Manly Wade Wellman: "The Horror Undying," "The Kelpie," & "The Werewolf Snarls"

My quest to read at least one story in every issue of Weird Tales with a 1930s publication date advances--today with stories by Manly Wade Wellman, a man who, besides writing plenty of science fiction and weird stories for the pulps, scripted comic books and penned works of history on the Civil War and the Old South.

Today's three stories all were reprinted in the 1973 collection Worse Things Waiting; "Horror Undying" was retitled "The Undead Soldier" for that outing and "The Werewolf Snarls" appeared under the title "Among Those Present."

"Horror Undying" AKA "The Undead Soldier" (1936)

This is a solid vampire story that reads smoothly and has some novel flourishes.  Whereas many vampire stories are clothed in the trappings of the aristocrats or decadent aesthetes of Europe, Wellman here leverages America's history of immigration and wars with Mexico and native Indian tribes in a way that is interesting.

A guy, our narrator, is taking a walk in the woods and gets lost in the middle of a blizzard.  He takes shelter in an old cabin, and pulls up some floorboards to burn for warmth--under the floor he discovers some 19th-century documents.  One such document is a privately printed pamphlet that describes how a serjeant in the U.S. Army in the 1840s, an immigrant from Eastern Europe, was discovered to be the murderer of some Indians and even his own comrades, and to have cannibalistically eaten of their bodies!  Another document is a newspaper clipping that tells a similar story of cannibalism in the Army from the 1870s; a third is a wanted poster for the 1870s murderer--the illustration on the pamphlet, and a photo attached to the wanted poster, depict the same man, apparently unaged!

The man described in the documents enters the cabin--is our narrator doomed to be his latest victim?  No--a second man, a Russian priest equipped with garlic and stake and other vampire-fighter paraphernalia, busts in to slay the monster and help explain its strange and horrific career.  Wellman presents in this guy's mouth an unusual theory of lycanthropy and vampirism that would have us believe that a werewolf, which is apparently what the soldier was in the 1840s, who is killed but not burned may return to life as a vampire!  

In some ways a typical monster story but done quite well.  I like it.  "Horror Undying" would reappear in three different Wellman collections and three different anthologies.

"The Kelpie" (1936)  

Like "The Horror Undying," this is a tidy and fun little monster story.

Some dude of means has his girlfriend over to his apartment.  They are a hot item, apparently planning to get engaged.  When they try to make out on the divan they feel like they are being watched, though the only other living thing in the apartment is the little frog in the dude's big aquarium.  This guy's hobby is botany, and he's had samples of freshwater plants sent to him from Scotland upon which to experiment.  Bizarrely enough, in the sealed package with the plants came the little amphibian and a ring, which the guy casually slipped on his ring finger.

When the man is out of sight in another room, answering the phone or at the sink, using soap to try to get that unaccountably stuck ring off his finger, the woman has the hallucination that a hideous monster, a sort of frog woman, is climbing out of the aquarium, that this jealous amphibian wishes her ill because it is in love with her man!  

Or maybe it isn't an hallucination: at the end of the brief story the man is trying to explain to the police that he didn't kill his girlfriend, that those marks on her neck, much like the bite of a water snake, have nothing to do with him.

Short and to the point, the monster vividly described, an entertaining piece of work.

Donald Wollheim selected "The Kelpie" for inclusion in his reprint magazine Avon Fantasy Reader, and it went on to be included in the paperback anthology of stories from the magazine, as well as other anthologies and multiple Wellman collections.

"The Werewolf Snarls" AKA "Among Those Present" (1937)  

This one is just competent filler. 

Our narrator attends a party thrown by some wealthy hipsters who claim to know about the occult and Satanism.  It is the night of the full moon.  The hostess introduces our narrator to an ugly guy with an oddly shaped body who claims to be a werewolf!  He tells our narrator the story of how, when he was in medical school doing research on Renaissance medicine, he followed a recipe for some goop said to be able to give you the power to change your shape, and tested it on himself.  Soon after this experiment he was out on a date with a girl, on the night of the full moon, and felt irresistibly impelled to murder her with his nails and teeth!

Our narrator has been thinking this guy was just joking or perhaps insane, but now he recalls a news story about the very murder this guy is describing!  The murderer explains that he was in an insane asylum for a few years, and was recently released.  He got into contact with the hipster couple hosting this pasty, hoping they might know how to cure him.  But the hipster couple are just a pair of poseurs who invited the werewolf to this party--held on the night of a full moon!--so their friends could laugh at him.

Our narrator hurries out of the party.  Good thing, too--when he looks at the paper the next morning the headline blare that last night those hipsters and two of their guests were murdered and the killer is still at large! 

Unremarkable, but it operates without a hitch.

In 1994 "The Werewolf Snarls" was reprinted in one of those Barnes and Noble anthologies edited by three guys with long names that take a long time to type, where it was accompanied by "The Kelpie," and an Italian werewolf anthology, which also featured "The Undead Soldier"/"The Horror Undying."  

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Three comfortable and easy-to-follow stories that don't challenge you with wild new concepts or waste your time with superfluous descriptions or passages that read like they should have been edited for length or clarity.  A pleasant diversion.  Expect to see more Manly Wade Wellman here at MPorcius Fiction Log in the future.