"They Bite" (1943)

Anthony Boucher's moody classic WWII-era horror / Western story has a desert setting and unsettling spy overtones. It's fast and effective with lots of surprises, but I think what I like best is its working knowledge of terrifying true-crime cases, such as the Bender family in Kansas circa the early 1870s. These fiends set up as an inn for westering pioneers and murdered an unknown number but at least 11. The motive was robbery but they were notable butchers. Boucher even throws in a preening name-check of William Roughead and one of his classic case write-ups about a 16th-century murder by poisoning within the royal family of Scotland, nothing to do with anything here but fun to see. The Benders were human beings in real life but not exactly in this story, which says they moved west and become the Carkers, long slender brown weird immortal monsters that strike swift and sure. Interesting theory. Yes, they bite. They're never seen except in reaches of peripheral vision, fleetingly. "They Bite" takes place in a desert town in the West called Oasis. Our hero is a regular white guy but also a spy for Axis powers. He's there checking out the doings at a nearby military airfield. He has an old friend who blackmails him when he figures out what's going on. Our hero is not a good man. Outside of town are abandoned adobe dwellings where no one lives anymore, except the Carkers. Carkers is a good word—you sort of have to clear your throat or bark like an animal to get it out. Boucher's descriptions are more dancing and allusive about them than concrete for most of the story, a nice use of misdirection until we finally come face to face with one. There's also a mysterious grizzled old miner guy who won't say any more about them than the title of the story. The reader is allowed to imagine them and then compare notes with the shuddering reality at the end, as the story explodes to its inevitable conclusion. This subtle approach to exposing monsters as such is reminiscent of the original 1942 Cat People and other movie productions where the viewer is asked to do a lot of the work of imagining the menace. "They Bite" does not particularly rise to the level of jolting fear but instead is better, much better, at gnawing tension, with a nice blast at the end. Considering that our good guy is actually a bad guy—you'll see more about why—you might say it's a happy ending. Either way a stone classic.

Realms of Darkness, ed. Mary Danby (out of print)
Read story online.