You know, there's this fantasy, I think almost
everyone has had it at some point. It's like
three in the morning, you can't sleep and you
just think, what if I just left? And I don't
just mean a vacation. I mean, you pack one bag,
you walk out the door, you pick a direction and
you just never look back. It's the geographical
cure. It's a classic human delusion, really.
Yeah, exactly. The idea that if you just put
enough physical miles between you and your past,
the past somehow, you know, loses its grip. We
always forget that saying wherever you go, there
you are. You think your problems are external,
this house, this job, this city? You can't leave
your own head behind. And that very concept is
the absolute core of the story we're unpacking
today. We're doing a deep dive into a piece of
horror that takes that whole running away fantasy
and just twists it into something honestly terrifying.
We are talking about Clark Ashton Smith's A Night
in Malnail. Oh, a fantastic choice. And for anyone
who might only know, say, Lovecraft or Robert
E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith is really the third
pillar of that whole Weird Tales golden age.
Right. From the 30s. Yeah. But where Lovecraft
is all cosmic and kind of clinical and Howard
is very visceral and action -packed, Smith is
something else. He's a poet first. His horror
is... It's lush. It's dreamlike. Incredibly atmospheric.
That's a great way to put it. This story, which
I think first came out in 33 and then later in
Weird Tales in 1939, it doesn't rely on, you
know, some monster from the deep. The monster
here is memory. It's guilt. And it's set in a
city that feels less like a real place and more
like a fever dream. It's really a story about
the architecture of guilt. how deep regret can
actually reshape the world around you. So our
mission today is to explore how Smith uses that
setting, the city of Melnion, as a mirror for
the main character's mind. We have a narrator
who's running from a tragedy he caused, a city
completely wrapped in fog, and a twist that forces
him to face the one thing he swore he'd forget.
So let's start with him. Our guy. We don't get
a name, do we? He's just the narrator. No, no
name. And he's definitely not on a leisure trip.
When we first meet him, he's described as weary
and just doing this aimless wandering. Aimless
wandering? Yeah. Through the remote cities and
roads of the old world. And Smith is probably
pinching of his fictional version of medieval
France, Averon, or somewhere like that. A place
sort of out of time. But the key is he isn't
moving towards something. He's moving away. And
he's exhausted. Right. But the story doesn't
really hide why he's running. It drops the reason
pretty early. It all comes back to his wife,
Lady Mariel. It does. And this is where it gets
really dark. Lady Mariel isn't just dead. She
committed suicide. And Smith gives us a very
specific and very damning detail about why. It
wasn't just some sudden madness. The text explicitly
links her death. to the narrator's own behavior.
Yeah, the phrase is his cruel and vicious temper.
And we have to pause on that because that just
changes everything about how we see this guy.
He's not some tragic widower. No. He's an abuser.
He broke his wife's spear until she just couldn't
take it anymore. Precisely. That distinction
is everything. If he were just grieving, this
would be a tragedy. But because he's the cause,
it becomes a story about guilt. Culpability.
He's fleeing the scene of the crime. Exactly.
Even if the law can't touch him. His wandering
is just a desperate attempt to outrun his own
conscience. He thinks if he just keeps moving,
the guilt can't catch up. So he's dragging this
with him across the countryside. And then as
evening is falling, he stumbles upon Malnais.
I want to talk about that name, Malnais. I mean,
I took French in high school and my brain immediately
starts picking it apart. Mal is bad. Or sick.
You're spot on. It's a wordsmith basically made
up to pack a punch. Yeah. Mal implies evil, sickness,
something wrong. And nil, that translates to
nothingness, the void. So he literally walks
into the city of evil nothingness. Or bad void,
yeah. That is not a welcoming sign. If I saw
that on a map, I would pull a U -turn so fast.
It creates this sense of dread before he even
gets inside the gates. It suggests a place that
is, you know. morally bankrupt or maybe a place
that just shouldn't exist at all. Yeah. A little
pocket of negation in the real world. And the
physical description, it matches the name perfectly.
He arrives and the very first thing he notices
is the fog. Oh, yeah. And it's not just a little
mist. It's this heavy, suffocating shroud that
just wraps around everything. Smith is a master
of this kind of texture. The fog does two things
here. Visually, it isolates him. It cuts him
off from the rest of the world, traps him. But...
Psychologically, fog is confusion, right? The
inability to see clearly. Which is exactly what
he's doing in his own head. It mirrors his denial
perfectly. But even more than the fog, there's
the sound. The bells. The bells. And they are
not happy wedding bells. Smith describes them
as sepulchral. tolling constantly. A mortuary
toll, yeah. It's this heavy, rhythmic, metallic
sound that just gets into every inch of the city.
