INTRODUCTION

The idea for A Touch of the Creature first came to Charles Beaumont at the home of Ray Bradbury in August 1953.

At the time, Beaumont was a struggling young writer who had been an ardent devotee of Bradbury’s stylish tales of science-­fiction since the early Forties—an era that had established Bradbury as a cult favorite among readers of the pulp magazines that were popular in the day.

Born on January 2, 1929, Beaumont had begun reading the pulps in the late Thirties while growing up on Chicago’s North Side. Shortly before his twelfth birthday, however, he was stricken with spinal meningitis. While bedridden, he became a fan of authors such as H.G. Wells, Edgar Allan Poe, and L. Frank Baum, creator of the “Wizard of Oz” series of books. “It was he who first showed me what words could do,” Beaumont wrote. Midway through his bout of meningitis, Beaumont was sent by his parents to convalesce with his grandmother in Burlington, Washington. It was there that he discovered Bradbury’s stories in the pages of Weird Tales magazine—stories that fueled his imagination and inspired him to put his own works of fiction on paper. “I love and have always loved to write and to create imaginative word pictures,” Beaumont wrote at age fifteen. “I have an extreme interest in grammar and word-construction, and love to read. I believe all these are instrumental in the making of a good author. The only other vocation I could really be happy in is the cousin of fiction writing—playwriting and radio script writing. The deciding factor in all of these is, of course, my intense love of literature.”

While Beaumont penned his first stories, he devoted himself to reading the classic works of American literature, becoming an admirer of F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, Carson McCullers­, James Thurber, and Ernest Hemingway. His personal study of the field indicated how obsessive he could be. By his reasoning, it was not enough to familiarize himself with the critically acclaimed authors, or to be aware of the important, influential literary works; he was driven to know everything about the various styles and genres that had cross-pollinated and influenced each other.

During a visit to Los Angeles in the summer of 1946, Beaumont met Ray Bradbury in a downtown bookstore. The two became immediate friends. “We were drawn together by similar tastes and memories,” Bradbury said. “We’d both grown up in the Midwest: Chuck in Chicago; me in Waukegan. And even though he was ten years younger than me, he seemed to remember things out of my own boyhood. We shared a love of radio and movies and comics and theater. We loved books and music and King Kong. We shared a passion for language. We also missed the changing of the seasons, particularly autumn, the most nostalgic and contemplative of seasons.” With so much in common, Bradbury could not help but to encourage young Beaumont as he sought his own career path. “Sometime later, I began critiquing his short stories,” Bradbury said. “When I read the first one, I said, ‘Yes, very definitely. You are a writer.’ It’s not like so many people who come to you with stories and you say, ‘Well, they’re okay; if they keep working they might make it.’ Chuck’s talent was obvious from that very first story.”

Although Beaumont’s métier was horror, science fiction, and fantasy, he also turned out numerous works of “mainstream” fiction—stories that spoke of the human condition: “The Rival”, like many of his tales of this period, is a story written in a lucid, invigorating style that came to him early in his writing life; “With the Family” is a prime example of a non-plot character story; “Mr. Underhill” is an intriguingly cryptic piece in which Beaumont concludes the story with suggestion rather than overt explanation.

In late 1949, Beaumont married Helen Broun. After the couple moved into a small, two-bedroom apartment in Los Ange­les, they converted the spare bedroom into a study. It would be in this monastic room, barely wide enough to hold a desk, but as private as any aspiring writer could hope for—as Helen intended to let her husband work without interruption—that Charles would write a voluminous number of stories that would later establish him as not only one of the top fantasists of his generation, but as a top writer in a variety of fields.

As Beaumont’s early fiction brought him little more than rejection slips, he began experimenting with various styles of storytelling. Many of his tales written during this era reveal his remarkable talent for investing ordinary situations with well-crafted characters, bizarre plot twists, and ironic endings. “The Indian Piper” is a beautifully written story of a down-and-out tycoon who is contemplating suicide in a shabby hotel room when he hears the sounds of the strange pipe player emanating from a nearby room. “The Junemoon Spoon” is a tale of rural humor, in which the citizens of a small country town find a way to deal with a dishonest traveling salesman.

