In a 2000 interview with Jayme Lynn Blaske, Jack Williamson was asked this question: “Have you ever had a story published, and afterwards wished you could go back and have another crack at it?”
Jack’s reply is fascinating: “I’ve had stories published that really shouldn’t have been published, certainly. Back in those hard times, I wanted to write for the horror magazines, which were new and paying good rates. I wrote “The Mark of the Monster”, which was too heavily influenced by H.P. Lovecraft. It was rejected by the horror magazines. I sent it to Weird Tales. They accepted it and published it with a cover picture. The readers panned it heavily. I wish that it had never seen the light of day.”
That cover story was in May 1937. It was Jack Williamson’s second last sale to Farnsworth Wright. He would appear in “The Unique Magazine” eight times between 1932 and 1939. He also appeared in Weird Tales’ main rival, Strange Tales with the classic, “The Wolves of Darkness” (January 1932).
The “horror magazines” Williamson is referring to are now known as The Shudder Pulps. These magazines, such as Thrilling Mystery, Horror Tales and Terror Tales, specialized in an odd form of Pulp Grand Guignol, in which the story involved supernatural looking events but proved to be mundane in the end. They were not true weird fiction but a kind of demented Mystery story such as Ann Radcliffe wrote back in the days of Gothic fiction. The top writers of this type of story were often SF and horror writers like Hugh B. Cave, Arthur Leo Zagat and Paul Ernst. That Williamson was testing this better paying market shows he was a professional with an eye out for an opportunity to sell. That “Mark of the Monster” was rejected by those markets and ended up at Weird Tales shows Williamson’s heart wasn’t quite in it. He did not persevere in cracking the Shudder Pulps but moved back into SF. Williamson’s interest in horror fiction was never ordinary. He would later write a horror classic that also satisfied John W. Campbell’s criteria for rigorous Fantasy with Darker Than You Think (Unknown, December 1940). Williamson would receive the Lifetime Achievement Award from Horror’s highest award, The Stoker.
“The Mark of the Monster” (Weird Tales, May 1937) begins with that familiar Cthulhu Mythos scenario, the man who returns to a seedy, degenerate town that hides a family secret. The town is called Creston (British Columbia fans may well snicker). The man is Claibourne Coe, who wants nothing more than to fetch Valyne Kirk and leave. Clay has been away for seven years in the Orient, accumulating a fortune.
Clay walks through the town that sits below the fir-covered Blue Squaw Mountain. He feels like the town is draped in the webs of a lurking terror. He recalls seeing an evil looking altar in the forest when he was six. Then he hears Valyne scream, and races over to find her being accosted by the butcher, Jud Geer. A fight ensues and Clay goes into a red fog. When Valyne pulls him from his berserk rage, Geer has two missing teeth and a bloody face. Clay has a history of losing his temper in this way and always tries to prevent confrontations.
The couple go to Doctor Kyle’s house, home of Clay’s foster parents and Valyne’s current residence. Sarah Kyle meets them at the door, old and toothless she welcomes Clay with a warning to listen to the doctor. “…Don’t walk too near the edge of hell!” Also in the house are two servants, Eben and Josepha Hand. Clay doesn’t like the couple as there is something wicked about them.
The family sits for dinner, with Doctor Kyle putting Clay off again and again. All will be revealed after the meal. A terrible animal noise comes from the basement. Jud Geer is late with his delivery, which is a bucket of blood. The meal is taken to the basement to feed the mysterious creature below. Doctor Kyle says that too will be explained– after dinner.
Kyle invites Clay up to his study. He shows Clay the occult doodads and books in his study. Kyle is working on a history of the demonology of Creston. He finally tells Clay what his ancestry is and why he can’t marry Valyne: Clay’s grandfather, Eliakim Coe was a great sorcerer. On the eve before his daughter’s wedding, Eliakim took Elizabeth, Clay’s mother, to the altar in the forest, where a demon bedded her. The resulting offspring were twins, Clay and the monster in the basement. Clay was told his mother died but she actually took the other twin into the forest to live in a cave. Only recently she had died, making it necessary for Doctor Kyle to watch Clay’s brother. Doctor Kyle warns Clay if he and Valyne have children they will be like the monster in the basement.
Not surprising, all this bad news drives Clay to thoughts of suicide. He has a .45 that he presses to his head. Valyne comes into his room and stops him. She doesn’t care about all the horrible history. She just wants them to be together until they both die. Clay agrees.
The monster in the basement escapes. Clay learns that the thing has always wanted Valyne ever since the first time he saw her. Clay and Sarah lock Valyne in her room so they can find the twin. A scream and they know that Valyne has been taken by the beast through the window. Clay wonders where he would take her. Sarah reminds him of the altar in the woods and what happened to her mother there.
Clay races up the mountainside finding the horned monster standing over his nearly-naked love. The two brothers fight. Clay goes into his red rage, then awakens from it to find the demon brother dead, a bullet hole in his brain. He picks up Valyne to make sure she is alright. Doctor Kyle is there now, holding a rifle. He admits he shot the monster. Clay tells Valyne that he must go into the woods and kill himself. He is about to do this when Valyne screams it is a hoax. Clay examines the body of the monster and finds it is a costume. The dead man inside is Jud Geer. Doctor Kyle, now found out, admits that everyone except Valyne, has been in on a plan to get Clay to kill himself, so they can get his fortune. Jud Geer was to have Valyne. Doctor Kyle stills wants to win and raises his rifle to kill Clay and Valyne too. Clay draws his .45 first and Kyle loses. The couple leave Creston never to return.
The entire story is written in a kind of melodramatic haze, typical of Shudder Pulps because they try to use atmosphere to create their terror. The result is an over-blown style that when looked at in isolation will send the reader into hysterics — the laughing kind. While reading the story, if the reader can suspend critical judgement, it can build and build until the grand finale then dissipate like a wave. The logical explanation also fizzles out any real sense of horror.
Weird Tales felt the competition of the Shudder Pulps. To combat them, they published Hugh B. Cave’s “The Black Gargoyle” (Weird Tales, March 1934) and then hired Paul Ernst to write the Doctor Satan stories (August 1935-September 1936), but readers did not like them. The readers of Weird Tales weren’t really the readers of Terror Tales. They liked their ghosts and ghoulies to be actual monsters and not the fake kind.
Fans made their feelings known in “The Eyrie”. Mrs. Mark Shover wrote:
“…Surely there are better stories coming to your office than The Mark of the Monster. It was so obviously a formula yarn, and the choice of words did not serve to give an atmosphere…Keep Weird Tales the Unique Magazine.”
Robert Leonard Russell wrote:
“…I liked everything in the issue except The Mark of the Monster. It seemed like a blurred carbon copy of late HPL’s classic The Dunwich Horror. Nix on these logical endings in WT.”
Ironically, Wright may have taken Williamson’s tale because of its Lovecraftian elements. The fir-clad mountain is borrowed from “The Lurking Fear”, a tale Lovecraft called “hackwork”. I’m not sure why the Shudder Pulp editors rejected it. It seems as melodramatic as the rest of their output. Maybe it came across too supernatural? “Mark of the Monster” appeared two months after HPL’s death. Perhaps it is best he never saw it.
