Weird Tales, Volume 1, Number 1, March 1923: The unique magazine

1, MARCH 1923 ***

Transcriber’s Note: All advertisements have been moved to the back. Stories that were split over this issue have been recombined.

=WEIRD TALES=

THE UNIQUE MAGAZINE

Printed in U.S.A.

March, 1923 25 Cents

“OOZE”

An Extraordinary Novelette

By ANTHONY M. RUD

The Tale of A Thousand Thrills

_Complete in This Issue_

WEIRD TALES

THE UNIQUE MAGAZINE

EDWIN BAIRD, Editor

Published monthly by the RURAL PUBLISHING CORPORATION, 934 North Clark Street, Chicago, Ill. Application made for entry at the postoffice at Chicago, Ill., as second class matter. Single copies, 25 cents: subscription, $3 a year in the United States, $3.50 in Canada. The publishers are not responsible for the loss of unsolicited manuscripts in transit, by fire, or otherwise, although every precaution is taken with such material. All manuscripts should be typewritten and must be accompanied by stamped and self-addressed envelopes. The contents of this magazine are fully protected by copyright, and publishers are cautioned against using the same, either wholly or in part.

Copyright, 1923, by the Rural Publishing Corporation.

VOLUME 1 25 Cents NUMBER 1

Contents for March, 1923

TWENTY-TWO REMARKABLE SHORT STORIES

The Mystery of Black Jean JULIAN KILMAN 41 _A story of blood-curdling realism, with a smashing surprise at the end._

The Grave ORVILLE R. EMERSON 47 _A soul-gripping story of terror._

Hark! The Rattle! JOEL TOWNSLEY ROGERS 53 _An uncommon tale that will cling to your memory for many a day._

The Ghost Guard BRYAN IRVINE 59 _A “spooky” tale with a grim background._

The Ghoul and the Corpse G. A. WELLS 65 _An amazing yarn of weird adventure in the frozen North._

Fear DAVID R. SOLOMON 73 _Showing how fear can drive a strong man to the verge of insanity._

The Place of Madness MERLIN MOORE TAYLOR 89 _What two hours in a prison “solitary” did to a man._

The Closing Hand FARNSWORTH WRIGHT 98 _A brief story powerfully written._

The Unknown Beast HOWARD ELLIS DAVIS 100 _An unusual tale of a terrifying monster._

The Basket HERBERT J. MANGHAM 106 _A queer little story about San Francisco._

The Accusing Voice MEREDITH DAVIS 110 _The singular experience of Allen Defoe._

The Sequel WALTER SCOTT STORY 119 _A new conclusion to Edgar Allen Poe’s “Cask of Amontillado.”_

The Weaving Shadows W. H. HOLMES 122 _Chet Burke’s strange adventures in a haunted house._

Nimba, the Cave Girl R. T. M. SCOTT 131 _An odd, fantastic little story of the Stone Age._

The Young Man Who Wanted to Die ? ? ? 135 _An anonymous author submits a startling answer to the question, “What comes after death?”_

The Scarlet Night WILLIAM SANFORD 140 _A tale with an eerie thrill._

The Extraordinary Experiment of Dr. Calgroni JOSEPH FAUS and JAMES BENNETT WOODING 143 _An eccentric doctor creates a frightful living thing._

The Return of Paul Slavsky CAPT. GEORGE WARBURTON LEWIS 150 _A “creepy” tale that ends in a shuddering, breath-taking way._

The House of Death F. GEORGIA STROUP 156 _The strange secret of a lonely woman._

The Gallows I. W. D. PETERS 161 _An out-of-the-ordinary story._

The Skull HAROLD WARD 164 _A grim tale with a terrifying end._

The Ape-Man JAMES B. M. CLARK, JR. 169 _A Jungle tale that is somehow “different.”_

THREE UNUSUAL NOVELETTES

The Dead Man’s Tale WILLARD E. HAWKINS 7 _An astounding yarn that will hold you spellbound and make you breathe fast with a new mental sensation._

