Here's my humble, and rather lengthy (sorry), summary; I may break a few rules (if there are any) concerning the kinds of information I provide, but because of the peculiar circumstances surrounding the piece, which are, as much as the text, what makes the story compelling, I said what the hell. I guess I’m thinking of a ‘cover’ of both the story and the strange vibe surrounding it.

The House in Cypress Canyon (c. 1939); Kenneth Robeson

Christmas is seven days away, and a couple, Frank and Helen, recently transplanted to southern California because of Frank’s job transfer (he’s a chemist), are driving along the highway late at night. Helen sees a sign advertising a vacant house. They are desperately looking for housing more permanent than the seventh floor room at their downtown hotel and they stop to ask about the house.

They proceed to buy, sight unseen, the advertised vacancy and follow the real estate agent (whose gender is never clear) by car to the house in Cypress Canyon, a squat ranch in the developing development. They immediately begin moving in, all of their boxed-up belongings somehow already at the doorstep of their newly purchased home. How? What about the paperwork? Who knows. (Questions and obvious inconsistencies like this make up most of the story.)

The story’s structure then switches to a second narrative (which alternates until the end) told in the agent’s first person. The agent is telling a cop friend about a typed manuscript s/he found three months earlier in the half-finished Cypress Canyon house. The manuscript tells the story of newlyweds who move into the home and find it is inhabited by some sort of demon taking the form of a werewolf. They ‘find’ the werewolf behind a locked door in the house.

The manuscript story, as told by the agent, starts at the ‘end,’ where the husband, after surviving a savage attack by the beast, waits in the couple’s bedroom with a shotgun. His wife is missing or dead (presumably killed by the werewolf/demon), and the section ends just as he hears scratching at the door and pulls the trigger.

The story returns to Frank and Helen, who are just then searching for the keys to open a closet located in the middle of the house. First they think the door is stuck. Then it is obviously locked. They find no such key. As you might have guessed, the stories begin to mirror one another (though in the opposite directions, a little like Memento maybe).

The subsequent events in Frank and Helen’s narrative are:

1. During their first night in the house, they are awakened by howling. Getting up to investigate, they find a stream of blood running from under the locked closet. Helen touches the blood. Frank does not.

2. Three killings occur in the next three days, including a. a sheep and goat, b. the milkman, and c. a 7-year-old who lives in a nearby suburb and whose uncanny resemblance to Frank’s dead brother sparks nightmares for Frank (how did the brother die? Was it sinister or supernatural? No clue.)

3. Frank suspects his wife is (now) the werewolf.

4. Frank waits in the bedroom for his wife to return from grocery shopping. His shotgun is loaded.

The agent’s story repeats many of the events, though sometimes in different order and with slight variations (i.e., instead of a sheep and goat, a dove and bat are the first-killed). Robeson's use of religious/occult imagery--sheep/dove = good, goat/bat = bad; numbers: Christmas = 2+5 = 7; it’s a week before Christmas; houses address is No. 25; boy is 7--is quite heavy-handed. Also the obvious use of the blood as sacrifice (whether human or animal) and the locked door (he quotes the ‘no man may enter unto the Father except through me.’ Does the werewolf = the Father?).

The melodrama seems to reinforce the pulp/horror/genre tone one would expect from Robeson (he wrote the Doc Savage pulps in the 30s), except the fact that he proceeds to shift and undercut every genre cue. The story, by the end, finds a way to be genuinely unsettling because it is so inexplicable.

It begins as a monster/horror story, moves to sci-fi/time travel (the manuscript found three months ago in the half-finished house predicts what is happening presently with pasted-in newspaper clippings, dating and verifying the killings) and invokes the murder mystery, romance serials and even vaudeville humor (Frank and Helen recite a George Burns/Gracie Allen comedy bit when getting ready for bed).

The fact that the story was found in Dent/Robeson’s unpublished papers and only saw the light of day posthumously just adds to everything. But I've said enough, right...

The last line (if you want it):

‘And perhaps most significant the second time through was the fact that Helen didn’t touch the blood, but instead physically appeared behind the door after the howling woke Frank, who was left alone this time to follow the trail and try the door, which was unlocked, so he could see his wife sleeping inside in the dark like an animal; I knew that switch was the signal--the negative value of the unknown monster replaced by the positive known quantity of lovely, lovely Helen: It was the difference between Frank firing and Frank being fired upon.’