Tag: Manly Wade Wellman

What of the Night by Manly Wade Wellman

What of the Night by Manly Wade Wellman (F&SF, March 1980) opens with a man called Parr taking shelter in a disused Southern Highlands house when his car breaks down. After he eats he falls asleep on the dank and dirty sofa.
When he wakes he sees a glow of light, and a young woman called Tolie asks if he is alright. Parr is instantly smitten by her, and then he notices that the surroundings are clean and in good order. Tolie introduces Parr to the owner of the house, Mr Addis, and another man called Fenton. The latter serves them all a thimbleful of drink (they toast “unity and Sitrael”), and then Parr is invited to see Addis’s room. There, Parr sees Addis has books on magic (one is by John Dee, “the Queen’s Sorceror”) and also has a pentacle painted on his desk, “to help his work”.
After this the pair return to the living room for a second round of drinks and toasts, and then Parr visits Tolie and Fenton’s rooms. When Parr is in the latter’s room, he realises that Fenton is in love with Tolie and jealous of him.
During this experience Parr asks twice if he is dreaming, and also learns that the occupants of the house do not know what he means by “Korea” and “telephone”. He eventually asks them if they are haunting the house: Addis partially dodges the question and suggests they have their fifth drink. As they prepare to do so, Fenton declares his feelings for Tolie and knocks the drink out of Parr’s hands: he tells Parr if he has the fifth drink he will be trapped here. Parr flees.
Some time later Parr stumbles into to a local town, where he learns that the house has been deserted for ninety years. He also learns of Addis’s strange habits and death, and the deaths of Tolie and Fenton when they stayed overnight at the house.
Most haunted house tales would stop there, but there is an effective coda in this story where the local preacher takes Parr back to the house to recover his car (no-one else from the town will take him). When they go inside the gloomy house Parr asks the preacher to perform an exorcism. The preacher says that isn’t a ritual he knows, but he conducts a baptism, a communion (both for Parr), and then the rites for the dead: each of these acts unburdens and lightens the house:

Finally they both stood and Preacher Ricks repeated the service for the burial of the dead. The gloom seemed to thicken itself around them. But at last the hushed voice came to, “Come, ye blessed children of my Father, receive the kingdom prepared for you.” Then light suddenly stole into the room. Parr, looking sidelong at the open door, saw sunshine in the yard that had been so shadowed.
Preacher Ricks cleared his throat. “Do you think it looks sort of different in here?” he asked Parr. “Like as if it had somehow cleared up?”
“In here and outside both,” replied Parr. “Maybe you’ve truly put those spirits to rest.”
“Let’s devoutly hope so.”
They walked out. No haze, no shadows.
“Bring your car along behind mine, back to Sky Notch,” said Preacher Ricks. “We’ll see if some kind soul there won’t let us have some breakfast.”  p. 64

A quietly effective and atmospheric piece.
*** (Good). 5,100 words.

Treasure Asteroid by Manly Wade Wellman

Treasure Asteroid by Manly Wade Wellman (Astounding, September 1938) is, unlike his notable Pithecanthropus Rejectus in the January issue, standard pulp fare that begins with the hero of the story, Captain Drury Banion, slugging a guy in a club when they make a pass at one of the singing-girls. When Banion subsequently finds out the man is the Martian traffic boss of Spaceways, Inc., he loses his job as a spaceship pilot. However, it isn’t long before a shady Martian character called Guxl approaches him to do an (illegal) flight and, after initially rebuffing the offer, Banion ends up taking it when the girl from the club slugs a cop outside the door to his room.
Banion soon finds himself flying Guxl and two shady Earthmen to an asteroid where there is “proto”, an illicit substance that is the lost—and, according to legend, guarded—treasure of a long-dead pirate called Corsair Mell. During the journey the singing-girl, Cassa Fabia, turns up as a stowaway, and is put to work as the ship’s domestic—and it isn’t long before Banion is boxing the ears of one of the Earthmen for making a pass at her (that woman is nothing but trouble, as they would say in the less enlightened thirties).
When the ship arrives at Asteroid 1204, Guxl and the two Earthmen set off to retrieve the proto—first wrecking the fuel lines to make sure Banion can’t leave without them, and to give him something to do while they are gone. Tarsus, one of the Earthmen, returns on his own and tries to make a deal with Banion, but they are interrupted when the other two arrive followed by a large black shape that attacks the ship. It stops its assault when night falls.
At sunrise the next day the (obviously solar-powered) guard starts attacking the ship once more, and Guxl and the two Earthmen (spoiler) go out to destroy it. They are unsuccessful however, and Hommoday, the other Earthman, gets ripped to pieces when he can’t get back into the ship fast enough. Guxl and Tarsus later die when the attacker punches through the hull, but Banion and Fabia get to an airtight part of the ship. Fabia improvises a spacesuit and, when it gets dark again, goes and retrieves Tarsus’s body so Banion has a spacesuit to finish his repairs (the improvised one wouldn’t have fitted him). However, the guard returns to attack the ship again before Banion is finished—so Fabia goes out and sprays it with the same fast setting enamel that she used to make her suit airtight: the guard grinds to a halt. Fabia later explains to Banion that it was obviously solar powered and, by the way, she is a Terrestrial League Policeman who organised his sacking and stowed away to recover the proto.
This is a formulaic pulp tale, and all a bit unlikely, but it’s fast paced, the solar-powered guard (and way it is incapacitated) is a neat enough idea, and it is notable and atypical for the period that Fabia (the “girl”) is ultimately the story’s brains and hero.
** (Average). 6,100 words. Story link.