In the annals of weird fiction, the name Elsie Robinson (Elsinore Justina Robinson) does not loom large. During her lifetime, Robinson’s fame came mostly as a syndicated columnist for the Hearst newspapers, and at the height of her fame millions read her column “Listen, World!,” that often featured a flippant, sarcastic tone; dealt seriously (if cynically, and often humorously) with issues of marriage, romance, and daily life; and were sometimes illustrated with her own cartoons or poems.

Which is why the column for “Listen, World!” for 31 December 1937 (or 1 January 1938, or 3 January 1938, depending on when the syndicated material was run) stands out a bit from the corpus of her work, because the bulk of the article is an severe (and somewhat humorous) abridgement or synopsis of Edward Lucas White’s bizzare classic of weird fiction, “Lukundoo”—a story first published in Weird Tales November 1925, and then in White’s collection Lukundoo and Other Stories (1927), Dorothy L. Sayers‘ The Omnibus of Crime (1929), and many other places. White’s story also served as the direct inspiration for Henry S. Whitehead’s “The Lips” (Weird Tales September 1929).

This New Year’s recapitulation shows the odd ways weird fiction gets out into the world, the different forms it takes and the odd influence it can have, even on such an aggressively mainstream and popular journalist as Elsie Robinson.

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LISTEN, WORLD
by Elsie Robinson
LUKUNDOO!

New Year’s Day!

So many desires, so many resolutions, springing again in your tired, suspicious spirit! So much furious hope that you’ll “get your break at last!”…

Yet, tucking in beside the resolutions, ready for instant use—the same old score of excuses and alibis!

New Year ahead! What will it bring? And whose fault will it be if it doesn’t? The Other Fellow’s? Some outer circumstance over which you had no control…bad breaks you couldn’t buck…will these cause your failure and frustration in the year that opens today? Will defeat come from OUTSIDE? Or is there another danger you need to face? Think…listen…

* * *

Stone was dying. Dying a hideous mysterious death.

(You’ll find the story in Dorothy L. Sayers’ “Omnibus of Crime.”)

What lay behind that closely guarded tent in the black heart of the African jungle? Nobody knew. Dusky Zanzibar and Mangbattu bearers might come slinking through thr night, peering, sniffling—their great nostrils quivering like curious beasts. But no one knew. Not even Etcham, the Englishman, Stone’s devoted friend, could tell the meaning of the thing he had seen.

Panting, exhausted, Etcham rested after a five days’ incredible trek for help. And the other Englishmen—their hunting trip interrupted—listened. Stone dying? But why? What were the symptoms? Coma…fever…some strange and frantic urge which forced him to hide within his tent, forbidding anyone to follow. And carbuncles—only they weren’t carbuncles. But whatever they were, Stone was dying of them.

A crazy explanation. But there was agony in Etcham’s eyes. So the others had followed. Come at last to the camp. Seen Stone, lying in a stupor, his huge, collapsing body bound in bandages.

The wounds? They told nothing. Strange bulgings, here and there, on the body, “as though something hard and blunt were being pushed up through the healthy flesh.”

Nothing to do but wait. So the night had come…and with the night the two voices, as Etcham had said there would be…two voices speaking together, pleading, sneering, arguing, screeching, out of the tent where only one man lay in deadly stupor.

Two voices speaking out of Stone’s body! They could not believe it! But they had crept nearer…then they had seen.

The bulgings had broken, one after another. And out of them had come—incredible awfulness!—little heads! Little savage heads…low browed, beastial…gibbering, screeching! Heads that, at first, Stone had tried to cut off with his razor. but they had come again…and again…and again. Heads, arms, clawing hands…forming within, bursting out of Stone’s body. Secret horror—long concealed—bursting at last through the haunted flesh.

So this was it! This ws the secret horror that was killing the man they had loved! Someone had wished it on him…some foul devil! But he should not conquer! His friends would save him!

Eagerly they rushed forward—knives in hand. But even as they slashed at the horror, Stone spoke… “Let me be! Let me die in my own way…You can cut off ten, a hundred, a thousand heads, but the curse you cannot take off… The curse is not put on me; it grew out of me. Even now I go!”

And with that admission, he wrenched—twisted to his side—was dead.

* * *

New Year’s day. So many dreams…so many dreads—so many excuses if your dreams do not come true.

But the excuses will be in vain. There is only one reason for weakness, and the failure that follows weakness. Like Stone’s curse, it is “not put on you, it grows out of you.” Grows out in all its vicious horror…out of your hidden savagery, your cowardice and greed, your fear and dishonesty.

New Year’s day!

What will come out of it?

WHATEVER YOU PUT INTO IT.

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There are a few quirks of presentation in different papers, as different folks laid out portions of the text with bold, italics, all caps, or just plain type, presumably as need or aesthetics demanded. At least one paper substituted “You Make Your Own ‘Breaks.'” in place of “LUKUNDOO!” for a sub-header. The text above combines a features from different iterations of the article.

Robinson’s synopsis is judicious; while she encapsulates most of the essential characteristics of the horror, she leaves out many critical details. Her quotations from the text are approximate, not exact; perhaps she worked from memory. Perhaps she had picked up the Omnibus of Crime around Christmastime, in search of a ghost story, and was inspired; perhaps it was simply odd reading that struck her as meat for an article. Either way, Robinson put her own characteristic interpretation on the material. She was a self-made woman who had struggled as a divorced single mother in the early 20th century, and had succeeded as a writer and journalist by dint of her own effort—she very much made her own breaks, often out of necessity (see Famous Author To Write Daily Column in NEWS for a brief biography).

I can’t help but wonder how many readers shuddered over Robinson’s abbreviated story—and how many later sought out White’s “Lukundoo” to read the full story, with all of its hints and added details. We will never know; while Elsie Robinson encouraged readers to write in, I haven’t found any sequels to this episode in her syndicated columns.

For anyone interested in learning more about Elsie Robinson, check out Listen World: How the Intrepid Elsie Robinson Became America’s Most-Read Woman (2022) by Julia Scheeres and Allison Gilbert.

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Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos.

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