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Fantasy Commentator, v. 1, issue 7, Summer 1945
Page 143
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FANTASY COMMENTATOR 143 with this one. It is perhaps significant that after this apparent loss of style eight years were to elapse before any more of the author's work in appeared in the pages of Weird Tales. Sudden and strange are the ways in which authors sometimes lose their touch... In this first "Tale of the Werewolf Clan" we find ourselves viewing a parade which is passing before Philip II of Spain. There we see a device of fiendish cruelty known as a "cat-organ". This is composed of a number of cats with strings attached to their tails; these lead to keys, which when depressed thus arouse a fearful howl from the poor animals. (One cannot help but wondering if the author was not led to such vicarious tortures because of having been kept awake nights by feline choruses!) The author explains the perversion by referring to an ancient legend which states that should the corpse of a man be leaped over by a cat, then the dead one would rise and drink the blood of his fellow men. (This is no invention of Munn's; such beliefs, with variations, do exist. The interested reader is referred to Montague Summers' Vampire: his Kith and Kin, p. 168ff. for further details.) Baudoin Gunnar is the "organist", and it is in relating the reason for his dislike of cats to his son that we learn he is one of the seven sons of Ivga. Baudoin then tells of the circumstances of his mother's death, and of her revelation to her sons of the terrible bargain struck between her and the Master. Before Ivga's body was cold some demon had entered the peaceful souls of her sons and they quarreled, two drawing daggars and being killed... "But a few seconds and we seven had become five. Then in a dark corner we saw a swirling gray mist like the river fog and from it came a voice, a strange, dry, unhuman voice---oh, horrid to hear!---it chuckled and gloated and was pleased---!" Gunnar shivered at the remembrance. "It said, 'Children of Ivga, the Master keeps his word. Brother slays brother and the curse begins!' And straight from the mist a cat came leaping toward us, bounded across dead Anatol, circled and leaped over [dead] Hugo, fled into the mist, and it and the mist were gone altogether." The family scattered and burned the dwelling with the three in it. However, even as Baudoin relates his tale the Master is setting to strike once more. Unknown to him, his dwarf helper is in reality the Master himself. And that day the dwarf unlocks the cage where the cats are kept to allow them at their tormentor. Theophide, Baudoin's son, arrives on the scene just in time to see his father's death; he flees the place on horseback, his last remembrance being the master's horrible laugh and sight of Baudoin's torn body beneath a snarling mass of fur. The second section of "The Master Strikes" takes places a score of years later, when Theophide has become a man. The scene is one of the bloodiest massacres of the Thirty Years War in eighteenth century France. Theophide has hidden himself on a street just traversed by massacreing pillagers. Dead Hugeunots litter the streets in scores. Amid this butchery Theophide thinks of his wife, safe in a neighboring city and beyond reach of the mob. Suddenly the Master appears, and prophecies his doom; looking down, Gunnar sees the body of his wife lying with the slain---she has been lured there on a pretext by the Master. Theophide prostrates himself beside her; one of the passing mob comes on the scene, and implants his spear, binding the two together in a last embrace as the last gloating laugh of the Master rings out in the air... Thus concludes one of the most powerful pieces of supernatural fiction ever written. Because of its intimate connection with the earlier stories in the series, however, it is almost valueless to those who have not had the privilege of reading those preceeding it.
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FANTASY COMMENTATOR 143 with this one. It is perhaps significant that after this apparent loss of style eight years were to elapse before any more of the author's work in appeared in the pages of Weird Tales. Sudden and strange are the ways in which authors sometimes lose their touch... In this first "Tale of the Werewolf Clan" we find ourselves viewing a parade which is passing before Philip II of Spain. There we see a device of fiendish cruelty known as a "cat-organ". This is composed of a number of cats with strings attached to their tails; these lead to keys, which when depressed thus arouse a fearful howl from the poor animals. (One cannot help but wondering if the author was not led to such vicarious tortures because of having been kept awake nights by feline choruses!) The author explains the perversion by referring to an ancient legend which states that should the corpse of a man be leaped over by a cat, then the dead one would rise and drink the blood of his fellow men. (This is no invention of Munn's; such beliefs, with variations, do exist. The interested reader is referred to Montague Summers' Vampire: his Kith and Kin, p. 168ff. for further details.) Baudoin Gunnar is the "organist", and it is in relating the reason for his dislike of cats to his son that we learn he is one of the seven sons of Ivga. Baudoin then tells of the circumstances of his mother's death, and of her revelation to her sons of the terrible bargain struck between her and the Master. Before Ivga's body was cold some demon had entered the peaceful souls of her sons and they quarreled, two drawing daggars and being killed... "But a few seconds and we seven had become five. Then in a dark corner we saw a swirling gray mist like the river fog and from it came a voice, a strange, dry, unhuman voice---oh, horrid to hear!---it chuckled and gloated and was pleased---!" Gunnar shivered at the remembrance. "It said, 'Children of Ivga, the Master keeps his word. Brother slays brother and the curse begins!' And straight from the mist a cat came leaping toward us, bounded across dead Anatol, circled and leaped over [dead] Hugo, fled into the mist, and it and the mist were gone altogether." The family scattered and burned the dwelling with the three in it. However, even as Baudoin relates his tale the Master is setting to strike once more. Unknown to him, his dwarf helper is in reality the Master himself. And that day the dwarf unlocks the cage where the cats are kept to allow them at their tormentor. Theophide, Baudoin's son, arrives on the scene just in time to see his father's death; he flees the place on horseback, his last remembrance being the master's horrible laugh and sight of Baudoin's torn body beneath a snarling mass of fur. The second section of "The Master Strikes" takes places a score of years later, when Theophide has become a man. The scene is one of the bloodiest massacres of the Thirty Years War in eighteenth century France. Theophide has hidden himself on a street just traversed by massacreing pillagers. Dead Hugeunots litter the streets in scores. Amid this butchery Theophide thinks of his wife, safe in a neighboring city and beyond reach of the mob. Suddenly the Master appears, and prophecies his doom; looking down, Gunnar sees the body of his wife lying with the slain---she has been lured there on a pretext by the Master. Theophide prostrates himself beside her; one of the passing mob comes on the scene, and implants his spear, binding the two together in a last embrace as the last gloating laugh of the Master rings out in the air... Thus concludes one of the most powerful pieces of supernatural fiction ever written. Because of its intimate connection with the earlier stories in the series, however, it is almost valueless to those who have not had the privilege of reading those preceeding it.
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