Sometime around the turn of the twentieth century, something happened, something . . . weird. In the dark halls of ivy-clad manors, in the ancient woodland escapes of New England, a generation of authors was inspired to radically reinterpret the horror and fantasy writing of the past. In place of vampires and werewolves were atmospheres of breathless dread, terrifying visions of long-forgotten gods and unexplainable, writhing monsters. The strange and extraordinary work from that time remains incredibly influential on all aspects of literature today. Penguin Weird Fiction is a celebration of the very best of this writing, a store of novels and tales that for generations have delighted and horrified.
About the Author
Gertrude Barrows Bennett (1884–1948) was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Writing under the pseudonym Francis Stevens, her imaginative and adventurous tales, characterized by ancient civilizations, remarkable artefacts and fearsome supernatural beings, often blurred boundaries between fantasy, science fiction and the darker recesses of the ghost story. A pioneering female author of genre literature, her fantasy and science fiction writing was some of the first by an American woman to be widely published. Her novels Claimed! and The Citadel of Fear remain classic works of Weird Fiction.
Claimed!
Gertrude Barrows Bennett
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Preface
Extract from entry of May 17, 19—, in the log of the Portsmouth Bell, British merchant vessel, Captain Charles Jessamy, Master:
The floating scoria and ashes covering the sea in an almost unbroken thickness of from six to fifteen inches are greatly impeding our progress. How far we shall have to sail before we are out of the affected region I am unable to judge. With the fair breeze and all canvas set, three knots has been our best speed since meeting the seismic wave, May 14.
The port binnacle still disagrees by two and a quarter points with the starboard binnacle, and by one and a half with that in my cabin. Two of the compasses, therefore, or more likely, all three, have been in some manner affected by the submarine volcanic convulsion which caused the wave. Heavy clouds preclude observations; by dead reckoning we should have sighted Corvo early this morning. The heat is terrible, registering 150 F. in the coolest parts of the ship.
Approaching at last the island referred to on my last entry of the 16th, I determined to go ashore if possible. Shortly after six bells in the afternoon watch, being then by dead reckoning 40 degrees N., 31 degrees 15 minutes W., we dropped in a boat, and, leaving Mr Kersage in charge of the ship, with considerable difficulty made our way to land. The island proved to be perhaps five miles in circumference, being of an irregular, oval shape. The formation is a dark, chocolate-colored rock, striated with metallic-red, as I discovered by scraping away at one spot the scoria and wet ashes with which it is thickly coated.
Near the center the rock has been flung up in ridges, forming rectangular and other shapes, quaintly reminiscent of the ruins of old buildings. Though, from some distance off, I observed
that in several cases the warm rain which has been falling intermittently had washed the ash away from these ridges and that the rock so bared is uniformly of the same brilliant metallic-red with which the chocolate-colored formation near the shore is streaked.
From where we stood the illusion of ruins was nearly perfect, and indeed – who knows? – we may to-day have looked upon the last surviving trace of some ancient city, flung up from the abyss that engulfed it ages before the brief history we have of the race of man began. I would have liked to investigate the ‘ruins’ more closely, but thought best not to attempt it.
From many fissures hot, ill- smelling, and probably poisonous vapor is still pouring up, and though the rock is sufficiently cool so that it is possible to walk on it, I deemed it safer to confine exploration to a comparatively small space near our landing- place.
I and one of the men, James Blair, were the sole members of my little exploration party actually to set foot where man has at least not set foot in untold ages, and where, in all possibility, man may never set foot again, since land of this type is quite likely to sink beneath the waves as abruptly as it rose above them.
Blair rather amused me by asking permission to carry away a keepsake of Belle Island as Kersae and I agreed to name it. Scattered over its surface are many irregular blocks and ball-shaped masses – ‘bombs’ as they are termed – greenish-black lava. One of the smaller of the blocks was rather pretty, having a very regular rectangular shape, and the lava deep-green in color, flecked with brilliant scales of metallic scarlet.
