A NOVA CALIFORNIA aka A NEW CALIFORNIA (1921) HALLOWEEN MONTH IS UNDERWAY!

The Halloween Season has rolled around once again! For newcomers to Balladeer’s Blog let me point out that I post about more than just horror topics in October. I also cover my usual recurring subjects but throw in reviews of neglected, centuries old novels and short stories from around the world in a Gothic Horror equivalent of my Ancient Science Fiction blog posts. I also review horror films throughout the month. 

A NOVA CALIFORNIA (1921) – This short horror story from Brazil was written by Lima Barreto. The tale is set in a fictional Brazilian town called Tubiacango after the river along whose banks it stood. Tubiacango’s population was roughly 4,000.

The tranquil town had never known much in the way of excitement or scandal outside of a few crimes of passion and some political violence committed by the incumbent political party.

NOTE: Something I’ve been struck by as I read more and more Brazilian literature is how even the smallest towns could boast an international population. There will be native Brazilians, newly arrived Portuguese, white Europeans, and – as the literature itself points out – every shade of dark colored people from all over the world.

The end of the tranquility came with the arrival of a wealthy and mysterious man who practiced a form of pharmaceutical science beyond the understanding of Tubiacango’s resident pharmacists, physicians and schoolteachers.

Raimundo Flanel was the enigmatic figure’s name. He did no shopping but had packages of all sizes delivered by mail to his home. He did no visiting and he did not welcome any visitors in turn. He would even get rid of charity collectors for the next church holiday with a quick gift of cash and bundle them on their way.

Fabricio, one of the town’s carpenters, became a celebrity for a few days as he installed a furnace in Raimundo’s living room to accommodate his latest experiments. What little information that the carpenter could pass along about the mysterious Flanel and his lifestyle made him the center of attention.

Eventually, Raimundo surprised the pharmacist at the Bastos Apothecary by paying a call on him and stating that his latest experiment needed witnesses. He asked the pharmacist to recommend three of Tubiacango’s most prominent and honored citizens to be those witnesses.

Flanel recruited the landed, decorated and politically connected citizens that had been recommended to him. Not long after a private meeting with the trio in his home, Raimundo Flanel vanished.

The enigmatic figure’s three “witnesses” remained close-mouthed about their interaction with Raimundo. Pelino, the editor of the town’s newspaper, helped lead Tubiacango in feeling relieved at the man’s disappearance and speculated that he was a criminal from Rio de Janeiro who was on the run.

Days after Raimundo Flanel had vanished, an epidemic of grave robberies began. Nothing protected the interred corpses from this defilement. Families from every level of society were outraged over the plundering of their loved ones’ remains for some unknown, probably unspeakable purpose.

Volunteer parties of townsmen began standing guard over the cemetery and mortuaries of Tubiacango. After several more grave robberies, a quartet of night watchmen interrupted three men in the middle of another ghoulish attempt.

A fight ensued, with one of the men being killed, another escaping and the third taken into custody. Come morning the entire town was buzzing over the identity of the captured grave robber – he was one of the wealthy and “respectable” citizens who had served as witnesses for the missing Flanel’s experiment.

The dead man was another of those witnesses and the escapee was identified as the third. The macabre reason for the rash of grave robberies was revealed.

Raimundo Flanel had devised a way of transmuting human bones into gold. Raimundo and his “witnesses” instead became accomplices in the theft of human remains from the local cemetery. Flanel had swiftly fled town with a share of the gold, while the other three continued their nocturnal raids on the dead.

When the other townspeople were shown that the outlandish tale was true – that the chemical formula of Raimundo Flanel did indeed transform human skeletons into gold – a new horror was unleashed. Greedy, gold-hungry citizens began openly plundering the graves of their forebears in order to become rich.

When the bodies of the long dead were all dug up and transmuted, the violence increased as gold fever drove citizens to begin murdering each other just to skin the bodies and make additional gold for themselves. Even family members were maddened into taking each other’s lives in a days-long orgy of bloodshed and crude “filleting.”

At length, the violence in this New California and its perverse gold rush came to a close. No one in the entire town was left alive except the town drunk, who shivered at what had transpired and wanted nothing to do with gold made from the bones of the dead.

FOR ELIZABETH OF EGYPT (1812), ABOUT A GYPSY QUEEN, A MANDRAGORE, A SHE-GOLEM AND A BARENHAUTER CLICK HERE.

FOR AMERICA’S 1879 AZTEC MUMMY TALE, THE SQUAW HOLLOW SENSATION, CLICK HERE.