Best of Modern Horror - Ferman & Jordan (1989)

[Calenture]

Max Schindler

The Best of Modern Horror: 24 Tales From the Magazine of Fantasy and SF

First published 1988; Guild Publishing, 1989

I read both Aickman's and Edith Bowen's stories, Hand in Glove because I wondered if they had anything in common beside their titles. As it happens, no. Then I tried to find the Aickman thread here, but couldn't - so I thought I'd start a thread for this book. Hope I'm not doubling up on that.

It's that time of night...

I'll add the contents list later. Lots of good stuff in it, anyway (Russell Kirk, Robert Bloch, Stephen Gallagher, Matheson...)

Here's Aickman's:

Hand in Glove by Robert Aikman: Millicent has broken off her engagement with Nigel, so to cheer her up Winifred suggests a picnic combined with a visit to Great House.

The two follow a country footpath through a churchyard, past a strangely silent herd of cattle, and they emerge on the bank of a river. During the picnic, Millicent realises that they’re surrounded by thousands of mushrooms, which she dislikes intensely and is sure weren’t there when they arrived – though Winifred insists they were.

When they return through the churchyard, she sees something else: a pile of wreaths and sprays close by the path – and they certainly weren’t there before.

A sense of wrongness affects the place; and then Millicent finds the black leather glove on the path, and decides to hand it in at the vicarage. A mute housekeeper leads them into the presence of the lady of the house, Miss Pansy Stock - who seems oddly reluctant to accept the glove. She says that the spirits of jilted women often leaves things in the churchyard there, and it's bad luck to pick them up.

Millicent asks her how a broken heart can be mended, and Mrs Stock replies that the only way to mend a broken heart is to kill the man who broke it.

When Millicent leaves the house, Nigel is waiting for her and insists on taking her home. But unfortunately, before they get there, he meets a gruesome end.

This isn’t the end of the story.

This one is quite satisfying and accessible Aickman (apparently), though it’s one of the most dreamlike that I’ve read. It’s rich in typically dreamlike imagery – the dream symbols of the mushrooms and the abandoned glove; the abandoned objects in the churchyard and the rather sinister church - is it really disused, and is there something horrible inside? - and herd of cattle. And, typically of Aickman, before the end, the quality of dream turns to nightmare.

[dem bones]

Introduction - Anne Devereaux Jordan

Bob Leman - Windows
Tom Reamy - Insects In Amber
Charles Beaumont - Free Dirt
Patricia Ferrara - Rising Waters
Stephen King - The Night Of The Tiger
Brian Aldiss - Poor Little Warrior!
Robert Bloch - Nina
J. Michael Reaves - Werewind
Richard Matheson - Dress Of White Silk
John Anthony West - Gladys's Gregory
Stephen Gallagher - By The River, Fontainebleau
Charles L. Grant - Pride
Edward Pangborn - Longtooth
__________________________

Ron Goulart - Glory
Lisa Tuttle - Bug House
Robert Aickman - Hand In Glove
Mike Conner - Stillborn
Russel Kirk - Balgrummo's Hell
Pamela Sargent - The Old Darkness
Lucius Shepard - The Night Of White Bhairab
Ian Watson - Salvage Rites
Theodore L. Thomas - Test
Manly Wade Wellman - The Little Black Train
Michael Shea - The Autopsy

St. Martin's Press also published this as a 2 volume paperback in 1990. Never really bothered with MFSF until I picked up three issues at a Church fair as a desperate alternative to leaving empty handed. Still thinking I'd made a bad move, flick open the Feb. 1973 issue and - what's this? Robert Aickman's Pages From A Young Girl's Journal and Lisa Tuttle's Doll Burger! Check out the one with the fetching cover by Emsh for Sept. 1963 and there's William Bankier's 'When Plants Attack!' outing, Unholy Hybrid, and the ever-readable Joanna Russ with There Is Another Shore, You Know, Upon The Other Side.

