Sebastian Wolfe - Little Book Of Horrors

[dem bones]

Sebastian Wolfe - The Little Book Of Horrors (Xanadu, 1992)

All lovers of the grim and grisly will relish this tiny tome of terrific tales. It is a collection of very short and extremely nasty stories and poems, most only a couple of pages long, but guaranteed to appall and amuse in the best tradition of horror.

Which says it all, really. Some of the stories and poems are maybe too slight to work, but I've a great fondness for this collection which was a fixture of the remainder bins during the mid-nineties. As the bulk are examples of what we might call proto-flash fiction, It's pointless trying to write too many of them up (so I most likely will). Plenty of old friends. Joe R. Lansdale, Ornella Volta (whose contributions have all been surgically removed from The Vampire), Ambrose Bierce, immortal Burke and Hare tribute The Edinburgh Landlady, Jeffrey Scott from Tales Of Unease, a couple exhumed, from the Pan Horror books, some amusing 'factual' accounts from The Police Gazette or some-such ... Probably the pick of the bunch is Richard Christian Matheson's Red, truly one of the most shocking horror stories ever written and all over and done in two pages! It's an ideal book to have around when you're too lazy to attempt anything as strenuous as a Sydney J. Bounds marathon.

Here's the run-down. It goes on for ever.

Sebastian Wolfe - Foreword

Roald Dahl - In The Ruins
John Lennon - Randolf's Party
Richard Christian Matheson - Red
A Wide Driven Mad By A Husband Tickling Her Feet (fact)
Alexander Woolcott - Moonlight Sonata
Alistair Sampson - Untitled
George D. Painter - Meeting With A Double
Ambrose Bierce - John Mortonson's Funeral
E. H. Visiak - The Skeleton At The Feast
Ornella Volta - Untitled
Colin West - Cousin Jane
Alistair Sampson - Untitled
Jeffrey Scot - Out Of The Country
Stephen Gallagher - Mousetrap
Singular Method Of Execution (fact)
Robert Bloch - The Model Wife
John Lennon - Good Dog Nigel
Joe R. Lansdale - Dog, Cat And Baby
Edward Gorey - Untitled
Kingsley Amis - Mason's Life
William Plomer - The Dorking Thigh
Ornella Volta - Henri Blot (fact)
Charles Dickens - Captain Murderer
F. Scott Fitzgerald - Untitled
Joe R. Lansdale - Chompers
James Malcolm Rymer - Varney, the Vampire
Gina Haldane - Grocery List
Lafcadio Hearn - Mujina
Raymond Chandler - At Parting
Richard Middleton - Love At First Sight
W. R. Hodder - The Vampire
Singular Attempt At Suicide
Ambrose Bierce - One summer Night
Aubrey Davidson - The Edinburgh Landlady
Alistair Sampson - Delighted Deb's Lament
Ornella Volta - Sergeant Bertrand
Richard Christian Matheson - The Near Departed
Edward Lauterbach - A Warning For Certain Victorian Ladies
John Lennon - a Surprise For Little Bobby
Ambrose Bierce - Oil Of Dog
Edward Bryant - A Functional Proof Of Immortality
Pricilla Marron - My Dear, How Dead You Look And Yet You Sweetly Sing
Horrible Cannibalism (fact)
Frederic Brown - Nightmare In Red
Alistair Sampson - Essay
M. A. Lyon - American Gothic
Liao Chai - The Corpse Rises
Dannie Plachta - Revival Meeting
Alphonse Allais - Anything They Can Do ...
Jean Cocteau - The Look Of Death
Frederic Boutet - Pierre Torture (fact)
Tomasso Landolfi - Untitled
A Horrible Discovery (fact)
Gerald Atkins - The Midnight Lover
K. C. Mann - A Tale The English Used To Tell
Franz Kafka - Before The Law
Gloria Orlick - Hell Hath No -
Mark Twain - The Five Books Of Life
Arthur L. Samuels - Mass Without Voices
Lord Dufferin's Story (fact)
Richard Christian Matheson - Deathbed
W. B. Yeats - 'Magdalene'
Martin Gardner - Thang
Shutting A Woman's Head In A Box (fact)
Robert Kurosaka - a Lot To Learn
Jessica Amanda Salmonson - Angel's Exchange
Derek Pell - How To Write The Suicide Note

Acknowledgements

[dem bones]

Roald Dahl - In The Ruins: Now i think of it, there's plenty of cannibal content in this book. Anyway, Roald gets us started with a post-apocalyptic shocker involving himself, a surgeon and a little girl who wants their mummy, each of them desperately hungry.

A Wife Driven Mad By A Husband Tickling Her Feet (fact). Invaluable caption contest material from Illustrated Police News.

Ambrose Bierce - John Mortonson's Funeral: A tasteful, open casket affair with the deceased "not disagreeable" to look upon. At least to begin with ...

James Malcolm Rymer - Varney, the Vampire: The very abridged version.

Richard Christian Matheson - Red: You don't get what passes for a synopsis of this as its one you need to read it yourself. No fooling, this is as upsetting a horror story as has ever come under the dem microscope.

