Luis Rey
THE GIANT BOOK OF TERROR (Parragon/Magpie 1994)Edited by Stephen Jones and Ramsey Campbell, this should not be mistaken for
The Mammoth Book of Terror, which has the same Luis Rey cover, but does reprint
Best New Horror 3 and 4 - and I don't think those are listed here, either.
Robert R McCammon - Miracle Mile
Scott Edelman - The Suicide Artist
Roberta Lannes - Dancing on a Blade of Dreams
Clive Barker - The Departed
Poppy Z Brite - How to Get Ahead in New York
Roger Johnson - Love, Death and the Maiden
John Brunner - They Take
Edward Bryant - Colder Than Hell
Lisa Tuttle - Replacements
Graham Joyce - Under the Pylon
Thomas Ligotti - The Medusa
John Gordon - Under the Ice
Norman Partridge - Guignoir
Les Daniels - The Little Green Ones
Elizabeth Hand - The Bacchae
Steve Rasnic Tem - Mirror Man
Sarah Ash - Mothmusic
Karl Edward Wagner - Did they Get You to Trade?
Nicholas Royle - Night Shift Sister
Christopher Fowler - Norman Wisdom and the Angel of Death
Michael Marshall Smith - The Dark Land
Peter Atkins - Aviatrix
Ian R MacLeod - Snodgrass
Kate Wilhelm - The Day of the Sharks
M John Harrison - Anima
Kim Newman - Red Reign
Douglas E Winter - Bright Lights, Big Zombie
Peter Straub - The Ghost Village
The Miracle Mile by Robert R McCammon: The opening chapter from the novel
Under the Fang, which, like Matheson's
I Am Legend, shows a world dominated by vampires. Kyle, Allie, their son Tommy and a baby found in the restroom of a wayside gas station are returning to Miracle Mile, Perdido Beach, where they have spent their summer holidays every year since Kyle and Allie met each other there and fell in love as teenagers. But this year will be different, as Hurricane Jolene has ripped through the seaside town, just as an epidemic causing humans to behave like vampires has ripped through the human race. By day the vampires sleep in closets, wrapped in bandages, but by night the world is theirs. Atmospheric but impossibly depressing.
The Suicide Artist by Scott Edelman: Children are vanishing, and the small boy who waits outside the school for his mother, is approached by a man who says he has been sent to collect him. The boy's experience convinces him of the need for an aptness, a poetry, in death, that nothing should be so important in a person's life as his manner of leaving it; and this is his narrative of how he came to believe that, what happened to him, and what he did. An utterly ruthless piece of first-person storytelling, Edelman says that when he reads this one aloud, his audience knows that he is not just speaking to some faceless audience. He is speaking to them. "And to you". Should give most horror fans a guilty but delicious twinge.
Dancing on a Blade of Dreams by Roberta Lannes: This author has the distinction of writing a story for a previous edition of
Best New Horror which was cut by the publisher from the British edition on grounds that it was
too extreme for the sensibilities of a British readership. Deep breath...
This story of sexual brutality and murder gives some indication what that excised piece might have been like, as Patty endures a long term of jury service on the trial of a man accused of abducting and horribly murdering a young woman. Strange dreams come to Patty, disturbing her rest, dreams of bondage and sadism leading to death. But are they her own dreams, or sent to her by some outside agency?
The Departed by Clive Barker: It's Al Hallow's Eve, and recently deceased Hermione and Rice are set for a night on the town; after all, moonlight cannot erode their subtle bodies, only the direct light of the sun. Hermione wants to go see her son Finn. But Finn lives with her ex-, Thomas, and her sister Elaine. A very slight piece; Barker probably wrote this in a lunch break.
How to Get Ahead in New York by Poppy Z Brite: Steve and Ghost, from Brite's earlier vampire novel
Lost Souls, are visiting New York for the first time, and find themselves overwhelmed by its winos, junkies, squalour and vividness. The plot is barely more than an anecdote, based, Brite claims, on a couple of incidents that happened to herself and a friend. Despite the horrors of the Port Authority bus station and the later horror found in the city itself, this is a bright and vividly written piece of horror. Few seem able to describe characters so effortlessly but strongly as Brite.
Love, Death and the Maiden by Roger Johnson: The anonymous narrator of the story becomes interested in Valerie, the beautiful secretary of playwright Margaret Pennethorne. His feelings for Valerie are not those of heterosexual love, because, even at their first meeting he realises he must have been unconsciously aware that she is not interested in men as lovers; she is not only Margaret Pennethorne's employee.