I mean, just imagine that. You're tired, you're
guilty, you're lost in the fog, and all you can
hear is this ceaseless B -O -Y, B -O -Y, B -O
-Y. It's like the heartbeat of the city is a
dying heartbeat. It's psychological warfare.
The bells are a constant reminder of death. You
can close your eyes, you know, block out the
fog, but you can't close your ears to the bells.
They're wearing him down. Right. He enters the
city wanting to just sleep, wanting oblivion.
But the city is just screaming at him to stay
awake and pay attention. So he tries to find
a place to stay, goes to a tavern, then an inn.
He just wants a bed. And this is where things
ramp up from just like creepy atmosphere to full
on nightmare logic. Right. Because in a normal
city, maybe things are booked up for a big event.
But here he's rejected with this very specific,
almost bureaucratic explanation. He's told that
all accommodations, every room, every service
has been appropriated. Appropriated. That is
such a cold word. It implies a total takeover.
Yeah. And when he asks why, they tell him it's
for a funeral. And not just any funeral. No,
they explicitly say it's for the funeral of Lady
Mariel. Okay, freeze frame. This is the moment.
He is miles and miles away from home. He hears
the name of his dead wife. The wife he drove
to suicide? Right. He hears that the entire city
is shut down for her funeral. A rational person
would scream. A rational person would run. What
does our narrator do? He just, he completely
checks out. He rationalizes it. He tells himself
it's an uncanny coincidence. An uncanny coincidence.
That is. Wow. That is some heavy lifting for
the human brain. Must be another Lady Mariel
having a massive state funeral in this random
foggy town I just walked into. It seems totally
absurd to us reading it. Yeah. But this is actually
a pretty realistic depiction of how the mind
protects itself from trauma or extreme guilt.
How so? Well. If he admits that it's his Lady
Mariel, his entire reality just collapses. He
has to admit he hasn't escaped a thing. So his
brain, it builds a wall. He decides it's a coincidence
because the alternative is just. It's madness.
It is. So he's wearing these blinders. He's walking
through the streets. Everyone is preparing for
this funeral. The people aren't, you know. Living
their lives, they're all somber, carrying wreaths,
sewing black cloth. The whole town is like a
stage crew setting up for a tragedy. And notice
how they're described. They barely register.
They're like ants working for the colony. Their
only purpose is this ritual. It adds to the feeling
that Malnais isn't a real functioning city. It's
a machine built for one thing. This funeral.
And the narrator's just walking through it feeling
like an outsider. But we, the readers, we know
he's the guest of honor or maybe the prisoner.
He's the center of it all. And he's just refusing
to look at the center. Eventually, he just kind
of gets swept up in the crowd, right? He can't
ignore the flow. The bells are getting louder.
The crowd is moving. And he ends up at the cathedral.
And Smith's description of the cathedral, it's
not a place of sanctuary. It sounds heavy, oppressive.
It's the architectural heart of the bad void.
Oh, no. Right. The bells are deafening here.
The incense is thick. He enters the nave. And
again, you can feel the pressure building. He
is physically moving closer and closer to the
truth he's been running from. He walks up to
the coffin, the open coffin. Yeah. And this is
the moment the blinders are just ripped off.
He looks down. And Smith doesn't play any games
here. It's not a skeleton. It's not some demon.
It's not a blank face. The narrator looks down
and sees, with no doubt, the face of his wife,
Lady Mariel. The shock of that. I mean, it breaks
the laws of physics. She died back home. She
was buried. And yet here she is in a city he's
never even been to. The whole coincidence defense
just shatters instantly. He is forced to confront
this impossible reality. He ran away from her
death. Only to walk right into a city that's
eternally reenacting it for him. It's the ultimate
irony. By running, he didn't escape. He took
a shortcut straight to the confrontation. It's
like the universe itself said, no. You don't
get to just walk away from this. His cruelty
was so potent, it actually stained the fabric
of reality and created this city, this funeral,
these bells just for him. So he sees her face.
He knows it's her. Does he fall to his knees?
Does he confess his sins? No. He does the only
thing he knows how to do. He runs. Again. Flight
is his only coping mechanism. He turns and he
flees the cathedral. But this is where the environment
shifts again. When he first entered, the city
was just foggy and confusing. Now, Smith describes
the streets as becoming labyrinthine. I love
that shush. A labyrinth isn't just a maze. It's
a trap. It feels like the city is now actively
trying to keep him there. The geometry of the
city itself seems to be conspiring against him.
