A Derleth: "The Sleepers," and, w/ M Schorer, "The River," "The Black Castle," and "The Turret Room"

I haven't been keeping it a secret--I'm trying to read a story from each issue of Weird Tales, the famed magazine that was the vehicle for some of the most famous work of such giants as H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard and the early work of breakout successes Robert Bloch and Ray Bradbury, as well as the showcase for the writing of many less famous but well-loved members of the speculative fiction community like Edmond Hamilton, Leigh Brackett, Henry Kuttner, C. L. Moore, and Manly Wade Wellman.  And the list goes on.  One name that belongs on the list is that of August Derleth.  Today we read four stories that appeared under Derleth's name in 1927 issues of Farnsworth Wright's unique magazine of the bizarre and unusual.  The pages of Weird Tales credit one of these four as a collaboration with Marc R. Schorer AKA Mark Schorer, and isfdb suggests that the 2009 Derleth collection The Sleepers and Other Wakeful Things labels two additional stories as Derleth/Schorer collabs, though Schorer is not credited in the 1927 printings.  All four of today's tales would be included in The Sleepers and Other Wakeful Things, but I'll be reading them in scans of the original magazines--here are links to the scans I'll be reading:

Feb     May     Sept     Dec  

Speaking of lists and links, here are links to webpages with lists of Weird Tales stories I have already blogged about, organized by year.

1923   1924    1925   1926

1930    1931   1932   1933    1934    1935    1936    1937    1938    1939  

1940    1941   1942

"The River"

From the February '27 issue we've already grappled with Edmond Hamilton's "The Atomic Conquerors," and now we take a dip in Derleth's contribution.  (It looks like The Sleepers credits Schorer  as a collaborator on this one.)    

"The River" is not very good.  It is a little silly and obvious, and, besides, is too long, even though it is only three pages here in WT.  The first half of the story is a letter.  A British firm is building a dam on the Volga, and the foreman of the project is writing to England to tender his resignation, and he explains why.  The local peasants and a college professor and a hunchback all keep telling the British team that spirits protect the Volga from molestation and somebody will get killed if they build the dam.  Sure enough, somebody disappeared and an inexplicable wave destroyed half of the progress made on the dam, so the writer, and all the workers, quit.  The head engineer is staying on, however.

We then switch to third-person narration, witnessing that stubborn engineer have another interaction with the hunchback, who yells "Death!  Death!  Death!" at the top of his lungs.  Then the engineer watches the ghosts of the boatmen of the Volga rise up to wreck the rest of the dam; these ghosts then wash the engineer downriver, killing him.

Why is there a college professor and a hunchback?  Why is the narration half a letter and half third-person omniscient?  It doesn't seem like much thought went into this thing.  Weak filler, thumbs down.

"The Black Castle"

In the May 1927 issue of Weird Tales, "The Black Castle" is attributed to "Marc R. Schorer and August W. Derleth."

A European count in his high castle above the village feels a strange, irresistible compulsion!  He sits down to write--someone else is controlling his hand, sending him a message!  The message is from some guy he destroyed, a dead man, a man whose widow and child are suffering in poverty because the count coveted the man's wealth!  The count's victim announces that, with his astral body, he is seeking revenge!  The count has a dim-witted son, and the dead man says he will be using his superior intelligence and willpower to try to push the son's low-IQ soul out of his body and take it over and use it to murder the count!

For weeks the count is worried about this, watches his son, judges his behaviors.  The son falls ill, and, when he recovers, the count thinks he is acting like a different person!  When he catches the son taking a stiletto off the wall and taking it to his room, the decides desperate action is called for--the count takes up the other blade of the pair, creeps into his son's room, and murders his son in his sleep.

Then the ghost controls the counts hand again, writes another message!  The ghost tricked the count!  He didn't take over his son's body, the count murdered his son unnecessarily!  But the count is still going to die tonight!  Sure enough, a lightning bolt hits the castle and kills the count, and the villagers below hear a laugh!  

I like the idea of a dead person's restless soul taking over a body to use for vengeance, and the revelation that it was all a bluff was a disappointment.  "The Black Castle" also has way too many loose ends.  The ghost can control the count's hand, even though the count is clever, so why are we expected to believe taking over the son is facilitated by the son's dim wits?  Why did the son act differently after his illness--why did he carry the stiletto to his room?  Is it just a coincidence?  And then the dead man is shown to be able to control the weather?  Why build a story around one creepy supernatural phenomenon, and then have the resolution of the story come through the use of a totally different, less interesting and less creepy, phenomenon?  

Not only are the plot and themes all messed up, Derleth and Schorer pad out the story with a lot of unneeded romantic goop about melting snowbanks and shadows and moonlight and all that.  Another thumbs down, I'm afraid.  

"The Turret Room" 

We've already read Edmond Hamilton's story in this September issue, "The Moon Menace."  "The Turret Room" here in WT is credited solely to Derleth, and to Derleth and Schorer in The Sleepers.    

This one is an acceptable trifle.  A bunch of British aristocrats are hanging out, and, when the Duke of Kent says that talk of ghosts is just balderdash and poppycock, Lord Alving tells a story about his own sight of a ghost.  He was at the Duke of Gloucester's castle with a bunch of people, including the poet Harry Longworth.  When the Duke of Gloucester mentions that the turret room in his central tower is haunted, Lord Alving says he wants to spend the night there, hoping to see a ghost.  Harry jokes that if Alving doesn't see one, he'll have one sent up.  Alving sits in the room hour after hour--no ghost.  He dozes, awakes, sees Harry in the room with him.  Harry is not very communicative, just sort of smiles.  The Lord looks out the window, looks back, and Harry is gone.  He doesn't return.  In the morning, Alving reports to the party that he has seen no ghosts, only Harry.  As we readers expect, Alving is informed that, sadly, Harry passed away in his sleep last night--before Alving saw him.

Not good, but competently and smoothly put together with no unnecessary frills or confusion.

"The Sleepers"

This story from the December issue serves as the title piece of that 2009 collection we've been referring to--hopefully a clue that it is an above average production--and is the only of today's stories that nobody claims is a collab with Schorer.

Well, I can mildly recommend "The Sleepers," which is almost as economically written as "The Turret Room" and feels more original and creepy (to me at least.)

An important writer, a man whose books get made into movies, tells a story to a bunch of people as they sit before a fireplace.  He was in Hollywood, and was suddenly called back to Chicago.  He gets a bed on a midnight train, but it turns out that the Pullman cars are all full up.  Another traveler is in the same predicament, and they make enough of a fuss that the train adds an additional Pullman for the two unhappy customers.

Once in the Pullman, the men find people sound asleep in their beds!  They call the porter, a sort of comic relief "negro," who gets the conductor.  When the conductor touches the man sleeping in the bed the writer paid for, his hand passes through the man like he is an illusion!  

It turns out that this Pullman is a recently repaired car that was wrecked in a disaster that killed all onboard.  These forms are the images of the dead!  Another ghost, the conductor who died on the train that was wrecked, walks through car and the ghosts of the sleepers vanish.

Not bad.  There is an additional plot thread--the ghost conductor comes to the fireplace to hear the story and comment on it--that is superfluous but doesn't sink the story.

**********

These are all quite minor stories, and two of them are pretty bad.  But on a long journey, you gotta take the rough with the smooth.  This little kink in the road is not going to dissuade us from achieving our weird destiny.