Joshua Reynolds's Blog, page 21

Christmas 2020

Merry Christmas, folks. Y’all have a safe and happy holiday, and I’ll see you on the other side. If you’re in need of some entertainment, I’ve written a wee free holiday tale, involving everyone’s favourite monster-hunter and the Icelandic beast known as the Yule Cat. Pour yourself some eggnog, cut a piece of stollen, and enjoy!

Play us out, Eartha.

Casefiles of the Royal Occultist

For today’s look at the Royal Occultist universe, we have a chronological listing of all of the short stories published so far, as well as those that are forthcoming in the near future, and where you can find some of them.

The stories below are listed in a rough chronological order – or as near as I can figure it. While I initially tried to mention the date in every story, I soon gave up on that, save when the date was actually important, i.e. “Scholar’s Fire”. It felt forced, and I decided that keeping that part of things a bit vague wasn’t a bad idea, especially as the number of stories ballooned.

That said, having *some* sort of organisation is probably important in a long-running series like this. Those interested in a far more accurate chronology, especially with regard to the numerous crossovers and Easter Eggs in the stories, are encouraged to check out both volumes of Crossovers Expanded by Wold Newton scholar Sean Lee Levin, available from Meteor House Press.

[1592] “A Tiger’s Heart, A Player’s Hide”– Dr. John Dee, and his assistant, William Sly, investigate a mysterious plague afflicting the playhouses of London.

[1666] “Scholars Fire”– As the Great Fire threatens London, the Duke of Cumberland and his servant, John Cadmus, hunt down an errant alchemist and a fiery salamander.

[1902] “The Disagreeable Bridegroom”– Edwin Drood and his apprentice, Thomas Carnacki, investigate a peculiar haunting, involving the East India Club and an age old debt.

[1913] “Monmouth’s Giants”– Thomas Carnacki makes the acquaintance of one Charles St. Cyprian as they investigate ghostly giants in Guildhall. 

[1914] “Hochmuller’s Hound”– Thomas Carnacki and his assistant, Charles St. Cyprian, battle the monstrous Hound of Mons.

[1916] “The Charnel Hounds”– Thomas Carnacki and his assistant, Charles St. Cyprian, confront an infestation of ghouls in the trenches.

[1918] “Dead Men’s Bones”– Thomas Carnacki and his assistant, Charles St. Cyprian, join forces with American ghost-breaker John Bass to battle a giant made from the corpses of fallen soldiers.

[1919] “The Unwrapping Party”– St. Cyprian and Gallowglass confront a linen-shrouded horror out of black aeons at a Soho mummy-unwrapping party.

[1919] “The Dreaming Dead”– St. Cyprian and Gallowglass face down a trauma-eating entity in Bethnal Green Infirmary.

[1919] “Merry John Mock”– St. Cyprian and Gallowglass deal with ghostly swine and malevolent mummers during a Winter Solstice in the Channel Islands.

[1920] “The Maida Vale Mummy”– St. Cyprian and Gallowglass confront some decidedly risible Roman remains in a Maida Vale wine-cellar. 

[1920] “Orbis Tertius”– St. Cyprian and Gallowglass attempt to prevent a memetic horror from overtaking the Voyager’s Club, and all of London. 

[1920] “Hairy Hands”– St. Cyprian and Gallowglass attempt to capture a murderous phantom throttle on Dartmoor.

[1920] “The Strix Society”– St. Cyprian and Gallowglass confront a deadly society of psychic predators in London.

[1920] “An Ounce of Prevention”– St. Cyprian and Gallowglass taking on an avian entity of the Pictish persuasion in rural Cornwall.

[1920] “The Creeping Man”– St. Cyprian and Gallowglass attend an auction and face the monstrous Creeping Man in London. 

[1920] “The Great Revelry”– St. Cyprian and Gallowglass confront a murderer with a mania for the Dionysian Mysteries in the halls of the Voyagers Club.

[1920] “The Door of Eternal Night”– St. Cyprian and Gallowglass join forces with Harry Houdini and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to defeat a sinister cult and an old enemy in London.

[1920] “The Artist as Wolf”– St. Cyprian and Gallowglass locking horns with an artistically inclined lycanthrope in London.

