Red Shadows, By Robert E Howard

Robert E Howard. Best known as the guy who created Conan, Howard was incredibly prolific as a writer, packing more stories into one short lifetime than most creators, myself included can get over in the full 3 score and 10. The man was a storyteller of the first rank, filling his tales with two-fisted heroes that always make for an enjoyable tale.
Now I, like the majority of Howards fans I’d guess am a die-hard Conan fan. It’s what I came to first and have always enjoyed the most, and I’ll make no apologies for that thank you very much. Coming up a close second is the dour ‘more John Wick than John Wick’ Soloman Kane. There’s just something about a revenge tale done right that is so damn satisfying, and Red Shadows delivers, in spades.
The one element in Shadows that really stands out for me is the genius use of the zombie, unlike anything that I’ve seen elsewhere. Howard has his Juju-man reanimate a corpse by leaving his own body and entering it, wearing the man’s skin like a puppeteer. Said zombie then kills a despot, winning freedom for himself and Kane. The description is tight, the atmosphere is contagious and the outcome … so satisfying.
Absolute genius.

Now the corpse was upright, swaying on stiltlike legs, body tilting far back until the sightless eyes seemed to stare straight into the red moon that was just rising over the black jungle. The thing tottered uncertainly in a wide, erratic half-circle, arms flung out grotesquely as if in balance, then swayed about to face the two thrones—and the Black God. A burning twig at Kane’s feet cracked like the crash of a cannon in the tense silence. The horror thrust forth a black foot—it took a wavering step— another. Then with stiff, jerky and automatonlike steps, legs straddled far apart, the dead man came toward the two who sat in speechless horror to each side of the Black God. “Ah-h-h!” from somewhere came the explosive sigh, from that shadowy semicircle where crouched the terror-fascinated worshipers. Straight on stalked the grim specter. Now it was within three strides of the thrones, and Le Loup, faced by fear for the first time in his bloody life, cringed back in his chair; while Songa, with a superhuman effort breaking the chains of horror that held him helpless, shattered the night with a wild scream and, springing to his feet, lifted a spear, shrieking and gibbering in wild menace. Then as the ghastly thing halted not its frightful advance, he hurled the spear with all the power of his great, black muscles, and the spear tore through the dead man’s breast with a rending of flesh and bone. Not an instant halted the thing —for the dead die not—and Songa the king stood frozen, arms outstretched as if to fend off the terror.
An instant they stood so, leaping firelight and eery moonlight etching the scene forever in the minds of the beholders. The changeless staring eyes of the corpse looked full into the bulging eyes of Songa, where were reflected all the hells of horror. Then with a jerky motion the arms of the thing went out and up. The dead hands fell on Songa’s shoulders. At the first touch, the king seemed to shrink and shrivel, and with a scream that was to haunt the dreams of every watcher through all the rest of time, Songa crumpled and fell, and the dead man reeled stiffly and fell with him. Motionless lay the two at the feet of the Black God, and to Kane’s dazed mind it seemed that the idol’s great, inhuman eyes were fixed upon them with terrible, still laughter.

Howard, Robert E Red Shadows

THE NAMELESS OFFSPRING, by Clark Ashton Smith

The Cthulhu Mythos is a very broad church, and many great writers have dipped their toes in it. Clark Ashton Smith jumped in, swam a few lengths and declared the pool his own. He had the same faculty with language, with far greater control (let’s be honest here, Lovecraft could have benefitted on occasion from an editor with a greater grasp on the red pencil) where every word works at moving the story forward.
Here’s a paragraph from my own personal favorite from his Mythos stories, The Nameless Offspring. It’s a tale that creeps up on you, slowly making you comfortable before springing on you like a cat that’s missed its meal. The following paragraph sets the table, preparing the diner for the horror that’s to come, describing a single moment.
Enjoy!

Without even glancing at the door, my host went on, carrying a taper that scarcely shook in his feeble fingers. My curious reflections, as I followed him, were interrupted with nerve-shattering suddenness by a loud cry that seemed to issue from the barred room. The sound was a long, ever-mounting ululation, infra-bass at first like the tomb-muffled voice of a demon, and rising through abominable degrees to a shrill, ravenous fury, as if the demon had emerged by a series of underground steps to the open air. It was neither human nor bestial, it was wholly preternatural, hellish, macabre; and I shuddered with an insupportable eeriness, that still persisted when the demon voice, after reaching its culmination, had returned by reverse degrees to a profound sepulchral silence.

 

H.P. Lovecraft, ‘They still can’t kill the beast’.

I read an article over on Tor yesterday that went for all the standard plays; start with a beloved author, trash gently before casting aspersions at Tolkien before trying to put the stake, once again into their self created vampire, Lovecraft. Attack his racist views, and yes, I’m sure he was racist, and thereby dismiss everything he ever wrote.
Lazy, lazy writing.
Lovecraft had that rare ability to write prose that stayed with you long after you’d put the book down. Of course if you manage to get people to stop people from reading said prose in the first place …. One of his stories that comes under regular artillery fire is The Horror at Red Hook. Is it one of his best? Nope, not at all, probably not even in his top 20 and yet within it is the following gem of a passage:

Avenues of limitless night seemed to radiate in every direction, till one might fancy that here lay the root of a contagion destined to sicken and swallow cities, and engulf nations in the foetor of hybrid pestilence. Here cosmic sin had entered, and festered by unhallowed rites had commenced the grinning march of death that was to rot us all to fungous abnormalities too hideous for the grave’s holding. Satan here held his Babylonish court, and in the blood of stainless childhood the leprous limbs of phosphorescent Lilith were laved. Incubi and succubae howled praise to Hecate, and headless moon-calves bleated to the Magna Mater. Goats leaped to the sound of thin accursed flutes, and Ægypans chased endlessly after misshapen fauns over rocks twisted like swollen toads. Moloch and Ashtaroth were not absent; for in this quintessence of all damnation the bounds of consciousness were let down, and man’s fancy lay open to vistas of every realm of horror and every forbidden dimension that evil had power to mould. The world and Nature were helpless against such assaults from unsealed wells of night, nor could any sign or prayer check the Walpurgis-riot of horror which had come when a sage with the hateful key had stumbled on a horde with the locked and brimming coffer of transmitted daemon-lore.

Lovecraft, H.P.. 

Yeah, most writers never get to put something this lyrical into print during their whole careers, let alone into their ‘worst’ short story.

Jack Ketchum-Empathy

I discovered Jack Ketchum late, just a couple of years ago in fact. I read Crossings first, and then everything else of his that I could get my hands on, the man could really tell a tale and tell it so that the truth came out of it wholesale. His secret?
See below.

But I think it’s impossible to really know another person fully no matter how close you are. There are always places in the heart and mind you’re never going to reach. But what you can reach and must reach is into yourself, where that character you’re creating exists somewhere. And that’s what empathy’s all about. If you can’t empathize, if you can’t or aren’t willing to put yourself into someone else’s place with all the compassion and insight you can muster—to find their character through your own character—you have no business calling yourself a fiction writer.

Jack Ketchum

Horror 101: Making Contact