Horrors Unknown

by Sam Moskowitz (ed)

  Thorhall came out when the fight was done, praising God for the issue, and he and Gettir together burned the body and, wrapping the ashes in a skin, buried them in a corner of the sheep-walks.

  In the morning Thorhall gave Grettir the piebald horse and new clothes and set him a mile on his road. They rode through the Vale of Shadows and kissed each other farewell on the shore where the road led away toward Waterdale.

  The clouds had gathered again during the dawn and the rain was falling, driven landward by the incessant wind. The seals again barked and hunted in the offing, and the rough-haired ponies once more wandered about on the beach snuffing at the kelp and seaweed.

  Long time Thorhall stood on the ridge watching the figure of Grettir grow small and indistinct in the waste of north country and under the blur of the rain. Then at last he turned back to the byre.

  But Grettir after these things rode on to Biarg, to his mother’s house, and sat at home through the winter.

  * * *

  WEREWOMAN by C. L. Moore

  * * *

  On October 4, 1956, the late Henry Kuttner wrote me from Santa Monica, California: “I tried to reach you in New York, but didn’t get through, and since Catherine and I were staying only about three weeks, things were so hectic that we had to leave before I could reach you by telephone . . . What I wanted to ask you about was whether or not you had a record of publication for a story by C.L. Moore about Northwest Smith called “Werewoman.” It was unfinished, written in the late thirties, I think, and Catherine doesn’t remember its being published anywhere. But we keep running across references to it, and there’s a possibility it may have been given to some fan mag which Catherine has forgotten about. Since you’re about the only one who’d really have complete records for this sort of thing, I’m wondering if you happen to recall any publication data on this yarn. If you do and could let us know, we’d be very grateful.”

  C. L. Moore is probably the most talented woman writer of science fiction to appear on the scene since Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley wrote Frankenstein and it was published in London on March 11, 1818. Moore’s first love was science fiction and she unsuccessfully tried to sell stories to Amazing Stories and Wonder Stories; when they rejected them because of an atmosphere of near fantasy and grim horror of the themes, she tried Weird Tales magazine with “Shambleau.” Lead character of “Shambleau” was Northwest Smith, “a man nearing forty, with steely no-color eyes, a streak of murder in his makeup, and a psychological hardness that . . . resisted the most soul-destroying horrors . . .” Northwest Smith rescues a strange brown girl from a Martian mob and takes her to his lodgings. When she unloosens her turban, instead of hair a cascade of worm-like tendrils falls like a cloak almost to her feet.” She is, in truth, a Martian Medusa. That was but the first of many nightmarish and fascinating adventures of Northwest Smith on

  Mars, Venus, the asteroids, and other dimensions. His legendary exploits have been collected in Shambleau and Others (Gnome Press, 1953) and Northwest of Earth (Gnome Press, 1954). That is, most of them were, but there are several that for one reason or another were not included. Among those was “Werewoman,” of which C. L. Moore did not even own a copy.

  “Werewoman” appeared in only one place, the second, 1938 issue of a mimeographed amateur magazine published by H.P. Lovecraft’s good friend R.H. Barlow and titled Leaves. The first issue of Leaves was dated Summer, 1937 and was edited, stenciled, and mimeographed by R.H. Barlow when he resided in Leavenworth, Kansas. It was an outstanding collector’s item, containing original material by Clark Ashton Smith, H. P. Lovecraft, Donald Wandrei, and Frank Belknap Long, and reprints of stories by A. Merritt and August W. Derleth.

  The second issue was stenciled by R.H. Barlow between July, 1937 and December, 1938 in Kansas City, Mexico City, and Lakeport, California and sixty copies were ostensibly run off for sale at 50 cents each. It contained new material by H.P. Lovecraft, Donald Wandrei, and Fritz Leiber, Jr., but its real coup was the first and only publication of “Werewoman” by C. L. Moore, a Northwest Smith story completely atypical of any other in the series. It is a supernatural fantasy, superbly written, and deserves a better fate than the obscurity it has been consigned to.