[1920] “Deep Red Bells”– St. Cyprian and Gallowglass battle an antediluvian ghost in Dorset.

[1920] “The Fates of Dr. Fell”– St. Cyprian and Gallowglass confront a sinister fortune-teller on a train to Penzance.

[1920] “Krampusnacht”– St. Cyprian and Gallowglass battle the demonic Krampus in London on Christmas Eve.

[1921] “The Faceless Fiend”– St. Cyprian and Gallowglass go up against a monstrous killing thought, summoned by a combination of higher mathematics, devilish incense and illicit carpentry, in a Seven Dials garret.

[1921] “The Ironwood Wardrobe”– St. Cyprian and Gallowglass join forces with Sherlock Holmes in order to investigate a case involving a missing child and a magical wardrobe.

[1921] “The Second Occupant”– St. Cyprian and Gallowglass confront the vengeful occupant of Lot No. 249 in their back garden to save the life of Abercrombie Smith.

[1921] “Sign of the Salamander”– St. Cyprian and Gallowglass deal with murder, foreign agents and a ferocious fire elemental in Egypt.

[1921] “Squatter’s Rights”– St. Cyprian and Gallowglass must rescue a friend from the monstrous attentions of an unwelcome tenant in Brichester.

[1921] “The Gotterdammerung Gavotte”– St. Cyprian and Gallowglass join forces with five other occult detectives, including John Silence, to confront the horrors of the Great Old Ones.

[1921] “The Teeth of Winter”– St. Cyprian and Gallowglass hunt a cannibalistic ogre with the help of fellow occult investigator, Lone Crow, in Northern Alberta.

[1921] “The Bascomb Rug”– St. Cyprian and Gallowglass hunt a monstrous killer in Orkney. 

[1921] “Return of the Hound”– St. Cyprian and Gallowglass encounter an old foe in a new form in the wilds of Limehouse.

[1922] “Iron Bells”– St. Cyprian and Gallowglass investigate horrors in the Underground, and worse things waiting in London.

[1922] “The Hunting of Philip Ackroyd”– St. Cyprian and Gallowglass battle a phantasmal predator in their own sanctum sanctorum.

[1922] “Terror on the Links”– St. Cyprian and Gallowglass encounter ghosts, golfers and worse in West Kilbride.

[1922] “The House of Bast”– St. Cyprian and Gallowglass confront a surgical horror of monstrous proportions in Wapping.

[1922] “The Coventry Street Terror”– St. Cyprian and Gallowglass join forces with a mysterious Styrian nobleman in order to prevent a deadly vampiric plague from taking root in London. 

[1922] “The Cult of the Horrible”– St. Cyprian and Gallowglass battle a cult of monster-worshipping vivisectionists in South Yorkshire.

[1922] “The Bells of Northam”– St. Cyprian and Gallowglass team up with Harley Warren and Randolph Carter to prevent the rise of a horror out Roman times.

[1922] “The d’Erlette Configuration”– St. Cyprian and Gallowglass must solve a demonic puzzle-box before an unholy unpleasantness is unleashed.

[1922] “The Wedding Seal”– St. Cyprian and Gallowglass deal with a Selkie under domestic duress and her fierce kin in the Orkney Islands.

[1922] “Feast of Fools”– St. Cyprian and Gallowglass face down the sinister Saturn Society on a bothersome Boxing Day.

[1923] “In the Dark and Quiet”– St. Cyprian and Gallowglass confront a monstrous not-a-ghost beneath the Bank of England.

[1923] “Wendy-Smythe’s Worm”– St. Cyprian and Gallowglass confront a rapacious and ever-expanding serpent of mythical, malevolent proportions in Kensington.

[1923] “The Jagtooth Lane Horror”– St. Cyprian and Gallowglass tangle with an angry Viking ghost in the snickleways of York.

[1923] “The Caller in the Night”– St. Cyprian and Gallowglass investigate a family curse and a mysterious beast in the Mendips.

[1923] “The Uninvited Guest”– St. Cyprian and Gallowglass face a decidedly hostile ectoplasmic manifestation at a séance gone wrong. 

[1923] “The Creature from the Abysmal Sea”– St. Cyprian and Gallowglass join the London Tunnel Authority in a hunt for a creature from an otherworldly sea, loose in the sewers of London.