Deciding to write a play about the Countess Elisabeth Bathory, Pennethorne sends Valerie to Europe to research the infamous Countess. In particular, she wishes Valerie to find a terrible torture device made by the countess, an iron maiden. Interspersed with parenthesized notes on the life and atrocities of the countess, this makes interesting and gruesome reading, and as we follow Valerie Beddoes on her quest across Europe, her letters home becoming increasingly vague and dreamlike, until she does in fact find what she is looking for.
They Take by John Brunner: Surprise appearance here by long-time science fiction writer Brunner. Ann Bertelli and her husband Carlo inherit an old farm in the Italian countryside. Their intention to sell the farm quickly changes when they learn that it's surrounded by ancient Etruscan relics, including barrows and tumuli; but one of these is still inhabited, its occupant very much alive. The man living in the tumulus is a Vipegno, one of a family that has lived in that area for centuries; and Vipegno is not open to offers or threats. For the Vipegnos 'take'.
Colder than Hell by Edward Bryant: Logan and Opal have been sitting out a snowstorm in their isolated Wyoming farmhouse for six days, finding their way through the blinding whiteness outside by means of ropes stretching between the door and the various outbuildings. A grim story of cabin fever and haunting.
Replacements by Lisa Tuttle: On his way to work, Hodder sees something on the pavement, something disgusting and alive. Repelled, he crushes it. But at work the secretaries are secretive about something one of them keeps in a paper bag. And when he gets home his wife has a new pet. A story that could be taken as a subtle feminist tract about the unneccessity of men, this one has a curiously oblique and thoughtful ending.
Under the Pylon by Graham Joyce: The children build their play camp under the forbidding tower of the electricity pylon. Clive claims that the power lines are talking to him. Mrs Nantwich insists the pylon casts a 'shadow'. Someone decided it would be a good idea to hypnotise Joy and Tania. Then Clive decided to climb the pylon to have a closer listen to what the wires are saying. A nicely observed story of children and growing up, and other things.
The Medusa by Thomas Ligotti: Lucian Dregler is obsessed with the pursuit of the Medusa. An object of faint ridicule in intellectual circles, tolerated by only those friends who accept his rudeness, he collects scraps of 'evidence' and writes papers on the subject. Then a friend directs him to a bookshop, where he suggests Dregler might find the object of his quest. Dregler becomes increasingly paranoid, reading meanings into the most banal things on his frequent excursions around the city. This is probably the most thoughtful story in the collection so far.
Ligotti suggests that the Medusa's head is more than a syumbol, it can be anything that distracts us from life - including our pursuit of the Medusa itself. In effect, he leaves us with the problem of defining true life and living.
Under the Ice by John Gordon: Rupert invites David to go night skating with him, out on the Fens. David's mother is less than keen on the idea. But David has something to show Rupert, out there under the ice. Written presumably for a young audience, this is a simply told piece; but then so was Gordon's brilliant novel
The House on the Brink (which is a Peacock title well-worth buying, if you see it around). The Fens in winter is nicely evoked, and the story moves to a point of pure horror. It shambles on into pulp schlock in the last few paragraphs, but then many will appreciate that...
Guignor by Norman Partridge: Frank and Larry are twins, working in the Castle of Horror of their dad's travelling show. But the show's main attraction is Hank Caul's Death Car, a 1950 Nash Ambassador that Caul was said to have painted with blood and upholstered in human skin from his stab-and-skin rampage years before. When dad decided to take the show to Fiddler, where Caul did his dirty work, he naturally stirs up a little local hostility in this gruesome tale of revenge.
Caul is loosely inspired (if that's the word) by Ed Gein, the original Norman Bates, whose car the author saw pictured in a sideshow.
The Little Green Ones by Les Daniels: During the author's stay at a hotel during a horror convention, he saw two little statues in a neighbouring cemetery. They sparked this piece about an American trade visitor to London, for whom these gruesome statues become the focus of all that's wrong with his fallen-apart life.
The Bacchae by Elizabeth Hand: In an indeterminate near-future, sails of mylar and solex protect the earth from ultra-violet rays, and Debbie DeLucia has been released, found not guilty
after beating to death with her high heels a young man who she claimed assaulted her one evening. Crimes of extreme violence by women against men are dramatically rising. Perhaps it's because the fish in the rivers are mutating, wildlife becoming extinct, the world generally going to hell through male-driven projects down the decades. Nasty, but effective.
