As I’ve said before, since the Weird Menace genre is all
about dressing up and saying “Boo!”, I find it very appropriate for the
Halloween season. So this week I read a “gripping mystery-terror novel” (actually a
novella) by one of the masters of the genre, Arthur Leo Zagat.
“Satan Calls His Children” was published in the May 1937 issue of DIME MYSTERY,
probably the leading Weird Menace pulp. It actually starts off quite differently
from most of these stories I’ve read. The protagonist is Jennie Gant, a young
woman who works in a commercial laundry and lives in a lower-class neighborhood
populated mostly by immigrants from eastern Europe. She has a young brother,
but they’re orphans and she supports them both. Her boyfriend is a medical
student who works as a night watchman to make ends meet. Zagat establishes all
this pretty quickly, while at the same time sketching a vivid, naturalistic
portrait of the neighborhood that seems almost more like something from a
mainstream novel of the time.
Then, one of the poor immigrant women kills her own infant and then herself in
a really shocking murder-suicide, all because she doesn’t want Satan to get her
baby. There’s a mysterious talisman involved, as Jennie discovers to her fear
and regret when her own brother is targeted by sinister forces. Other than the
one instance of violence, the first half of this novella is a slow burn, as
Zagat steadily ratchets up the psychological suspense. It’s genuinely creepy
and had me looking over my shoulder a little as I read it.
The second half is considerably different, as Zagat falls back on more familiar
Weird Menace tropes. We get desperate chases through the sewers, a spooky crypt
full of cages where stolen children are kept locked up before apparently being
turned into savage beasts, a red-robed mastermind, his hulking minion, and the
inevitable logical explanation for all the supposedly supernatural stuff.
The thing is, Zagat was better at this sort of thing than most of the writers
in the genre, and his excellent storytelling is compelling enough that I read
the whole novella in one sitting, something very unusual for me in these
attention-span-challenged days. Ultimately, “Satan Calls His Children” is a
very good Weird Menace yarn, with the added bonus of the fine writing in the
first half. You can find the e-book version on-line, and I give it a high
recommendation.