[1923] “The Riders of St. George”– St. Cyprian and Gallowglass seek to exorcise a host of murderous undead knights in Hertfordshire.

[1923] “The Hungry Stones”– St. Cyprian and Gallowglass match wits with a possessed woman and a lupine horror in Derbyshire.

[1923] “The Pnakotic Puzzle”– St. Cyprian and Gallowglass match wits with a bevy of devilish intruders, including a time traveller and an amorphous entity.

[1923] “The Necromancer’s Drum”– St. Cyprian and Gallowglass confront the walking dead, a cunning necromancer and a demonic Ankou in darkest Wessex.

[1924] “Deo Viridio”– St. Cyprian and Gallowglass battle a pagan fertility god in Lincolnshire.

[1924] “The Devil of Dog-End”– St. Cyprian and Gallowglass hunt down a fearsome ghost in York.

[1924] “The Fane of the Black Queen”– St. Cyprian has gone missing, and Gallowglass must find him before an undead queen unleashes a cosmic horror on London.

[1924] “Owd Hob”– St. Cyprian and Gallowglass match wits with a vicious boggart in Suffolk.

[1924] “Hairy Shanks”– St. Cyprian and Gallowglass face the fangs of a phantasmal bear in the sewers of London.

[1924] “The Black Brotherhood”– St. Cyprian and Gallowglass confront a shadowy secret society in Hampstead.

[1924] “The Hound’s Daughter”– St. Cyprian and Gallowglass investigate a mystery involving two old foes in the heart of London. 

[1924] “Fiends Fell”– St. Cyprian and Gallowglass confront an aquatic horror in the north of England. 

[1925] “They Shall Eat Dust”– St. Cyprian and Gallowglass confront the spirits of the unhappy dead in a forgotten tube station.

[1925] “The Bride of the Hound”– St. Cyprian must face a cavalcade of horrors at a fancy dress dinner party in Myrdstone.

[1925] “The Roaring Ship”– St. Cyprian and Gallowglass battle zombies and a spectral Zeppelin in Swaffham.

[1925] “The Third Death of Henry Antrim”– St. Cyprian and Gallowglass hunt for a vampire during a Christmas party.

[1926] “A Whisper of Soft Wings”– St. Cyprian and Gallowglass must solve a series of murders involving an airborne killer of unknown origins.

[1926] “The River’s Brink”– St. Cyprian and Gallowglass confront a murderous river spirit on the Tees.

[1926] “The Creeping Crawlers of Clavering”– St. Cyprian and Gallowglass investigate a peculiar spectral manifestation at England’s most haunted house – Clavering Grange.

[1926] “The Mere”– St. Cyprian and Gallowglass uncover a deadly threat in a Fenlands cottage.

[1953] “Unquiet in the Earth”– Ebe Gallowglass and her assistants investigate ghostly giants and government conspiracies in a Cornish village.

[1985] “Cheyne Walk, 1985”– A reluctant medium is forced to plumb the secrets of No. 427 Cheyne Walk by the Ministry of Esoteric Observation.

To date, twenty-six of the above stories have been collected in two books – Monmouth’s Giants and Hochmuller’s Hound – both of which are currently available. And if you’d like to check out some of the Royal Occultist stories for free, head over to my Curious Fictions page. For more general updates, be sure to check the Royal Occultist Facebook page.

The Last Wolf

Recently, I watched The Last Wolf: Karl Edward Wagner, a documentary about – well – Karl Edward Wagner. It was a fascinating and somewhat sobering ‘warts and all’ look at one of the most accomplished dark fantasy and horror writers of the late Twentieth Century.

Wagner has always been one of my literary touchstones. Like Manly Wade Wellman, Wagner’s work has often informed my own, and I often turning to his stories when I feel my creative energies at an ebb. His stories display an inventiveness second to none, with characters of such unparalleled vividness that more than once I have found myself attempting to dissect his work, to learn that secret alchemy by which I might improve my own writing.

He’s also something of a warning – of drinking too much, of taking on too many contracts and breaking them…the sort of lessons any jobbing writer needs to learn. In Wagner, the best and worst of the writer’s life was on view. Wagner’s relative obscurity these days is also a reminder that the glory of the written word is – at best – fleeting, for all save a lucky few.

