The Metal Monster(1920, but not in book form
until 1946), is more overtly science fiction, involv-
ing an alien life form that emerges from a sheltered
world in Tibet to menace the world.
Merritt used the lost world device again in
The Face in the Abyss(1931), which is also based
on earlier, shorter pieces. Once again he mixes
super-science with ambiguous magic as outsiders
encounter a lost civilization that has used a form of
genetic engineering to create dinosaurs and other
monstrosities. Good and evil are clearly defined,
and the battle between them has mixed results.
His remaining lost race novel, Dwellers in the Mi-
rage(1932, but revised in 1941) is possibly his best,
but the editors replaced his original ending when it
first appeared. Subsequent reprintings have not al-
ways used the restored version.
Merritt’s remaining novels vary considerably
in subject matter. The Ship of Ishtar(1926) follows
the adventures of a man from our world who ac-
quires the model of an ancient ship and is thereby
magically transported into another world where it
is full-sized. There he becomes embroiled in the
battle between the forces of good and evil. Seven
Footprints to Satan(1928) is a marginal story about
a super-criminal, but Burn, Witch, Burn!(1933)
and its sequel, Creep, Shadow, Creep!(1934) are
overtly supernatural. The former was filmed as The
Devil Doll(1936).
Some incomplete manuscripts were completed
by Hannes Bok, but they are unmemorable. Mer-
ritt’s short stories, including the very good “Three
Lines of Old French” (1919) and “THE WOMEN OF
THE WOOD” (1924), both of which were collected
in The Fox Woman(1949). Although the premises
of most of his novels have been overtaken by
events, they are still very readable, and his influ-
ence on the writers of his time and those that fol-
lowed has been pervasive.
“The Mezzotint”M. R. James(1904)
Some of the most effective horror stories result
from mixing bizarre incidents with an otherwise fa-
miliar, even humdrum, setting. Williams, the pro-
tagonist of this classic tale of the supernatural, has
the rather prosaic job of acquiring topographical
sketches for a museum. In that capacity he is at-
tracted one day by the sale of a mezzotint of an un-
known manor house drawn by an equally unknown
artist. Although he considers it an indifferent en-
graving, he decides to try to identify the subject of
the drawing, during the course of which investiga-
tion the picture begins to change.
When he first sees the hint of a human figure,
he assumes that he just missed it during his earlier
examination. That evening he glances at the draw-
ing again as he is preparing for bed and is startled
to notice the finely drawn figure of a man crawling
on all fours toward the manor house, an image that
was certainly not there earlier in the day. In the
morning Williams discovers that the figure is gone,
but one of the windows is now open. He concludes
that the crawling man must have reached the
house during the night. Upon subsequent viewings
he and his associates witness the abduction of an
infant by a grotesque but largely unseen intruder,
after which all human figures disappear from the
drawing entirely.
They eventually identify the manor house and
discover that a child was, in fact, abducted a cen-
tury earlier, after which the owner completed the
mezzotint and promptly died. Further research in-
dicates an old feud, a hanging, and apparently a
vengeful return from the grave. James leaves the
reader with no explanation of the reason the draw-
ing should reflect past events. The eerie atmo-
sphere is well done, and the image of a static image
changing over time has been used by many later
horror writers. James himself may have been in-
spired by Oscar Wilde’s THE PICTURE OF DORIAN
GRAY(1891).Michaels, Barbara(1927– )
Barbara Michaels is one of the pseudonyms used
by Barbara Mertz, who has written a large number
of mystery and suspense novels, although most of
her fantastic fiction has appeared under this single
pseudonym. Most of these employed the supernat-
ural to create a sense of menace and mystery and
were more atmospheric than substantive, al-
though in some cases the supernatural elements
are key to the plot. That is the case in her first
fantastic novel, Ammie, Come Home (1968), in
which a woman is possessed by a restless spiritMichaels, Barbara 239