Six months after Beaumont and his wife celebrated the birth of their first child, in December 1950, they were introduced to a struggling young writer by the name of Richard Matheson (who, years later, would be known for penning such classics as I Am Legend, The Shrinking Man and Somewhere in Time). As their families became close, there developed between Charles and Richard a constant interchange of ideas, out of which a number of varied and imaginative stories would emerge. “Though Chuck and I never collaborated on a short story, we spent a lot of time discussing the finer points of fiction writing,” Matheson said. “We talked about plot, character, style, structure and dialogue.” As their careers grew, the pair acted as “spurs” to one another. “He and I—in a very nice way, of course—were very competitive,” Matheson said. “At first, I was a little ahead of him in sales. But he caught up to me.” Yet, as close as the two of them were as friends, their personalities could not have been more different. “Our stories sort of showed the way we lived and thought,” Matheson continued. “I was a homebody. Just a very, almost dull realist. [Laughs.] Fortunately, the ideas that I’ve gotten were sort of unusual. But then I would immediately place them in the home situation. The neighborhood situation. Whereas Chuck would get these incredible ideas and they could take place anywhere and in any way. He was much more unlimited in his thinking.” One such Beaumont tale penned during this period is “Resurrection Island”, a cynical story about the film industry written with a pulp slant.

By mid-1953, Beaumont had sold a handful of stories to publications such as Amazing Stories, If: Worlds of Science Fiction, Universal-International News, Imagination and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Although the promise of additional story sales was on the horizon, he had a family to support. As such, Helen had taken a secretarial position, while Charles worked at a variety of jobs, including that of musical score copier at Universal Studios.

While he spent his nights and weekends penning his tales, he noted that life at the studio had become unbearable, due to “a conflict of interests” with a department supervisor.

When Beaumont was fired in June, he turned to full-time writing.

By August 1953, Beaumont’s finances were spiraling out of control. Although Helen’s income was sufficient to cover household expenses when her husband’s stories were not selling, her family was barely surviving. “Helen understood the tremendous sacrifice that goes into the making of a writer,” Matheson said. “The wife of an author must offer her husband hope and encouragement; she needs to be a friend and confidante, a lover, cook and housekeeper; she must possess the patience of a saint. So rather than have Chuck run out and get another job, Helen insisted he stay at the typewriter. She believed in him; believed in his talent.”

In late August, Charles and Helen were invited to Ray Bradbury’s home for dinner. By now, Bradbury’s darkly poetic tales of science fiction and fantasy were challenging readers to explore new horizons. With such acclaimed classics as The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man and Fahrenheit 451, he had introduced social and political themes and asked complex questions that had previously been the territory of serious novelists. Before leaving Bradbury’s home, Beaumont learned of the recent offer his host had received from filmmaker John Huston. Bradbury had sent Huston a copy of The Golden Apples of the Sun, his recently published collection of short fiction, and was pleased to discover that one of the book’s twenty-two stories (“The Fog Horn”) had captured the renowned director’s attention. As a result, Huston hired Bradbury to adapt Herman Melville’s classic novel, Moby Dick, for the cinematic screen.

Inspired by Bradbury’s good fortune, Beaumont began penning stories around the clock, sleeping an average of four hours a day, surviving on coffee and cigarettes. With a burst of crea­tive energy, he also began putting together his own collection of published and unpublished short fiction. With dozens of stories from which to choose, Beaumont elected to “go with a mainstream and science-fiction package” that would appeal to publishing houses such as Doubleday. After briefly considering several titles, including A Touch of the Creature, he decided to call his book Strange Companions.

As Beaumont continued to work at a feverish pace, friends and editors noted that his creative and technical writing skills were developing at an astonishing rate. With each new story he redefined his style, and he soon began penning the type of lyrical fiction that would set him apart from other writers.

“Chuck had, I think, as most writers do—but it was exaggerated in Chuck’s case—a great desire for recognition, because he had a tremendous ego, which is both a strength and a weakness,” recalled John Tomerlin, who had known Beaumont since 1949. “Most, if not all, of Chuck’s stories involve a character who has some sort of talent or quality that others can’t see … I have a feeling that Chuck felt that way about himself.”

