The Best Horror Stories of Read online

  The Best Horror Stories of

  Robert E Howard

  The Best Horror Stories of

  Robert E Howard

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Previous publication information for the stories contained in this work Illustrations

  Foreword

  Introduction

  In the Forest of Villefere

  A Song of the Werewolf Folk

  Wolfshead

  Up, John Kane!

  Remembrance

  The Dream Snake

  Sea Curse

  The Moor Ghost

  Moon Mockery

  The Little People

  Dead Man's Hate

  The Tavern

  Rattle of Bones

  The Fear That Follows

  The Spirit of Tom Molyneaux

  Casonetto's Last Song

  The Touch of Death

  Out of the Deep

  A Legend of Faring Town

  RestlessWaters

  The Shadow of the Beast

  The Dead Slaver's Tale

  Dermod's Bane

  The Hills of the Dead

  Dig Me No Grave

  The Song of a Mad Minstrel

  The Children of the Night

  Musings

  The Black Stone

  The Thing on the Roof

  The Dweller in Dark Valley

  The Horror from the Mound

  A Dull Sound as of Knocking

  People of the Dark

  Delenda Est

  The Cairn on the Headland

  Worms of the Earth

  The Symbol

  The Valley of the Lost

  The Hoofed Thing

  The Noseless Horror

  The Dwellers Under the Tomb

  An Open Window

  The House of Arabu

  The Man on the Ground

  Old Garfield's Heart

  Kelly the Conjure-Man

  Black Canaan

  To a Woman

  One Who Comes at Eventide

  The Haunter of the Ring

  Pigeons from Hell

  The Dead Remember

  The Fire of Asshurbanipal

  Fragment

  Which Will Scarcely Be Understood

  Miscellanea

  Golnor the Ape

  Spectres in the Dark

  The House

  Untitled Fragment

  Appendix

  Notes on the Original Howard Texts

  Acknowledgments

  The Fully Illustrated Robert E. Howard Library from Del Rey Books Copyright

  For Karen

  Greg Staples

  In the Forest of Villefere

  first published in Weird Tales, August 1925

  A Song of the Werewolf Folk

  first published in Etchings and Odysseys, 1987

  Wolfshead

  first published in Weird Tales, April 1926

  Up, John Kane!

  first published in Up, John Kane!, 1977

  Remembrance

  first published in Weird Tales, April 1928

  The Dream Snake

  first published in Weird Tales, February 1928

  Sea Curse

  first published in Weird Tales, May 1928

  The Moor Ghost

  first published in Weird Tales, September 1929

  Moon Mockery

  first published in Weird Tales, April 1929

  The Little People

  first published in Coven 13, January 1970

  Dead Man's Hate

  first published in Weird Tales, January 1930

  The Tavern

  first published in Singers in the Shadows, 1970

  Rattle of Bones

  first published in Weird Tales, June 1929

  The Fear That Follows

  first published in Singers in the Shadows, 1970

  The Spirit of Tom Molyneaux

  first published in Ghost Stories, April 1929 (as The Apparition in the Prize Ring) Casonetto's Last Song

  first published in Etchings and Odysseys, 1973

  The Touch of Death

  first published in Weird Tales, February 1930 (as The Fearsome Touch of Death) Out of the Deep

