At first, it seems like a crime that Pelan thought ANY story other than Henry Kuttner’s “The Graveyard Rats” should have been the choice for 1936. It is one of the most well-known horror stories in history, not to mention that it would have been nice to have at least one husband-and-wife team represented in this volume (he was married to C.L. Moore).
Here’s the thing, though: “The Crawling Horror” is really fucking good. Amazingly good. McClusky comes at his reader with guns blazing, all hands on deck. Check it out.
This story is narrated by Dr. Kurt, a country doctor who has an odd patient in farmer Hans Brubaker. One day, Hans comes to him with a story about how something has been killing first his rats, then his cats, and finally his dogs. Well, he doesn’t say they’re being killed, but he implies it. From his perspective, they’re just disappearing, and just before they do, they are visited by a very strange member of their species. But the creepiest of these incidents is when he falls asleep while smoking a pipe, his dog at his feet. He wakes up and decides to pet his dog without looking down. Instead of the expected fur, his hand encounters something very, very slimy, and he knows right away that he’s not touching his dog.
When he looks, he sees a blob covering his dog like a blanket. He attacks the creature, and it retreats, but his dog just . . . isn’t right anymore. When his other dog comes home, it very obviously fears the first dog. Yet it attacks its companion with the intent of killing it, as if it knows this task is necessary, maybe even merciful.
Hans takes his dog out in the yard and shoots it. However, the next day when he’s going to bury the dog, its body is gone. Later, a dog he knows is dead comes for a visit, looking for its surviving companion.
Notice a pattern? Oh yeah. Still later, a strange child wanders by Hans’s farm . . . .
Creepy, no? That’s just McClusky warming up. Hans needs the doctor’s help, so Dr. Kurt decides to investigate a little himself. Just after Hans marries Dr. Kurt’s nurse, Hilda, the doctor himself comes for a visit only to find that Hans has been so desperately afraid that he hasn’t slept in days. Hilda has not encountered anything, so she kind of thinks he’s a kook, but Hans explains that he’s learned a few things about the blob. First of all, when it attacks its prey, its prey becomes a part of it to the point that it can imitate the dead creature. Also, it can get into any room, even through the tiniest crack. Lastly, it only comes when you’re asleep, or if you invite it while awake.
The doctor is still skeptical, but he offers to keep watch while Hans catches some shut-eye. Hans hermetically seals the room he’s in with wax and then takes the doctor up on his offer. And here’s where McClusky really shines: he describes the doctor’s ordeal in such a bone-chilling way. The isolation of the farm is perfectly depicted as snow starts drifting down, and the reader realizes that just about anything can happen out here in the middle of nowhere. Unlike someone like, say, Blackwood, McClusky knows exactly when to stop, when maximum creepiness has been achieved. Any reader whose blood doesn’t run cold after spending some time out at Hans’s farm may have a blob of their own on their back.
Long story short, Dr. Kurt sees the blob running down the window, and when he goes outside to investigate further, he sees a very clear trail through the snow, as if a large ball had been rolled through there, which suddenly turns into very human tracks . . . . Now that he believes his patient, they come up with a plan to defeat the creature.
SPOILER ALERT: While Hilda sleeps in her room, and Hans sleeps elsewhere, Dr. Kurt stands vigil over the house. He hears a knock on the door and sees a neighbor who has been missing for a few days. She begs to spend the night with them because she’s very much afraid of something back home. Dr. Kurt thinks he knows what she’s afraid of, so he lets her in. While he’s fetching her coffee, he comes back to see that she’s crawled into bed with Hilda. When he turns on the light, he sees that she’s turned into the blob and has attached herself to Hilda’s back.
Horrified, he attacks the blob, but it doesn’t retreat. He changes his tactics and pulls Hilda away from her attacker. Remember the ‘Eighties remake of THE BLOB? There was a scene in which the titular monster drops down on a character, covering his entire body except for his arm. He’s reaching out for help, and his girlfriend tries to pull him out of the mess. Instead, his arm comes off in a rather gory fashion.
So . . . guess what happens to Hilda. Oh yeah. In a very gruesome scene, only half of her body comes away. Her spine and ribs are laid bare, and her skull is open in the back.
The blob moves down to finish off its meal, and Dr.Kurt decides to try to hermetically seal it in this room, hoping that if it’s trapped long enough, it will starve and die. Hans has other ideas. Instead, he offers it himself, thinking that if he’s strong enough to dominate it, it will die (seeing as how it only goes after sleeping prey, it’s a pretty sound idea). Sure enough, he defeats it, but he feels it inside of himself, lurking. He decides to run away, hoping that he never weakens enough to let it out. END OF SPOILERS.
Remember a while ago when Pelan called “The Willows” the perfect horror story? Nope, so far in this book, “The Crawling Horror” deserves that title. As powerful and awesome as Kutter’s “The Graveyard Rats” is, McClusky kicks the shit out of him with this one. Easily the best in the anthology so far.
[This story first appeared in WEIRD TALES (check out that steaming hot cover above!), but sadly, it cannot be read online at this time. That's a fucking crime.]
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