Mark Valentine - The Werewolf Pack

[dem]

Mark Valentine (ed.) - The Werewolf Pack (Wordsworth Editions, June 2008)

Introduction - Mark Valentine

Captain Frederick Marryat - The White Wolf of the Hartz Mountains
Sir Gilbert Campbell - The White Wolf of Kostopchin
Count Stenbock - The Other Side
B. Fletcher Robinson - The Terror in the Snow
Mrs Hugh Fraser - A Werewolf of the Campagna
Andrew Lang - The White Wolf
Andrew Lang - The Boy and the Wolf, or The Broken Promise
F.J. Harvey Darton - William and the Werewolf
Barry Pain - The Undying Thing
Saki - Gabriel-Ernest
Saki - The She-Wolf
Bernard Capes - The Thing in the Forest
Vasile Voiculescu - Among the Wolves
Ron Weighell - The Shadow of the Wolf
Steve Duffy - The Clay Party
Gail-Nina Anderson - The Tale Untold
R.B. Russell - Loup-garou

Blurb:

The wolf has always been a creature of legend and romance, while kings, sorcerers and outlaws have been proud to be called by the name of the wolf, it s no wonder, then, that tales of transformation between man and wolf are so powerful and persistent. This original collection offers some of the greatest, rarest and most unusual werewolf stories ever. From the forests of Transylvania to the ordered lawns of an English country estate, here are all the classic aspects of the tale. You will encounter shadows that lope under the moon, chilling howls, family curses, crimson feasts, the desperate chase and the deathly duel. But you will also find the werewolf in less expected guises as an adversary for Sherlock Holmes, as a myth of the Wild West, and as a figure restored to its origins in folk and fairy tales. With an informative introduction by Mark Valentine that follows the traces of the werewolf in literature, and its links to Dracula, Jekyll & Hyde, and The Hound of the Baskervilles, this superb collection will make you fear the full moon.

Another welcome addition to the Mystery & Supernatural series. Mark Valentine’s judicious selection is a neat mix of the classic, the downright obscure and the contemporary.

Includes:

Sir Gilbert Campbell - White Wolf of Kostopchin: Sir Gilbert applies a vampire treatment to the werewolf theme and comes up trumps in this marvellous slice of Victorian melodrama. Best of all, he doesn't pull his punch and instead treats us to a satisfyingly grisly ending. Pine Forests of Lithuania, Russian Poland. After a series of gruesome murders in which the hearts are torn from the horrifically mutilated victims, Paul Sergevitch, wealthy owner of the Kostopchin estate, organises a search of the surrounding forest for a monstrous white wolf believed to be responsible for the gory goings-on. When Paul gives the order to torch the thicket where the wolf is believed to be hiding, a soft, sweet voice calls from the trees. "Do not set fire to the forest my dear friends, give me time to come out. Is it not enough for me to have been frightened to death by that awful creature?" A beautiful young woman, Ravina, emerges from the trees all covered in blood, and, on her admission that she is a fugitive, Paul, totally enraptured, offers her the sanctuary of his home, much to the disbelief of his faithful servant Michal who suspects there's something of the night about her from the first. Similarly, Paul's son, Alexis instinctively avoids Ravina, although Katrina, his little daughter takes a strange fancy to her. The landowner, who intends to take Ravina as his bride, dismisses Michal at her bidding after the loyal servant voices his suspicions too loudly, but Michel, undeterred takes to prowling the castle at night:

By the faint light of a shaded lamp, he saw Katrina stretched upon the ground; but her wailing had now ceased, for a shawl had been tied across her little mouth. Over her was bending a hideous shape, which seemed to be clothed in some white and shaggy covering. Katrina lay perfectly motionless, and the hands of the figure were engaged in hastily removing the garments from the child’s breast. The task was soon effected; then there was a bright gleam of steel, and the head of the thing bent closely down to the child’s bosom.

With a yell of apprehension, the old man dashed in the window frame, and, drawing the cross from his breast, sprang boldly into the room. The creature sprang to its feet, and the white fur cloak falling from its had and shoulders disclosed the pallid features of Ravina, a short, broad knife in her hand, and her lips discolored with blood.

