THE WOMEN OF WEIRD TALES 03: “BRING OUT YOUR DEAD.”
While reading The Women of Weird Tales I noticed a few tendencies among the selected stories. One was the morbidly sensational story. The second was the old school style that harks back to a tradition of English ghost stories. The third were child vampires. And the last I don’t know what to call except “ideas Phillip K. Dick stole”.
This week’s story is very much the second classic ghost story sort.
“The Dead-Wagon” by Greye La Spina (September 1927)
It’s a tale as old as time.*
There’s an old English family. They have a curse on them. There’s the strapping young American man newly married into the family. Ominous portents portend. Our American doesn’t believe in curses. Things happen. A gruesome ghost appears. A horrible secret is revealed. Tragedy strikes. The American starts to believe. Only blood will appease the curse, but whose blood will it be?
“No one has told you that old legend?”
Dinsmore is the name of our American. Melverson is our old English family. There’s other people like the wife and servant, but mostly it’s Dinsmore and Lord Melverson talking to each other. Since it’s a weird tale there’s none of that is it a ghost or isn’t it malarky. It’s a ghost. It scribbles ominous portents on the abbey’s sturdy heirloom door, and appears with its wagon to bring out a dead Melverson every time it arrives. The curse has its source in the abduction of a woman in the 17th century, the Plague, and a dying man getting refused sanctuary in the house. Now the dead-wagon with its equally dead driver visits the family to claim the firstborn males. This happens to Melverson’s son when he conveniently falls out of an airplane. Then later when Dinsmore marries into the family the curse falls onto his son. It’s then that we get the family secret revealed (in a found manuscript) and old Lord Melverson trying to convince Dinsmore that his newborn is in peril. Of course at first Dinsmore doesn’t believe, and he thinks it’s all old world nonsense. But then his son bonks his head and slips into a coma, at which point Dinsmore is convinced the curse is real. Then as the clock ticks and the child’s brainfever mounts, Dinsmore and Lord Melverson see the approaching ghost with his gruesome freight, and it’s at that moment that Lord Melverson figures out a way to satisfy the curse.
“Bring out your dead.”
Overall, a decent story that sits comfortably alongside the works of Sheridan Le Fanu. And with a grisly antagonist that I could absolutely see in some old classic horror movie. It’s hard not to imagine the wagon driver as the gleefully sinister Boris Karloff. And while there are some florid bits and giggle-worthy sentences like “the old man ejaculated weakly” we’ve taken a break from the thirsty territory of the first two stories. Instead, we get some pure distilled Edwardian shudders. Not a bad thing. Not a bad thing at all.
Next week? The Canal.
* By “time” I mean, like, the 1800s.
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