Anyhow, the anthology also includes:

Ron Goulart - Glory: Nineteen-Thirties screen-idol Glory Sands vanished at the height of her popularity. Unscrupulous gold-diggers Jack and Hoff trace her to a coffin in a Beverly Hills mansion. They learn that an occultist, Byers Tumley, worked his magic on her after he'd discovered the terrible truth of who and what Glory is, and she's lain in suspended animation ever since. The hoods decide it would be a wizard wheeze to "persuade" the frail old guy to lift the spell ...

Theodore L. Thomas - Test: As part of his driving test, Robert Proctor is put under hypnosis and made to live through a head-on collision in which his mother, the other driver and a sleeping girl passenger are all killed. He comes out of his trance and learns to his relief, that he's passed, signs his licence, and ... immediately seized by the dreaded "uniformed men" on the grounds that killing doesn't seem to bother him.

Ian Watson - Salvage Rites: Tim and Rosy, two of life's losers, take their garbage to the town dump and never return, being themselves trashed by the weird family who own it. As Rosy whispers to Tim when he can't find the road that takes them out of the junkyard, "We've entered the world of rubbish .... where we've been heading for the past twenty-seven years". A very horrible and sad allegory, revived in his splendid collection of the same name.

Salvage Rites: (Grafton, 1989)

Mike Conner - Stillborn: Claudia is a newcomer to the quiet Missouri mining town and no-one troubles to warn her about dreadful harridan, Mrs. Phillip Ash, who takes malicious glee in wrecking the lives of those around her. And when she learns, much to her twisted delight, that Claudia is barren ....

Emsh's illustration for Robert A Heinlein's Glory Road, Sept. 1963

[dem bones]

Robert Bloch - Nina: (MF&SF, June 1977). Robert Nolan leaves the States to earn some real money on a Brazilian plantation. Drinking heavily, driven half out of his mind by pounding drums in the night, he betrays wife Dolores with 'Nina,' a spectacularly ugly native girl. When Darlene arrives with their new born son, Nolan violently evicts his mistress. Darlene is struck down with fever. The village matriach warns Nolan that 'Nina' is a serpent women, that his wife and child are in grave danger, but you know what these "primitive" types are like with their mumbo jumbo old wives tales. A were-boa constrictor, indeed!

Lisa Tuttle - Bug House: (MF&SF, June 1980). A furious Elaine Morrow walks out on cheating husband and moves in with Aunt May while the dust settles. In the three years since they last met, May's heath and looks have deteriorated alarmingly, like it's not just her ocean home is infested with termites! More troubling still, the dying woman has acquired a toy boy, Peter, an obnoxious creep who does for her. Peter is already on the lookout for a younger model.

Michael Reaves - Werewind: (MF&SF, July 1981). "The werewinds .... they were supposed to take human shape ... they're not evil so much as just lonely, sort of lost souls, I guess. The werewind is drawn to lonely people."

As the Santa Anna wind-storm hits LA, 'The Hollywood Scalper' claims six showbiz people over consecutive nights. Simon Drake, unemployed actor, is bitterly aware that he's too insignificant for this latest serial killer to bother with. Five years in Hollywood, with only a part in atrocious B-feature, Disco Dracula to show for it. As if life couldn't get any worse, the freak weather has cost him an audition at Marathon Studios. So long, big break in hot shot producer Martin Knox's massive budget horror flick.

The swirling wind creates a naked woman from leaves and ash. Knox's male lead, Terrence Froseth, becomes the Scalper's seventh victim, and Simon strikes up an unlikely romance with Molly Hannon, a lonesome screenwriter researching the legend of the "werewind." Apparently, it can only be held off by braiding lengths of hair into stout rope (!). Could this be the Scalper's motive?

Molly urges Drake to chase up Knox for the role conveniently vacated by Froseth's demise. A local man confesses to the murders, but the storm continues unabated and, driving to Knox's private residence, Drake again encounters the ghost girl. Perhaps the cops have arrested the wrong person? We suspect things are going to go horribly wrong before this night is done, and so it proves.

A decent read but convoluted plot bloody confusing to mere mortals like self.