  first published in Magazine of Horror, November 1967

  A Legend of Faring Town

  first published in Verses in Ebony, 1975

  Restless Waters

  first published in Witchcraft & Sorcery, 1974

  The Shadow of the Beast

  first published in The Shadow of the Beast, 1977

  The Dead Slaver's Tale

  first published in Weirdbook, 1973

  Dermod's Bane

  first published in Magazine of Horror, Fall 1967

  The Hills of the Dead

  first published in Weird Tales, August 1930

  Dig Me No Grave

  first published in Weird Tales, February 1937

  The Song of a Mad Minstrel

  first published in Weird Tales, February--March 1931

  The Children of the Night

  first published in Weird Tales, April--May 1931

  Musings

  first published in Witchcraft & Sorcery, January--February 1971

  The Black Stone

  first published in Weird Tales, November 1931

  The Thing on the Roof

  first published in Weird Tales, February 1932

  The Dweller in Dark Valley

  first published in Magazine of Horror, November 1965

  The Horror from the Mound

  first published in Weird Tales, May 1932

  A Dull Sound as of Knocking

  first published in A Rhyme of Salem Town and Other Poems, 2007

  People of the Dark

  first published in Strange Tales, June 1932

  Delenda Est

  first published in Worlds of Fantasy, 1968

  The Cairn on the Headland

  first published in S trange Tales, January 1933

  Worms of the Earth

  first published in Weird Tales, November 1932

  The Symbol

  first appeared in Ariel, Autumn 1976

  The Valley of the Lost

  first published in Startling Mystery Stories, Spring 1967 (as The Secret of Lost Valley) The Hoofed Thing

  first published in Weirdbook Three, 1970 (as Usurp the Night) The Noseless Horror

  first published in Magazine of Horror, February 1970

  The Dwellers Under the Tomb

  first published in Lost Fantasies, 1976

  An Open Window

  first published in Weird Tales, September 1932

  The House of Arabu

  first published in Avon Fantasy Reader, 1952 (as The Witch from Hell's Kitchen) The Man on the Ground

  first published in Weird Tales, July 1933

  Old Garfield's Heart

  first published in Weird Tales, December 1933

  Kelly the Conjure-Man

  first published in The Howard Collector, Summer 1964

  Black Canaan

  first published in Weird Tales, June 1936

  To a Woman

  first published in Modern American Poetry, 1933

  One Who Comes at Eventide

  first published in Modern American Poetry, 1933

  The Haunter of the Ring

  first published in Weird Tales, June 1934

  Pigeons from Hell

  first published in Weird Tales, May 1938

  The Dead Remember

  first published in Argosy, August 15, 1936

  The Fire of Asshurbanipal

  first published in Weird Tales, December 1936

  Fragment
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br />   first published in Weird Tales, December 1937

  Which Will Scarcely Be Understood

  first published in Weird Tales, October 1937

  Golnor the Ape

  first published in Crypt of Cthulhu, Roodmas 1985

  Spectres in the Dark

  first published in Cromlech, Spring 1985

  The House

  first published in The New Howard Reader, 2003

  Untitled Fragment

  first published in The Howard Collector, Spring 1967

  Illustrations

  Like a shadow it moved upon de Montour

  "Sea fiend," I said in an unsteady voice

  He halted, frozen

  And about clustered the--Things

  The sky was overcast with misty gray

  He parried the bird-thing's stroke

  Yar Ali fired point-blank from the hip with deadly effect

  Foreword

  I have been a professional illustrator for nearly twenty years and was inspired, like many artists, by the work of Frank Frazetta. I first saw his Conan paintings when I was eight years old, and I can still remember where I stood and what the furniture in my neighbor's house looked like at the time--and twenty years later, Howard's writing still has the same effect. Howard is a master of atmosphere and detail, and when I read his stories, I am in them; I can see the buttons on the costumes, smell the dank air, and feel the foreboding. So, although illustrating his work has been a dream project, it has not been an easy one! For doing such a master justice is no small task--but, nevertheless, it's incredibly rewarding.

  To follow in the footsteps of the mighty Frazetta is one thing, but to follow in Howard's is quite another.

  I hope you enjoy reading this book as much as I enjoyed illustrating it.

  Greg Staples

  2008

  Introduction

  He was almost alone in his ability to create real emotions of fear and of dread suspense.... For stark, living fear...the actual smell and feel and darkness and brooding horror and impending doom that inhere in that nighted, moss-hung jungle...what other writer is even in the running with REH?

