the final pages David receives a message from the
abbot telling him that they have secured their pris-
oner again. Beaumont’s low-key narrative style is
particularly effective for this story, whose true hor-
rors are implied rather than explicitly stated.
“How Love Came to Professor Guildea”
Robert Hichens(1900)
In almost every instance the supernatural menace
in a horror story is dangerous because of its ani-
mosity and often violence toward the protagonists.
Robert Hichens, at one time a popular novelist, is
now remembered almost exclusively for this one
offbeat tale of the supernatural, which twists things
completely around. The unexplained, invisible
creature whose presence destroys the life of Profes-
sor Guildea does so by giving him its unrelenting,
unshakeable love.
Guildea is a brilliant scientist who has no time
in his life for love or friendship. He is a bit of a
misogynist and more than a bit of a loner, celibate,
secluded, and with only a single acquaintance who
might be considered a friend, Father Murchison. The
two meet regularly and argue about the value of
human closeness, neither of them ever budging from
their original positions. Then comes the day when
Guildea announces that he has been shaken to the
core by an odd series of events, starting with his
catching a glimpse of an odd figure in a park. From
that night forward he is convinced that there is an-
other presence in the house, something that follows
him around and projects a smothering, indiscrimi-
nate affection, the very emotion he most loathes.
Guildea decides that he may be suffering from
overwork, but when his parrot begins to act as
though it is responding to another presence, he
changes his opinion, summoning Murchison to be an
unbiased witness. The parrot also begins to imitate a
voice that strikes both men as repulsive, a voice that
neither of them has ever heard before. The value of
human friendship is demonstrated further when
Guildea’s butler abruptly quits when his employer
asks him for his help. Since he feels the presence
only when he is home, Guildea is able to maintain
his composure, but that changes when he travels to
deliver a speech and feels his nameless admirer
nudge him while he is addressing the audience.
In the midst of a nervous collapse, he con-
ceives such a hatred for the thing that he eventu-
ally drives it away, apparently through the force of
his emotion, but the strain is too great. Guildea
dies shortly thereafter. If the reader feels inclined
to dismiss this all as an illusion based on the vic-
tim’s profoundly isolated personality, that belief is
destroyed at the end when Murchison himself
catches a glimpse of the briefly visible creature.
Guildea’s efforts to distance himself emotionally
from others provide a unique weapon with which
to bring about his doom.Hubbard, L. Ron(1911–1986)
L. Ron Hubbard is best known for founding the
Church of Scientology, but he wrote science fic-
tion and fantasy as well and at one time was held
in fairly high regard in the latter category. Al-
most all of his fantasy fiction appeared between
1936 and 1942, and much of that did not appear
in book form until years later. In tone it ranges
from lightly humorous to quite dark, although al-
most always wrapped around a series of well-told
adventures. Death’s Deputy(1940, book version
1948) is the closest to a modern horror novel. A
pilot miraculously escapes a terrible accident,
after which he becomes the focal point for a se-
ries of disasters. Fear(1940, book form 1951) is a
very early story that mixes psychological and su-
pernatural horror. The protagonist refuses to be-
lieve in the existence of the supernatural until he
finds several hours missing from his life, tries to
reconstruct what happened, and discovers that
there are literally demons interfering in human
affairs.
Typewriter in the Sky(1940, book form 1951) is
considerably lighter. The hero is actually a charac-
ter in a story that is in the process of being written
by another character, a kind of intermediary au-
thor. When this fictional writer has second
thoughts about something and revises, his charac-
ter’s reality perceptibly alters around him. Slaves of
Sleep(1939, book form 1948) also makes use of a
clever device. This time the central character re-
leases a djinn, or genie, after which he is cursed
with wakefulness. When his body sleeps in our
world, he is awake in another filled with Arabian170 “How Love Came to Professor Guildea”