  At my suggestion, Henry Kuttner wrote to Clyde Beck, still living in Lakeport, California, who published the second issue of Leaves, with the following result, concerning which he wrote me on January 19, 1957: “We did get in touch with Clyde Beck, who had one copy of the issue. We certainly didn’t expect him to present it to Catherine, but that’s what he did, a hell of a nice gesture ... I am sorry we don’t have a second copy. If we had, we’d be happy to pass it along to you. As it is, if you should ever want to borrow this issue of Leaves, or if photostats would do any good, just let us know.”

  I eventually secured the second issue from other sources, for after Henry Kuttner’s death, C. L. Moore stated that she was unable to locate her copy. For those many thousands already familiar with C. L. Moore and Northwest Smith, settle back to enjoy a novelette of fantastic horror which has languished in a literary limbo for thirty-one years. For those who have never experienced this phase of C. L. Moore’s writing, you are in for a reader’s voyage of discovery.

  WEREWOMAN

  * * *

  by

  C. L. MOORE

  With the noise of battle fading behind him down the wind, Northwest Smith staggered into the west and the twilight, stumbling as he went. Blood spattered brightly behind him on the rocks, leaving a clear trail to track him by, but he knew he would not be followed far. He was headed into the salt wastelands to the westward, and they would not follow him there.

  He urged his reluctant feet faster, for he knew that he must be out of sight in the grey waste before the first of the scavengers came to loot the dead. They would follow—that trail of blood and staggering footsteps would draw them like wolves on his track, hot in the hope of further spoils—but they would not come far. He grinned a little wryly at the thought, for he was going into no safety here, though he left certain death behind. He was stumbling, slow step by step, into almost as certain a death, of fever and thirst and hunger in the wastelands, if no worse death caught him first. They told tales of this grey salt desert . . .

  He had never before come even this far into the cold waste during all the weeks of their encampment. He was too old an adventurer not to know that when people shun a place completely and talk of it in whispers and tell little half-finished, fearful stories of it over campfires, that place is better left alone. Some might have been spurred by that very reticence into investigation, but Northwest Smith had seen too many strange things in his checkered career to doubt the basis of fact behind folk-tales or care to rush in heedlessly where others had learned by experience not to tread.

  The sound of battle had dwindled to a faint murmur on the evening breeze. He lifted his head painfully and stared into the gathering dark ahead with narrowed eyes the no-color of pale steel. The wind touched his keen, scarred face with a breath of utter loneliness and desolation. No man-smell of smoke or byre or farmstead tainted it, blowing clear across miles beyond miles of wastelands. Smith’s nostrils quivered to that scent of unhumanity. He saw the greyness stretching before him, flat and featureless, melting into the dark. There was a sparse grass growing, and low shrub and a few stunted trees, and brackish water in deep, still pools dotted the place at far intervals. He found himself listening . . .

  Once in very long-ago ages, so campfire whispers had told him, a forgotten city stood here. Who dwelt in it, or what, no man knew. It was a great city spreading over miles of land, rich and powerful enough to wake enmity, for a mighty foe had come at last out of the lowlands and in a series of tremendous battles razed it to the ground. What grievance they had against the dwellers in the city no one will ever know now, but it must have been dreadful, for when the last tower was laid to earth and the last stone toppled from its foundation they had sown the land with salt, so that for generations no living thing grew
in all the miles of desolation. And not content with this, they had laid a curse upon the very earth wherein the city had its roots, so that even today men shun the place without understanding why.

  It was very long past, that battle, and history forgot the very name of the city, and victor and vanquished alike sank together into the limbo of the forgotten. In time the salt-sown lands gained a measure of life again and the sparse vegetation that now clothed it struggled up through the barren soil. But men still shunned the place.

