Dark World: Huff and Puff

(The story begins here.)

The creature gagged as it inhaled, and Darren swiftly reached back, grabbed the chair behind him, and smashed it against the hairy head with all his might. The blow would have killed a man, but Darren was sure it would have had little or no effect on the thing until that moment, just as the shovel he had hurled like a spear into the back of its head had merely bounced off.

But now it bowed and sank to the floor, and the chair was still intact enough for another try, which Darren immediately used. Good thing Victor always insisted on buying the best quality!

The creature collapsed as Victor ran to the scene, shovel in hand.

“Is it unconscious?”

“I think so, but you’re the doctor.”

“Quite. I have a mind to rouse it with some smelling salts and batter it unconscious again with my shovel.”

“If I had a mind like that, I’d leave it on the shelf unused.”

“So I’ve noticed. Would you mind telling me what you did to the thing?”

“Of course. But let’s put him someplace secure; he might come to at an awkward moment.”

Dr. Fleming looked around. “Put it in the vault; that’s the only place I’m reasonably sure will hold it.”

They dragged the creature toward the massive door, and Darren was not surprised to find the weight of the burden diminishing as they went. By the time they had the door open, their captive was a man. “He’s a werewolf, you know.”

“Superstitious nonsense,” Dr. Fleming retorted. “Something like a werewolf, perhaps, but a scientific phenomenon all the same.”

“That strange pistol wasn’t yours; it was a kind of small shotgun, and its shot was silver. I ground the shot to a powder with one of your gadgets and blew the dust in its face as it inhaled. That’s why it was weak enough to subdue.”

“Clever and delusional. I note your pathetic religious ritual wasn’t so effective.”

“I think it was, just in a different way. I’ve encountered similar phenomena elsewhere, but this time I felt I wasn’t supposed to rely on a spiritual confrontation alone.”

“Your religion isn’t enough?”

“Your science isn’t enough. How do you explain the transformation? I assume he came here as a man; I know he changed from werewolf back to man as we carried him. I suspect the transformation was caused by a demon; without the demon’s power, he eventually reverted to his normal form. But subduing him required other means.”

“Namely chemistry: the silver provoked an allergic response or interfered with the transformation.”

“And its response to the exorcism?”

“Obviously the man is superstitious, which may explain a lot of this.”

“Including the transformation?”

“Perhaps. I know a doctor who believes in such things; he would no doubt find this man an interesting case.”

Darren scowled and inspected their prisoner. “He’s coming around. Maybe he’ll give us some answers you’ll accept.”

Next: The Werewolf's Tale

Dark World: Taking a Stand

(The story begins here.)

It took all Dr. Fleming’s strength to withstand the attack on his stronghold. He braced for another assault and wondered yet again what his arch-friend was up to. A thump and clang suggested an answer, and he thought the howl on the other side of the bookcase had a note of pain and surprise.

“That’s right, flea-bait,” Darren Christopher called. “I’m right back here without a bookcase to my name.”

The answering growl receded swiftly, and Victor peered cautiously from behind his barricade. The thing was standing almost fifteen feet from Darren, and it was clearly about to charge. Victor scooted out from cover, though he wasn’t sure what he could do to help. A shovel lay invitingly on the floor, and he picked it up, though he was sure it would be useless as a weapon and little comfort in digging a grave. If he could only get to the power cables!

He ran toward the massive generator, hoping that the creature wouldn’t notice, but also wishing it would notice enough to turn from Darren. What was the idiot’s problem? He had no weapon. A chair stood just behind him, but instead of wielding it, he faced the thing confidently, with his fists clenched as though for a boxing match. Dr. Fleming had admired Darren’s courage before, but courage without a plan is folly.

The creature paused to take another breath and howl. There was some kind of pattern there, but the doctor didn’t pause to analyze it. If it slowed the thing down, fine; he was in full sight of it now, and he didn’t want it to spot him until he had the cables in hand.

The creature charged Darren, and the doctor ran for the cables, dropping all attempt at stealth. His only chance to help his friend lay in getting a workable weapon—assuming that electrical force could succeed where kinetic force had failed.

“Come out of him in the name of Jesus!” Darren cried.

The commanding tone and sheer audacious stupidity of the order arrested the doctor’s progress, and he saw that the creature had been similarly affected. It was within arm’s reach of the man, but instead of attacking, it looked as though a giant hand had slapped it violently across the muzzle: it winced, its face averted.

Then it leered and turned back to Darren, who held his fist to his open mouth as if in terror and gasped.

The creature evidently liked the idea and took another breath, which the doctor knew would lead to another howl and his friend’s demise.

But Darren merely smiled, opened his clenched fist, and blew.

Next: Huff and Puff!

Dark World: Fresh Blood

(The story begins here.)

Darren Christopher’s placid amble changed to a breakneck dash without so much as a pause when he heard the gunshots. He had grown up around danger from savages and civilized men alike, and he seldom hesitated, even when he was puzzled. He was early for his usual argument with Victor, and he wondered who else the doctor might be shooting at.