Ooze ANTHONY M. RUD 19 _A Remarkable short novel by a master of “gooseflesh” fiction._

The Chain HAMILTON CRAIGIE 77 _Craigie is at his best here._

A STRANGE NOVEL IN TWO PARTS

The Thing of a Thousand Shapes OTIS ADELBERT KLINE 32 _Don’t start this story late at night._

THE EYRIE THE EDITOR 180

Also a number of odd facts and queer fancies, crowded in for good measure

For Advertising Rates in WEIRD TALES apply to YOUNG & WARD, Advertising Managers, 168 North Michigan Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois

_“Gooseflesh” Stories_

Tales of horror--or “gooseflesh” stories--are commonly shunned by magazine editors. Few, if any, will consider such a story, no matter how interesting it may be. They believe that the public doesn’t want this sort of fiction. We, however, believe otherwise. We believe there are tens of thousands--perhaps hundreds of thousands--of intelligent renders who really enjoy “gooseflesh” stories. Hence--

_=Weird Tales=_.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

The Unique MAGAZINE

WEIRD TALES offers such fiction as you can find in no other magazine--fantastic stories, extraordinary stories, grotesque stories, stories of strange and bizarre adventure--the sort of stories, in brief, that will startle and amaze you. Every story in this issue of WEIRD TALES is an odd and remarkable flight of man’s imagination. Some are “creepy,” some deal in masterly fashion with “forbidden” subjects, like insanity, some are concerned with the supernatural and others with material things of horror--all are out of the ordinary, surprisingly new and unusual. A sensational departure from the beaten track--that is the reason for

_=Weird Tales=_.

WEIRD TALES

THE UNIQUE MAGAZINE

Edited by Edwin Baird

VOLUME ONE 25c A COPY MARCH, 1923 SUBSCRIPTION $3.00 A YEAR NUMBER ONE $3.50 IN CANADA

_For Scalp-prickling Thrills and Stark Terror, Read_

_The_

DEAD MAN’S TALE

_By_ Willard E. Hawkins

_The curious narrative that follows was found among the papers of the late Dr. John Pedric, psychical investigator and author of occult works. It bears evidences of having been received through automatic writing, as were several of his publications. Unfortunately, there are no records to confirm this assumption, and none of the mediums or assistants employed by him in his research work admits knowledge of it. Possibly--for the Doctor was reputed to possess some psychic powers--it may have been received by him. At any rate, the lack of data renders the recital useless as a document for the Society for Psychical Research. It is published for whatever intrinsic interest or significance it may possess. With reference to the names mentioned, it may be added that they are not confirmed by the records of the War Department. It could be maintained, however, that purposely fictitious names were substituted, either by the Doctor or the communicating entity._

They called me--when I walked the earth in a body of dense matter--Richard Devaney. Though my story has little to do with the war, I was killed in the second battle of the Marne, on July 24, 1918.

Many times, as men were wont to do who felt the daily, hourly imminence of death in the trenches, I had pictured that event in my mind and wondered what it would be like. Mainly I had inclined toward a belief in total extinction. That, when the vigorous, full-blooded body I possessed should lie bereft of its faculties, I, as a creature apart from it, should go on, was beyond credence. The play of life through the human machine, I reasoned, was like the flow of gasoline into the motor of an automobile. Shut off that flow, and the motor became inert, dead, while the fluid which had given it power was in itself nothing.

And so, I confess, it was a surprise to discover that I was dead and yet not dead.

I did not make the discovery at once. There had been a blinding concussion, a moment of darkness, a sensation of falling--falling--into a deep abyss. An indefinite time afterward, I found myself standing dazedly on the hillside, toward the crest of which we had been pressing against the enemy. The thought came that I must have momentarily lost consciousness. Yet now I felt strangely free from physical discomfort.

What had I been doing when that moment of blackness blotted everything out? I had been dominated by a purpose, a flaming desire----

Like a flash, recollection burst upon me, and, with it, a blaze of hatred--not toward the Boche gunners, ensconced in the woods above us, but toward the private enemy I had been about to kill.