Blair said he meant to cut and hollow it out as a box, but when he picked it up it was so hot it burned his hands. The men who had remained in the boat, laughed, which so much annoyed Blair that he removed his shirt, wrapped the block in that, and triumphantly carried it off.
A memento of Belle Island! As I write the place is still visible,
a black streak flecked with the scarlet of its ‘ruins,’ and set in a desolate, heaving waste of gray. I wonder if any other ship will ever sight that land? It may rise yet higher, pushed up by the mighty forces at work beneath us. Or it may be only a week – a day – till the sea reclaims its own.
Mr Lutz and the Strange Sailor
‘For why would I give you the seller’s name? You want you should buy the thing back from him? Believe me, for that feller’s name would be no good to you.’
‘Naw, and I can guess why not! Why, you poor shark – you poor –’
‘Now, now, mister! That’s all. Speak polite, or out of my shop you go!’
Squat, square, heavy-shouldered and brute-jowled Mr Jacob Lutz appeared a poor specimen in whom to seek the traditional Hebraic noncombativeness. Looking upon him, the other man’s bleak gray gaze shifted and fell.
‘Slack away!’ he muttered. ‘I ain’t huntin’ trouble, and I ain’t brought you none.’
With a dismissing shrug, the shopkeeper turned and began ostentatiously to flirt the dust from a crowded tableful of odds and ends. There were crudely ugly fetish bowls from the Congo, and naive wooden manikins, shaped in the half-light of a devildevil hut in the Solomons; there was a cracked, yellowed walrus tusk, painstakingly mal-carved to represent some talented igloodweller’s idea of a tornaq, or boulder-inhabiting she-demon; there were several greenish-black bronze Buddhas, a little badlymarred portable shrine, and various other more or less valuable oddities.
This was Mr Lutz’s ‘bargain-table,’ set out to attract the interest of the casual customers. His ‘regular people’ mostly knew too much to bother with such trash.
Moving delicately to avoid oversetting a stand of Mongolian
arms that nestled a huge, bristling bronze dragon beyond the table’s end, Lutz passed around the table and began working back along the other side.
‘Say,’ complained the man of the bleak gray eyes, ‘ain’t yer going to give me no lead whatever?’
Lutz flung down his duster.
‘For why would I give you a lead?’ he demanded impatiently. ‘Yesterday morning you comes into my shop and says: “I get this here curio off a mate of mine who gets it off a Chinese steward what gets it off a Manchu that stole it from a Taoist temple. I don’t know how it could be opened, and I don’t know what is inside. How much you give me as she lays?”
‘Right away I know somebody’s lying. The writing on the top ain’t Chinese. It looks like it could be archaic Hebrew, maybe; but it ain’t Chinese. Just the same, you being a sailor, I think likely you come by it reasonably honest, and pay you good money. No place else could you sell for so much a curio that has no history, no name, no nothing but a pretty look and a guess for what is inside.
‘Then quick I sell it again, and for more – yes, I tell you the truth, mister – for more than I pay. Why not? That is my business, and at that I ain’t so wealthy. But the feller who buys it, he ain’t the kind of feller that wants I should send you bothering him. He is like all my customers. They are all fine, wealthy people –’
‘And I ain’t fine enough to take a peep at ’em squint-eyed, eh? Well, now you listen here. I ain’t got the least wish to buy back. See? Fact is, I come to do yer a favor like. After I was in here yesterday, I meets the matey I was tellin’ yer about that I got the thing off in the first place. He opens up with some info I didn’t have when I sold.
‘Thinks I, mebbe the poor dealer will get stung, like I did when I sold fer the price of a square. I’ll blow in and put him wise. Mebbe he’ll slip me the half of a bum dime fer sheer gratitude; he looks like a generous slob.
‘So when I find you’ve already sold – and fer a darn sight
more’n what yer give me, I’ll bet! – I ask yer the man’s name that bought it, so I can wise him up. And fer that I get treated like a dog and pretty near throwed out on my head! You give me a pain – fer a fact yer do. So-long!’
In sullen disgust the visitor jerked at his weather-beaten cap, thrust his hands deep in the pockets of disreputably ancient trousers, and slouched for the door. The dealer promptly called after him.