The door was unlocked, which wasn’t unusual, but the sight of a barricade in a corner attacked by a large hairy animal was. The table where they traded insults and insights over tea was overturned, the doctor’s gun lay on the floor, and something like another gun was near it. An odd, shiny substance spilled out from the broken object.

He examined the doctor’s situation more closely as he collected a shovel from the tool rack near the door. The creature was clearly quite strong, but it seemed to be struggling somehow, as though injured. There was no sign of blood, so it presumably hadn’t been shot, but in any case it was making no headway against the doctor’s makeshift defense. The large metal bookcase had its back to the attacker, allowing the doctor to hold it by the shelves, Darren surmised. He only knew the doctor was there at all by his occasional outbursts and taunts.

“New patient, Victor?” he called.

“Darren! Thank G— Thank goodness you’re here!”

Darren smiled: even at such a moment, Victor wasn’t about to thank the God he despised. He bent down to take a closer look at the guns on the floor. “You dropped your gun. Did you really miss that many times?”

“Of course not! The thing’s invulnerable!”

“That sounds scientifically improbable,” Darren replied amiably. Strange as it seemed, this was beginning to make sense. He briefly considered confronting the creature, but a familiar nudge said no. “Have you considered a spiritual explanation?”

“Yes, but I doubt this is my fairy godmother. If you aren’t going to help me, why don’t you bore this thing senseless with your prattle?”

“I’m rather busy at the moment.” And he was: the strange gun had been bitten nearly through, and it told him all he needed to know. Almost. Where did the doctor keep that thing?

The creature took a deep breath and howled. It seemed to grow with the noise, and it assaulted the bookcase with renewed vigor, provoking more invective from the doctor.

“Darren! Try running the power cables to it! Maybe you can electrocute it.”

“I think I have a solution of my own,” Darren called back as he seized the device he wanted from a shelf. “But please stop screaming; it’s very distracting.” He set to work, but the creature nearly dislodged the bookcase on its next try. Its injury or handicap was gone, and so was Darren’s time.

(Next!)

Dark World: By the Dark of the Moon

"You have five minutes to live, Doctor."

Dr. Victor Fleming regarded his visitor with almost as much amusement as annoyance. The mild demeanor of the young man betrayed a trace of unease, even fear. Was he truly a killer?

"Take my pistol, Doctor, I beg you. You can still save yourself."

"I prefer my own pistol. Whatever you try in...four minutes, I shall be quite prepared."

"Your pistol won't help. At least take mine, even if you don't intend to use it."

"Take a strange weapon? Whom will it end up killing?"

The man shifted uncomfortably. "It won't kill me; it will only make me harmless."

Dr. Fleming smiled. "My pistol shall achieve both purposes." The man squirmed slightly in answer, and the doctor continued, "If you are so sure of my danger, why did you come to me? And why don't you simply leave before this deadline?"

"I came because I thought you could help. But I knew you would need proof. And it's already too late for me to run away: it would return and kill you."

"What do you mean, 'it'? I thought you were the killer."

"No, I'll become the killer. I—" He broke off and shook his head wearily. "It's too late! Quick, take the gun! Take it, for God's sake! For your own sake!"

"I am my own God, so it makes no difference. Though I begin to think I should have brought a tranquilizer instead of a bullet, if this is merely a psychotic episode."

The man gave no answer. His head lolled back, and his eyes stared toward one of the high windows in the doctor's laboratory.

The outer darkness was giving way to the cold light of the rising full moon, and the inner darkness gave way to something even more terrible.

Dr. Fleming had followed the man's gaze, but a sense of movement from the corner of his eye drew him back to his visitor. "Spasms of the facial muscles," he muttered. "Evidently some kind of seizure. A sedative would have been a better idea, but if he grows violent, I can wing him and slow him down while I get the tranquilizer."

He stood up to get a better vantage point. A shot into the leg should be sufficient, and unless the man made a sudden turn—not impossible in a seizure—hitting the femoral artery was unlikely.

The spasms continued, and the doctor marveled at how they contorted the face. If he hadn't known better, he might have imagined that the nose was actually lengthening into a snout, and. . .

It was the hair that did it. No mere seizure could cause hair to grow on someone's face and hands, especially so rapidly. And the nose was definitely a snout. The teeth were long and sharp, and the eyes were beginning to focus—on him.

Dr. Fleming was well acquainted with his gun, and it had already changed target from legs to face. He fired as the thing opened its maw wide, and the creature's muzzle flinched slightly as the bullet bounced off it.

Part of the doctor's mind informed him that the bullet should have blown the muzzle off. Another, more useful part told him to grab the strange gun his visitor had offered, and his right hand emptied his own gun into the thing in hopes of gaining a few seconds while his left got within reach of the pistol.

A clawed hand reached the rejected weapon before the doctor could, and the creature leered with savage glee as it bit the object, crimping the barrel and partly breaking open the magazine.

The less useful part of the doctor's mind informed him that the creature was clearly intelligent as well as impervious to bullets, and the more useful part told him to run for his life.

(Next!)

Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyll vs Adaptations

I don't think there's a book more frequently mis-adapted for any medium than Frankenstein. Consider:

1. Frankenstein did not re-animate anything. He made up his creature from scratch. "No corpses were harmed in the making of this monster."