  --H. P. LOVECRAFT

  In 1923 a new magazine appeared on the newsstands of America, proclaiming itself "The Unique Magazine": Weird Tales. It was intended by its publishers to be a market for the sort of "off-trail" stories that other magazines would not publish, but while it did become the first professional magazine to publish H. P. Lovecraft, its first editor showed perhaps too great a fondness for traditional ghost stories.

  Following a shaky first year, though, a new editor, Farnsworth Wright, took the reins, adding to the masthead "A Magazine of the Bizarre and Unusual." He would quickly make good on that claim, and among his first accomplishments was acceptance, in the fall of 1924, of a story of prehistoric adventure by an eighteen-year-old Texan named Robert E. Howard.

  Howard and Weird Tales would remain closely associated for the next dozen years, until the author took his own life at the age of thirty. During that period, forty-eight stories and twenty-one poems by Robert E. Howard appeared in the magazine, and he became one of its most popular writers, along with Lovecraft and Seabury Quinn. His fame rests largely on the fantasy adventures of Conan, Kull, Solomon Kane, Bran Mak Morn, and Turlogh O'Brien, stories in which he created a new subgenre that has come to be known as sword and sorcery, blending together elements of heroic adventure and horror. As the stories in this volume will demonstrate, he was also a master of horror, who brought to it a strong dash of adventure.

  Though a great admirer of the "cosmic horror" of Lovecraft and the imaginative sweep of Clark Ashton Smith, Howard was by nature an adventure writer, and his concerns were human, not cosmic. "It is the individual mainly which draws me--the struggling, blundering, passionate insect vainly striving against the river of Life and seeking to divert the channel of events to suit himself--breaking his fangs on the iron collar of Fate and sinking into final defeat with the froth of a curse on his lips," he wrote to Lovecraft.

  Where Lovecraft's characters frequently are driven to madness by what they have seen, Howard's will more frequently be provoked into action. Howard's characters, as a general rule, refuse to give up or to run away, no matter how heavily the odds are stacked against them. Howard also brings to his work a gift of poetry, a talent for creating moody or atmospheric effects with just a few broad strokes, and a strong emotionalism that heightens the dramatic effects.

  As with many naturally gifted storytellers, Howard's earliest works are marked by a creative exuberance that is sometimes only barely under control. "Wolfshead," for example, demonstrates that the young writer is not afraid to play with conventions of the horror genre, in this case the werewolf. On the other hand, the author recognized that he had perhaps gotten carried away with himself, writing to a friend,

  "After reading it, I'm not altogether sure I wasn't off my noodler when I wrote it. I sure mixed slavers, duelists, harlots, drunkards, maniacs and cannibals reckless. The narrator is a libertine and a Middle Ages fop; the leading lady is a harlot, the hero is a lunatic, one of the main characters is a slave trader, one a pervert, one a drunkard, no they're all drunkards, but one is a gambler, one a duelist and one a cannibal slave."

  Farnsworth Wright, however, thought well enough of the tale not only to buy it, but to make it the cover story for the April 1926 issue, and therein is an interesting story itself. In January of that year, Wright wrote to Howard asking if he had a carbon copy of the story: the artist assigned to provide the cover painting and interior pen-and-ink illustration had not returned the manuscript, and there was no time to lose in typesetting if the story was to make it into the April issue. Howard, at this stage in his career, had not developed the habit of making carbon copies. So the young writer sat down, rewrote the story from memory, and sent it off. Shortly thereafter he learned that the manuscript had been found, missing the first page, which was taken from his rewrite.

  Howard's elation at making an extra ten dollars for his efforts (on top of the forty dollars he'd already been promised) was short-lived. As he later told a correspondent, he "one day got the advance pages of Wolfshead which was about to be published. Reading it over I was so depressed and discouraged that I went and got a job jerking soda in a drug-store."