‘Hey, mister! wait a minute. You sell me a curio and say you know nothing about it. Then back you come and say you know all about it. Looks to me like there was fishy business –’
‘Sure,’ flung back the other. ‘Fishy-sharky business – dealin’ with you, I could’ve told yer “fine customer” what’s wrote on the bottom, and what language it’s wrote in, and the whole bloomin’ truth about it. But it’s all off, now.’
Again he lunged toward the door.
Five minutes later Lutz was tossing down on the glass of a display case filled with carved white jades, one of his own business cards. The back bore a scribbled address.
‘You give Mr Robinson that,’ he instructed, ‘and tell him Mr Lutz sent you. I wouldn’t wonder he might give you a nice reward, can you let him know what that inscription is on the top –’
‘On the bottom,’ corrected the sailor.
Mr Lutz started slightly. The sailor’s bleak gray eyes were fixed on him, and something in their expression – or perhaps it was a thought in his own mind – seemed to cause Mr Lutz a sudden strange uneasiness.
‘But the inscription – for sure it is on the top, if you lay it down that way,’ he insisted.
‘On the bottom, lay it just how yer please.’
The bleak eyes held their gaze fixedly. Mr Lutz looked away hastily. Had he not been so stolid and obviously untimorous, one might have believed that Mr Lutz was frightened. Under the blueblack of his shaven jowls the skin seemed actually to whiten.
The stranger leaned to thrust his lean, brown, sneering face close to that of the dealer across the showcase.
‘On the bottom, however, she lays, matey! And say’ – his voice dropped to a rasping whisper – ‘did yer see the white horses come in, with their red throats gapin’ and the wind and the tide at their tails? Did yer?’
At the apparently senseless question, Mr Lutz drew still further away. The hint of fear in his face, however, yielded to a sudden, savage irritation. Brick red replaced the pallor, and an artery in his bull neck throbbed visibly.
‘You talk foolish!’ he snarled. ‘Mister, get out of my shop. Go talk your foolish white horses to Mr Robinson. Maybe he’s got the time to listen. I ain’t!’
Some minutes after the man had left however, Mr Lutz flung down his duster and with a manner oddly distressed ran blunt fingers through his bristling black hair.
‘That such foolishness I would let a feller like that put into my head!’ he muttered. ‘Jacob, it is time, you would take a vacation from business! You are tired out with the July heat and too much work. White horses with red throats and – Phew! – I do not like that feller! I wonder –’
He hesitated a moment, then, going to the telephone at the back of his shop, he took down the receiver and called a number.
Dr Vanaman’s Night Call
‘I can’t say that I see anything so very remarkable about it,’ drawled Leilah Robinson. ‘But I presume that it really is wonderful as you say, Uncle Jesse.’
‘Well, then! And I suppose you can’t see any queerness in the color of this here? Nor in the stuff it’s made of; that surely ain’t metal, nor glass, nor porcelain, nor any ordinary kind of stone? Nor in this here writing on the top, nor – Leilah, I wish to gracious you’d set down while I’m talking! You’ve saw all the things in this room a thousand times if once. Set, can’t you?’
The young woman had been wandering up and down her uncle’s study, inspecting the pictures, taking a book from a shelf and replacing it, or laying an appreciative finger on the crackled glazing of an old vase, a bit of real Satsuma. Now, her slate-gray eyes more bored than usual, she strayed languidly back to the table.
There was a box set on it – an oblong, bluish-green box, about a dozen inches long by half as many wide, highly polished, but severely simple of workmanship. Its sole decoration was a single short line of characters belonging to some foreign language, which had apparently been incised across the top with an engraver’s tool and the lines filled in with scarlet enamel.
The old man, whose finger-nail slowly followed these characters, as if by doing so he might trace their meaning, was as perfect in his way as their draughtsmanship. He was a perfect specimen, that is, of the hawk or predacious type in the genus homo. It was night, and the rays of a hanging lamp brought out his face in bold lights and shadows.
The curved beak of a nose, thin-bridged and cruel, thrust out