It had been the opportunity for which I had waited interminable days and nights. In the open formation, he kept a few paces ahead of me. As we alternately ran forward, then dropped on our bellies and fired, I had watched my chance. No one would suspect, with the dozens who were falling every moment under the merciless fire from the trees beyond, that the bullet which ended Louis Winston’s career came from a comrade’s rifle.

Twice I had taken aim, but withheld my fire--not from indecision, but lest, in my vengeful heat, I might fail to reach a vital spot. When I raised my rifle the third time, he offered a fair target.

God! how I hated him. With fingers itching to speed the steel toward his heart, I forced myself to remain calm--to hold fire for that fragment of a second that would insure careful aim.

Then, as the pressure of my finger tightened against the trigger, came the blinding flash--the moment of blackness.

_II._

I had evidently remained unconscious longer than I realized.

Save for a few figures that lay motionless or squirming in agony on the field, the regiment had passed on, to be lost in the trees at the crest of the hill. With a pang of disappointment, I realized that Louis would be among them.

Involuntarily I started onward, driven still by that impulse of burning hatred, when I heard my name called.

Turning in surprise, I saw a helmeted figure crouching beside something huddled in the tall grass. No second glance was needed to tell me that the huddled something was the body of a soldier. I had eyes only for the man who was bending over him. Fate had been kind to me. It was Louis.

Apparently, in his preoccupation, he had not noticed me. Coolly I raised my rifle and fired.

The result was startling. Louis neither dropped headlong nor looked up at the report. Vaguely I questioned whether there had been a report.

Thwarted, I felt the lust to kill mounting in me with redoubled fury. With rifle upraised, I ran toward him. A terrific swing, and I crashed the stock against his head.

It passed clear through! Louis remained unmoved.

Uncomprehending, snarling, I flung the useless weapon away and fell upon him with bare hands--with fingers that strained to rend and tear and strangle.

Instead of encountering solid flesh and bone, they too passed through him.

Was it a mirage? A dream? Had I gone crazy? Sobered--for a moment forgetful of my fury--I drew back and tried to reduce the thing to reason. Was Louis but a figment of the imagination--a phantom?

My glance fell upon the figure beside which he was sobbing incoherent words of entreaty.

I gave a start, then looked more closely.

The dead man--for there was no question about his condition, with a bloody shrapnel wound in the side of his head--_was myself_!

Gradually the import of this penetrated my consciousness. Then I realized that it was Louis who had called my name--that even now he was sobbing it over and over.

The irony of it struck me at the moment of realization. I was dead--_I_ was the phantom--who had meant to kill Louis!

I looked at my hands, my uniform--I touched my body. Apparently I was as substantial as before the shrapnel buried itself in my head. Yet, when I had tried to grasp Louis, my hand seemed to encompass only space.

_Louis lived, and I was dead!_

The discovery for a time benumbed my feeling toward him. With impersonal curiosity, I saw him close the eyes of the dead man--the man who, somehow or other, had been me. I saw him search the pockets and draw forth a letter I had written only that morning, a letter addressed to----

With a sudden surge of dismay, I darted forward to snatch it from his hands. He should not read that letter!

Again I was reminded of my impalpability.

But Louis did not open the envelope, although it was unsealed. He read the superscription, kissed it, as sobs rent his frame, and thrust the letter inside his khaki jacket.

“Dick! Buddie!” he cried brokenly. “Best pal man ever had--how can I take this news back to her!”

My lips curled. To Louis, I was his pal, his buddie. Not a suspicion of the hate I bore him--had borne him ever since I discovered in him a rival for Velma Roth.

Oh, I had been clever! It was our “unselfish friendship” that endeared us both to her. A sign of jealousy, of ill nature, and I would have forfeited the paradise of her regard that apparently I shared with Louis.

I had never felt secure of my place in that paradise. True, I could always awaken a response in her, but I must put forth effort in order to do so. He held her interest, it seemed, without trying. They were happy with each other and in each other.