  Readers reacted to the story much more positively than the author. While it was not voted the most popular tale in the April issue (Lovecraft's "The Outsider" won that honor), it placed a very respectable third. Years later, writing about Howard to E. Hoffmann Price, Lovecraft said, "I first became conscious of him as a coming leader just a decade ago--when I read Wolfshead. ...I saw that WT had landed a big-timer."

  Most young writers are, of course, inclined to emulate other writers whom they admire or respect, and Howard was no exception. Sometimes the influences are quite apparent, as in "The Little People," based on the work of Welsh master Arthur Machen (who is mentioned in Howard's tale, along with his story

  "The Shining Pyramid"), a prelude to what will become an important motif in some of Howard's finest stories ("The Children of the Night," "People of the Dark," "Worms of the Earth," "The Valley of the Lost," etc.). Less explicit are influences like Ambrose Bierce (whose "A Watcher by the Dead" must surely have inspired "The Touch of Death") and Jack London (if indeed the Faring Town tales may be said to owe something to Howard's favorite writer). Undoubtedly Howard was occasionally influenced by something he'd read in the magazines. Sometimes stories came from his own dreams (as he claimed was the case with "The Dream Snake").

  Yet Howard is never entirely derivative. Always there is something in his work that marks it as his. As Lovecraft would later recognize, "Seldom if ever did he set down a lifeless stock character or situation and leave it as such. Before he concluded with it, it always took on some tinge of vitality and reality...always drew something from his own experience and knowledge of life instead of from the sterile herbarium of dessicated pulpish standbys." As with his werewolves, oth
er Howard creations do not seem to follow traditional guidelines: the merman of "Out of the Deep" seems not so much a creature of the sea as an embodiment of the cold, cruel sea itself; his ghosts take varied forms in such tales as "The Spirit of Tom Molyneaux" and "The Shadow of the Beast." The Tavern of the poem is "like a monster"--no mere building, but a sinister life form. To my mind, though, his most effective accomplishment is the way he can make fear, or guilt, or hate, or other intense psychological states assume almost tangible form. Howard was a very emotional writer, and it adds a heightened sense of urgency to his tales and poems. "The Touch of Death," "The Fear that Follows," and "The Dead Slavers' Tale" are but three examples--almost all the stories herein will illustrate the point as well.

  In the fall of 1927 Howard wrote a story about an Elizabethan-era swordsman who pursues a trail of vengeance into Darkest Africa, where he meets with sorcery and witnesses a bestial retribution. He'd intended to send it to Weird Tales, still at that time the only magazine that had accepted any of his stories. However, on a whim he sent it to Argosy, one of the better pulp magazines, instead, and was rewarded with a personal letter from an associate editor who, while rejecting it, said "You seem to have caught the knack of writing good action & plenty of it into your stories." Considerably buoyed, Howard wrote to his friend Clyde Smith, "So, if a despised weird tale, whose whole minor tone is occultism, can create that much interest with a magazine which never publishes straight weird stuff, I don't feel so much discouraged." He sent the story without modification to Weird Tales, which published it in the August 1928 issue as "Red Shadows," the first of Howard's tales of the swashbuckling Puritan Solomon Kane, and the first of his many successful heroic fantasy series.

  All of Howard's sword-and-sorcery stories include elements of horror, but the Kane series in particular is every bit as much horror as it is adventure. Some of these are set in England or Continental Europe: we have selected here "Rattle of Bones," in which a chance encounter in the Black Forest leads Kane to a confrontation with evil in a lonely tavern. Others are set in Darkest Africa, that fictional continent so beloved of the adventure writers of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, a mysterious land of jungles teeming with life inimical to man, of strange peoples and cults, bizarre flora and fauna, a land largely unexplored, in which might lie lost cities or civilizations from remotest antiquity. Howard certainly was not the first, nor the last, writer to make use of the possibilities of Darkest Africa, but as Lovecraft said, he brought to "the shadow-haunted ruins of unknown and primordial cities in the African jungle...an aura of pre-human fear and necromancy which no other writer could duplicate." In "Hills of the Dead,"