Four Spicy Mysteries by E. Hoffmann Price

My local library offers the hoopla service that facilitates the borrowing of e-books, and, still curious about E. Hoffmann Price's stories from the "spicy" pulps, I borrowed The 11th Golden Age of Weird Fiction MEGAPACK, an e-book of 18 stories by Price.  On this episode of MPorcius Fiction Log we'll be reading four of those 18, each a cover story from an issue of Spicy Mystery Stories that appeared between 1935 and 1942.

"The Walking Dead" (1935)

We immediately wade into troubled waters with this story, which by today's standards is alarmingly racist.  A week ago Walt Connell gave the black man who acts as his gardener, handy man and gofer, Plato Jones, some money to drive down to the Mississippi Delta, sixty miles away, to pick up some orange wine.  Connell hasn't seen the man since then, and assumes he drank the wine himself and is scared to come back.  But today Jones's fat wife, crying, comes by to say she has not seen her husband in a week.  Price makes jokes abut how white people who hire blacks are always having to bail them out of jail and always in danger of being outwitted by their "African guile" and forced into doing them favors. And you know how people who have pet cats joke that the cat actually owns them, and dog owners will joke that the dog walks them instead of vice versa?  Well, Price makes a similar joke about how a white person doesn't hire a "negro," rather, a white is "adopted" by a black.  Oy. 

Anyway, Mrs. Jones, whose speech Price renders phonetically ("Ah knew you'd take care of yo'ah cullud folks") gives Connell the gift of a chocolate cake and some salted cashew nuts and gets him to go look for her husband ("Ah don' baked yo'all a chocolate cake for yo' lunch when you go to get dat no good niggah!")  The next day he drives down to the Delta, the cake and nuts in his glove compartment, stopping at every small town jail on the way to ask after Jones.

At the last town he asks the pretty Cajun girl with large breasts who is working behind the counter of the general store about Jones.  She hints that Jones has been turned into a zombie and is working on the plantation of one Pierre Ducoin!  This shocking news doesn't stop Connell from having sex with the curvaceous Cajun seductress in the back room of the store.  As the sun begins to set he remembers why he came down here and books it on over to the Ducoin plantation where he sees Jones's distinctive red Model T half hidden behind some shrubs.  Then he meets Ducoin himself, shepherding and a squad of silent and vacant-eyed African-American workers--the zombies!

Ducoin agrees to let Connell talk to his workers to see if any of them know about Jones, but insists that will have to wait until tomorrow.  Ducoin has Connell over for dinner and gives him a room.  At night, Connell can see blacks silently working the fields, even though there is no overseer present.  He also receives a surprise visitor, the beautiful pale-skinned black-haired Madeline Ducoin, Pierre's niece.  She warns him to leave at once, and tells him Jones is now one of the walking dead!  Connell seduces the girl and they agree to sneak off together to be married.  When Connell opens the trunk of his car to put Madeline's luggage in there, Mrs. Plato emerges--she has been hiding there the whole time!  (Like eight or twelve hours?)

Ducoin, and the black sorceress who acts as his assistant, have spotted Connell and Madeline trying to steal away and sic the zombies on them; Connell's blows have no effect on their nerveless dead bodies, and he and Madeline are captured.  After a little gloating the two villains leave to make the potion that will turn Connell and Madeline into zombies.  They assign some of the zombies to guard them--one of them is poor Plato Jones!

Price portrays the zombies as emotionless robots with no initiative who follow instructions precisely and otherwise do nothing.  This helps explain how Mrs. Jones has eluded capture.  Another piece of zombie lore that I can't recall ever having seen before leads to Mrs. Jones saving the day.  She remembers something her grandmother told her about zombies--salt makes zombies go berserk and kill their masters, and then bury themselves--and gives her undead husband some of her salted cashew nuts.  Fed these salty treats, the zombies tear Pierre Ducoin and the black witch to pieces, and then run off; our surviving cast can see them in the distance, feverishly digging their own graves in the bare earth.  Connell promises to hire the widowed Mrs. Jones full time as Madeline's maid after they get married, so I guess everybody has a happy (?) ending.

