Weird Tales, Nov '24: F B Long, O A Kline and H S Whitehead

Years ago, I pledged to read at least one story from each issue of the seminal speculative fiction magazine Weird Tales bearing a 1930s cover date.  That quest accomplished, I expanded the scope of my eldritch ambitions to encompass the entire century-long history of the unique magazine of the bizarre and unusual and began chipping away at the 1940s and 1920s.  Some progress has been made, but more lies ahead.  (Click the links below to see the evidence that backs up my boasting.)

1923 

1930    1931   1932   1933    1934    1935    1936    1937    1938    1939

1940    1941   1942   1943

Today's stride in this long journey will see us read three stories from the November 1924 issue of the magazine, the first issue edited by Farnsworth Wright.  We've got a story by Frank Belknap Long, one of H. P. Lovecraft's closest associates and author of such dud post-war novels as Monster from Out of Time,Woman from Another Planet and Journey Into Darkness (good titles, though) and good pre-war stories as "The Ocean Leech," "The Red Fetish," and "Dark Vision."  We've got a piece by Otis Adelbert Kline, three of whose underwhelming stories we recently read. And a story by Henry S. Whitehead, known for his ghost and voodoo stories, three of which we read in the fall of 2024.  I'll be reading "The Desert Lich," "The Phantom Rider," and "The Door" in a scan of the magazine that you too can explore at this link.

"The Desert Lich" by Frank Belknap Long

The narrator of "The Desert Lich" was an adherent to the religion of peace we have all been learning about, whether we wanted to or not, since September 11, 2001.  But a faithless one!  "The Desert Lich" is the tale of how he for the first time called upon Allah for help and finally realized one must "never violate the Qoran."

Our narrator is a slave merchant who sells wives to lonely men who live out in the desert, far from the walled city in which he does business.  He sold a customer some shoddy merchandise--a woman who cheated on her husband!  Our guy tries to rationalize that he himself did nothing wrong, but of course it is a crime to sell defective goods!  The customer has killed his faithless wife, and come to town to wreak a revenge on our narrator.  Too cowardly to fight, the merchant allows himself to be led out into the cold desert night and dropped down a hole into the sepulcher where lies the dead wife--and other disgusting things!

Long puts on a bravura performance describing the evolving mental state of the merchant--his horror at what he finds in the sepulcher, his regret, his maddening, obsessive, desire for food--at describing the shocking and sickening contents of the tomb--mildew, rats, snakes, the corpse!--and at describing the physical pain suffered by the slave merchant due to his fall and the frostbite that threatens to relieve him of possession of his ears and the rat bite that draws his blood.  There is even effective black humor:

During the day I devoured my headdress. It was not pleasant, of course, but I got it down somehow. It had a sweet starchy taste.

Very good.  For years I wondered why Long had such a good reputation when his later work was so shoddy as to defy belief.  But early pieces like this that are so truly disturbing and disgusting, that convey so ably the psychology of a horrible person in a horrible circumstance, that describe so memorably images and events so monstrous, justify the fund of good will Long has enjoyed.  Thumbs up for "The Desert Lich."

"The Desert Lich" was reprinted in a 1986 special Long-centric issue of The Crypt of Cthulhu and in the 1996 Barnes & Noble anthology of short-shorts 100 Tiny Tales of Terror.  You can also find it in the colossal 1100-page Long collection put out by Centipede Press in 2010. 

Some websites show this red image (right) as the cover of Centipede Press'
Masters of the Weird Tale: Frank Belknap Long, while others show a 
blue-green cover.  This thing is a mystery, and I don't have $1500
to fund an investigation.

"The Phantom Rider" by Otis Adelbert Kline

Advertised on the contents page as a "Western Ghost Story," "The Phantom Rider" is a competent filler piece.  A guy who has spent many years prospecting for gold ran out of cash and had to take on a young inexperienced partner who could finance his next operation.  They find a fortune in gold, and the older guy resents having to share with the younger.  So, he pushes the "greenhorn" and his horse off a ledge into quicksand, the subject of many jokes by lame comedians and tiresome hipsters.  As the young man sinks to his death, he curses his murderer, saying he will climb out of hell to get his revenge.  Sure enough, later in the story, after the killer has gotten drunk with his newfound wealth and fled a saloon because he got a little rowdy and drew the attention of the sheriff, the ghost or revenant or whatever of the murder victim--and his horse--chase down the killer, lassoing him--the next day he is found dead, rope marks on his neck.  

A professional job with foreshadowing and a character who acts in accordance with his personality and all that, just not a big deal.  "The Phantom Rider" has not been reprinted--maybe it is true that the internet is convincing kids to eat detergent and chop off their body parts, but without it we'd have a hell of a time reading this story.

"The Door" by Henry S. Whitehead

Here's another story that was immortalized in one of those "instant remainder" B&N anthologies, this one 100 Ghastly Little Ghost Stories.  "The Door" was also reprinted in a 1933 ish of WT under the "Weird Story Reprint" heading, and in various Whitehead collections.

Little more than three pages of text in the November 1924 issue of Weird Tales, "The Door" is a better than average filler piece, a sort of twist ending story the twist of which you know from the first column.  I can marginally recommend it.  

A guy hits something as he is driving down the street, goes back to see what it was--Whitehead doesn't say it is a person, but we readers are led to assume it is.

We are then introduced to young Phillips, apparently some kind of troublemaker.  Recently he was thrown out of the house of his socially prominent parents for committing some crime.  Tonight he feels a shudder as he crosses the street to sneak into his parents' apartment while they are at the symphony and the "colored maid" is on a train for Boston.  Whitehead doesn't tell us quite what, but he is on a mission to do something to try to make up in some small way for his misdeeds, return stolen money or something like that.  But when he gets to the apartment door he can't open it.  He hears a commotion down on the street.  Then a bunch of men come up the stairs, carrying an awkward bundle.  The makeshift shroud flaps open and Phillips sees his own dead face!  He couldn't open the door because he is a ghost!  

We know the whole time that Phillips is dead, but still the story is sort of engaging. 

**********

It feels good to award three passing grades, and a high mark for Frank Belknap Long, whom I have had to upbraid so many times in the past.  This stretch of our weird journey has been pretty smooth.  We'll be seeing more of Long, Kline and Whitehead in the days ahead.