“Vile sorceress!” cried Michal, dashing forward and raising Katrina in his arms. “What hellish work are you about?”

Ravina’s eyes gleamed fiercely upon the old man, who had interfered between her and her prey. She raised her dagger, and was about to spring in upon him, when she caught sight of the cross in his extended hand. With a low cry, she dropped the knife, and, staggering back a few paces, wailed out: “I could not help it; I liked the child well enough, but I was so hungry.”

Even after the disappearance of Katrina, Paul still persists in going through with the wedding and she seems to be talking the same language. "It is your heart that I want. Tell me, Paul, that it is mine, and mine only."

Paul, like a fool, tells her, and seals his bloody fate.

Steve Duffy - The Clay Party: "What he wore was the skin of my dear husband John Buell stretched over his head and shoulders like an awful mask. He was laughing like a madman, and bawling at the top of his cracked shrieking voice "You like me! You like me now, huh?". 1846. Account told via diary entries, newspaper reports and a final, very revealing letter of a doomed 2000 mile trek by early settlers across desert and mountain range to reach the promised land of California. It soon becomes glaringly apparent that their leader, the esteemed Mr. Jefferson Clay, hasn't a clue what he's about and by stubbornly clinging to his carefully planned route he leads them ever onward to their doom. As starvation and Injun raids whittle down the party, the self-serving wretch Hiderick assumes control and solves the food crisis by turning all but three of the survivors on to cannibalism. Throw a shape-shifting mother who'll do all that is required to protect her baby into the resulting abattoir and you've a terrific 2008 blood and guts pure horror story.

R. B. Russell - Loup-Garou: He arrives in Birmingham two hours early for a job interview. To to kill time he slips into a cinema for a screening of Loup-Garou, an obscure French art film from legendary director 'Alain LeGrand'. The girl in the movie is a ringer for wife Yvonne and the story eerily mirrors events in his own life. Unsurprisingly, he obsesses over Loup-Garou for years and eventually finds a bootleg DVD going for £5 on eBay - except this version is subtly nastier and the ultra-bleak ending takes on a terrible personal significance.

Gail Nina Anderson - The Tale Untold: Scandinavian folk tale of a wife who fends off her husband with a pitchfork when he attacks her in the guise of a great grey wolf. Anderson fleshes out the story to give the dramatis personae character and motivation. Can't say it did much for this reader.

Barry Pain - The Horror Undying: Eve, loyal wife of the thoroughly wicked Sir Edric Vanquerest, died giving birth to an infant so monstrous his father conspired with Dr. Dennison to abandon it in nearby caves to fend for itself. Sir Edric knew his actions had damned him as he'd reneged on a vow he'd made before God, but only as his death approached, and rumours spread around the nearby village of Mansteth of a wolf thing roaming the fields, did he discover the long-term consequences. "The thing that I took to Hal's Planting is dead. Yet it will come back again to the Hall and then will the Vanquerests be at an end."

A century later and the present Lord Edric, the last of the Vanderquest line and a popular fellow, nothing like his beastly ancestor, is about to wed the gorgeous Ray - family curse permitting ...

Bernard Capes - The Thing In The Forest: In a weird rewrite of Little Red Ridinghood, little Elspet is making her way through the forest when she encounters a werewolf. Taking pity on the starving wretch, she feeds him - then realises that to do so is a mortal sin. She rushes to Father Ruhl who takes her confession and then, laughing, changes shape ...

Saki - Gabriel-Ernest: Van Cheele learns the inadvisability of inviting a feral child of the woods into your nice suburban home - particularly one who who brags of hunting on all fours and living on child flesh. His aunt makes an even greater miscalculation when she asks ‘Gabriel-Ernest’ to escort the Toop kids home from Sunday School classes. Saki’s typically sarcy take on the werewolf theme continues his gleeful persecution of the middle classes.

[chastel]

Sounds Interesting!

[lobolover]

Well, I dont realy remember "The Undying Thing" having a "werewolf" in it. I remember corectly, they never did describe the thing at all .