While not suitable for today's audiences, and poor at best because it doesn't maintain a consistent tone--there are too many jokes and silly sex scenes for it to work as a horror story, and the disgusting killings keep it from being light-hearted fun--"The Walking Dead" is perhaps a story scholars of the depiction of African and African diaspora culture in genre literature, and in particular the depiction of zombies, should read.  

Like our next story, "The Walking Dead" would be included in the 2004 Price collection Satan's Daughter and Other Tales form the Pulps.

"Satan's Daughter" (1936)

Price appends to the start of "Satan's Daughter" three lines about Lilith from Dante Gabriel Rossetti's poem "Eden Bower."  (Check out Rossetti's paintings and drawings on the theme of Lilith at wikipedia.)  

Morton Reed is an archaeologist.  He discovers a forgotten city under the desert, and unearths a fine statue of a gorgeous woman with Semitic features standing on the back of a lion.  The thing scares his faithful Arab servant, who thinks it represents Bint el Hareth--the Queen of Demons!  

(Price never actually uses the name "Lilith" in the text of "Satan's Daughter," but I guess we are supposed to see Bint el Hareth as Lilith under another name or perhaps a related figure.)

At night a beautiful woman comes to Reed's tent, a woman who looks just like the statue of the Queen of Demons.  She and Reed have an enthusiastic make out session, but she won't go all they way--it seems she can't because of a silver girdle she wears.  She explains that if he wants her Reed must come to her in Kurdistan, and exhorts him to study the inscription on the base of the statue, which describes the spell he must cast to summon her.  Then she bites him and drinks some of his blood, and convinces him to bite her and drink some of her blood.  Then, she is gone.

Weeks later Reed, disguised as a native, rides a donkey into Kurdistan, to the ruined tower where he can cast the spell that will summon Bint el Hareth.  In the tower's crypts lie the dried mummies of the many men who have summoned the Queen of Demons over the centuries--each of these desiccated husks has the mark of a woman's lips on its forehead!  

By the ruin sits a village.  Reed goes to it to buy food, and while there he spots a white missionary providing medical care to the locals; with him is a beautiful red-headed girl, the first white woman Reed has seen in years!  His desire is enflamed!  Suddenly, bandits attack the village.  Reed is good at fighting with a sword and at shooting with a rifle, and rescues the redhead.  They retreat to the ruin; the missionary, her uncle, is dead, and the village has been burned.

The bandits lay siege to the ruin, and Reed and the redhead have sex--she assumes the bandits will eventually get them, and says she doesn't want to die a virgin.  Could love be blossoming between them?  Should Reed abandon his quest for Bint el Hareth and try to figure out a way to elude the bandits so he and this girl can live happily ever after together?  But hopes of escaping are dashed when the Reed runs out of ammo; doomed he casts the spell to summon the Queen of Demons... and finds the joke is on him!  The redhead is the Queen of Demons!  The real redhead was slain in the village with her uncle--Bint el Hareth just took over her body to have a little fun.  At first Reed fears his demon lover is going to punish him for cheating on her, but she doesn't care about that--she fulfills his dream, and Reed dies of ecstasy while enjoying Bint el Hareth's charms.  When the bandits finally bust into the tower they can't find the redhead they had hoped to enslave, just the white man's inert body, the mark of a woman's lips on his forehead. 

This is actually a decent story, with a plot that makes sense and a unity of tone.  Long time readers of MPorcius Fiction Log know I like stories about disastrous sexual relationships and stories about the crazy and stupid things men will do when driven by sexual desires.  I think this is the first of these spicy stories I can legitimately recommend to general SF/pulp readers.

"Prayer to Satan" (1942)

A bunch of anthropologists are in Kurdistan, measuring and photographing a tribe of Yezidis, people who, according to this story, worship the devil!  (According to wikipedia this is a misconception about the Yezidi religion that is actually offensive to Yezidis, so I advise against going around saying this to people.)  Dan Mason is a senior member of the expedition--he's not an anthropologist himself, but as a friend of the Yazidis he  plays the role of guide, ambassador and peacekeeper; for some reason (I guess to move the plot along and enhance the story's theme of vision), he also has the job of developing the expedition's film.