Mirrror Man by Steve Rasnic Tem: Jeff is growing old, mutating; his marriage to Liz has become tired. All he lives for now is his daughter Susan, who accompanies him on a long car journey to a
convention. He views the world through distorting mirrors, which somehow protect him from confronting the true distortions of age and the world around him. Written as part of a Lovecraftian tryptych, the original publisher's blurb suggested that through teaching us new ways to view the world, Lovecraft also showed us new ways to look at ourselves - which is an interesting idea, and along with the Ligotti story shows that the horror genre can produce pieces as thoughtful as any others.
Mothmusic by Sarah Ash: The physician Astar Taziel makes some observation on the dust from the wings of the recently imported Aelahim Moonmoth, concluding that it is a wonder drug capable of curing all known ills. But further observations reveal that the dust has addictive properties as well as undesirable side-effects. And finally the larvae of the moths begin to hatch from within the bodies of the dust's users. Taziel becomes fascinated by its effects upon a young prostitute, who it appears is undergoing some form of metamorphosis. Ash does have a slightly annoying habit of using words which are only slight distortions of others in common usage, which distracts slightly
from the narrative. But for all that this is a moody piece of writing, hinting at much more going on behind the wings; and as the editors suggest, the general feel of the story is reminiscent of the better work of Clark Ashton Smith. This one's been developed into a full length novel,
Moths To a Flame.
Did They Get You To Trade? by Karl Edward Wagner: Portrait painter Ryan Chase is enjoying a drink in a London pub when a derelict begs the price of a drink from him. Chase recognises the man as Nemo Skagg, founder of Needle, a cutting edge punk band in the movement's early years. A nightmare pub crawl ensues, with Skagg taking the painter deeper and deeper into the derelict-haunted territory of London's slum district. Chase wants to know what happened to Skagg, how he came to lose all that he had. But Skagg has lost nothing; not even his fans. Wagner claims this nightmare is based on fact. Floyd fans should have no trouble identifying the title... or possibly Skagg’s original?
Night Shift Sister by Nicholas Royle: Siouxsie Soux as a ghost? Another music-orientated story. Following the collapse of his marriage, Carl's life revolves entirely around his small record shop. He finds a streetmap on the pavement outside the shop, but none of the street names are marked. The pattern of the map obsesses him, like the spiral burn mark left on one of his palms from a hot cooker ring, and the messages left by cutting engineers in the run-out grooves of singles. He glimpses a woman in a car who bears a faint resemblance to Siouxsie Soux. The woman haunts his dreams, and his waking hours are haunted by the mystery of the map, until finally all these parts of a paranoid's jigsaw puzzle are brought together in a strange car chase down some unfamiliar streets.
Norman Wisdom and the Angel of Death by Christopher Fowler: Stanley Morrison is a hospital visitor obsessed by the early years of the BBC and the films of Norman Wisdom. As a hospital visitor to friendless patients, he narrates the storylines of these films in detail until the patients lose the will to live. Morrison's narrative becomes increasingly horrific, until Saskia comes into his life, a severe diabetic confined to a wheelchair who shares his appreciation of the better things in life. Fowler says he wrote this after reading an article on Asperger's Syndrome, which exists in varying degrees in people who become obsessed in anything from train spotting to Star Trek. Even more disturbing, Fowler admits to liking Norman Wisdom films.
(I remember we had a little discussion about the above on another thread. For some reason, none of my searches have been finding stuff lately - too many windows open probably. I'll link it when I find it.)
The Dark Land by Michael Marshall Smith: The anonymous narrator of this surreal piece steps out of his kitchen door to find that when he returns he has allowed admittance to two complete strangers who treat the house as their own and himself as an intruder in it. Additionally, his house changes, becomes filthy; and the hall leading to the front door has somehow mysteriously warped, while through the lounge door he glimpses a strange but curiously inviting dark land.
Aviatrix by Peter Atkins: Dyson hates flying. He has brought the timing of taking a valium before take-off to a fine art, unable to bear those moments when the wheels leave the ground. During his flight his mind drifts between consciousness and a strange continuing dream of a flight in an antique biplane piloted by an aviatrix.
Peter Atkins wrote this one after seeing a list of banned 'politically incorrect' words issued by Liverpool City Council, 'To ensure that there are now in the world more pieces of paper bearing this beautiful banned word than there used to be'. Amen to that. Atkins is also known for his film scripts for
Hellraiser II and
III.
Snodgrass by Ian R MacLeod: What would have happened if John Lennon had quit the Beatles. In this story of the fear of artistic failure, closely linked with the fear of failing in life as a whole, we find out. There's a marvelous little scene with a public toilet attendant carrying a copy of
The Catcher in the Rye.
