The vampire stories of Hugh B. Cave form a small part of his Horror fiction. He wrote them while still quite young, twenty-two and three. He would become a famous all-round Pulpster, writing for adventure, spicy, detective, Science Fiction and Shudder Pulps. He had several pseudonyms including the ironic, Justin Case. The majority of his Horror is of the non-supernatural variety, where in the ghost, monster, etc. proves to be a disgruntled maniac with a predilection for the Gothic. Of this type of fiction, I am not particularly fond. But in these early stories, Cave would write a real ghost story or terror tale.
The Brotherhood of Blood
“The Brotherhood of Blood” (Weird Tales, May 1932) is a first person account of how a man became a vampire. (No, Anne Rice did not invent this.) Paul Munn’s love, Margot Vernee, dies on her twenty-eighth birthday (just as the vampire who killed her did, and the one before, etc.) On Munn’s twenty-eighth birthday she will come for him. She visits him repeatedly but his crucifix, that she made him promise to wear, drives her off.
Rojer Threng, a doctor and failed suitor for Margot’s hand, takes Paul to a special room at the university. That night he will die and join Margot in the world of the undead. Threng doesn’t do this out of decency but jealousy. He should have been the one to join in undeath. Margot comes and spends the night, waiting with Paul. It is only minutes before dawn. She must leave. A bright electric crucifix appears on the wall by the window. Another on the other wall. Threng has built the room specifically to hold her. Margot is trapped and as the sun rises she dies the real death. Threng’s laughter is all Munn can hear.
Munn becomes a vampire but he spends all his time trying to get Rojer Threng unawares. The day he does Threng will die a horrible death. Once Threng is dead, then Munn will walk into the sunlight…
First Person Vampire
Cave’s choice of name for the narrator is a bit of hint as to the origin of this story. “Take a werewolf story, for instance—who ever wrote one from the point of view of the wolf, and sympathizing strongly with the devil to whom he has sold himself?” said H. P. Lovecraft in “The Eyrie” (Weird Tales, March 1924). This inspired H. Warner Munn to create “The Werewolf of Ponkert” (Weird Tales, July 1925). Cave has done the same for vampires and named his hero in honor of Munn.
Some other thoughts on this story. I was wondering if when Cave wrote a supernatural story if it would read differently than his Shudder Pulp stuff. I found Paul Munn almost as annoying and whiny as Louis de Pointe du Lac, but the cruelness and plotting of Threng strikes me as being quite Shudder Pulpy too. Maybe this is Cave’s natural voice, making him perfect for Horror Stories and Terror Tales.
Stragella
“Stragella” (Strange Tales, June 1932) has two sailors lost at sea in a rowboat. Yancy and Miggs think their luck has changed when they come across a hulk in a cloud of mist. They find food but also strange things like a large vine that possesses hypnotic blooms growing inside the derelict. During the day, the duo search the ship. Yancy finds a Bible in the mates’ room and puts it in his belt. Miggs explores the hold that is filled with boxes and empty cages.
As night falls, Yancy sees the light of a distant ship. He tries to signal it with a lamp. (This is the scene Sewell chose to illustrate for the story.) He also sees two giant bats come out of the hold. They head in the direction of the far ship. After they fly off, he meets Stragella, a beautiful Gypsy girl who speaks to him in the Serbian tongue. She says “You–mine.” She gives him wine to drink before trying to bite his neck. The Bible in his belt repels her.
With the Bible there, Yancy is safe from the vampires. The drink he swallowed makes him unable to move. He is an unwilling witness to the Night of Resurrection, when all the men and animals who died and are dry bones, live again. (This is the cover scene Wesso did.) Yancy sees the night the Golcanda was wrecked re-enacted, with cholera and vampires killing everything. The two bats return from their flight. They take human form. They are named Papa Bencito and Seraphina. As daylight approaches the three vampires return to their coffins full of grave dirt.
A Mist With Red Eyes
Daylight comes and Yancy goes in search of Miggs. He finds him in a cabin with his neck pierced by two holes. All his blood has been drained. Yancy collapses from weariness and shock. He wakes in late afternoon and gets busy. He pulls up the weird flower which is rooted in grave dirt. He unhooks the anchor, allowing the ship to move away from its long-time berth. He goes to his boat but finds it gone. The metal lifeboats of the Golconda are rotten and useless. He has one last job, to spike the vampires.
