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Post by dem bones on Aug 27, 2008 21:58:50 GMT
Inspector Blake (AKA "Hitler", "Dracula", "Blakey") comes face to face with his doppelgänger in an early episode of On The Buses Slightly less terrifying than watching Reg Varney the Vampyre & friends in their 'seventies pomp, but this lot would make for a tidy anthology. E. F. Benson's The Bus Conductor - itself, as Hugh Lamb has pointed out, a variation on one of Andrew Lang's vignette's in The House Of Strange Stories is arguably the most famous example of this neglected sub sub-genre, but here's proof that, whichever route you travel, they all terminate at the Cemetery Gates. Michel Parry - The Last Bus: Edward Crump, embittered square (he's the assistant manager of a grocers shop), packs a knife and boards the last bus from Bridgley. Tonight he will finally achieve international fame and avenge himself on rotten happy people into the bargain. As the journey through Essex begins he sizes up his fellow passengers - which to take out first? Little does he imagine that another bored, demoralised workforce are more up for carnage than he is. David A. Riley - The Satyr’s Head: Yorkshire. Student type Henry Lamson’s world is one of Wimpy bars, pubs, going to watch the Rovers play on a Saturday afternoon, attending screenings of The Shuttered Room and the like at the film society with his friend Alan Sutcliffe. He’s been dating Joan for some time but she’s shown no interest in sleeping with him. Walking home across the Moors one night he encounters a filthy, diseased tramp who he can’t shake off - the malodorous one even sidles up next to him on the bus. Turns out that he wants to sell him a relic for a nominal fee. Despite himself, Henry shells out on the evil looking bauble … and that’s when his nightmares begin, nightmares in which he’s visited and raped by the original of the satyr. When he next catches up the tramp (who is by now pretty much decomposing on his feet), the old boy sneers that the relic chose him because he is the “right sort” and Henry, mortified that he may indeed be a homosexual, books a session with local prostitute Clara Sadwick, but where Henry goes, his incubus goes too … Archie Binns - The Last Trip: “I would have died long ago if it hadn’t been for her. I was blown up and shot to pieces … they brought back what was left of me, and put me away. I waited my chance until tonight, when I came to find you!” The late bus from Pacific Street to Lewis. Butler is first irked then increasingly terrified as the journey proceeds in sombre silence, save for the mantra “Driver, I want to get off here” when one of the passengers wants to disembark. Eventually, there is only one man left, who pulls a gun, introduces himself as Death and says he wants to go to Woodland Cemetery. Essentially a precursor of Dr. Terror’s House Of Horrors‘ framing story, this would have made for a great EC strip. Michael Avallone - The Graveyard Nine: The Ravenswood Ravens baseball team put on a dismal performance against the Melville Hawks but at least they have an excuse. They were killed an hour before the game when their team bus crashed through the safety barrier on Melville Bridge and plunged into the river. David Forrest - Wherever You May Be: Randy is a Jamaican bus-driver whose route takes in the Fulham Broadway. One day he spies a beautiful Caribbean girl and resolves to make her his own. However all his attempts to woo her come to nought, and Bill, his Alf Garnett style bus conductor, suggests that he try Voodoo, since he saw a film about it on the telly where someone successfully uses ju-ju to get a bit of crumpet. Randy takes his advice and asks around the London Caribbean community where he manages to contact an old Obeah witch who grants his wish to make the object of his affection come to him ... without fail. Mark Samuels Richard Matheson - Finger Prints: On a night time bus a man sits opposite two women communicating in sign language. One of the women is a deaf mute, the other her troubled paid companion. At the insistence of the deaf woman he finds himself sat beside the companion. She tells how tired she is of the deaf woman, how she never leaves her alone, how she can never be with a man because she can’t get away. Then she makes a desperate and fierce sexual advance which is practically rape and also seems quite vampiric... And the deaf woman has been watching all the time... NightreaderJohn Whitbourn - Waiting For A Bus: Biscombe tale: Eccentric old Bob Springer regales the Duke of Argyll crew with his experiences at the village bus stop where he got talking to a stranger - and lost forty years of his life. G. W. Stonier - The Memoirs of a Ghost: The narrator talks us through his death by collision with a bus and subsequent experience as a ghost. He doesn’t much enjoy it. Constantly bored but terrified that he’ll dissolve to nothing at any moment. He offers his thoughts on traditional ghost stories - at least you can still read in the afterlife it seems - and moans that all who write on the subject have got it all wrong. And that’s about the strength of it. *shrug* Charles Thornton - The Lonely Apparition: Wandsworth. the spectre of an old woman trudges aimlessly across South West London until the day she notices a small group making their way into a basement flat where a fraudulent medium does his business. The sound of screeching brakes and a bus skids off the road and through the window, killing the owner and the driver who goes through the windshield. Even so, a happy ending. Which kinda ruins it.
