Vivian Meik - Devil's Drums

[dem bones]

Vivian Meik - Devil's Drums (Philip Allan, 1933)

Devil Drums, White Zombie, An Acre in Hell, The Doll of Death, L'Amitie Reste, The Man Who Sold His Shadow, Ra, Honeymoon in Hate, Domira's Drum

Meik (1895-1959) only had one story, The Two Old Women, included in the Creeps anthologies, but both Devil's Drums and Veils Of Fear are recognised as being part of the series. Some of his work has have been reprinted in modern anthologies, notably those of Hugh Lamb.

Honeymoon in Hate: Mikalongwa, Angoniland. English refugees Blair Taylor and Martin Kemp are bitter rivals for the love of the beautiful Estelle. When she decides to marry Taylor, Kemp turns to black magic and drives him to madness and suicide. Estelle avenges her beloved by marrying his murderer, having first infected herself with the blood of a leper. On their wedding night she performs a macabre striptease ...

White Zombie: Nswadzi, Central Africa. During World War I, Sinclair had risked his life to save a badly wounded Aylett. Now Sinclair is dead, but Aylett gets a chance to repay his debt when voodoo-practicing plantation owner Mrs. Sinclair revives his friend as one of her Zombies.

Vivian Meik - Veils Of Fear (Philip Allan, 1933)

A black magic novel, described as follows in Monsters:

A strange mysterious world, this world of the East - and stranger still when we look beyond the veil of it's allure and fascination. It is a world where good and evil bear a strange perspective, as often as not perverted and twisted into fantastic shapes by primeval and elemental emotion - a world where the knowledge of the occult and abnormal attained it's zenith before the West was born ...

In "Veils Of Fear" Vivian Meik, having spent many years beyond the beaten track, has a knowledge of the mysterious East second to no one, and in "Veils Of Fear" he tells of those things which from time to time are hinted at but never until now disclosed.