Revelations in Black, page 1
CARL JACOBI
Revelations in Black
Introduction by
LUIGI MUSOLINO
VALANCOURT BOOKS
Revelations in Black by Carl Jacobi
Originally published by Arkham House in 1947
First Valancourt Books edition 2024
Copyright © 1947 by Carl Jacobi, renewed 1975 by Carl Jacobi
Introduction © 2024 by Luigi Musolino
Translation © 2024 by Valancourt Books, llc
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the copying, scanning, uploading, and/or electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitutes unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher.
Published by Valancourt Books, Richmond, Virginia
http://www.valancourtbooks.com
Cover by M.S. Corley
Introduction
Carl Jacobi: A Forgotten Master of the Weird
It has been said that a writer’s literary fortune doesn’t necessarily depend on the quality of his art. Many authors of tales of the supernatural, science fiction, and adventure, especially those who lived during the Golden Age of pulp magazines between the First and Second World Wars, enjoyed a fleeting success tied to that specific moment in time, with the lucrative boom of the genre magazines, only then to fall into oblivion. Others, snubbed by the literary establishment, have subsequently been rediscovered and included among the pantheon of the greats, thanks to word of mouth from enthusiasts and the undeniable caliber of their work.
One of the last “survivors” of the pulp era, Carl Jacobi has received recognition and appreciation from genre aficionados, but probably not the attention he deserves. His production, fascinating and wide-ranging, spans more than half a century of speculative fiction. Esteemed by world-renowned authors like H.P. Lovecraft, Robert Bloch, Clifford D. Simak, Donald Wandrei, Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, and Hugh B. Cave, Jacobi was a mild-mannered, versatile writer, a close friend of the founder of Arkham House, August Derleth, with whom he maintained an extensive correspondence for almost forty years.
Jacobi’s work spans the various genres of popular fiction, ranging from horror and science fiction to adventure and detective stories, thriller, and mystery. Some of his stories have become cornerstones of supernatural short fiction (such as “Revelations in Black,” a disturbing story of vampirism, and “Matthew South & Co.,” a notable revisiting of the doppelgänger theme), and his contribution to the most famous American horror pulp, Weird Tales, was substantial. Not to mention his numerous appearances in other legendary pulp magazines such as Astounding Stories, Thrilling Mysteries, Comet, Strange Stories, Planet Stories, etc.
Jacobi had a shy personality and was devoted to his parents, whom he would look after until their death, and to his typewriter, his only true companion in life; a life dedicated to the fantastic, spent almost entirely in his hometown.
Born in Minneapolis on July 10, 1908, Carl began writing very early, fascinated by the fiction of writers such as Jules Verne, Edgar Allan Poe, and Edward Bulwer Lytton. With his father’s encouragement, young Jacobi began to experiment with words. His earliest literary efforts were published in the school newspaper at Central High, the high school he attended from 1924 to 1926. Around the same time Jacobi discovered Weird Tales:
I believe I was introduced to Weird Tales by the issues which featured on their covers ‘The Stolen Body’ by H.G. Wells, ‘Monsters of the Pit’ by Paul S. Powers and ‘The Werewolf of Ponkert’ by H. Warner Munn.
After graduating in January 1927, Carl enrolled at the University of Minnesota, continuing to cultivate his passion for the Weird and writing. The Minnesota Quarterly, the university’s literary magazine, published four of his stories between 1928 and 1930. The first was “Mive,” a mature and evocative story, in which Jacobi seems to capture the sort of gloomy atmosphere so dear to Edgar Allan Poe, presenting the reader with a swamp infested with alien butterflies.
And it was “Mive” that helped Jacobi make the leap to the next level: Weird Tales, the magazine that had so fascinated the young Minneapolis student, accepted and published the story in 1932. True recognition of Jacobi’s talent came not just from the magazine’s decision to publish the story, but also from the numerous letters of praise from enthusiasts and fellow writers; a letter of appreciation from H.P. Lovecraft, always very critical of his own and other people’s literary production, gives us an idea of the quality of the story: “ ‘Mive’ pleased me immensely,” writes Lovecraft at the beginning of his first letter to Jacobi. Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard, and August Derleth would follow with their tributes.
The extraordinary success achieved by “Mive” was repeated, the following year, with “Revelations in Black,” perhaps the author’s best-known story. Jacobi began to consider the idea of dedicating himself to writing full time; he rented an office in Minneapolis, moved his desk and typewriter there, and began creating. It was the beginning of a career that, with ups and downs, would span almost sixty years.
Robert E. Howard, the famous creator of Conan and one of the “musketeers” of Weird Tales, in a letter sent to Jacobi in 1933 characterizes his style as subtle. It is a label that fits perfectly. Jacobi’s stories instill unease in the reader through the sophisticated use of words, an accumulation of clues, and veiled hints that contribute to the crescendo typical of his stories, a gradual, almost surgical escalation of tension, which relies on atmosphere and psychological analysis of the protagonists, leading to explosive and revelatory endings. Carl Jacobi was an exacting wordsmith, a delicate chiseller of sentences. He firmly believed that the overall effect of a story could only be achieved through “the word that would hit home,” as his friend Hugh B. Cave recalls. In fact, Carl revised his tales countless times, with obsessive care, thus giving life to fiction without frills, made up of concise and direct prose. A style that at times could be characterized as almost minimalist.