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Post by benedictjjones on Sept 1, 2008 13:55:59 GMT
i'd add:
"The Bus" Robert Westall
Jack, spots a bus he has never seen stopping at his stop and intrigues boards it - the fare is two pennies... the buses passengers are all talking baout the past and gradually the bus moves through the town shifting through the decades as it does...
and
"On the way to the front" China Mieville
An unnamed character begins to see soldiers on the tubes and buses of London (the public transport system being used to move the troops 'to the front'). The narrator see's them more and more and see's a tramp at the bus stop who finally boards a bus to front while the character doesn't. a short graphic tale from mievilles 'looking for jake and other stories"
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Post by dem bones on Sept 2, 2008 9:12:08 GMT
More of a borderline case, but it's a great story and there's a bus journey involved ....
Ramsey Campbell - Lilith's: An Inland Revenue employee becomes increasingly obsessed with a shop he sees from the bus on his daily journey home. Lilith's, it transpires, is a sex shop, and when he eventually plucks up the courage to browse, he fixates on the rubber doll in the shop window and the crippled girl running the shop. Shortly after he buys the inflatable, "Lilith's" burns to the ground and the girl perishes in the flames. The hero dumps his girlfriend and he and the doll make the happiest couple. For a while ...
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Post by benedictjjones on Sept 2, 2008 10:04:51 GMT
^that one rings a bell, i think someone has told me about it before.
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Post by dem bones on Sept 18, 2008 10:04:04 GMT
Franklin Marsh - The Late Bus: Welcome to Death's bus stop, where the grimly fiendish driver and his skeletal conductor will see you safely home through the swirling fog. Perhaps you might like a natter with your fellow passengers before you reach journey's end? Meet Muriel Athlone; she spitefully smashed her meek husband's beloved plastic aircraft and threw Lord Nelson's flagship in his face - hardly the behavior of a model wife! Clarence; the acceptance of his gangsta friends meant more to him than life itself - which, as things turned out, was just as well! Minnie; She was determined that her no good son-in-law would never see a penny of her money, and, fangs to Larrikins Rest Home, she really puts the bite on him! James Waddicot; His lust for a spanking good time lead him to the swish Larrikin's Gentleman's Club where satisfaction is the stocks in trade! And, finally, Mick Flanagan: after a violent episode, his estranged best friend is committed to an institution to cure him of his obsession with a mysterious website! He returned home and switched on the computer. After a moments thought, he called up a search engine and typed in ‘Larrikins’, not entirely sure of the spelling.He skimmed through the various entries. A model shop. A weapons guide. A rest home for the elderly. Some kind of spanking porn site.
He sighed. Perhaps Keith really was nuts. He decided to type in WWW followed by Larrikins and Dot Com .... The late bus, where there's always room for one more downstairs! If you hurry, you'll catch it at Larrikins Dot Com
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Post by franklinmarsh on Sept 18, 2008 10:17:01 GMT
Meet Demonik - the UKs very own VaultKeeper and fastest pun in the East (End) - sheer genius!
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Post by dem bones on Sept 18, 2008 11:26:27 GMT
Very misguided of you to say so, Mr Marsh, but you needn't think it exonerates you for The 80s were pretty crap in theory - Martian Dance Fortunately, I'm planning a closely argued 2 million page retrospective on Shock City's finest to "restore the balance", so now everyone has to suffer - and all because of the misbehavior of one member! Anyhow, I always loved the Amicus novelisations by Jack Oleck and John Burke - I even thoroughly enjoyed 'William Lauder's adaptation of The Uncanny: even Michel Parry couldn't read that one! Allegedly! - so it was pretty much a dead cert that The Late Bus would appeal to me, but just not so much as it did. Some not very pleasant things happened earlier in the week and your story made me cheer up some and do my bloodcurdling laugh again. Thank you for that. And who'd have thought it? You really could get a cracking little anthology out of horror on the buses!