Our relations might be expressed by likening her to the water of a placid pool, Louis to the basin that held her, me to the wind that swept over it. By exerting myself, I could agitate the surface of her nature into ripples of pleasurable excitement--could even lash her emotion into a tempest. She responded to the stimulation of my mood, yet, in my absence, settled contentedly into the peaceful comfort of Louis’ steadfast love.

I felt vaguely then--and am certain now, with a broader perspective toward realities--that Velma intuitively recognized Louis as her mate, yet feared to yield herself to him because of my sway over her emotional nature.

When the great war came, we all, I am convinced, felt that it would absolve Velma from the task of choosing between us.

Whether the agony that spoke from the violet depths of her eyes when we said good-by was chiefly for Louis or for me, I could not tell. I doubt if she could have done so. But in my mind was the determination that only one of us should return, and--Louis would not be that one.

Did I feel no repugnance at thought of murdering the man who stood in my way? Very little. I was a savage at heart--a savage in whom desire outweighed anything that might stand in the way of gaining its object. From my point of view, I would have been a fool to pass the opportunity.

Why I should have so hated him--a mere obstacle in my path--I do not know. It may have been due to a prescience of the intangible barrier his blood would always raise between Velma and me--or to a slumbering sense of remorse.

But, speculation aside, here I was, in a state of being that the world calls death, while Louis lived--was free to return home--to claim Velma--to flaunt his possession of all that I held precious.

It was maddening! Must I stand idly by, helpless to prevent this?

_III._

I have wondered, since, how I could remain so long in touch with the objective world--why I did not at once, or very soon, find myself shut off from earthly sights and sounds as those in physical form are shut off from the things beyond.

The matter seems to have been determined by my will. Like weights of lead, envy of Louis and passionate longing for Velma held my feet to the sphere of dense matter.

Vengeful, despairing, I watched beside Louis. When at last he turned away from my body and, with tears streaming from his eyes, began to drag a useless leg toward the trenches we had left, I realized why he had not gone on with the others to the crest of the hill. He, too, was a victim of Boche gunnery.

I walked beside the stretcher-bearers when they had picked him up and were conveying him toward the base hospital. Throughout the weeks that followed I hovered near his cot, watching the doctors as they bound up the lacerated tendons in his thigh, and missing no detail of his battle with the fever.

Over his shoulder I read the first letter he wrote home to Velma, in which he gave a belated account of my death, dwelling upon the glory of my sacrifice.

“_I have often thought that you two were meant for each other_” [he wrote] “_and that if it had not been for fear of hurting me, you would have been his wife long ago. He was the best buddie a man ever had. If only I could have been the one to die!_”

Had I known it, I could have followed this letter across seas--could, in fact, have passed it and, by an exercise of the will, have been at Velma’s side in the twinkling of an eye. But my ignorance of the laws of the new plane was total. All my thoughts were centered upon a problem of entirely different character.

Never was hold upon earthly treasure more reluctantly relinquished than was my hope of possessing Velma. Surely, death could not erect so absolute a barrier. There must be a way--some loophole of communication--some chance for a disembodied man to contend with his corporeal rival for a woman’s love.

Slowly, very slowly, dawned the light of a plan. So feeble was the glimmer that it would scarcely have comforted one in less desperate straits, but to me it appeared to offer a possible hope. I set about methodically, with infinite patience, evolving it into something tangible, even though I had but the most indefinite idea of what the outcome might be.

The first suggestion came when Louis had so far recovered that but little trace of the fever remained. One afternoon, as he lay sleeping, the mail-distributor handed a letter to the nurse who happened to be standing beside his cot. She glanced at it, then tucked it under his pillow.

The letter was from Velma, and I was hungry for the contents. I did not then know that I could have read it easily, sealed though it was. In a frenzy of impatience, I exclaimed:

“Wake up, confound it, and read your letter!”

With a start, he opened his eyes. He looked around with a bewildered expression.