Today’s indulgence was The Corpse on the Grating, by Hugh B. Cave, from Astounding Stories, Vol I, No. 2. In it, a skeptical medical man named Dale, on a bet with a friend, a more liberal minded scientist, tries to spend the night in an old warehouse where he is led to believe that the watchman had, that very night, been frightened to death. The entire story involved five people, two of whom were dead. It was reminiscent of some of the horror writing of Edgar Allen Poe, told in first person with a tone that suggests that even the teller, after having endured the ordeal, has a hard time believing the tale.
An excerpt: “He was hanging on the grating. Hanging there, with white, twisted hands clutching the rigid bars of iron, straining to force them apart. His whole distorted body was forced against the barrier, like the form of a madman struggling to escape from his cage. His face—the image of it still haunts me whenever I see iron bars in the darkness of a passage—was the face of a man who has died from utter, stark horror. It was frozen in a silent shriek of agony, staring out at me with fiendish maliciousness. Lips twisted apart. White teeth gleaming in the light. Bloody eyes, with a horrible glare of colorless pigment. And—dead.”
The story was only nine pages long, and comprised little more than the fearful thoughts of a man walking alone in a dark, abandoned building after coming across a corpse. This was the pulp science fiction of its day, a fanciful story of scientific experimentation, skepticism, and discovery.
I was happy to learn that I’ll be able to enjoy more of Cave’s writing, because he contributed roughly 800 stories to the science fiction, horror, (et. al.) pulp magazines throughout the 20s and 30s. He also wrote under the pen names John Starr, Geoffery Vace, and Justin Case.
Until next time, dear reader.
John Racette