Free Xenograffiti by Robert Reginald Page A

realm of the dead, where he can determine for himself whether any of those who have claimed to have made the elixir work actually escaped the Grim Reaper. The magus’s potion succeeds, but Dismas is disappointed to learn that all of those he wishes to consult are in the netherworld—all have failed. Albrecht has been informed during Dismas’s sojourn that the local coven of witches under Albrecht’s control has captured the two girls; Albrecht orders a black mass during which the virgin will be sacrificed. Mad Hans, the magus’s assistant, offers to help Dismas stop the ceremony. When Dismas appears, the monk shows the hags the talisman he had been given by a gypsy in England, a token of power over all witches; they must not interfere. Albrecht is stopped and dies in rage as his hand is slapped away from the girl’s throat.
    Thomas has found Radegonde’s father living as a hermit in a nearby cave and arranges a reunion. Radegonde persuades Dismas that he loves her, and they all return to London, where Thomas learns that the indisposed Earl has recovered from his illness and now credits Thomas with the cure. His friends’ fortunes restored and his own heart secured, Dismas returns to his abbey, both to report his failure to his abbot and to resign his position as lay brother. The abbot has sunk into senility, however, and Brother Nicholas, temporarily in charge, threatens to lock Dismas away unless the alchemist reveals his secret. Dismas disavows the elixir, for he has come to realize the futility of living eternally; however, he suggests that the brother take the gypsy amulet, which is known by the ancients to have great power, and call up the Devil, who can grant immortality for the price of a soul.
    In a curious epilogue, Brother Nicholas calls the Prince of Darkness out of his pit and offers him his soul, but the Black Prince will have none of it, saying that he is not what men make him to be. Nevertheless, although Nicholas has nothing to give in return, he will grant the monk’s request—eternal youth and life—until he grows tired of it. As for Dismas, he has ordered his life as befits a man.
    Here is a novel of adventure, magic, fantasy, sorcery, love, and life. Dismas is a complex character, a shy, scholarly recluse who grows emotionally into a fully-rounded human being. Not a man of action, he nevertheless does what needs to be done to save his friends from death or torture. Radegonde, his paramour, has a bolder, more sparkling personality; intelligent, humorous, and directly courageous, she decides her own fate by taking it into her own hands. Comeau’s style anticipates that of L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt ten years later; his work deserves wider attention than it has received.

10. CURIOUS THINGS
    THE HORROR FICTION OF ELEANOR M. INGRAM (1983)
    with Mary A. Burgess
    Eleanor M. Ingram was just beginning a promising career as a novelist when she died at the age of thirty-five, leaving three or four undistinguished fictions of modern-day life and a last book, her only venture into fantasy, which stands as a monument to her unrealized abilities, and which is perhaps the single most neglected novel of supernatural fiction written by an American author between the late Victorian period and the advent of H. P. Lovecraft in the mid-1920s.
    In every way, The Thing from the Lake (1921) remains a thoroughly modern work, as readable today as it was when it was first published more than seventy years ago. Roger Locke, a well-known writer of popular songs, buys the old Michell property in rural Connecticut, determined to find a secluded refuge from the pressures of New York City. During his first night in the house, he wakes to find a braid of hair trailing through his open hand. A woman’s soft voice warns him to leave the house while he still can, but when he manages to find a light, the girl has vanished, leaving a cut length of hair dangling by his bed. Later that same night, Locke hears a horrifying