Francis Stevens’ The Citadel of Fear: Early Weird Fantasy

Francis Stevens is the pen name of Gertrude Barrows Bennett. The Citadel of Fear  was her first and most famous novel, published in 1918. It features a “lost city” in Central America, along the lines of Conan Doyle’s The Lost World. However, where the main threats in Doyle’s adventure were dinosaurs, Stevens’ tale features a lost civilization – the ancient city of Tlapallan – which is inhabited by peoples who still practice human sacrifice and worship the ancient Aztec gods.

Two prospectors for gold, the greedy and amoral Archer Kennedy, and our hero, the young Irishman Colin “Boots” O’Hara, stumble upon Tlapallan and are stunned to find an American, Svend Biornson, living on a plantation there and married to one of the natives. He keeps them in captivity until they can be returned to civilization, but of course they escape and cause all kinds of havoc. Along the way, Kennedy witnesses a gruesome ceremony where a hapless villager is sacrificed to the evil god, Nacoc-Yaotl, “the black maker of hatreds”. He ends up becoming possessed by the demon. O’Hara is recaptured and sent packing back across the desert.

At this point, the scene abruptly shifts to New England, where O’Hara is visiting his newly wed sister, Cliona, and her husband, Tony Rhodes. All of the trials and adventures Colin underwent in Tlapallan are like a fading dream to him (which is hard to believe, but it moves the story along). One evening, Colin and Tony go into town for business and leave Cliona alone for the night in their country bungalow. Late that night, something horrific breaks in and destroys all the furniture downstairs. Cliona hears the thing coming up the stairs to her bedroom, and it starts beating on the door. A huge white claw tears through the door, and she empties her pistol in the direction of the door. There follows some unearthly shrieking and the thing retreats downstairs and out of the house. When Cliona goes to investigate, she finds an enormous amount of blood that trails down to the stream in her backyard and disappears.

Cliona and Tony decide to leave the bungalow and move into a different house. Unbeknownst to them, Colin has bought the bungalow and plans to get to the bottom of the mystery. They think he is traveling in South America. One night, he is attacked by a strange ape-like animal and nearly strangled to death. Colin manages to break one of its arms, and it leads him on a wild chase through the countryside until it darts inside a large old estate house.

What follows is part mystery, part dark fantasy, as Colin doggedly uncovers a devious plot to subjugate North America to the evil will of Nacoc-Yaotl. Even though Stevens did not stay in school past the eighth grade, she has an excellent command of the English language and ancient Aztec mythology. Her plotting is somewhat disjointed, which I put down to the fact that the novel was originally serialized in The Argosy weekly magazine. I can imagine her editor telling her to get the main characters out of the very dark and weird city of Tlapallan and into more familiar surroundings!

I can also see how she might have influenced later fantasy writers like H. P. Lovecraft. Just check out this description of the lower level of the mysterious house Colin is exploring:

That dim expanse must be called swamp or marsh, because a better name has not been made to name it by. But Nature never made a marsh like that. Between the granite pillars, fungoids and some kind of whitish vegetation like pale rushes grew thickly, but though those fungoids and rushes had a strangeness of their own, it was not the vegetable growth alone which made Reed’s marsh peculiar.

Its entire space was acrawl with living forms that for repulsiveness could only be compared to a resurgence from their graves of creatures dead and half-decayed.

Colin saw them by a livid light that by no means increased their beauty — a light that was derived from the fungoids. These singular growths glowed with a whitish-gray effulgence that, diffused by curling vapors, gave the place such a dim illumination as might grace the surface of a witch’s caldron.

A cold, dank caldron it was, with fires pale and heatless as the moon, and giving off with its mist wraiths the effluvium of decay and of the life that springs from decay. Like some horrible, hidden ulcer, Reed’s work-room lay festering; and above it the black beams of the old house dripped and rotted with its moisture.

Francis Stevens. The Citadel of Fear (Kindle Locations 3156-3165). Delphi Classics. Kindle Edition.

Anyway, there’s a huge climactic battle between good and evil, and it’s all a lot of fun. Colin O’Hara is a little too good to be true, and Kennedy is a little too nasty to be believable, but this was originally published in a pulp magazine. Fans of classic Lovecraft will definitely enjoy this one.

Classic Fantasy Tales

In my last post, I wrote that I wasn’t too familiar with contemporary fantasy. I do like classic fantasy, in that it often overlaps with Gothic and Victorian ghost and horror stories. For a few years now Barnes and Noble has offered leather-bound collections of classic tales for a pretty good price ($25.00 for most titles). I’m a sucker for attractive editions of books, so I’ve picked up a few. Barnes and Noble has NOT compensated me in any way for this free plug, by the way. I am happy to support one of the few brick and mortar booksellers that hasn’t been put out of business by Amazon. I still miss Borders Books.

Each collection features lots of classic stories that are in the public domain, which means you can find all of them for free online. There are some excellent yarns in them, like W. W. Jacobs’ “The Monkey’s Paw”. The Penny Dreadful collection is a hoot – it has the original Sweeney Todd story, published as “String of Pearls”.

Anyway, this post is about book number 14 of 2024: Classic Fantasy Stories:

I’m cheating a little here, since I started reading it before 2024, but since I read the majority of the stories in this year, I’m counting it!

Even though it calls itself classic fantasy, it could just as easily be called a collection of Gothic horror. There are some terrific stories in it – one of my favorites is Robert Louis Stevenson’s “The Bottle Imp”, which is a cautionary tale of being careful what you wish for! Theophile Gautier’s “The Mummy’s Foot” is just what it sounds like: a mummy’s foot that has a life of its own and bedevils an archaeologist.

Quite a few are more light-hearted, such as E. M. Forster’s “The Celestial Omnibus”, about a bus that magically appears in a blind alley and is discovered by a young boy. I wonder if J. K. Rowling was familiar with this story when she was writing the Diagon Alley scenes for her Harry Potter series. John Kendrick Bangs’ “The Water Ghost of Harrowby Hall” is likewise tongue-in-cheek, about a very damp ghost that is more annoying than frightening.

Seabury Quinn’s “The Phantom Farmhouse” is much creepier – a man recovering from surgery in a Maine sanitarium comes across a pleasant country family while he is taking restorative walk. He falls in love with the beautiful daughter, but there are strange things about her and her family. They all have red fingernails, their index fingers are longer than the other fingers, and when the moon is full he hears mournful howling as three houndlike creatures hunt down hapless sheep.

The book closes with novella by Francis Stevens, “Claimed”. It is the tale of a mysterious box that is discovered on an island that suddenly appeared when an underwater volcano in the Atlantic erupted. It is made of some indestructible green substance, and even though a seam can be seen, it is impossible to open. There are some red words inscribed in one side, and whenever they are on top, the box inexplicably places them on the bottom. A greedy and unsavory millionaire businessman acquires it and ends up in a battle of wills with Poseidon himself. Fortunately, his loyal niece and his young, handsome, personal physician are there to make sure things work out for the best. It sounds cheesy, and it is, but Stevens is a fairly good writer, and I can see how H. P. Lovecraft claimed her as an influence.

Classic Fantasy Stories is a great book to keep on the side table next to your favorite reading chair. When you’re at a loss for something to read, and you don’t want to get into something heavy, you can pick this one up and read one or two stories. And when you’re done, it looks very nice on your bookshelf!