Another fundamental aspect of Jacobi’s stories is their atmosphere, which often seems to be elevated to a character in and of itself. Whether the events take place in the rural Midwest or on a Caribbean island, the author’s ability to depict disturbing landscapes and suggestive settings is one of the hallmarks of his work. To give greater realism to his stories, especially the “exotic” ones, Jacobi got in contact with a number of military detachments in Malaya, Borneo, and other remote regions of the globe, in order to obtain first-hand information from the officers in charge. The garden with the twenty-six jays in “Revelations in Black,” the isolated manor in “The Unpleasantness at Carver House,” or the disturbing exoticness of the island of Tortola in “An Incident at the Galloping Horse,” are perfect examples of this conception of setting: not simply a backdrop for the characters’ actions, but an active part of the story, sometimes even the protagonist of the story as the harbinger of the supernatural event.
In the best Weird tradition, Jacobi’s work also includes a cursed tome, The Restitution of Decayed Intelligence, which, contrary to the myth of literary grimoires, is a volume that actually existed, written in 1605 by Richard Verstegan; the author would adopt its fascinating title to create his own grimoire.
There are times when Jacobi’s fiction seems to anticipate that fringe of horror that would bring success to authors such as Richard Matheson, Stephen King, and others: the simple (but difficult to achieve) concept of “everything creeps,” of the dark, strange, unexpected event that insinuates itself into the banal everyday life of reality and explodes with its disturbing charge of horrors and mysteries. And so the discovery of an old book in an antique dealer’s shop is the prelude to a dizzying descent into madness and vampirism (“Revelations in Black”); two ordinary scarecrows come to life on an isolated Louisiana farm (“Witches in the Cornfield”); a simple wall dividing an estate becomes the last bulwark of defense against mythological horrors manifesting in nineteenth-century England (“The Singleton Barrier”). And then there is the fleeting parallel between horror (often embodied in objects, ancient manors, and dark events of the past) and the dormant madness of human beings, an ephemeral boundary that is difficult to grasp. As the protagonist of the celebrated story “Mive” wonders, “Where did the delirium fade into reality?”
Jacobi has a tendency to plant the seed of doubt in the reader that the supernatural story is attributable to a hallucination, an alteration of the senses, making the final effect of the story even more ambiguous and disturbing. Robert Bloch, the author of Psycho, a pupil of Lovecraft and an established writer of horror and the fantastic, seems to have fully grasped this aspect of Jacobi’s work; as he wrote in the pages of The Arkham Sampler, reviewing Revelations in Black:
Carl Jacobi’s concept is, at first glance, the velvet pall, the midnight moor, the unlit house, the mysterioso chord on the piano—in a word, the conventional, almost traditional “stage effect” or backdrop for the saga of the supernatural. It is the inevitable background for the mysterious veiled woman in “Revelations in Black,” the genius recently released from the asylum in “The Satanic Piano,” and the diabolical stranger of “The Coach on the Ring.” Yet one cannot dismiss the Jacobi gambit quite this easily. On the surface, his use of “black” is proper to the atmosphere of “man
And Jacobi’s own words contain the key to the effectiveness of his tales, the ability to pull readers in and involve them in the stories:
To me there is one unbreakable rule in successful fiction writing. If your chief character’s actions are fantastic or removed from reality, then your background should be commonplace. If your backdrop is a strange world, a far distant planet or an antediluvian period of the Earth’s past, then your protagonist should be an ordinary fellow with ordinary traits and characteristics. If you have both in the same story (as some sword and sorcery tales do) it is difficult for your reader to have something which he can relate to. (Jacobi, The Derleth Connection, p. 6).
Despite the enthusiasm of his readers, relying solely on the uncertain market of the pulp magazines was not an easy way of making ends meet. In 1942, Jacobi was forced to get a full-time job at a factory in the city; every night he sat in front of his typewriter, despite his fatigue and frustration, continuing to turn out little gems of the supernatural for his readers.
His physical decline began in the seventies, with a bad fall that left him hospitalized for months. But his passion for the fantastic was stronger than his illness. Carl continued to write and collaborated with R. Dixon Smith on the anthologies of his tales East of Samarinda, released in 1989, and Smoke of the Snake, published in 1994.
He passed away on August 25, 1997 in his Minneapolis home. With him went one of the last bastions of 1930s horror fiction, a writer who had fully experienced the unforgettable epic of the American pulp magazine, a historical period that made and continues to make legions of readers dream. Dreams (and nightmares) that Jacobi’s narrative continues to fuel . . .