As Yancy goes into the now dark hold, he trips and loses his Bible. Stragella is already coming out of her coffin. She encircles the holy book with a thick black goo. The three vampires come for Yancy. He is taken to the cabin where Miggs lies. Papa Bencito gives Yancy the history of how the vampires came from Serbia. The vampires argue over who shall have Yancy’s blood. Stragella claimed him the night before and doesn’t want to share. She is ripping off his shirt to feed when she sees Yancy’s tattoo, a crucifix he had got one drunken night. The vampires hover around him in a mist, only their burning red eyes visible.
Stragella comes up with plan. She begins to cover the cross with her black ooze. It looks like Yancy will now die but the moving ship strikes rocks and the floor tears open. Stragella realizes the hour is late and the three vampires rush into the rising sunlight.
Of Hodgson and Horrors
Yancy survives the wrecking of the Golcanda. He lights the ship on fire and makes sure the coffins are destroyed. He is only yards away from a beach which he follows. He is soon in Port Blair. He is reluctant to speak of what has happened but as his hair has turned completely white it isn’t hard to guess. He speaks with the warden of the prison, for the island is a prison. The warden believes his story, as hundreds of prisoners have died with bite marks in their throats. Yancy insists that the graves be opened and the bodies destroyed. To the end of his sailing days, Yancy leaves his shirt open, with his cross tattoo prominently on display.
Now this is the Hugh B. Cave I have been waiting for. The writing moves but has atmosphere. His sea snakes and ghostly vampires all smack of William Hope Hodgson. This could be my favorite story of his. The tattoo on the chest is a telegraphed but it isn’t too powerful. Luck and courage win the day.
Murgunstrumm
“Murgunstrumm” (Strange Tales, January 1933) is a short novel. Because of this it has a strange structure. The story begins with Paul Hill being in an insane asylum. Cave spends several paragraphs on being rather hyperbolic about the terror before we get to see the asylum from Hill’s point-of-view. (Remember, he is getting paid by the word.) We learn about the inmate who captures bugs and tortures them. We hear the guards going about their business.
Eventually we follow Paul as he escapes from the building with a master key he has had made by his brother-in-law from chewing gum impressions. His brother-in-law, Martin Le Geurn, picks him up and drives him far from the searchers. Paul asks about his fiancee, Ruth, but Martin can not tell him the terrible news. This he learns from his future father-in-law, Armand Le Geurn. Ruth has been put into a different madhouse, Morrisdale. Armand gives Paul a suitcase (which contains a gun). He also sends his muscular chauffeur, Matt Jeremy, along to back him up, because Paul is returning to Rehobeth and the Gray Toad Inn.
The Story Before the Story
So here we have the story after the story. We only get hints that something terrible happened at the inn and with a person named Murgunstrumm. Whatever it was that happened had Paul and Ruth locked up as maniacs. Paul and Jeremy go to the Rehobeth Hotel, where Ruth and Paul stayed seven months previously. Paul writes a two letters to the shrinks that locked Ruth up, signing it as Dr. Von Heller. The hotel owner, Gates, recounts what had happened then, not recognizing Paul because of his loss of health. Gates tells how the couple had gone for a walk on a pleasant evening. When they returned Paul was half-dead, carrying a raving Ruth in this arms.
Paul and Jeremy sneak over to the Gray Toad Inn, a shambling building tucked away in the trees. They see a light. Creeping to the window, they spy the dwarf Murgunstrumm sitting at a table:
An ugly face it was, in the full horrible significance of the word. A sunken savage gargoyle, frog-like in shape, with narrow close-set eyes blinking continually beneath beetled brows that crawled together, like thick hairy fingers, in the center. The broad nose, twisted hookwise, seemed stuck on, like a squatting toad with bunched legs. And the mouth was wide, thick, sensuous, half leering as if it could assume no other expression.
A car pulls up and the men hit the dirt. A tall, thin man escorts a beautiful young woman to the inn while Murgunstrumm brings a lantern. Paul sees that her throat bears two marks. She is doomed, a slave of the undead. He wants to charge and try and save her but to do so would be death. They leave.