The film itself is impressive, boasting interviews with Wagner’s family and friends, including Peter Straub and David Drake. It’s well worth a watch if you have any interest in the man, or his work – or just in that particular period in the history of horror writing. I highly recommend checking it out, if you’ve got a few extra bucks burning a hole in your pocket.

The Last Wolf: Karl Edward Wagner from The Last Wolf: Karl Edward Wagner on Vimeo.

The Hateful Hound

In today’s look at the Royal Occultist universe, we examine one of Charles St. Cyprian’s deadliest foes…the monstrous Hound of Mons. 

The first recorded appearance of the gigantic canine known as the Hound of Mons was in Belgium in 1914, when it reportedly stalked No Man’s Land. An enormous black mastiff, driven mad by the death of its master, mauled a number of unlucky British soldiers before it perished in an artillery barrage. Or so the official reports claimed.

In reality, the Hound was anything but a normal dog. Dr. Gottlieb Hochmuller, vivisectionist, alchemist and member of the sinister Thule Society, created the beast by implanting a specially bred dog with the brain of a madman. When he unleashed his abominable weapon on the British forces at Mons, he attracted the attentions of then-Royal Occultist, Thomas Carnacki, and his apprentice, Charles St. Cyprian. In the ensuing confrontation, Hochmuller was seemingly killed his own creation, and the Hound itself was thought slain by a well-placed bullet.

But seven years later, the Hound returned to bedevil St. Cyprian and his own apprentice, Ebe Gallowglass. Despite a fiery plunge into the Thames, the bestial killer returned once more, this time allying with another old foe of St. Cyprian’s to threaten the life of Hochmuller’s estranged daughter.

Again, the creature was thought to have perished, only to reappear – albeit in an altered state – and attempt to take his revenge on the Royal Occultist at a fancy dress party in Myrdstone, in a scheme involving a mysterious cult and a secretive race of corpse-eaters.

While St. Cyprian and Gallowglass have a number of reoccurring foes, the Hound is possibly my favourite of the bunch – so much so that I’ve returned to him four times now. The initial premise behind the character was to be an homage to the Universal Monsters. A creature created to return again and again, regardless of how it was dispatched in the previous story. And as with those old films,  I added a new wrinkle to things every time the Hound reappeared – a slight change to the formula, in order to keep the concept fresh.

I hope to write another Hound story at some point. Initially, I wanted to write one a year, and give them increasingly bizarre titles – “The Hound’s Tomb”, “Curse of the Hound”, “The Hound Strikes”, “The Cult of the Hound”, “The Hound Walks Among Us”, etc. – but only time will tell if he’ll rise from the grave to bedevil the Royal Occultist once more.

If you’d like to check out some of the Royal Occultist stories for free, head over to my Curious Fictions page. For more general updates, be sure to check the Royal Occultist Facebook page.

The Diehard

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Lady of gentle birth, Scottish, young, penniless, possessing strong psychic powers, will devote her services to the solving of uncanny mysteries or the ‘laying of ghosts’. Offer quite genuine. Reply, with particulars and remuneration offered, to S. C. c/o Mrs Barker, 14b Air Street, Regent’s Park, London.

– Shiela Crerar

Shiela Crerar, psychic investigator and adventuress, first burst into public view in the pages of The Blue Magazine in 1920 with “The Eyes of Doom”. The obscure creation of the intriguingly enigmatic Ella Scrymsour, Crerar battled ghosts, werewolves and gibbering ghouls of all types from May of 1920 to October of that same year, appearing in a grand total of six stories.

Unfortunately, these vanished into the literary ether when The Blue Magazine folded not long after – at least temporarily.  Luckily for aficionados of occult sleuths, Ash Tree Press released a lovely collection in 2006, marking the first time these stories were collected or reprinted in any form. You can also find them online, if you’re of a mind.

Unlike her masculine counterparts in the occult detective business, Crerar is a two-fisted phantom fighter, wading into supernatural situations with little more than guts, brains and a distinct lack of fear bolstered by harsh economic necessity.  Not for her the remote recordings of Dr. Hesselius or the psychical solutions of John Silence. Instead she pounced willy-nilly on lycanthropes and luminescent manifestations, sinking her teeth into matters both mundane and malevolent with admirable determination.