Luigi Musolino
Luigi Musolino was born in the Italian province of Turin, where he still lives and works. A specialist in Italian folklore, he is the author of several collections of tales of weird fiction, horror, and rural Gothic, including his English-language debut, A Different Darkness and Other Abominations, which was a finalist for the World Fantasy Award. He has translated into Italian works by Brian Keene, Lisa Mannetti, Michael Laimo, and the autobiographical writings of H. P. Lovecraft. He is currently at work on a new volume of short fiction to be published by Valancourt in 2025.
Revelations in Black
It was a dreary, forlorn establishment way down on Harbor Street. An old sign announced the legend: “Giovanni Larla—Antiques,” and a dingy window revealed a display half masked in dust.
Even as I crossed the threshold that cheerless September afternoon, driven from the sidewalk by a gust of rain and perhaps a fascination for all antiques, the gloominess fell upon me like a material pall. Inside was half darkness, piled boxes and a monstrous tapestry, frayed with the warp showing in worn places. An Italian Renaissance wine cabinet shrank despondently in its corner and seemed to frown at me as I passed.
“Good afternoon, Signor. There is something you wish to buy? A picture, a ring, a vase perhaps?”
I peered at the squat bulk of the Italian proprietor there in the shadows and hesitated.
“Just looking around,” I said, turning to the jumble about me. “Nothing in particular . . .”
The man’s oily face moved in smile as though he had heard the remark a thousand times before. He sighed, stood there in thought a moment, the rain drumming and swishing against the outer pane. Then very deliberately he stepped to the shelves and glanced up and down them considering. At length he drew forth an object which I perceived to be a painted chalice.
“An authentic Sixteenth Century Tandart,” he murmured. “A work of art, Signor.”
I shook my head. “No pottery,” I said. “Books perhaps, but no pottery.”
He frowned slowly. “I have books too,” he replied, “rare books which nobody sells but me, Giovanni Larla. But you must look at my other treasures too.”
There was, I found, no hurrying the man. A quarter of an hour passed during which I had to see a Glycon cameo brooch, a carved chair of some indeterminate style and period, and a muddle of yellowed statuettes, small oils and one or two dreary Portland vases. Several times I glanced at my watch impatiently, wondering how I might break away from this Italian and his gloomy shop. Already the fascination of its dust and shadows had begun to wear off, and I was anxious to reach the street.
But when he had conducted me well toward the rear of the shop, something caught my fancy. I drew then from the shelf the first book of horror. If I had but known the events that were to follow, if I could only have had a foresight into the future that September day, I swear I would have avoided the book like a leprous thing, would have shunned that wretched antique store and the very street it stood on like places accursed. A thousand times I have wished my eyes had never rested on that cover in black. What writhings of the soul, what terrors, what unrest, what madness would have been spared me!
But never dreaming the secret of its pages I fondled it casually and remarked:
“An unusual book. What is it?”
Larla glanced up and scowled.
“That is not for sale,” he said quietly. “I don’t know how it got on these shelves. It was my poor brother’s.”
The volume in my hand was indeed unusual in appearance. Measuring but four inches across and five inches in length and bound in black velvet with each outside corner protected with a triangle of ivory, it was the most beautiful piece of book-binding I had ever seen. In the center of the cover was mounted a tiny piece of ivory intricately cut in the shape of a skull. But it was the title of the book that excited my interest. Embroidered in gold braid, the title read:
“Five Unicorns and a Pearl.”
I looked at Larla. “How much?” I asked and reached for my wallet.
He shook his head. “No, it is not for sale. It is . . . it is the last work of my brother. He wrote it just before he died in the institution.”
“The institution?”
Larla made no reply but stood staring at the book, his mind obviously drifting away in deep thought. A moment of silence dragged by. There was a strange gleam in his eyes when finally he spoke. And I thought I saw his fingers tremble slightly.
“My brother, Alessandro, was a fine man before he wrote that book,” he said slowly. “He wrote beautifully, Signor, and he was strong and healthy. For hours I could sit while he read to me his poems. He was a dreamer, Alessandro; he loved everything beautiful, and the two of us were very happy.
“All . . . until that terrible night. Then he . . . but no . . . a year has passed now. It is best to forget.” He passed his hand before his eyes and drew in his breath sharply.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Happened, Signor? I do not really know. It was all so confusing. He became suddenly ill, ill without reason. The flush of sunny Italy, which was always on his cheek, faded, and he grew white and drawn. His strength left him day by day. Doctors prescribed, gave medicines, but nothing helped. He grew steadily weaker until . . . until that night.”
I looked at him curiously, impressed by his perturbation.
“And then—?”
Hands opening and closing, Larla seemed to sway unsteadily; his liquid eyes opened wide to the brows.
“And then . . . oh, if I could but forget! It was horrible. Poor Alessandro came home screaming, sobbing. He was . . . he was stark, raving mad!
“They took him to the institution for the insane and said he needed a complete rest, that he had suffered from some terrific mental shock. He . . . died three weeks later with the crucifix on his lips.”
For a moment I stood there in silence, staring out at the falling rain. Then I said:
