Among Lovecraft’s correspondents, who included obscure revision clients such as Hazel Heald—with these “revisions” sometimes amounting to full-fledged ghostwriting for a few dollars—and authors of a certain renown, such as C. L. Moore, who penned the Jirel of Joiry stories, there was a young aspiring writer named Beatrice Tremblay, though back then she had signed her letters “Betty.”
Beatrice would go on to correspond with other writers and publish a robust number of short stories, a couple of novellas, and one novel. Her name, first glimpsed as a footnote in a paper about Lovecraft, had incited Minerva’s curiosity because Lovecraft and Tremblay had apparently corresponded on the subject of witchcraft, and also because she was a woman and a writer of “weird tales,” a combination that, although not unique by itself—Greye La Spina, Everil Worrell, and Mary Elizabeth Counselman were women who wrote such stories—was noteworthy because history seemed to have forgotten most female horror authors.
Minerva had tracked down one of Tremblay’s stories, translated into Spanish and reprinted in a horror anthology that had been put out by Minotauro in the eighties, and had fallen hopelessly in love with her prose.
New England and witchcraft featured prominently in Tremblay’s work. Minerva’s original plan had been to dig into the autobiographical elements inThe Vanishingand tie it all together in an essay with the context of New England’s history and folklore.
The first edition ofThe Vanishingcontained a cryptic note at the back that declared, “This is based on a true story.” And atBrown, in one of those two letters kept at the John Hay Library, there was a paragraph that read:
I have been toying with writing a novel based on certain experiences of mine, which, as I indicated when we met in Providence last summer, were of a most eerie and disturbing nature. The working title isThe Vanishing,and it concerns the disappearance of a young woman whom I briefly befriended. I know you’ve asked me for more details on this tale, which is a true account as baffling as the Lost Colony of Roanoke. Perhaps I might be able to show you my noteswhen I go down to Providence, which looks plausible in the fall.
The letter had been dated January 1937. Lovecraft passed away in March. Beatrice and Lovecraft had never discussedThe Vanishing—she wouldn’t write it until decades later; it had a long gestation. Of their first meeting, there were no great details and no information on what they had conversed about. Minerva knew Beatrice had almost concluded her studies at Stoneridge by the time she went to Providence to meet “Grandpa Theobald”—Lovecraft liked to call himself that. She also knew that she’d stayed for three days in Providence and that Lovecraft had given her something of a tour of the area.
He’d done the same thing for Helen V. Sully in 1933 when she’d visited Providence, and spooked her by taking her to a graveyard at night, and in 1934 Lovecraft had headed to Florida to meetwith a teenage fan, R. H. Barlow—Lovecraft did not actually know his pen pal was sixteen until he arrived—who had invited him for a visit at his family’s house. Which is to say, rather than being an old, scared man hiding inside a dilapidated mansion, Lovecraft did have a social life.
Lovecraft’s impressions of Beatrice had been preserved in a letter to Jonquil Leiber in 1936, in which he detailed his meeting with an “interesting” young woman named Beatrice “Betty” Tremblay who was fascinated by matters of the occult and witchcraft, thus birthing the footnote that had entranced Minerva.
Minerva’s mission to rescue Beatrice Tremblay from the jaws of oblivion had seemed to her achievable in the beginning, but the material in the archives of Stoneridge was dry and impersonal, unless you were eager to know that the price ofWeird Talesin 1932 was twenty-five cents.
“What about her journal? Didn’t you find out someone in the area had Tremblay’s personal papers?”
“Yeah. Carolyn Yates.”
“You know the remodel job at Joyce House? It’s being financed by the Yates Foundation. It’s notthatYates, is it?”
“Yep. They went to school together. Beatrice left her business correspondence and a bunch of roughs, outlines, and notes to the college; her journal and personal letters went to Carolyn. The problem is I can’t get hold of them.”
“She’s given you the brush-off?”
“I wish. I can’t even get the woman on the phone. Because she’s a valuable donor, I must go through the alumni office, and they said her secretary turned me down. I got so upset that a few weeks ago I cornered her grandson in the library and asked him aboutit.”
“He goes here?” Hideo asked. “What’s his name?”
“Noah.”
“What’s he studying?”
“I think economics, but he might be switching to something else. Rose at the registrar’s office said he’s cycled through several universities. You want a cup of coffee? I’ll brew a fresh pot.”
“No, thanks.”
Minerva stood up, fiddling with the coffee maker. Like the other appliances in the kitchen, it was an ancient, temperamental machine from the seventies. The wiring didn’t help. An old building like Ledge House couldn’t have two things hooked up to one electrical outlet or the power might fail.
“He’s not that balding guy with the ponytail, is he? The one who has one of the singles in Catherine House?”
“No. He’s our age.”
“Well, okay, so what did he say?”
“He told me to contact his grandmother’s secretary. This isgoing to be the dullest thesis in the world. I’ll never secure doctoral funding.”
“Why don’t you switch it up? Focus on Lovecraft.”
“Lovecraft’s played out,” she said, pushing the brew button. “De Camp wrote a bio about him in the seventies and then Joshi came out with an even better bio. Tremblay is fresh. Anyway, how’s your work going? You keep changing your topic.”
“I think I’m going to compare the ghost stories of Henry James withKwaidan.”
“The movie or the book?”