In late October, Beaumont learned that Doubleday had rejected Strange Companions. “They seemed to feel it wouldn’t fit into their science-fiction set-up and that the science-fiction element kept it from their straight list,” he wrote. “In short they didn’t know how to market the thing.” The following month, Beaumont’s literary agent submitted a restructured Strange Companions to Ballantine Books, who also passed on the manuscript. Undeterred, Beaumont sent a “revamped, multi-genre story package” to Dodd, Mead & Company, after which he and John Tomerlin decided to collaborate on a short story. “Chuck and I came up with a plot that revolved around a young pregnant woman, hormones, paranoia and despair—in that order!” Tomerlin laughingly recalled. “We called our story ‘Moon in Gemini.’ Although it never sold, we had fun writing it.”

In April 1954, Beaumont’s agent received word that Strange Companions had been turned down by Dodd Mead: “We’ve given this manuscript unusual attention because of its remarkable excellence in some respects. Our decision against it came because, first, it is short stories and, second, because the stories don’t seem to group together. The title well describes them. If a book of equal distinction could be found with all the stories in the same groove it ought to be a publishing venture. So, reluctantly, the manuscript has been returned to you. If you ever have a full length Beaumont, we’d like to see it, and I think we could make an attractive offer for it.”

In response, Beaumont wrote to Dodd Mead: “The ‘mixed-bag’ idea was an experiment and, apparently, a poor one—at any rate, I have no difficulty sympathizing with your criticism of lack of grouping. It was meant to be ‘comprehensive’ but ended up being helter-skelter. I am reworking Strange Companions . . . I’ve taken out the science-fiction and humorous stories and substituted other ‘straight’ stories which I feel represent the very best work of which I am capable. Many of them are brand new, and my personal opinion is that the book will not only be more of a cohesive piece but actually quite superior.”

As Beaumont attempted to breathe new life into his collection, the spring of 1955 found him involved in a new and exciting hobby: auto racing. The sport instantly became one of the great fascinations of his life. He soon began to compete in weekend sports car racing events on the West Coast, while writing voluminously for motoring journals such as Road & Track and Sports Cars Illustrated. His passion for the sport often found its way into his fiction. In his short story, “Fallen Star”, his tale opens with its protagonist driving a Porsche Speedster into Palm Springs—a site where Beaumont had raced his own Porsche in sanctioned competition.

By now, Beaumont’s stories had begun to appear in the most prestigious magazines in America, including Esquire, The Saturday Evening Post, Collier’s, and Playboy, for whom he would become a contributing editor. Although his prolific output of fiction and nonfiction embraced a wide variety of moods and genres, Beaumont remained a fantasist at heart. Like Bradbury before him, he helped bring about a sophistication of style and content to the fantasy field. He was a keen observer and social commentator, whose writing exposed the foibles of modern society. Beaumont’s stories also reflected his interests and concerns: jazz and music, the dark side of character, the bite of satire.

Upon reading Beaumont’s latest works of fiction, Bradbury realized that he had mentored his student well. “Chuck had come into his own,” he said. “I instinctively knew there was little more that I could do for him. I felt I’d have only gotten in the way of his natural development if I’d continued to critique his work.”

In August 1956, Charles noted that it had been exactly three years since he first launched Strange Companions. Since that time, his collection had gone through numerous variations of story lineups and had been rejected by several publishing houses, including Scribner’s and Bobbs-Merrill. “Everyone wanted a novel,” Beaumont’s agent, Don Congdon, recalled. “But no one wanted short stories in book form.” As Beaumont began the search for suitable material for a novel, Congdon learned that Saul David, editorial director for Bantam Books, had expressed interest in publishing Strange Companions as a paperback reprint. As a result of David’s interest, Congdon contacted Walter Minton of G.P. Putnam’s Sons. “He was nervous about putting out a book of short fiction by a virtually unknown author,” Congdon said. “At that point, I had no guarantee that Bantam would buy into the collection’s paperback rights. So Minton would’ve been gambling on coming out even on the production expenses of a hardcover edition. But if Bantam came through with the reprint deal, a portion of their money would have gone toward reimbursing Putnam’s for some of their expenditure.”