Two Prisoners
The next day the two psychiatrists, Allenby and Kermeff show up. When they don’t see Von Heller, they recognize Paul. At gun point, Paul and Jeremy hold the men until dark. Paul sews white crosses on their shirt fronts, then they drive right up to the Gray Toad Inn, and knock. Murgunstrumm tries to send them away but the vampires make him take the visitors in. Slowly, three of the undead appear, one with a new young woman to eat. Paul gets the upper hand by revealing the crosses on their chests. With chalk, Jeremy draws crosses on all the windows and doors. Paul, Jeremy and Murgunstrumm go upstairs to save the young woman, leaving Allenby to hold off the vampires. Allenby insists on being given a gun.
The trio search the house. They disrupt the vampire who has the girl. She is dead. They look all over the house, upstairs and in the cellar but only find Murgunstrumm abattoir, where he cuts up the women after the vampires have drained them. The dwarf is a cannibal, and this is why he is slave to the vampires. The half eaten victim is the girl from the previous night. There are piles and piles of human bones, all female.
Things go sideways quickly. The vampires burst in with Allenby’s gun. (Allenby is dead, unable to protect himself from hypnosis.) They shoot Paul in the shoulder. Murgunstrumm tears all the crosses off their shirts. A fourth vampire shows up. He has brought Ruth Le Geurn!
The Vampires Win
The vampires split up the victims, with Jeremy and Kermeff downstairs, and Paul and Ruth upstairs. The vampires recognize them as the pair that escape seven months ago and will give them a special death. The vampires leave for a moment when they hear a noise outside. Ruth explains that she escaped Morrisdale with her brother’s help. She, Martin and Dr. Von Heller had found Paul’s letters and figured he had come to Rehobeth. The vampire attacked them, taking Ruth. Paul quickly makes new cloth crosses.
The vampires return. The crosses work for a short while but the vampires become all misty with glowing green eyes. They hypnotize Ruth. It looks pretty bad. Paul notices out the window that dawn is almost there. The vampires flee. Jeremy, Keremeff and Dr. Von Heller rush in. Von Heller is a bear of man and leads them through the house to find the coffins. Von Heller wants to capture a vampire for study. When they do, they find Murgunstrumm destroying the vampires. He thought the vampires had betrayed him to the humans. After twenty-eight years of service, he’s a little pissed.
Von Heller tries to capture the dwarf but Murgunstrumm has lost it. He fights with the strength of twenty men. Von Heller finally shoots him dead. Paul and Ruth are reunited, free in the knowledge the doctors will release them from their asylums. For the first time in months, Ruth smiles.
Grand Guignol Reborn
Wow! What can you say about 30,000 words in a Grand Guignol style. With this story Cave has perfected the tone of Shudder Pulp writing, where everything is creepy and apocalyptic all the time. Despite the style, which obviously I didn’t care for, the plot could have been a Jule de Grandin tale (and probably 15,000 words shorter). The relationship of slave to master is more interesting than most post-Renfield henchman.
Hugh B. Cave doesn’t really add anything new from the first two stories. In both “Stragella” and “Murgunstrumm” the vampires are most dangerous when in mist form (with only their flaring eyes showing). We get to see the vampires in mist, bat, wolf and human form, where they are stylish dressers. Just because you dead, doesn’t mean you have to dress like a mucker… The one fact that saves this story for me is that the vampires were real and Von Heller didn’t pull any rubber masks off dead bad guys. The Dracula inspiration (probably the 1931 movie) isn’t hard to see in Von Heller’s name.
In the final analysis, the vampire stories of Hugh B. Cave were striking at the time they were written. He tried approaches that were different, styles that were unusual. Weird Tales, in particular. would use plenty of vampire tales over the years but Cave’s stand out as something different. While I might not have enjoyed his Shudder Pulp approach, I can still enjoy the supernatural plots and weird nature of the vampires. These stories deserve to be oft reprinted.
Shudder Pulpster
With “The Graveless Dead” in Dime Mystery Magazine, October 1933, Hugh shifts into full Shudder Pulp mode, producing dozens of explained horrors. He did well in the adventure and detective fiction after this. He was never one to stick to one genre as some writers were, making a good living writing Pulp, and then magazine articles and fiction like fellow craftsman, Paul Ernst.
In the late 1970s Hugh B. Cave returned to his roots and began writing a series of mostly stand-alone horror novels. Hugh was a recognized expert on Haiti and its culture. Most of these novels have something to do with voodoo. None of these were vampire novels. It was a wonderful last gift from a writer who lived to his nineties.