2. No lightning is mentioned, either, though he did have an impressive experience in his youth with a lightning bolt obliterating a tree.

3. He didn't live in Transylvania or some other exotic spot. Try Geneva.

4. Though the creature was self-educated, it read some fairly literate books (Sorrows of Young Werther was a mistake, though). The creature was a compelling speaker.

5. Since it wasn't sewn and bolted together from parts, it didn't have the stitches and such. It had yellowish skin with long, black hair.

6. Although it claims that it was initially good and only driven to cruelty by human rejection, it was fairly evil-tempered from the start.

7. (Minor spoiler) At the end of the story, the creature's still alive, though it promises to do away with itself. How sweet.

Still, I think the mis-adaptations of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde have done more damage, simply because I consider Stevenson's story superior (and not long-winded like Frankenstein). Though Frankenstein has its points, it meanders considerably and has several problems. For example, the whole Irish interlude seemed over the top: how did the monster pull off such a trick? Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, meanwhile, is fairly straightforward, especially given that it's told somewhat out of order: we see certain incidents that are known to Utterson the lawyer, and only afterward do we go back and see them from other viewpoints that explain them.

But the main problem is that the story is meant to be a kind of mystery. It loses a bit if you start out knowing the connection between Jekyll and Hyde. Also, Dr. Jekyll is often misrepresented as either someone trying to cure people (he wasn't) or simply a kind of drug addict (he wasn't really one of those, either). It's really a story about how one's evil side, once unleashed, will inevitably dominate and ruin one's life. There's a bit more to it than that, but that's the gist of it.

The gist of this post: read the original! Adaptations generally mess up a superior work.

You can get free audio books at LibriVox:
Frankenstein
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

A New, Old Direction

I've been giving considerable thought to where this blog is going. I like doing book reviews, but I admit that I've become greatly disaffected with modern Christian fiction. G. K. Chesterton said, "The morality of a great writer is not the morality he teaches, but the morality he takes for granted." Despite the occasional preachments (often tepid) of Christian fiction writers, the morality they take for granted tends to be largely identical with that of less-radical secular writers. The theology is typically pretty scary too.

But what is the alternative? Modern secular writers don't even have the Christian veneer. So that leads me, as a rather conservative sort, into the past. It's true that earlier Christian writers were often rather clumsy in their handling of the faith, with two-dimensional plots and characters, but not always. And secular writers back then were often more "Christian" than some modern writers.

Join with this the fact that there are free e-books coming out from Gutenberg.org in particular, and free audio books from LibriVox.org as well--so many that it would be useful to have a guide to them. Which of them is worth a look? I'll be reviewing them for you. Not all of them, of course: I don't have that much free time. But I can try to help you search through the pile.

Otherwise--I'll still do some theological studies, and I'll be publishing some fiction on the blog as well.

Next up: Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and the Evils of Adaptations.

Coming soon: the debut of Dark World, a serial about an atheistic scientist, his missionary friend, and the monsters and adventures they encounter in the 1930s. Horror, suspense, and witty badinage!

Quantum of Solace

Not the Bond movie; this has more to do with the original short story upon whose title the movie is based. The idea is that there is a bare minimum of solace or comfort required to keep going, to keep life bearable.

I would suggest that this applies to fiction as well. I doubt anyone wants a story where everyone is happy and life is wonderful all the time. But sometimes the reaction against the high-fructose sweetener plot leads to something equally emetic. I don't think I've ever actually encountered the totally wonderful bit in a book, not even in Pollyanna, which is actually an above-average story, better than the Disney version. I suspect that the Pollyanna defense is really just a poor excuse for putting syrup of ipecac in story form.

In any case, if you have enough negative elements, the story turns ugly. There's enough ugliness in the world without our adding to it; there is enough darkness without our dwelling on it. I would suggest that the negative elements in a Christian story be largely allusive: I already know what ugly looks like and would rather not spend page after page refreshing my memory. But if you can show me beauty, real beauty that isn't just photoshopped ugliness, that is an accomplishment. Or if you're going to stick something ugly in my face, at least do not do so at every turn. Like violence in splatter films, ugliness--be it moral or aesthetic--soon palls, and you have to increase the dosage to get the desired effect. That's called desensitization, and we have more than enough of that as well. In fact, this shows why, even from the standpoint of justifying darkness and ugliness, it's a bad idea.

Supposedly, highlighting such things is simply realistic. But courtesy of desensitization, the highlighting has to be more and more extreme to get the point across, taking us further and further away from that all-important "real life." I was surprised, for example, that no one seemed to notice the character flaws in the guys from League of Superheroes; I kept reading reviews that they were unrealistically good. Yet Tom is sarcastic, condescending, sanctimonious, proud, and a bit cowardly. Even Charlie tends to appease more than he should. But no one noticed these things. Why? Because they weren't exaggerated, and people only notice what's stuck in their face.

Do you call that Art? Then why is it Art to push exaggeration further and further and make reality harder and harder to spot?

Anyway...

Chawna Scroeder posted on the moral and spiritual side of this problem a while back, and I've found her analysis helpful; perhaps you will too.