The Thing on the Roof first appeared in the February 1932 issue of Weird Tales. Howard sold it to Weird Tales for $40.00, but later said he would have let it go for free, just to see it in print. He was quite fond of it. The story is set in the early 1930’s, and focuses on the legend surrounding the Temple of the Toad God. Howard’s occult tome, Nameless Cults plays a big part of the story.
Contains “Wings in the Night” with Solomon Kane. Kane comes across an entire village wiped out, and all of the roofs have been ripped off, as if by something attempting to get inside from above.
Contains Robert E. Howards poem “The Last Day”.
This early work by Robert E. Howard was originally published in the 1932 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introductory biography. ‘The Horror from the Mound’ is one of Howard’s stories in the weird west genre, a combination of a western and a horror or fantasy.
Bran Mak Morn, King of the Picts, vows vengeance on Titus Sulla, a Roman governor, after witnessing the crucifixion of a fellow Pict. He seeks forbidden aid from the Worms of the Earth, a race of creatures who Bran Mak Morn’s ancestors banished from their kingdom centuries ago. They were once men, but millennia of living underground caused them to become monstrous and semi-reptilian.
Searching for a contact with these creatures, Bran Mak Morn encounters a witch who lives in a secluded hut, shunned by her neighbors, who was born from a sexual encounter between one of the “Worms” and a human woman. The witch’s price for helping him is “one night of love” which her human-half craves – as men in general are repelled by her reptilian traits. Bran Mak Morn, though also himself repelled, agrees to pay the price. In exchange, she tells him of a barrow where “The Black Stone”, a religious artifact of great importance to the “Worms”, is hidden.
Contains the poem ‘An Open Windows’ by Robert E. Howard.
Contains the poem “Autumn” by Howard.
Old Garfield’s Heart was first published in Weird Tales in December of 1933 and is generally labelled as a “Horror Story”. It takes place shortly after the end of the Wild West, but perhaps it falls squarely into the “Weird West” genre. The story is about an frontiersman, Old Garfield, that has lived as long as anyone can remember. The story is told through the eyes of an unnamed narrator who believes the tales told by Old Garfield are nothing more than whims of fancy or tall tales.
Weird Tales from January 1933 contains the first publication of Howard’s ‘The Scarlet Citadel’, a Conan story. I haven’t found any replica so I made my own from a downloaded PDF-file.
“The Man on the Ground” is a short story by Robert Ervin Howard where two men are fighting a final duel.
