demonik Janitor Of Lunacy Hail Horrors, Hail member is offline
Thirsty Dog
Joined: Oct 2007 Gender: Male Posts: 3,940 Location: Loughville
Pan Horror # 20 « Thread Started on May 2, 2008, 1:52pm »
Herbert Van Thal (ed.) - 20th Pan Book Of Horror Stories (1979)
Carolyn L. Bird - The Leather Ottoman A. G. J. Rough - The Materialist Edwin Brown - Round Every Corner Rosemary Timperley - Hell on Both Sides of the Gate John Arthur - Don’t Go Down in the Woods Alan Temperley - The Victorian Conservatory Harry E. Turner - The Lion’s Cradle Francis King - School Crossing Norman P. Kaufman - Contents Sheryl Stuart - The Law: Its Administrators Carl Schiffman - A Smell of Fresh Paint Thomas Muirson - A Country Tale
Carolyn L. Bird - The Leather Ottoman: Gold-digger Susannah cheats on her far older, sex-starved husband with the ghosts of Casanova and Don Juan who she summons by renting items of their clothing from the museum. He bribes the curator to help him teach her a lesson she won't live to forget by throwing a garment that once belonged to Gaston Desgrades, the Paris strangler, into the mix.
Norman P. Kaufman - Contents: Pedro de los Espanitos, womaniser and embezzler, masquerades as a doctor to seduce Julia, the daughter of an eminent surgeon. Julia falls pregnant, he scarpers, Julia throws herself into the sea, and father vows to track down and punish the heartless fraudster. And when he does: "You've heard of taxidermy, yes? I'm going to un-stuff you!" Needless to say, this being a Kaufman story, he first administers a drug that ensures de los Espanitos is conscious throughout the entire process (see his sick classic Lady On Display in #19). Don't look in that bucket! Don't look ... Euw ...
Harry E. Turner - The Lion’s Cradle: Audacious cat-burglar Eddie is caught breaking into the Villa Louvigny, home to Saudi oil-Sheik Hosien and his priceless art collection. Back at home, the Sheik explains, Harry would have his hand chopped off for his crime, and he sees no reason why he shouldn't suffer the same fate now, even if they are in Cannes. But he is a sportsman and the thief will given a chance to retain limb and liberty should he successfully withdraw his hand from The Lion's Cradle, a miniature guillotine. Of course, there is an additional obstacle to make the challenge more interesting ....
Sheryl Stuart - The Law: Its Administrators: Teenage thugs carve up "unassuming and inoffensive" members of the public - or, at least, that's the way the newspapers report it. Hubert, a 39 year old retard, discovers for himself that their attacks are far from motiveless after he rapes and kills a runaway in Hyde Park.
Thomas Muirson - A Country Tale: Grenville's Copse, once the haunt of witches and druids, refuses to be levelled and woe betide any man who attempts to chop down a solitary tree. Narrated by a gnarled old man in the pub who is as expert on local legend as he is cadging pints. He's not quite what he seems ....
Some minor gore, but this would have been at home in one of the Chetwynd-Hayes edited Fontana Book Of Great Ghost Stories.
Francis King - School Crossing: An embittered, sacked headmaster is tormented by visions of ghostly schoolchildren suddenly appearing on the crossing just as he's fast approaching in his Aston Martin. An Optathologist assures him that the best way to confront these "mild hallucinations" as to drive through them. You've guessed the rest, but that harms this grim and unrelenting story not at all ...
Alan Temperley - The Victorian Conservatory: University student Colin Rowell is distraught after his girlfriend Bronwen disappears after a late-night visit to the Hothouse in the Botanical Gardens where she's been expertly sketching the plants as part of her course work. Together with his skirt-chasing pal Barry he investigates the Conservatory. What is the significance of that statue of a negroid satyr, and why are so many small, dead animals placed before it each night? It's obvious, really. Devil-worshipping tropical plants!