In the opening pages of “The Eyes of Doom”, Crerar’s situation rests at the far sharp end from that of John Silence. Left an orphan by the abrupt death of her uncle, the nineteen-year-old Shiela is forced to lease out her family’s ancestral Scottish home and make her way to London to look for work. There, running low on funds and friends, she is confronted by a mysterious man who encourages her to use her heretofore unknown psychic abilities for the good of mankind. 

Crerar promptly does so, albeit by putting an ad in the paper and advertising her abilities to the highest bidder. What her strange benefactor thought of this we are never to know, as he doesn’t reappear (possibly out of embarrassment). Crerar’s mettle is unquestionable given the era in which she lives and the expectations which dog her, and it is further tested by her first encounter with the justice-hungry spectres of “The Eyes of Doom”, when her ad is answered and she returns to her native Scotland for a spectral showdown. As becomes her practice, Crerar hurls herself headlong into matters and pits her will against that of the Kildrummie Weird without either hesitation or preparation.

By the end of the first story in the canon, Crerar has laid the Weird to rest, refreshed her bank account and acquired a love-struck admirer in the form of Stavordale Hartland, nephew of the unfortunate Lady Kildrummie.  Hartland flits in an out of the series, lovelorn and eternally worried until finally getting his heart’s desire in “The Wraith of Fergus McGinty”, when Crerar at last acquiesces to his constant stream of marriage proposals and gives up her adventuresome life for quiet domesticity.

But before that, Crerar takes on a number of tough and nasty ghouls with little more than a torch and moxie. It makes for an interesting contrast with other, more well-known occult detectives. Crerar takes no precautionary measures and has little more than a layman’s working knowledge of the occult to guide her. Instead, she relies on common sense and that particular brand of Scottish toughness that compels her to face the darkness head on, with eyes wide.

This gets her into trouble more often than not, however. In “The Death Vapour”, Crerar faces off against a vicious satanic presence and gets badly burned and temporarily blinded for her troubles. And in “The Werewolf of Rannoch”, she rapidly flits between being the predator and the prey as she tussles with the titular monster in the wintry Highlands. None of these travails seem to dampen her enthusiasm for bashing beasties over the head with handy items or hurling herself on them with wildcat savagery.

The stories themselves, while utilitarian in prose, are possessed of a more visceral excitement than many other psychic investigation stories of the time.  Crerar is a very physical character, always moving, thinking and doing. Where Silence or Carnacki spend most of their time in quiet contemplation, Crerar is in full pulp-heroine mode, tracking werewolves through snowy forests and sleeping in hidden rooms because that’s what it takes to get the job done.

And it is a job, something Crerar never forgets. Where her contemporaries are men of means or public-spirited citizens, Crerar is a professional woman, confronting ancient evils in order to put bread in the bin and butter on the table. Her heroism is a hard thing, motivated by self-interest and, initially, desperation.

In the end, it is that fact alone that makes the maudlin conclusion to the series palatable. When Hartland finally ties Crerar down and convinces her to marry him and give up her life of adventure, it makes sense for the times and the character both, however unsatisfying.

Still, one can’t help but feel that Shiela Crerar, tough as she was, didn’t give up so easily.  Marriage would simply be another obstacle to deal with and if Crerar proved anything in her short run, it was that any obstacle could be overcome if you hit it hard enough, and often enough.  

Especially monsters.

*Author’s Note: This essay originally appeared in 2011, at Black Gate Magazine.*

Turkeys Away

I’ve never been big on Thanksgiving, for a variety of reasons, but I have one tradition I refuse to break. Every Thanksgiving, whatever else is going on, whatever sort of mood I’m in or what sort of deadlines I’ve got looming, I watch the “Turkeys Away” episode of WKRP in Cincinnati.

You probably know what episode I’m talking about, because it’s the only episode of the series anyone really remembers – which is unfortunate, as WKRPiC is a comedy gem, and without it we possibly wouldn’t have had later workplace sitcoms, such as Newsradio, Wings, or even Parks & Rec. I highly recommend reading this oral history of the episode in question, over at The Classic TV History Blog.

