DARKER THAN YOU THINK (brrrr)
From the December 1940 issue of UNKNOWN, this is way cool and powerful stuff. I take back all my misgivings about Jack Williamson after being so disappointed with THE LEGION OF SPACE and THE REIGN OF WIZARDRY. Even if this was the one really good book he wrote (and I've only checked out a handful of his stuff), DARKER THAN YOU THINK is so well conceived and realized that it's completely satisfying.
Even the title is great. DARKER THAN YOU THINK...! I love it.
The book has quite a bit of similarity to Eric Frank Russell's SINISTER BARRIER, which ran in the same magazine the previous year. People who discover too much of the sinister supernatural forces in the world are killed by nonhuman creatures trying to keep the midnight wars a secret. Here, an archaeologist who has spent his life trying to find the truth behind the legends of werewolves, vampires and witches returns from the deserts of central Asia* with a mysterious ancient box. Before he can warn the human race exactly what is threatening us, he's struck down. And, one by one, the members of his party also meet sudden deaths which might possibly be natural and unrelated.
SPOILERS AHEAD
(With a few exceptions, I don't mind learning a bit about plot twists or revelations in advance, especially in books I've waited years to read. A lot of people like to be completely surprised, though, so if you have a copy on your nightstand table just waiting its turn, maybe you should skip the following.)
So, okay, there is a elder race akin of us Homo Sapiens, and they are what's behind many of the dark legends and folklore found all over the world. In a battle way back in the dim mists olf prehistory, wise humans found a weapon which scattered and nearly destroyed the shape-shifters. But these werewolves and leopard men and berserkers never disappeared completely and now they're eagerly awaiting their messiah, the Child of Night. (Traces of Homo Lycanthropus genes are scattered in most people, but this messiah will be almost pureblooded and very powerful.) It was to prevent this ominous coming and to wipe out the changelings for good that the archeologist spent his lifetime looking for that mystic weapon he brought back.
A miserably unhappy reporter named Will Barbee is present at the man's press conference and sudden demise; he gets tangled up with a gorgeous but creepy redhead named April Bell (is it my imagination, or are there an awful lot of firecracker redheads in pulp fiction?). As soon as he starts running around with her, he begins having horrifying nightmares in which he goes out with her to murder the members of the expedition. ("... nothing quite so real as that dream had ever happened to him awake.")
She takes the form of a white wolf (it does seem funny to repeatedly read "He chased the white bitch" in the text; sounds like a rap ballad) and he transforms into a giant grey wolf or a sabretooth or a python or even a pterodactyl. Then he wakes up the next morning and finds out the men really died in much the same way he dreamed....
What gives the story its emotional impact is the conflict in Will Barbee. He's really messed up. His lonely daytime life consists of constant drinking which doesn't make him happy, writing dishonest newspaper pieces he doesn't believe in, and in general just miserably treading water. But going out at night as a huge sabretooth or wolf is an incredible jolt of excitement, with all his senses heightened and the exhilaration of feeling alive for the first time. The allure of that April Bell witch (literally) teasing him and egging him on just draws him in deeper.
At the same time, he was friends back in college with the doomed members of that expedition and he still has warm feelings for them, So realizing that he's slaughtering them makes his daytime a real hell of confusion and guilt. This is one of the few stories where it really sinks in how being a werewolf would be both tempting and horrifying.
The final ingredient that makes DARKER THAN YOU THINK worth checking out is that Williamson has given some thought to explaining how these shenanigans would work. Will and April don't exactly turn all furry and fanged themselves; while their human bodies sleep, their mental energy-complexes drift out (sort of like astral projections with a physics rationale) in animal form and do their dirty work. They can drift through anything except silver (I imagine most science fiction fans have heard the old spiel how matter is mostly empty space with just probabilities giving the illusion of soldity) by focussing their perceptions.
The "free mind-webs" of these creatures are bundles of consciousness roaming through the darkness, taking animal forms and killing people by striking at the moment when the victims are most vulnerable to suffering accidents. This way, the deaths seem natural. If the mind-webs are strong enough, they can even exist independently after the deaths of their host bodies, coming out of the graves at night to feed. (Stop it, I'm getting the creeps.)
We normal people can't exactly see these monsters, even when their fangs are at our throats, but if you've ever felt a cold shiver for no reason or thought something was watching you but couldn't find anything there... well, it was these critters. Dogs can sense the witchfolk and even attack them. It's the real reason men domesticated dogs thousands of years ago, to protect us against the children of the night.
Jack Williamson did a great job on this one. He sets up and juggles a lot of plot threads that tie together in a scary finish, he throws in his explanation for many bits of folklore and superstition, and he does it all while rushing the story along as Will Barbee suffers through the conflict. If Williamson had written a few more books as good as this one (and I'd have to read a lot more of his stuff to tell), I'd move him up to the top ranks of my favorite pulp writers.
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*The African genesis of humankind seems pretty well established today, but back in 1940, there was serious conjecture that our origins were in central Asia. I've seen some recent articles where the idea still is being considered.