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Post by franklinmarsh on Sept 18, 2008 14:04:23 GMT
Fortunately, i'm planning a closely argued 2 million page retrospective on Shock City's finest to "restore the balance" - I found some photo's Mick Mercer gave me and everything! - so now everyone has to suffer - and all because of the misbehaviour of one member! Sorry, all. Nice to see you've cut down your 'Martian Dance - The Glory Years' study to a mere 2 million pages, Dem, making it more accessible to the layman. I preferred the original 'The Martian Dance I Knew' even though it took me five years just to read the footnotes.
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Post by monker on Nov 3, 2008 14:29:04 GMT
How's about adding Shirley Jackson's The Bus (I'm not good with synopsis' myself)?
This one really rips something right out of your subconscious and doesn't let up - creepy!
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Post by dem bones on Nov 3, 2008 16:00:12 GMT
Great to have you back, Monker. We were doing OK with that doll stories thread until suddenlaunch went wonky! I'm not good with synopsis' myself? I'm absolutely 'king diabolical at them, but very very shameless. I'll see if I can dig up a copy of The Bus (and E. M. Forster's The Celestial Omnibus while i'm about it).
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Post by fullbreakfast on Nov 3, 2008 19:08:09 GMT
I've got a couple more!
Daphne Du Maurier - Kiss Me Again, Stranger: Our nameless narrator is a dullish sort of chap ("I'm one for routine. I like to get on with my job, and then when the day's work's over settle down to a paper and a smoke and a bit of music on the wireless, variety or something of the sort, and then turn in early. I never had much use for girls, not even when I was doing my time in the army"). So it's quite out of character when he visits the cinema and is mesmerised by the copper-haired usherette, a self-possessed young lady with some nice one liners. What can he do but follow her to the bus stop, get on her bus and sit down next to her in hopes of striking up a conversation? Things go surprisingly well - she's up for a snog, and what a snog! - and she wants to get off at the cemetery (any cemetery will do; "I'm not particular"). We get the feeling this girl knows what she wants, even if our man doesn't. And it's a good job he doesn't, really.
L.P. Hartley - A Visitor from Down Under: Some passengers are most peculiar. Take this fellow sitting out on the open top deck despite the March rain. Still, he's well protected with his hat pulled down, his collar up and his face swaddled in a white muffler. Maybe that's why the conductor has trouble making out exactly what it is he's saying. All the same, it's odd how cold his penny is, even where he'd been holding it between two pallid fingers...
The first of these especially is a belting story, well worth tracking down!
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Post by dem bones on Nov 3, 2008 22:06:12 GMT
A right pair of beauties there, Mr. Breakfast! I'm thinking that all of these stories deal with the old-style double decker, open platform at the back, long white pole to hang onto for dear life and a chirpy conductor - "Fare's please!" - dispensing tickets of about two metres in length, etc. What I'd like to know is, have their been any stories involving that contemporary menace, the bendy-bus?
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Post by carolinec on Nov 3, 2008 23:04:45 GMT
What I'd like to know is, have their been any stories involving that contemporary menace, the bendy-bus? Well, if you want true life horror stories, I've had a few near misses with bendy-buses in Leeds when the buggers pull out just as I'm passing them at bus stops!
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Post by Dr Terror on Nov 3, 2008 23:09:04 GMT
I don't remember if it was a bendy one or not but I once saw a bloke with a bus on his foot.
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Post by carolinec on Nov 4, 2008 11:52:59 GMT
I don't remember if it was a bendy one or not but I once saw a bloke with a bus on his foot. Ouch! Here's a more up-to-date bus story for you folks: "We're All Bozos On This Bus!" by Peter Crowther originally published in the Darkside 2 anthology, 2002 but my copy is in Crowther's collection The Spaces Between The Lines, Subterranean Press, 2007A story in which Frank, a young orphan, goes on a bus journey to Hell with his new foster parents! The notes at the back explain that this is a very Ramsey Campbell-influenced story, and it puts me in mind of Ramsey's novella Needing Ghosts. The story's considerably different, but it uses the same neat trick of drawing the reader in with ever more strange happenings, till the full horror of what's happening to Frank is finally revealed. Brilliant story! Pete Crowther is, of course, better known as the brains behind PS Publishing, but he's a tremendous writer in his own right. ;D
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