Also, by god, either horrormasters or gutenbegr beter have the Capes I say, or there will be blood! ;D

[dem]

Mrs Hugh Fraser - A Werewolf of the Campagna: (Further Reminiscences of a Diplomatist's Wife, 1912). Italy. A hunter fortuitously slashes the paw from an enormous wolf as it leaps on him in the forest. Removing the bloody limb from his game bag to show a neighbour, he discovers it has undergone horrible transformation. "Do not go near it! As you value your soul, do not touch it!

Henry Rowe Schoolcraft - The Boy and the Wolf, or The Broken Promise: (Andrew Lang [ed.], The Yellow Fairy Book, 1906). The lure of village life proves too great for a brother and sister who, forgetting their vow to late father, abandon helpless baby brother to the fates - they've lives to live, after all! Raised by the wolves of the forest, the boy eventually becomes one.

Saki - The She-Wolf: (Metropolitan Magazine, Aug. 1912). The incorrigible and very wonderful Clovis Sangrail conspires with party hostess Mrs. Mary Hampton and Lord Pabham, owner of a private menagerie. Their mission: to publicly expose Leonard Bilsiter, serial attention seeker, who boasts a command of "Siberian Magic."

[dem]

Bertram Fletcher Robinson - The Terror in the Snow: (The Chronicles of Addington Peace, 1905). Cloudsham, Norfolk. Was Baron Steen mauled and chased over a cliff by the ghost hound of the Launes? Inspector Addington Peace, newly arrived at the manor house with a warrant for Steen's arrest on embezzlement charges, doesn't buy any of this 'family curse' nonsense, tests the seemingly watertight alibis of servants and guests - the Baron had been hosting a party for his grasping Smart Set chums. Narrated by Phillips, the Watson to Peace's Holmes.

Sadly, two years after book publication of the Peace stories, author contracted a fatal illness while in Egypt investigating a mummy curse. Or could it be that he was murdered by wife, Gladys, and her secret lover, Robinson's friend and sometime collaborator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle? Exactly who wrote 'The Hound of the Baskervilles'?, yet another fascinating entry on the splendid jot.101.com, reveals all.

[dem]

Vasile Voiculescu - Among the Wolves: (1966?) A veteran poacher known as 'the Wolfer' saves the life of a lenient judge through his occult command over the creatures of the wood. A story of hunter's magic as opposed to lycanthrope, though I suppose it could be argued that Wolfer is a man-beast of another kind.

Karl Brugmann - The White Wolf: (Andrew Lang [ed.], The Grey Fairy Book, 1900). Fairy tale concerning the romance between the King's favourite daughter and a were-handsome-prince. Sappy ending.

Ron Weighell - The Shadow of the Wolf: (The Northern Musgraves, Sherlock Holmes Society, 1992). Holmes and Watson travel to Crowford, Yorkshire to investigate the Hound of the Sturleson's. When the horribly mutilated corpse of Sturleson junior is discovered in his room, sister Freda turns to the great detective for help. Can there be any truth to the family curse? Does a werewolf stalk Tarn Hall? No lack of gore, most notably the properly horrible murder of an invalid. Collection would be worth having for this story and The Clay Party alone.

[humgoo]

Sept 8, 2020 17:44:29 GMT dem said:

Ron Weighell - The Shadow of the Wolf: (The Northern Musgraves, Sherlock Holmes Society, 1992).

There's a longer version of the tale in Mr. Weighell's Holmes collection. But Mr. Valentine certainly did right by using the short version. In the beefed-up version, Holmes detailed his adventure in Tibet (which, in the short version, he promised to tell Watson some day), where he was asked by a young Dalai Lama, who of course happened to read The Strand Magazine, to seek out the Yeti and communicate with them. Betrayed by one of his porters and on the brink of perdition at the Roof of the World, the detective was, horror of horror, saved by a Yeti. Yes, a good Yeti, who showed that "the Mountain Man needed no spiritual instruction, as he already embodied the highest principles of Buddhism". I remember the other day you said there's no party line here on Vault, but a good, enlightened Yeti? This is where we should draw the line!