  They said, in whispers, that there were dwellers yet in the saltlands. Wolves came out by night sometimes and carried off children straying late; sometimes a new-made grave was found open and empty in the morning, and people breathed of ghouls . . . late travellers had heard voices wailing from the wastes by night, and those daring hunters who ventured in search of the wild game that ran through the underbrush spoke fearfully of naked werewomen that howled in the distances. No one knew what became of the adventurous souls who travelled too far alone into the desolation of the place. It was accursed for human feet to travel, and those who dwelt there, said the legends, must be less than human.

  Smith discounted much of this when he turned from the bloody shambles of that battle into the wastelands beyond. Legends grow, he knew. But a basis for the tales he did not doubt, and he glanced ruefully down at the empty holsters hanging low on his legs. He was completely unarmed, perhaps for the first time in more years than he liked to remember; for his path had run for the most part well outside the law, and such men do not go unarmed anywhere—even to bed.

  Well, no help for it now. He shrugged a little, and then grimaced and caught his breath painfully, for that slash in the shoulder was deep, and blood still dripped to the ground, though not so freely as before. The wound was closing. He had lost much blood—the whole side of his leather garment was stiff with it, and the bright stain spattering behind him told of still greater losses. The pain of his shoulder stabbed at him yet, but it was being swallowed up now in a vast, heaving greyness . . .

  He drove his feet on stubbornly over the uneven ground, though the whole dimming landscape was wavering before him like a sea—swelling monstrously—receding into the vague distances . . . The ground floated up to meet him with surprising gentleness.

  He opened his eyes presently to a grey twilight, and after awhile staggered up and went on. No more blood flowed, but the shoulder was stiff and throbbing, and the wasteland heaved still like a rolling sea about him. The singing in his ears grew loud, and he was not sure whether the faint echoes of sound he heard came over grey distances or rang in his own head—long, faint howls, like wolves wailing their hunger to the stars. When he fell the second time he did not know it, and was surprised to open his eyes upon full dark with stars looking down on him and the grass tickling his cheek.

  He went on. There was no great need of it now—he was well beyond pursuit, but the dim urge to keep moving dinned in his weary brain. He was sure now that the long howls were coming to him over the waste stretches; coming nearer. By instinct his hand dropped to clutch futilely at the empty holster.

  There were queer little voices going by overhead in the wind. Thin, shrill. With immense effort he slanted a glance upward and thought he could see, with the clarity of exhaustion, the long, clean lines of the wind streaming across the sky. He saw no more than that, but the small voices shrilled thinly in his ears.

  Presently he was aware of motion beside him—life of some nebulous sort moving parallel to his course, invisible in the starlight. He was aware of it through the thrill of evil that prickled at the roots of his hair, pulsing from the dimness at his side—though he could see nothing. But with that clarity of inner vision he felt the vast and shadowy shape lurching formlessly through the grass at his side. He did not turn his head again, but the hackles of his neck bristled. The howls were nearing, too. He set his teeth and drove on, unevenly.

  He fell for the third time by a clump of stunted trees, and lay for a while breathing heavily while long, slow waves of oblivion washed over him and receded like waves over sand. In the intervals of lucidity he knew that those howls were coming closer over the greyness of saltlands.

  He went on. The illusion of that formless walker-in-the-dark still haunted him through the grass, but he was scarcely heeding it now. The howls had changed to short, sharp yaps, crisp in the starlight, and he knew that the wolves had struck his trail. Again, instinctively, his hand flashed downward toward his gun, and a spasm of pain crossed his face. Death he did not mind—he had kept pace with it too many years to fear that familiar visage—but death under fangs, unarmed ... He staggered on a little faster, and the breath whistled through his clenched teeth.

  Dark forms were circling his, slipping shadowily through the grass. They were wary, these beasts of the outlands. They did not draw near enough for him to see them save as shadows gliding among the shadows, patient and watching. He cursed them futilely with his failing breath, for he knew now that he dared not fall again. The grey waves washed upward, and he shouted something hoarse in his throat and called upon a last reservoir of strength to bear him up. The dark forms started at his voice.