In September, Putnam’s agreed to publish Strange Companions, with the proviso Beaumont change the book’s title and amend its lineup of stories. “They were really banking on the Bantam deal coming through,” Congdon said, “which, thankfully, it did.”

With hardcover and paperback contracts in place, Beaumont continued to turn out short fiction at a prodigious rate. By now, Playboy had placed him on a five hundred dollar monthly stipend for first refusal rights to his manuscripts. He had also become a regular contributor to a new men’s magazine called Rogue, for whom his stories would appear under the pseudonyms “Michael Phillips” and “C.B. Lovehill”.

As Beaumont’s writing career began its stellar rise, he often found himself juggling several projects simultaneously. “Chuck was always hyper-energetic,” Richard Matheson said. “From the time I met him he was always restless. Had to move. Had to go someplace. Got to go. I remember him talking about hating the idea of being asleep. He even hated the idea of someone seeing him asleep. Because sleep to him was like: I’m not doing anything. I’m wasting time.”

It was with this energy that Beaumont entered into his next project: The Intruder, a novel in which he dramatizes the volatile problems of Southern school integration in the 1950s. “I decided to write the book because at last I felt I had a theme that would allow me to do some serious work,” Beaumont wrote. “My novel is not entirely fictional … It concerns itself with a situation that is all too real in America … Good or bad, the novel does take a stand on the question of integration.”

While Beaumont was hard at work on The Intruder, his short fiction collection was released in April 1957. Although he had lobbied to have his book retitled A Touch of the Creature, he agreed, at Walter Minton’s behest, to call the collection The Hunger and Other Stories. Named for one of the book’s seventeen tales, The Hunger drew favorable reviews and enjoyed moderate success in hardcover sales. As such, Bantam decided to publish a second volume of Beaumont’s short fiction as a paperback original and scheduled the collection—under the title Yonder: Stories of Fantasy and Science Fiction—for an April 1958 release.

By 1959, Beaumont had entered into the world of script­writing for both film and television. But it was on a project uniquely suited to his fantastic imagination that he would receive his widest recognition: The Twilight Zone, Rod Serling’s seminal, fantasy-based television series. After the show made its network debut, Beaumont became one of its principal writers, penning several of the series’s most memorable episodes.

As Beaumont’s stories had been providing him with a steady income, he moved his family to another part of Los Angeles, where he had purchased a home. During a chaotic time of expensive renovations throughout early 1960, Charles noted he was pleased to see the release of his third short fiction collection. Although he had once again urged Bantam to name his book A Touch of the Creature, the publishing house instead chose the title Night Ride and Other Journeys. “One reason for our decision to go ahead with another paperback original had to do with The Intruder selling to Putnam’s,” Saul David recalled. “Another reason was the name recognition Chuck was starting to get from Playboy and Twilight Zone.”

Throughout 1961, Beaumont was at the height of his literary powers, selling to most of the top markets in magazine and television. By now, film offers were also flooding in. At times he juggled as many as ten projects simultaneously.

The following year, however, it seemed as though Beaumont’s heavy workload was beginning to take its toll on him. “From the late Fifties into the early Sixties, Chuck was aging at a rate that was extremely rapid,” Matheson said. “He was never healthy to begin with; he’d had spinal meningitis as a youth. And for years he suffered from terrible migraine headaches. Really awful ones. He lived on Bromo Seltzer. He’d buy these huge electric-purple bottles of Bromo and consume them in no time. He was always very, very thin. Almost gaunt. Though he was above six feet in height, he only weighed around one hundred and forty pounds—and that was when he was healthy.”

The spring of 1963 found Beaumont working on several film, television, fiction and nonfiction projects, while submitting his fourth collection of short fiction to Bantam. The book’s lineup of stories included “Time and Again”, which concerns parallel deaths in ancient Egypt and modern times, “Lachrymosa”, the touching story of a widow and widower meeting in a cemetery; and “Adam’s Off Ox”, a charming backwoods deal-with-the-devil fantasy that is written in an overtly bucolic style. Once again, Beaumont considered titling his collection A Touch of the Creature. Despite lengthy negotiations with Bantam, however, the volume never materialized.

