparatus, by the way, he so perfected and simplified that it occupied little space. After he had accomplished his purpose he carefully removed the apparatus. He bade fair to live out a long life of horrible crime.

   Fortunately for society, the western powers’ secret services are on Gluck’s trail. It is one intrepid U.S. secret service agent by the name of Silas Bannerman (a perfect name, right?) who finally tracks Gluck down and makes him his prisoner.

   A story with more than a hint of political commentary, “The Enemy of all the World” is worth consideration both as a work of early science fiction and as further evidence that London, who was involved in socialist politics in the Bay Area, had political views that weren’t so easily categorized.

LOUIS L’AMOUR “Unguarded Moment.” First appeared in Popular Detective, March 1952. Collected in The Hills of Homicide (Bantam, paperback, 1983).

   The first paragraph caught my attention:

   The second really had me sitting up and taking notice:

   And the third had me hooked all the way:

   But of course he was seen, and therein lies the story. It continues with some petty blackmail, an accidental death, the dead man’s girl friend who wants to …

   This is Cornell Woolrich territory, maybe with clearer and simpler language, but pure noir from beginning to end.

REX DOLPHIN “Off the Map.” First published in Weird Tales, July 1954. Reprinted in 100 Wild Little Weird Tales, edited by Stefan R. Dziemianowicz, Robert Weinberg, & Martin H. Greenberg (Barnes & Noble, 1994).

   Rex Dolphin (1915-1990) was the pen name of one Reginald Charles Dolphin, a British accountant who also wrote under the pseudonyms Peter Saxon and Desmond Reid. His sole contribution to Weird Tales, a story entitled “Off the Map” appeared in the pulp magazine’s July 1954 issue.

   The product of a vivid imagination and a mind steeped in fantasy literature, “Off the Map” is a minor, albeit imperfect, gem of a tale. The story is based on a premise that readers of historical fantasy and weird fiction have surely encountered in myriad forms over the years: what if there’s a city that’s marked on an older map, but that doesn’t appear on any contemporary ones:

   
   The town in question is Wychburne, an English city that no longer appears in modern cartography. In “Off the Map,” the story’s unnamed protagonist-narrator sets out to discover what happened to this village. Does it still exist? And if so, what happens there?

   The story unfolds in a rather predictable manner, with one local who learns of the narrator’s quest showing his absolute displeasure with the notion. As it turns out, the village — or some phantasmagoric facsimile of it, does still exist. But the small burg’s historical trajectory has been scarred by the experience of a great plague, making this town off the map a burial ground for the ages.

   It must be said that, while “Off the Map” has a more interesting premise than a conclusion, the work does demonstrate that the writer was certainly well versed in both the style and substance of early twentieth-century high fantasy literature.

ALICE & CLAUDE ASKEW “Aylmer Vance and the Vampire.” First published in The Weekly Tale-Teller, UK, July 1914. Collected in Aylmer Vance: Ghost-Seer (Wordsworth, UK) as “The Vampire.” Anthologized several times over the years, including The Vampire Archives: The Most Complete Volume of Vampire Tales Ever Published, edited by Otto Penzler. Available online here.

   Psychic detective Aylmer Vance was the brainchild of husband and wife writer duo Alice and Claude Askew, English authors who were tragically killed when a German submarine sank the ship they were traveling on in 1917. Like his more well known and esteemed counterpart, one Sherlock Holmes, Vance also had an assistant/sidekick who recounted his cases in narrative form. Enter Dexter, Vance’s “Watson,” who acts as “recorder of his strange adventures.”

   In “Aylmer Vance and the Vampire,” the reader learns of a most unusual case investigated by Vance and Dexter, one that involves a vampire and a witch’s curse and unravels less like a mystery and more like a Gothic supernatural tale. Although it’s not a particularly compelling work of detective fiction, the story does contain all of the major tropes of the then emerging modern vampire story.

   There are references to an ancient race, an exotic Continental locale, and the tension between ancient superstitions and modern rational thought and skepticism. There is also a castle, which serves as the locale for strange happenings, one which the narrator Dexter described as a “gloomy edifice” with “the great stone walls, the long corridors, gloomy and cold even on the brightest and warmest of days …”

   All told, “Aylmer and the Vampire” is a solidly constructed vampire story and one that deserves more recognition. While reading it, I couldn’t help but picture Peter Cushing portraying Aylmer Vance in my mind’s eye. That surely counts for something. Recommended.

GASTON LEROUX “The Woman with the Velvet Collar.” First published in English in Weird Tales, October 1929. Reprinted in Startling Mystery Stories, Spring 1969, and in several anthologies of weird fiction since. Originally published in French as “La femme au collier de velours” in 1924.

   Although it took me a while to become fully immersed in Gaston Leroux’s “The Woman With the Velvet Collar,” by the story’s end I was left with the indelible impression that I had just read a well-crafted horror tale. First appearing in English translation in Weird Tales, Leroux’s conte cruel transports the reader to Corsica, a land known for its vendettas and its cultural and physical separateness from mainland France.

   â€œThe Woman With the Velvet Collar” unfolds with a discussion between two sailors, a sea captain named Gobert and his friend, Michel. The two men are discussing Corsican vendetta stories, with Gobert assuring Michel that he has a story that is far more horrifying than any run of the mill vendetta. The tale further unfolds as Gobert begins to tell a story within a story, about his experiences in Corsica in which he encountered a ghost like woman dressed all in black and with a black velvet ribbon around her neck.