  So he went on, wading through oblivion that rose waist-high, shoulder-high, chin-high—and receded again before the indomitable onward drive that dared not let him rest. Something was wrong with his eyes now—the pale-steel eyes that had never failed him before—for among the dark forms he was thinking he saw white ones, slipping and gliding wraithlike in the shadow . . .

  For an endless while he stumbled on under the chilly stars while the earth heaved gently beneath his feet and the greyness was a sea that rose and fell in blind waves, and white figures weaved about his through the hollow dark.

  Quite suddenly he knew that the end of his strength had come. He knew it surely, and in the last moment of lucidity left to him he saw a low tree outlined against the stars and staggered to it—setting his broad back against the trunk, fronting the dark watchers with lowered head and pale eyes that glared defiance. For that one moment he faced them resolutely—then the tree-trunk was sliding upward past him—the ground was rising—he gripped the sparse grass with both hands, and swore as he fell.

  When he opened his eyes again he stared into a face straight out of hell. A woman’s face, twisted into a diabolical smile, stooped over him—glare-eyed in the dark. White fangs slavered as she bent to his throat.

  Smith choked back a strangled sound that was half oath, half prayer, and struggled to his feet. She started back with a soundless leap that set her wild hair flying, and stood staring him in the face with wide slant eyes that glared greenly from the pallor of her face. Through dark hair, her body was white as a sickle moon, half-veiled in the long, wild hair.

  She glared with hungry fangs a-drip. Beyond her he sensed other forms, dark and white, circling restlessly through the shadows—and he began to understand dimly, and knew that there was no hope in life for him, but he spread his long legs wide and gave back glare for glare, pale-eyed and savage.

  The pack circled him, dim blurs in the dark, the green glare of eyes shining alike from white shapes and black. And to his dizzied eyes it seemed that the forms were not stable; shifting from dark to light and back again with only the green-glowing eyes holding the same glare through all the changing. They were closing in now, the soft snarls rising and sharp yaps impatiently breaking through the guttural undernotes, and he saw the gleam of teeth, white under the stars.

  He had no weapon, and the wasteland reeled about him and the earth heaved underfoot, but he squared his shoulders savagely and fronted them in hopeless defiance, waiting for the wave of darkness and hunger to come breaking over him in an overwhelming tide. He met the green desire of the woman’s wild eyes as she stooped forward, gathering herself for the lunge, and suddenly something about the fierceness of her struck a savage chord within him, and—facing death as he was—he barked a short, wild laugh at her, and yelled into the rising wind. “Come on, werewoman! Call yo
ur pack!”

  She stared for the briefest instant, half-poised for leaping—while something like a spark seemed to flash between them, savageness calling to savageness across the barriers of everything alive—and suddenly she flung up her arms, the black hair whirling, and tossed back her head and bayed to the stars; a wild, long ululating yell and tossed it from voice to voice across the saltlands until the very stars shivered at the wild, exultant baying.

  And as the long yell trembled into silence something inexplicable happened to Smith. Something quivered in answer within him, agonizingly, the grey oblivion he had been fighting so long swallowed him up at a gulp—and then he leaped within himself in a sudden, ecstatic rush; and while one part of him slumped to its knees and then to its face in the grass, the living vital being that was Smith sprang free into the cold air that stung like sharp wine.

  The wolf-pack rushed clamorously about him, the wild, high yells shivered delightfully along every nerve of his suddenly awakened body. And it was as if a muffling darkness had lifted from his senses, for the night opened up in all directions to his new eyes, and his nostrils caught fresh, exciting odors on the streaming wind, and in his ears a thousand tiny sounds took on sudden new clarity and meaning.

  The pack that had surged so clamorously about him was a swirl of dark bodies for an instant—then in a blur and a flash they were dark no longer—rose on hind legs and cast off the darkness as they rose—and slim, white, naked werewomen swirled around him in a tangle of flashing limbs and streaming hair.