He runs for hours. Think about that. Yeah. Hours
of pure panic running through these identical
foggy cobblestone streets with those bells still
just. hammering away in his ears. He's a rat
in a maze that he built himself? It's a perfect
manifestation of his internal state. His mind
is a mess of guilt and panic, so the city becomes
a mess of winding streets. He's literally loft
in his own head. And the terror is that there
might not be an exit because, as we said, he
is the source of the horror. You can't find the
exit to a building you're carrying on your own
back. But the story says he does eventually find
the road. He stumbles out of the city limits.
The fog things out. Maybe the bells fade a bit.
He's back in the old world countryside. He physically
escapes, yes. But the real question is, has he
actually escaped anything? I would argue absolutely
not. I mean, before he was running from a memory,
a regret. Now, now he's running from a reality.
He saw her. Exactly. The denial is gone. He can
no longer pretend it was just a bad temper or
a tragic accident. He has seen the funeral. He
knows the universe holds him responsible. So
he might be walking down a quiet country road
again, but he's haunted now in a way that is
just total and absolute. Which makes you wonder
about Melnion itself. We talked about the name
Bad Void. Do you think if you or I walk down
that same road, we would find a city with funeral
bells? Or would we just find an empty field?
That's the most fascinating question Smith leaves
us with. It suggests that Melaniel might not
be a fixed location on a map. It could be a subjective
trap, a phenomenon that only rises from the fog
for those who have a certain weight of guilt
on their soul. Like a magnet for a guilty conscience
that just pulls you in. Or, and this is maybe
more disturbing, the city exists, but it changes
its face for every traveler. Maybe for someone
else it's a city celebrating a wedding or a city
of total silence. But for our narrator, it became
the funeral city. Because that's what he needed
to see. That's what he brought with him. Smith
takes that psychological truth, that we project
our internal states onto the world, and he just
makes it literal. The narrator's guilt is so
powerful, it literally built the walls and summoned
the fog. It weaponizes that idea. The environment
doesn't just match his mood, it attacks him with
it. Right. It's also interesting that he's completely
isolated. I mean, he gets turned away at the
end, but he never really has a conversation with
anyone. And that isolation is key to the punishment.
He's forced to be an observer of his own tragedy.
He can't stop the funeral. He can't apologize
to the corpse. He can only watch. It's a hell
of his own making. Quite literally. You know,
we often talk about horror in terms of jump scares
or gore, but this story hits on a much deeper
fear, the fear that we are known, that our secrets
aren't actually secret, that the universe keeps
a ledger and eventually the bill comes due. That
is what makes this story endure. It strips away
the comfort of anonymity. We all like to think
that if we move to a new town, hey, nobody knows
what we did. This story says, you know, here,
and that is enough. And that cruel and vicious
temper, it comes right back to bite him. It's
a cautionary tale about character. His character
flaw. His cruelty. That was the seed. Malnail
was just the tree that grew from it. A poisonous
tree indeed. Yeah. And it kind of forces you
to ask yourself, what cities are we building
with our own actions? If you walked into a city
built entirely of your own past behaviors, would
it be a place you'd want to visit? That is...
That is a terrifying thought. I'd hope for a
city of pleasant brunch spots, but, you know,
you never know. Let's hope so. So before we wrap,
I want to circle back to the end one more time.
He leaves, he's back on the road, and we assume
he just, what, keeps walking forever. That's
the implication. He's like the ancient mariner
or the wandering Jew. He's cursed to Rome, carrying
this knowledge with him. But here's a thought
that really kept me up after this reading. We
talk about whether the city was real or a hallucination.
What if? What if Melnion was entirely a manifestation
of his mind? A hallucination brought on by guilt
and exhaustion. Well, if the city was in his
head, then leaving the city is just another part
of the delusion. He never actually escaped the
labyrinth. He might still be sitting in that
cathedral or wandering that maze. And this is
the worst one. He might never have even left
his home. So he's sitting in the room where his
wife died. Yes. Completely catatonic. Hallucinating
this entire journey to the old world while just...
staring at a wall. That is a chilling interpretation.
Yeah. It would mean the entire story, the travel,
the city, the escape. It's all just the firing
of a broken mind trying to process the unprocessable.
He's trapped in a loop. He can never exit. And
that, my friends, is why Clark Ashton Smith is
a master. He leaves you with a map that leads
nowhere. A map to a place you definitely do not
want to go. Well, thank you for taking this trip
to Melneont with us. Maybe check your own conscience
before you go to sleep tonight, just in case
you hear bells ringing in the distance? Indeed.
Until next time.