The Yezidis warn Mason that all the white people on the expedition are his enemies, and invite him to join their tribe.  One of the Yezidis casts a spell on Mason, giving him, literally and metaphorically, better sight.  That evening he discovers that, while he is in the film-developing tent every night, his wife Diane has been cheating on him!  He also learns that the anthropologists are sneaking into the Yezidi's sacred temples and stealing their artifacts!  Holy crap!  Mason demands that the expedition leave at once, because the Yezidis will probably kill them all if they discover the thefts; he tells everybody to hastily pack while he returns to the Yezidi temple a purloined copy of the Black Book of Satan.

On his way to the temple, in the dark, Mason is ambushed, shot down and killed!  But with his augmented vision he is able to see a beautiful woman approaching him--it is Laylat, one of the daughters of Lilith, a demon who haunts the night!  (Lilith it seems, is a recurring theme in Price's work.)  As a sort of ghost, hanging between life and death, Mason has sex with this otherworldy being.  More importantly, perhaps, she tells him that all men are given the choice of whether to live or die, and Mason can now choose to live on or expire.  Mason wonders why so few men choose life over death, and Laylat explains that most men are weary of living, even if they don't admit it to themselves, and their souls crave the rest of death.  Price is laying some heavy philosophy on us here!  Oh yeah, there is another reason men who are sick or injured might choose to die instead of to live--men who choose life must make a deal with the Devil to secure that additional life!  Mason decides that he needs to restore his life so he can return the Black Book to his Yezidi friends and make sure the expedition, for which he has responsibility even if they are a bunch of shits, gets out of Kurdistan alive. 

Laylat the sexy demon leads Mason the responsible ghost into the Yezidi temple where they meet Satan himself, who appears as a glowing vortex.  Mason is flabbergasted, but Laylat negotiates for him, offering the lives of Diane and the other members of the expedition in exchange for prolonging Mason's life.  Well, there goes Mason's hope of rescuing the expedition!  But maybe the expedition doesn't deserve to be saved--when Mason gets to the expeditions' tents, still in invisible ghost form, Diane and her lover are not packing, but talking about how they hired some Arabs to kill Mason and get the Black Book back from him!  Mason thought that it was bandits or Yezidi guards who killed him, but it was agents of his own unfaithful wife and greedy colleagues!  The Yezidis, knowing the score, attack the expedition to retrieve their book and avenge Mason, killing everybody--the leader of the Yezidis bares Diane's breasts before ending her life with a sword.

Mason wakes up, back in his body, in the tent of his true friend, the leader of the Yezidi tribe.  The chief has a beautiful daughter, Layla, who looks like Laylat and already wants to be Mason's second wife.  Price hints that she is, somehow, an incarnation of Laylat and knows all about their passionate tryst and momentous visit with Ole Scratch while he was in ghost form.

Like "Satan's Daughter" this is a solid weird story about men and their risky sexual relationships.  It is also a story about going native; in "South Sea Justice," a Price story we looked at in our last episode, we saw a guy resist going native, but this time the protagonist takes the plunge.  It is nice to see Price exploring this theme from a different angle.  Similarly, while the Lilith figure in "Queen of the Lilin," Price's 1934 Weird Tales cover story we recently read, is an abominable monster, the Lilith figure here, while eager to consign people to death, is helpful to the hero and can be seen as an agent of (rough!) justice. 

"Prayer to Satan" was included in the 1975 Price collection Far Lands Other Days.             

"Web of Wizardry" (1942)

Here's another story that was reprinted in Far Lands Other Days.

Barry Baylor is an American in Iran, a businessman who buys Persian rugs for export.  An acquaintance of his is fellow Yank Allan Ostrom; Ostrom works for some kind of transportation company, managing bus and train stations.  Ostrom has a beautiful wife, Marta, and Marta and Baylor are having an affair.  Baylor keeps imploring Marta to leave her husband, but Baylor doesn't have enough money to maintain the lifestyle Marta enjoys with Allan--the war has really disrupted the international Persian rug trade.  This kind of feels like an excuse--it seems that Marta actually likes Allan, and isn't in love with Baylor--she just enjoys having a little sex on the side.  Baylor, on the other hand, is seriously smitten by Marta.