Carl Schiffman - A Smell of Fresh Paint: George and Helen buy the long-vacant house in Moorthorn Road at a knock-down price. It's not been exactly des res since Mr. Simons was carted off to a mental institution in 1958. But who is that filthy old hag creeping about in the garden and why has Helen changed something awful since they moved in, like she's possessed or something? When his wife serves up their pet cat as a "chicken" dinner, George finally acts. When he discovers a cupboard concealed underneath a layer of wallpaper, he seals his doom ....
John Arthur - Don’t Go Down in the Woods: Precocious seventeen-year-old schoolgirl Susie fancies the mysterious thirty-something hunk who's just pitched a tent in the woods. He's only recently been released from 'Broadheath' maximum security psychiatric hospital, having strangled a girl with her tights in his youth and has chosen to live in isolation, knowing that, whatever the "experts" have decided, he's far from cured. A young man was recently brutally murdered five miles away in Draybridge and he's terrified the police will try and pin that one on him. And now this girl has crept into his tent and began stripping off .....
A. G. J. Rough - The Materialist: Sheila Parker, dying of cancer, turns to 'psychic surgery' as her final hope of beating the disease. Caring husband Giles flies with her to Manila to meet Mr. Tony Parmeo of the Spiritualist Movement and detests him on sight, believing his prowess as a "miracle worker" to be vastly over-rated. But Parmeo is no fraud and cures Sheila. Unfortunately, he's taken great exception to Giles' accusations ....
Edwin Brown - Round Every Corner: Tom Clayton, a junior partner at the engineering factory, is haunted by his dead boss. Tom was sleeping with Sam Bradshaw's wife Celia for several months before he was run down in the road, and could have saved his life had he not decided against shouting a warning. Now Clayton has learned from a fortune-teller that the vengeful ghost wants a quiet word with him ...
Rosemary Timperley - Hell on Both Sides of the Gate: Gordon Sleight, seventy, is released from an asylum for the criminally insane having served twenty-five years of a life sentence for murdering his slatternly wife. He considered it his duty to new-born daughter Astrid to ensure she had the best chance in life, and her mother certainly wasn't going to be allowed to drag her down.
Now Astrid, happily married, is to meet him for the first time and is less than thrilled at the prospect. Sleight will be staying with he and her husband Cyril, a lighthouse-keeper who spends one month at home, two months away on duty. The domineering Sleight soon makes clear his loathing for Cyril, alienates him from his exhausted daughter and then instigates his death. He takes her husband's place in Astrid's bedroom and soon she's pregnant with his daughter. You can bet he'll see to it that she has the best chance in life ....
From the first, I set myself against "literature"; the story was the thing, and no amount of style could persuade me to select a story that lacked genuine, unadulterated horror. For those who wanted something high-brow there was plenty.
Re: Pan Horror # 20 « Reply #1 on May 2, 2008, 2:43pm »
Cheers for this, Dem. Wot, no subtitle? 'Mashed face'? 'Big eye?' It's a puzzler, isn't it? I've read the first two stories. Both well told if a little obvious. The second was let down by the ending.
demonik Janitor Of Lunacy Hail Horrors, Hail member is offline
Thirsty Dog
Joined: Oct 2007 Gender: Male Posts: 3,940 Location: Loughville
Re: Pan Horror # 20 « Reply #2 on May 2, 2008, 3:15pm »
Hi Franklin. I had this as 'Big Eye' which was dead damn imaginative of me. I've been busy being dead sick again these past few days (we should have a Vault's ill-est member competition) but at least I could read this time: finished this and - finally - #17!
I didn't think The Leather Ottoman was the obvious opener either. There's much that's workmanlike and sadism for sadism's sake (not always a bad thing, of course), but my picks would be Alan Temperley's The Victorian Conservatory and 'Carl Schiffman's malevolent ghost story, A Smell of Fresh Paint. Norman Kaufman deserves some kind of award for services to torture-porn and Francis King is very good at grim 'misanthrope on the verge of a nervous breakdown' shockers.