Meanwhile, Beaumont continued his prolific output of stories­. Yet for the first time in his career as a professional writer, he found himself struggling with his manuscripts, which saw continuous rewrites, as he was increasingly frustrated with the thoughts and words he was putting to paper. To worsen matters­, family and close friends noted that he seemed to be losing the ability to concentrate, the cause of which they attributed to exhaustion from stress and overwork.

In an effort to maintain his status as a writer who was at the peak of his reputation and career, Beaumont continued to struggle through his assignments until he could find time for rest and, hopefully, recovery. Yet, as his concentration worsened, Helen desperately tried to understand and treat his symptoms.

In the summer of 1964, after a battery of tests at UCLA, Charles Beaumont was diagnosed as having either Alzheimer’s disease or Pick’s disease, both of which are degenerative disorders of the brain and are recognized by doctors only through an autopsy. As each disease is largely untreatable and totally incurable, Beaumont faced premature senility, aging, and an early death.

The following year, Beaumont was taken to the Motion Picture Country Home and Hospital in Woodland Hills, California.

He died there on February 21, 1967 at the age of thirty-eight, his full potential never realized.

* * *

Charles Beaumont’s favored title was finally realized in 2000 when A Touch of the Creature was published in two hardcover formats: a numbered edition that featured fourteen previously unpublished stories, and a lettered edition that included three additional previously unpublished tales (“The Philosophy of Murder”, “The End Product,” and “The Blind Lady”). Now, with the release of Valancourt Books’ paperback edition of A Touch of the Creature, all seventeen stories are collected in this volume.

Like the best of Beaumont’s work, the tales within bridge the gap between pre-World War II and modern styles of story­telling. However, the innovations he and his colleagues brought to fantasy and horror are the foundations of those genres’ current popularity. As such, every writer, artist, or filmmaker who has followed Beaumont into that night country he knew so well owes him an enormous debt.

Upon reading these stories for the first time—decades after Beaumont’s passing—Richard Matheson noted that the tales in this collection had been a revelation to him: “All these years … I was under the impression that I had a clear picture of Chuck. I thought I had read all his work. I thought I had an accurate fix on his plotting, stylistic and character delineating skills. And certainly his persona.

“Obviously, I was wrong.”

Matheson was particularly struck by the intellectual and emotional impact of “The Pool”, a tale that concerns the frustrations of a young professional writer and family man. “Chuck was, literally, able to get inside himself, a feat only the best writers (or any superlative artist) can achieve,” Matheson wrote. “Nor, apparently, did he fear that inward probe and unflinching self-study which he was able to translate into words.

“In this particular story, what more perfect evocation could be created for a writer wanting to yet unable to resist the largesse of writing scripts. A problem complicated by the responsibilities of marriage and parenthood. On a personal level, Chuck dealt with all of this.

“This sorrow is familiar to me as it would be to any writer who yearns to write something truly important but lives in a state of constant frustration because he doesn’t.

“With Chuck, there was further complication to this problem—a complication he was not aware of—his demise at the maddening age of 38.

“Knowing all this, ‘The Pool’ is, to me in particular, a work of deep—and horrific—import.”

Matheson also noted that he had been “thrown off-balance” by the other stories in this volume, all of which had been a “revelation” to him: “One which I did not expect. One which unsettled me. But one I am happy to have experienced. How often in life, after such a long period of years, is one struck by such a revelation?

“Especially regarding an old friend and creative companion who, one discovers, was far different—and far larger—than one ever thought he was.”

Roger Anker

July 8, 2015

Roger Anker is a Bram Stoker Award-winning editor, and he has also written for numerous magazines, including Twilight Zone, Starlog, Fangoria, Fantasy Review, Dark Discoveries, and Mystery Scene. He lives in Chicago, where he is currently writing Trapped in the Twilight Zone: The Life and Times of Charles Beaumont for Centipede Press.