In search of a solution to his woman problem, Baylor visits a witch who lives in a cave, a hideous old hag named Aisha.  Her cave is full of looms with half-finished rugs on them that depict recognizable human figures amid their complex patterns--Aisha determines the the courses of people's lives by weaving their fates on these magic looms!  Aisha agrees to use her sorcery to help Baylor achieve his ambition of sailing away with Marta, after of course warning him that trying to change the patterns set by Allah is dangerous and "the blessing you seek will become a doom and Satan the Damned will mock you."  People in stories always ignore good advice like this.  

The rest of the story chronicles the wild twists of fate which Baylor and the Ostroms experience as Aisha weaves their fates in unexpected and often unwelcome ways.  Baylor and Ostrom are usually pretty even-tempered guys, but something (guess what!) makes them act impulsively and aggressively and they get in a fist fight which almost kills Ostrom.  Afraid he will continue to act impulsively, Baylor decides to bury his pistol in the courtyard under a stone so he can't easily access the weapon, and in the dirt he finds an ancient treasure trove!  Now he can afford to take Marta back to America!  But Marta refuses to leave Allan, because he is having a tough time and needs her support--the big company he works for has been seized by the Iranian government and those corrupt bastards laid him off because he can't afford to pay a huge bribe!  Thinking Marta may feel comfortable leaving Allan if he has his job back, Baylor uses some of the treasure to bribe the necessary Iranian officials so Ostrom is rehired!

This sort of stuff keeps happening, Baylor, Ostrom and Marta suffering all kinds of problems, but Baylor never actually getting any closer to getting Marta all to himself.  At one point Baylor goes to the witch's cave to try to get the old hag to do a better job with her sorcery, and instead of finding Aisha there he meets a beautiful young woman wearing a veil, who says she is Aisha's daughter, Shireen.  Shireen says living in a cave with her mother gets pretty lonely, and she seduces Baylor and they have sex; Shireen promises to rework her mother's weaving to Baylor's benefit. 

Things don't work out, however.  It seems you just can't trust witches who live in caves, even the hot ones!  Baylor and Ostrom ending up having a duel in a mountain pass near Aisha's cave.  Ostrom shoots first and misses.  Baylor doesn't want to kill Ostrom--Marta will never love the murderer of her husband--so he aims to miss on purpose, but his shot starts an avalanche that kills Ostrom and critically injures Marta, who was secretly watching the duel.  Baylor tells the Marta he is going to get help, but knows getting a doctor will take too long, so he goes to the witch cave.  When Shireen refuses to revise her weaving so as to undo the deadly disaster that has befallen the Ostroms, Baylor grabs the half-finished rug and throws it on the fire!  Shireen laughs and reveals that there is no Shireen--Aisha just put on that sexy disguise so he would have sex with her!  Cripes!  Even worse, burning up the weaving that was determining their fates has killed him. In the final scene of the story Baylor, Allan and Marta are all ghosts, walking listlessly by a caravan; one of the Iranian mule drivers shivers and prays to Allah for protection from the evils of the night, witches, and people driven by envy.

This is a pretty good weird story that reminds you that--no matter how horny or envious you get--you should deal honestly with people and should definitely not under any circumstances enlist witches to help you accomplish your unethical intrigues.    

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The first "spicy" story by E. Hoffmann Price I read, "Tailor Made Mummy," was a series of sex scenes and scenes of violence against women to which were tacked lame weird mystery story elements in an effort to justify them.  This batch of stories is different: "The Walking Dead" is a weird story with gratuitous sex scenes tacked onto it--not good, but an improvement.  The three stories we talked about today about white men in the Islamic world, "Satan's Daughter," "Prayer to Satan," and "Web of Wizardry," are weird stories about sexual relationships--men's perilous risk-taking in pursuit of sexual gratification is at their core.  Those three tales, whose erotic elements are fully integrated into their depictions of the occult and of the mysterious and exotic Near East, are successful and entertaining--I guess I am becoming an E. Hoffmann Price fan.

So, there will be more Price in this blog's future.  But first, after two posts about magazines full of low class exploitative entertainment, we'll have a post about a serious science fiction novel that addresses serious issues, written by a serious science fiction author everybody respects.  So stay tuned!