From the first, I set myself against "literature"; the story was the thing, and no amount of style could persuade me to select a story that lacked genuine, unadulterated horror. For those who wanted something high-brow there was plenty.
I've been busy being dead sick again these past few days (we should have a Vault's ill-est member competition)
Oh no! Do you want to tell us all about it, Dem? (I'm sure most people will be saying "No, please don't!" ) How's the physio going on your arm, by the way?
From the first, I set myself against "literature"; the story was the thing, and no amount of style could persuade me to select a story that lacked genuine, unadulterated horror. For those who wanted something high-brow there was plenty.
Joined: Mar 2008 Gender: Male Posts: 928 Location: Ipswich, UK
Re: Pan Horror # 20 « Reply #6 on May 2, 2008, 7:36pm »
Been chatting to Francis King - really lovely guy. Here's what he sent me on School Crossing this morning no less..
The genesis of that story came to me when I was living in Brighton in the Seventies. A wealthy industrialist asked me to ghost a book for him and I accepted. He then asked me whether I should like to be paid in cash or with a car for which he no longer had any use. The car turned out to be a magnificent Mercedes, in excellent condition, and in a moment of madness I opted for it, even though the cash would have been a far more appropriate choice at a time when I was short of hard cash.
I had never learned to drive a car, much less ever held a licence. However, within a short time, as much to the amazement of the driving instructor as to my own, I had passed the test. The car was large and powerful. I was terrified of driving it and began to have a repeated nightmare about being involved in an accident of the kind described in the story.
In the end I persuaded myself that my subconscious mind was giving me a warning – if I went on driving a car so large and fast, I’d eventually kill someone. I sold the car and never drove again. The story appeared in a collection of mine entitled Hard Feelings (1976).
I had published many stories before that and I have published many since. One story A Corner of a Foreign Field won the Katherine Mansfield Short Story Prize.
I am also a past winner of the Somerset Maugham Award. Last year, at the age of 84, I published a novel With my Little Eye. I am now working on another novel.
demonik Janitor Of Lunacy Hail Horrors, Hail member is offline
Thirsty Dog
Joined: Oct 2007 Gender: Male Posts: 3,940 Location: Loughville
Re: Pan Horror # 20 « Reply #7 on May 2, 2008, 7:49pm »
Johnny - is he the same Francis King who wrote a number of factual black magic titles for Nel in the 'seventies and gave evidence as the prosecutions expert witness at a rather infamous 'witch trial' in '74?
From the first, I set myself against "literature"; the story was the thing, and no amount of style could persuade me to select a story that lacked genuine, unadulterated horror. For those who wanted something high-brow there was plenty.
From the first, I set myself against "literature"; the story was the thing, and no amount of style could persuade me to select a story that lacked genuine, unadulterated horror. For those who wanted something high-brow there was plenty.
From the first, I set myself against "literature"; the story was the thing, and no amount of style could persuade me to select a story that lacked genuine, unadulterated horror. For those who wanted something high-brow there was plenty.
demonik Janitor Of Lunacy Hail Horrors, Hail member is offline
Thirsty Dog
Joined: Oct 2007 Gender: Male Posts: 3,940 Location: Loughville
you're banned! « Reply #13 on May 3, 2008, 8:17am »
What the .....
um .... that's not a clear photo! .... er .... it's miles worse than that really! It's hanging off and there's all veins and intestines dangling out and everything! I, uh, just toned it down to spare the innocent ....
From the first, I set myself against "literature"; the story was the thing, and no amount of style could persuade me to select a story that lacked genuine, unadulterated horror. For those who wanted something high-brow there was plenty.
Joined: Dec 2007 Gender: Female Posts: 1,205 Location: West Yorkshire
Re: Pan Horror # 20 « Reply #14 on May 3, 2008, 10:16am »
I'm trying to figure out what part of your arm that actually is, Dem. In fact, I'm trying to figure out if it really IS part of your arm and not some other part of your anatomy! I've been looking at it from all angles and it's still got me baffled. Anyway, it certainly looks quite disgusting!
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