   As it turns out, the woman was named Angeluccia and she was married to a local Corsican official. But she kept a secret from her husband! She was secretly romantically involved with her cousin, one of her husband’s employees. Without giving too much of the plot away, let’s just say that the guillotine makes a bloody appearance in this fiendishly clever tale about what happens when a costume party in which Angeluccia dresses up as Marie Antoinette turns into the beginning of a dark foray into the supernatural.

Bibliographic Note:   Captain Michel also appeared in three additional stories:

       Le noël du petit Vincent-Vincent (1924); The Crime on Christmas Night (1930).
       Not’ Olympe (1924); The Mystery of the Four Husbands (1929).
       L’auberge épouvantable (1925); The Inn of Terror (1929).

  ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE “The New Catacomb.” First published in The “Sunlight” Year-Book (1898) as “Burger’s Secret.” First collected in Tales of Terror and Mystery (John Murray, UK, hardcover, 1922) and in the US in The Black Doctor and Other Tales of Terror and Mystery (George H. Doran Co., 1925).

   Admirers of the young Tennessee Williams’ Weird Tales story, “The Vengeance of Nitocris” will find much to appreciate in Arthur Conan Doyle’s conte cruel, “The New Catacomb.” Much as in the former story, it won’t take long for a discerning reader to figure out how the story is likely going to end. Doyle’s punchy, if not overly imaginative, non-supernatural horror story, is a tale in which the quest for archaeological knowledge, a love triangle, and a man’s quest for revenge all play prominent roles and can only really lead to one particular horrifying conclusion.

   The story unfolds in an apartment in Rome in which two students, Kennedy (an Englishman) and Burger (of mixed German and Italian parentage), are discussing their love for archaeology. Kennedy soon discovers that Burger has uncovered a hitherto unexplored ancient catacomb and is eager to learn all about it.

   His zeal for knowledge, however, comes at a price. Burger insists that Kennedy disclose to him the details of a sordid relationship the Englishman had with one Miss Mary Saunderson.

   Why does Burger want to know these scandalous details of Kennedy’s love life and what’s the relationship between this aching desire to know and Burger’s archaeological find? As it turns out, all questions will be answered in the dark recesses of a Roman catacomb, a territory in which both Kennedy and Burger will enter together, but from which only one will return to the surface above.

ROBERT WEINBERG “Three Steps Back.” First appearance: Dial Your Dreams & Other Nightmares, DarkTales Publications, softcover, August 2001.

   If you were to ask me for an example of a solidly constructed horror story that doesn’t touch upon the mystical, the supernatural, or the weird, Robert Weinberg’s “Three Steps Back” would immediately come to mind. Originally published in Dial Your Dreams, a collection of Weinberg’s short stories, the tale can be found within a sub-section of the collection simply entitled, “Nightmares,” in which Weinberg contends that he “always felt the most frightening horror stories are those that don’t feature any element of the supernatural … The real horrors of the world surround us.”

   Set on a university campus, the plot of “Three Steps Back” revolves around the desire of a graduate student by the name of Jake Edwards to unravel the mystery of the Gray Ghost of Illinois University. But the ghost in question here isn’t a supernatural entity. No, he’s just an older man with an extremely bizarre habit: he doesn’t seem to want anyone to be behind him. It’s as if he fears some sort of presence behind him.

   Soon Jake comes to realize that the Gray Ghost is all-too-human. He’s a veteran named Chet Williams who has a severe case of what we now call PTSD. Williams’s fear of people lurking behind him, as it turns out, stems from a particularly heinous experience in a Viet Cong POW camp.

   But that can’t the extent of the story, now can it? Weinberg skillfully builds the suspense, raising it up a notch until the ultimate revelation. As he so rightly notes in his introduction, horror doesn’t need to be supernatural to be mightily effective.

  ULRIC DAUBENY “The Sumach.” First appeared in The Elemental: Tales of the Supernormal and the Inexplicable (George Routledge & Sons, 1919; Ash-Tree Press, August 2006, out of print). Story online here.

   Ulric Daubeny (1888-1922), a British scholar of church architecture, published one original volume of supernatural fiction. Entitled The Elemental (1919), the volume isn’t particularly easy to come by these days. After reading “The Sumach,” I can attest that that’s probably something that should be rectified. I had an opportunity to read this particular Daubeny short story in the recently published anthology, The Rivals of Dracula (No Exit Press, 2015).

   Although this work of weird fiction isn’t in the same league as say Arthur Conan Doyle or H.P. Lovecraft’s output, it’s certainly on par with the short fiction penned by other somewhat contemporaneous writers in the supernatural genre, authors such as Frank Belknap Long and E. Hoffmann Price, both of whom wrote for Weird Tales.

   â€œThe Sumach” is notable for two reasons. First, it is the tale’s reliance on two female protagonists and the concomitant lack of a male character central to the outcome of the story that makes it a bit unique. Second, and more importantly, Daubeny’s “The Sumach” successfully merges the weird biological/plant story with that of the vampire tale. Indeed, the eponymous sumach, as presented in the story, is both an artifact of nature and an agent of the supernatural. It is, for the lack of a better term, a vampire plant.

   With a premise as uncanny such as this, it’s notable that Daubeny is able to weave a tale that never descends into camp or parody. “The Sumach” remains a story in which a woman, in her quest to solve the mystery of her cousin’s tragic demise, comes face to face with a plant that has taken on the characteristics of a vampire that once haunted the English countryside.