All that aside, it’s well worth a watch if you’ve never seen it.

Just watch out for falling turkeys.

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Haint Blue

When I was growing up, I saw a lot of houses like this, down around where we lived. There was even one that was all blue – roof, walls, porch, chimney. All bright, vibrant blue. It even had blue posts, sunk into the ground at the edges of the property, with silver dollars nailed to the tops.

I always wondered what they were afraid of. Must have been nasty, whatever it was.

Anyway, haints don’t like blue. It’s a fact. Everybody says so.

And that’s why I always wear blue.

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Albion Triumphant

Today, our exploration of the Royal Occultist universe delves into the secretive and sinister organisation known as the Order of the Cosmic Ram.

The origins of the Order of the Cosmic Ram are shrouded in mystery, even to the bulk of its membership, which is comprised of men from the highest levels of English society. The Order are devoted to the ideal of the British Empire and Albion Triumphant.

Or, rather, that ideal as they define it.

Theories abound as to the Order’s antecedents–some occult scholars believe that the members of the Order are simply the Knights Templar by another name, while others believe that they are a radical English splinter group of the Rosicrucians.

The rites and rituals of the Order of the Cosmic Ram are as mysterious as their origins. What is known, however, is their goal – nothing less than the domination of the world by a newly invigorated British Empire, guided and controlled by the Order’s members.

It is, in part, due to this stated goal of global totalitarianism that the Order has as deplorable a reputation as it does amongst the various occult groups which make London their headquarters. The Order has made enemies of the Ordo Templi Orientis, the Black Brotherhood and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn among others with their activities, which include the theft of rare grimoires or objects of esoteric interest, the assault or assassination of prominent occult figures opposed to their goals, and being generally unpleasant about the whole thing.

Recently, the Order has come to the attention of the Ministry of Esoteric Observation due to their part in the murder of several prominent members of the Voyagers Club in 1920, as well as the Jade Suit Incident of that same year, and the 1921 Seeley Affair. In each case, the Order’s schemes were upended by Charles St. Cyprian and Ebe Gallowglass, and the organisation has learned to its cost that crossing the Royal Occultist carries certain risks.

While still influential, the Order has largely gone underground. Membership in the organisation has lost some of its lustre after the Order’s disastrous showing in Egypt, as well as the mass arrests that followed the Jade Suit Incident. But despite these setbacks, the Order perseveres.

For they believe that whatever else, the stars are in their favour.

The Order of the Cosmic Ram was created specifically to be a reoccurring foe for the Royal Occultist. They first appeared in the “Sign of the Salamander”, but I’ve since sprinkled them into a few other stories, sometimes retroactively. And they’re mentioned in many other short stories, whenever there’s a roll-call of bad guys.

With series characters, you run the risk of occasionally coming up empty when it comes to interesting antagonists, so having some you can tag in, as it were, is of immense benefit. The Order provide a ready-made source of conflict, being occult imperialists of the worst sort, and every time they appear we learn a bit more about their organisation and goals.

We also find out, in the second Royal Occultist novel, The Jade Suit of Death, that St. Cyprian himself was once a member, which adds another layer of complexity to his constant thwarting of their various intrigues.

I’d like to write more about the Order in the future, but only time will tell if I can come up with a suitably sinister scheme for them.

In the meantime, enjoy their latest appearance in “A Whisper of Soft Wings”, in which the Order gets up to its usual tricks, this time involving a prophetic monstrosity and a spate of high altitude murders. Available for free at Curious Fictions.

If you’d like to check out some of the Royal Occultist stories for free, including “A Whisper of Soft Wings”, head over to my Curious Fictions page. For more general updates, be sure to check the Royal Occultist Facebook page.

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The Judge

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Don’t you think a man always recognizes a woman he has loved?

– Judge Keith Hilary Pursuivant

A man of great height and greater girth, Judge Keith Hilary Pursuivant devoted his golden years to investigating the occult in the works of North Carolina author, Manly Wade Wellman.

Pursuivant, with his broad bulbous nose and protruding, warm eyes, was one of a half-dozen occult investigators created by Wellman over the course of his career, though the Judge has the distinction of being the first, and, in many ways, the most important of the lot.