The Day of the Sharks by Kate Wilhelm: Gary and Veronica are visiting their successful friends Bill and Sharon at their new home in the Bahamas. Veronica is recovering from a breakdown; Gary is looking forward to another liason with Sharon. The idyllic surroundings have been disturbed recently by the mass suicides of false killer whales, and no-one has reckoned on one drifting close to land to give birth. An enormously powerful story, Wilhelm really has her finger squeezing the reader's emotional pulse.
In the ‘sixties she wrote a great little novel called
The Clone which probably owed a lot to Joseph Payne Brennan’s
Slime.
Anima by M John Harrison: Choe Ashton is a young man who could have been more successful than he is, instead choosing high-paying short-term jobs that let him build up enough cash to pay off his speeding fines on European autobahns. He has a childlike fascination with everything from seagulls to fast motorcycles and shiny shop window displays. He's on a death-trip, and he fascinates the anonymous narrator, who befriends him at a business lunch. Ashton has been this way ever since he saw the ground open up and the young girl from the bus come out of it. A story of obsession with the past and how it deprives us of a true present. Possibly. The third story with a touch of Zen in this collection. But very good.
M John Harrison was another
New Worlds/
Impulse writer of the 'sixties, who wrote an excellent fantasy novel,
The Pastel City.
Red Reign by Kim Newman: Vlad Tepes was not destroyed by Van Helsing; he has Queen Victoria in his thrall, and has drawn her out of her widow's weeds. Van Helsing's head is publicly displayed on a pike. Dr Seward, unable to forget Lucy, is taking his revenge on the vampire population of the Whitechapel, cutting up prostitutes who offer immortality for a few ounces of blood. London is divided into vampire new-borns and warms. But the blood-line of Dracula is tainted, and diseases are carried on from life into un-death so that sports and mutations are common among the new borns. Inspector Lestrade is on the trail of Jack the Ripper. Sherlock Holmes is interred in a concentration camp at Devil's Dyke. Fu-Manchu, Raffles and other master criminals are concerned that the Ripper's murder spree will stir up a major uprising against the vampire crime-lords. The story is told from the viewpoint of Genevieve, of the line of Chandagnac, centuries older than Dracula, who has often found herself on the sidelines of history as an onlooker; though here it seems that she may at last be drawn directly into the brewing conflict.
Newman invokes every Victorian consulting detective and criminal from truth or fiction (Dr Henry Jekyll is an alienist called upon to venture an opinion at the autopsy of one of the prostitutes; even Merrick the elephant man plays a part). Like Newman's
The Night Mayor, this one displays almost too great a knowledge of the popular fiction of the past, though it's all told with zest; and Dracula's court is a scene out of true nightmare. This story was later expanded into the novel
Anno Dracula.
(Oh sheesh! The profanity screener has just inserted asterisks into 'Devil's Dyke'.
Bright Lights Big Zombie by Douglas E Winter: Douglas Winter is known for his fondness for Italian zombie splatter movies, and this is a hymn to those films in a near-future when, following ‘Black Wednesday’,
Night of the Living Dead has become a reality. The dead have begun to come back.
The narrator is a writer for a small horror magazine, now struggling to stay in circulation in an era when horror - and especially zombie films - has been oulawed by the State. Miranda was among the earlier ones to die; she had always wanted to be in the movies. Now, when the movies are dying and videos consigned to huge bonfires, the last addicts of horror must make their own. And inevitably Miranda is the star.
The Ghost Village by Peter Straub: Leonard Hamnet is going quietly crazy in Vietnam because a letter from his wife has informed him that his son has been interfered with by the leader of their church choir. Hamnet wants to cut her head off and stick it on a spike on the lawn. But for now they are in Vietnam, the company are making bets on which Lieutenant will get killed or go crazy first, and Bong To is a strange place, a ghost village, with a strange chamber cut in the earth below the chief's hut, and bloodstained piles driven into the ground. When Tim Underhill gets back behind the lines, he learns the full story about Bong To.
Straub's story is about the difference between private and public shame, and how when one becomes the other people may cross the line between acceptable or evil actions. After a muddled start, this becomes quite a good story. This story appears to be a prequel to Straub's 1988 novel
Koko.
When I wrote this some years back, I finished by adding: "Generally, an excellent collection of stories; Edelman, Lannes, Brite, Ligotti, Tuttle, Hand and Wilhelm leading the pack." Whether I'd reach the same conclusion now, I honestly don't know.
(don't know who he is either). 