In
1935, not long before his death, H.P. Lovecraft published his dreadful The Quest of Iranon—arguably one of the
worst stories he ever wrote—and his round-robin contribution to The Challenge from Beyond, a story that
also included sections written by Robert E. Howard, Frank Belknap Long, C.L.
Moore and A. Merritt, (see also Help, I’m
a Centipede!). He also wrote a couple of poems which later
became part of his Fungi from Yuggoth
series. In that same year, another
author whom Lovecraft was familiar with published a quintessential shudder pulp
story, Imp of Satan (1935). Though both wrote horror fiction, Hugh B.
Cave and H.P. Lovecraft were very different with respect to style, work habits,
and degree of success.
Interestingly,
the two men both lived in Rhode Island; Lovecraft in Providence and Cave in
nearby Pawtuxet. They never met in
person, which was probably just as well, but did correspond on occasion. Lovecraft and Cave disagreed vehemently about
the aesthetics and professionalism of publishing work in pulp magazines. Lovecraft took the high—but less lucrative—road
and disdained formulaic writing driven by a focus on speed and quantity over
quality. Cave took the other road, and was prolific and
successful. In 1935, the year Imp of Satan came out, Lovecraft
published just two stories and a couple of poems, while Cave cranked out 9
short stories.
A very partial
listing of Cave’s fictional works shows the scope of his subject matter. The stories below were published during the
period in which Lovecraft was active.
(Cave was still writing and publishing as late as 2004, at age 93. At that time, he was even venturing into
e-books!)
Prey of the Nightborn
Death Calls from the Madhouse
The City of Crawling Death
The Watcher in the Green Room
The Cult of the White Ape
Satan's Mistress
Tomb for the Living
The Brotherhood of Blood
The Flame Fiend
Disturb Not the Dead
And so forth. A few of his stories show the influence Lovecraft’s
“Cthulhu Mythos”, (e.g., The Isle of Dark
Magic), but the
majority are easily classifiable as fiction typical of weird menace or the
shudder pulps. In his chatty and
affectionate1975 study, The Shudder
Pulps: A History of the Weird Menace Magazines of the 1930s, Robert Kenneth
Jones quotes an author named Richard Tooker who offers a succinct definition of
the field:
“A
fearful menace, apparently due to supernatural agencies, must terrify the
characters (and reader, but not the writer) at the start, but the climax must
demonstrate convincingly that the menace was natural after all.”
It is the
naturalistic explanation near the end of shudder pulp stories, along with fast
pace, frenetic action, graphic violence and scantily clad women that
distinguish weird menace from weird fiction generally. Jones goes on to analyze key elements of
shudder pulp fiction. The stories often featured
a secret cult led by a madman, or a monster that was typically some form of exaggerated
but quite terrestrial biology. Instead
of a madman there might be a clever villain—typically an aggrieved family
member or lover.
Other
typical elements of weird menace include characters compelled against their
wills to engage with the terror in their midst, weird resurrections of
characters believed to be dead, aging evil-doers who prey on the young, strange
deformed amalgamations of people and creatures produced by evil scientists, irresistible
but hazardous women, vengeful, witch-like old crones, and curses.
Hugh B.
Cave’s Imp of Satan exemplifies many
of these features. The story begins with
narrator rowing frantically across a small pond, away from an old deserted
shack on the shore. He hears maniacal
laughing coming from the shack, and someone is aiming feathered darts at him—“the
kind of poison-tipped dart used in jungle blow-guns!”
It
would seem that more back story is needed here, and Cave soon provides it. Safe on the far shore, the narrator remembers
that right in the middle of his recent wedding to the lovely Lenore, he had
heard the same high pitched voice screaming these words from a balcony
overhead:
“Make them man and
wife, and then—God help them! For the
curse of Kawalo will follow them to the ends of the earth and destroy them!”
In the
text, these words are italicized to indicate that this young married couple
will have more than the ordinary period of adjustment. The narrator, whose name is Barrett, moves
into the house of his wife’s guardian Old Philias Arns and his housekeeper,
Mrs. Sargy. The house is just across the
pond from the evil, dilapidated shack.
Philias is dying of some strange disease, and Barrett wonders whether
the old man resents his marriage to Lenore.
Mrs. Sargy is also suspicious; Barrett speculates that she is disappointed
to have the newlyweds in the house—she had been in line to inherit the property
upon the death of Philias Arns.
But
these speculations are red herrings.
Barrett discovers in an old photo album a photograph of Lenore with
another man, her previous lover. When he
confronts his wife, she explains:
“I
should have told you before…But I didn’t think it was that important, after
three years. He was an engineer. His name—it doesn’t matter now, does it? When I said goodbye, that was the end.”
In the
interim, Lenore’s old paramour contracted a horrible disease in the tropics
that causes relentless physical shrinkage and insanity, that is, imp-ification. This is the ‘Curse of Kawalo’ that the spurned
boyfriend wants to share with Barrett and Lenore. Although there are vaguely supernatural
allusions to Satan and Hell, the diminutive monster in this story is clearly a
product of the natural world. Murder, kidnapping,
entrapment and related mayhem ensue, as well as considerable semi-nudity. There is a final struggle in which the imp is
vanquished and the newlyweds escape their torment. However, Barrett is left pondering the future
of his life with Lenore after such an inauspicious beginning.
The ‘Curse
of Kawalo’ involves the painful miniaturization of the humiliated ex-boyfriend,
probably a metaphor for the emasculation of being passed over for another guy
by a beautiful woman. But this is about
as profound as Imp of Satan gets. This is literature with a lower case ‘L’, but
still interesting and entertaining for its over the top melodrama and
half-baked ideas.
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