Pursuivant made his first appearance in Weird Tales in 1938, in the story, “The Hairy Ones Shall Dance”, wherein he tackled a werewolf. He made three more appearances in Weird Tales between 1938 to 1941, facing off with a vampiric Lord Byron in “The Black Drama”, demon-rabbits in “The Dreadful Rabbits”, and ghosts in “The Half-Haunted”.

All of these stories have been anthologized on a number of occasions, and have been collected in the 2001 Nightshade Books collection Fearful Rock and Other Precarious Locales as well as the recent reprint of Wellman’s 1981 collection, Lonely Vigils, by Shadowridge Press.

Besides the aforementioned four tales, Pursuivant appeared as a supporting character in a number of Wellman’s other stories and novels, including The Hanging Stones, where he aids John the Balladeer in combating a tribe of inbred, druidic werewolves.

And even if he doesn’t appear, Pursuivant is likely mentioned; indeed, the Judge looms over Wellman’s other occult investigators like a guardian angel, wielding knowledge, wit and wisdom in support of humanity’s more active defenders.

Born in 1891, he was a decorated intelligence agent in World War I. Pursuivant returned to the States and became a judge, then an author and finally an investigator of occult matters, upon which he also wrote.

Independently wealthy, he lives in a quiet town five hours drive from Washington D.C., though he travels extensively despite his advanced age. The acclaimed author of the seminal tome, Vampiricon, Pursuivant is an acknowledged expert in matters of the supernatural, though, as seen in “The Dreadful Rabbits”, there are some things even he has no answer for.  

Regardless of the dangers he faces, Pursuivant conducts himself with old fashioned Southern charm. Courteous and calm, he is a grandfatherly figure to those characters that interact with him, exuding a sense of safety and wisdom that sets even the most panicked individual at ease. And when the situation calls for it, he does not hesitate to dispatch monsters and devils like a man twenty years his junior.

Frequent mentions of his age and the associated aggravations serve to ground the larger-than-life Judge, and enable him to slip unobtrusively into the background of a given story without wholly surrendering the limelight. It’s a useful trait, given his later status as a mentor-figure to Wellman’s other characters. 

He even bequeaths his most formidable tool – a silver sword cane forged by Saint Dunstan himself – to fellow fighter of evil, John Thunstone. Despite this, it is another of Wellman’s characters, Lee Cobbett, who is the Judge’s chosen heir. Pursuivant appears or is mentioned in all of the Cobbett stories, and it is to the Judge whom Cobbett turns when things get too hairy, as in the creepy, Blackwood-esque “Willow He Walk”.

Indeed, in many ways, Pursuivant is the glue which holds Wellman’s diverse stories together as a cohesive whole. It is through him that these lonely devil-hunters and ghost-breakers know one another and can call upon one another for aid, thus enabling them to succeed together where one might fail.

In the end, it is because of this stern old Judge that humanity’s enemies are sentenced back to the depths from which they sprang.

*Author’s Note: This essay originally appeared in 2011, at Black Gate Magazine.*

Black Swallow of Death

Here’s a trio of things from one of my commonplace books. I keep meaning to do something with them, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet. Maybe next year.

Eugene Bullard. Black combat pilot in WWI. Boxer. Musician. Elevator operator. Had a pet monkey named Jimmy. Known as ‘the Black Swallow of Death’. Probably some kind of pulp hero.

The War of the Bucket. AKA the War of the Oaken Bucket. Literally a war fought over a bucket. Also part of that whole sorry-ass Guelph and Ghibelline scene. Began AND ended with the Battle of Zappolino. Had a mock-heroic epic written about it.

Picatrix. AKA the Goal of the Wise. Four hundred page book of magic. 11th century, or maybe 10th. There’s a copy in the British Library. The original Arabic version wasn’t discovered until 1920.

My subconscious has a bad habit of making random connections – crashing together unrelated concepts until something fits. I don’t know if that’s what’s happening with these particular entries, but I wouldn’t bet against it.

Bullard, in particular, has been taking up real estate in the back of my head for a few years now. If ever there was a historical personage deserving of fictional adventures, Bullard is it.

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