The strange paralysis that had held him was
broken. He took a step toward the door, then checked himself. The
footfalls were resumed. Branner was coming back. He was not running. The
tread was even more deliberate and measured than before. Now the stairs
began to creak again. A groping hand, moving along the balustrade, came
into the bar of moonlight; then another, and a ghastly thrill went
through Griswell as he saw that the other hand gripped a hatchet -- a
hatchet which dripped blackly. Was that Branner who was coming down that
stair?
Yes! The figure had moved into the bar
of moonlight now, and Griswell recognized it. Then he saw Branner's
face, and a shriek burst from Griswell's lips. Branner's face was
bloodless, corpse-like; gouts of blood dripped darkly down it; his eyes
were glassy and set, and blood oozed from the great gash which cleft the crown of his head!
Classic horror short story, written by Robert E. Howard in 1934 and published posthumously in Weird Tales in 1938.
The
tale involves two men from New England, John Branner and his friend
Griswell, who are traveling in the South and, stuck out in the
wilderness with nowhere else to stay, decide to spend the night in a
deserted plantation mansion they run across in the Louisiana forest.
Griswell awakens in the night to find Branner walking up the stairs in
an apparent trance. And in a few minutes, Branner comes back
downstairs -- dead but still walking, carrying the same bloody hatchet
that has been used to split his head open. Griswell flees into the
night.
He's fortunate to run into the local sheriff, Buckner,
who takes Griswell back into the mansion, where they find Branner
lying dead and holding the hatchet, which is now buried in the
floorboards where Griswell had been lying. Buckner tells Griswell that
the house is called Blassenville Manor after the cruel family that used
to live there until the last of the family fled the mansion. Since then,
it's gained an unsavory reputation, and it's whispered that the
pigeons that infest the mansion are actually the evil souls of the
Blassenvilles. After questioning and investigation, Buckner concludes
that Griswell is innocent of the murder, and they decide to spend
another night in the mansion.
The next night, Griswell and
Buckner start out visiting an elderly black man named Jacob who has a
reputation as a voodoo priest. They get him to tell them about the
Blassenvilles and about the creatures called zuvembies -- even though
speaking of them brings a terrible death curse. Will Griswell and
Buckner be able to uncover the terrible secret of Blassenville Manor? Or
will they too join the flocks of pigeons from hell?
So that's the plot. What makes it all so special?
Well,
here's the main thing. It's a damn scary story. I don't mean "scary
for its time," the way a lot of old ghost stories lose modern audiences
in archaic language. I mean it's damn scary. Descriptions are direct but
moody -- you can feel what it's like inside the old mansion or outside
in the Lousiana forest.
And you can feel the fear when the
reanimated Branner comes stomping down that staircase, when Griswell is
under the monster's control, when Jacob puts his hand down on that
fateful stick. It's not esoteric or theoretical -- it's grim and
visceral and bloody and fearful.
This was actually the
first of Robert E. Howard's stories that I ever read. The Conan movies
with Arnold Schwarzeneggar had basically convinced me that Howard
wasn't a smart writer, that he was just good for sword-swinging
brutality. Someone recommended I read this, and I didn't expect much.
"Pigeons? From Hell? That's the dumbest title for a horror story ever."
Cue:
me, after reading the story. Slack-jawed in amazement, wonder, and
admiration. One of the scariest stories I'd ever read, and it was
three-quarters of a century old. I've read other Howard books since
then, and it's been wonderful to discover how mistaken my original
assumptions were. He's an outstanding writer, even if he's often
shockingly racist and politically incorrect for modern audiences.
"Pigeons
from Hell" has been adapted several times -- it was the basis for an
episode of Boris Karloff's "Thriller" series in June 1961, and it's
been adapted for comics twice. Scott Hampton wrote a graphic novel of
the story for Eclipse Comics in 1988, and there was a four-issue
miniseries by Joe R. Lansdale and Nathan Fox that was published by
Dark Horse Comics in 2008.
Favorite trivia: While Howard
defined a "zuvembie" as basically a female zombie, the term was used
by Marvel Comics in the 1970s to get around the Comics Code
Authority's ban on the depiction of zombies.
horrorquest