Joe R. Lansdale - Chompers: Old Maude the bag lady, rooting through the dustbins as she has done every night for decades. She gets lucky with a gleaming set of dentures sat in a tiny puddle of blood ....

Alistair Sampson - Essay: Auntie Flo invites herself around to stay for the weekend. An innocent eight year old documents every last incriminating detail of his parents behaviour toward the despised old bag's in his English homework.

Ambrose Bierce - One Summer Night: As ripped off for the Bargain in Death sequence in the Amicus Vault Of Horror. Henry Armstrong is a victim of premature burial. Lucky for him, within hours of being planted in the soil, two medical students hire big negro Jess the cemetery caretaker to dig him up to furnish their dissecting table. On second thoughts, maybe "lucky" isn't the right word ...

Gina Haldane - Grocery List: A depressed housewife broods over what little treats to pick up for Bob and the kids when next she goes shopping.

Jeffry Scott - Out of the Country: Mr. Bullivant makes good his promise to smuggle a murderer across the sea - ground up in a hundred tins of dog food!

Robert Bloch - Model Wife: Haiti. The civilised, voluptuous Elise gives up a promising career to marry Josef, a Port Au Prince pauper with a talent for painting and sculpture. Josef takes a job at a department store to provide for his wife, but Elise falls for the wealthy M. Charnet and these two set off together to begin a new life in Paris. So Josef creates a mannequin in wax, bearing the face and figure of his wife and stands it in the window of the store. The sun beats down ...

MTF ...

[Craig Herbertson]

One of the reasons that it's not possible to dismiss the vault as anything other than the best horror forum in the world...

[dem bones]

There's an entire book of similar Illustrated Police News items, Craig, 'Orrible Murder: Victorian Crime And Passion by Leonard De Vries (MacDonald, 1971) which includes the above pioneering 'when animals attack' classic and the peerless 'Murderous Attack' (below)

Meanwhile, back at Little Book Of Horror:

Jean Cocteau - The Look Of Death: Who would have thought? Substitute "Ispahan" with the slightly less exotic "Basingstoke" and Harry E. Turner has reworked Cocteau as his contribution to Back From The Dead!

Richard Middleton - Love At First Sight: Stanley Barton persuades his heartthrob to leave husband Benham and elope to his Surrey cottage where, after a week of passion, they will commit suicide. Darling thinks this is a great plan. She watches lovingly as Stanley digs them a beautiful grave in the woods. Now Stanley hands her the revolver. What could possibly go catastrophically wrong, etc?

Alphonse Allais - Anything They Can Do ...: At the 104th attempt, tenacious Jean finally cures his beloved wife Madeleine of her bed-hopping ways.

Dannie Plachta - Revival Meeting: The fabulously wealthy Graham Kraken refuses to take death lying down and opts to be frozen until such times medical science has found a cure for his condition. Come 2088 and he opens his eyes to a kindly face who confirms that there have been several advancements in the med. profession this past century ....

.

[Craig Herbertson]

That's a marvellous looking book Dem. The anthropologist in me thrills to these portrayals. That innocent maid is not simply cleaning the floor. Look at the expression. She's cleaning it with humility and sincerity and with a Christian sense of duty. The murderer on the other hand has adopted the classic 'strong man taking vigorous action' pose and the artist has neatly avoided giving him any mad expression. Love it.

[dem bones]

Joe R. Lansdale - Dog, Cat And Baby: ... Each of them competing for master and master lady's attention. Who will win? Proper grisly.

Richard Matheson - The Near Departed: Attributed here to 'Richard Christian Matheson' but in J. N. Williamson's Masques 2 the author is given as his legendary father. Man walks into a funeral parlour and makes all the arrangements for his wife's burial ...

Ornella Volta - Henri Blot (fact): One of several selections from Volta's non-fiction The Vampire (Tandem, 1965). Blot was convicted of interfering with the occupants of two graves, the one an actress, the other an infant. He so exhausted himself that on both occasions he fell asleep on the job and was easily apprehended!

Singular Attempt At Suicide (fact):

Some of us took to news of a Tory-Lib Dem coalition worse than others. Another heart-warmer from the Illustrated Police News. Actually, this one isn't in The Little Book Of Horrors - I scanned the wrong 'Singular Attempt At Suicide'

Frederic Boutet - Pierre Torture (fact): One night the headsman was bound and blindfold, bundled from his home by three men, and taken to a crypt where where hooded men presided over a tribunal. A young woman has been tried, found guilty and condemned to death by decapitation. Under threat of death, Pierre Torture is imposed upon to carry out the sentence. This seems to have provided the basis for 'R. Anthony's Weird Tales/ Not At Night classic, The Witch-Baiters, though Anthony considerably nastied up the ending.

Lord Dufferin's Story (fact): Ha! I once wrote a long and excruciatingly tedious paper (i.e., rubbish fanzine article) arguing that, far from being 'factual', the legend of the Dufferin curse was for the most part the invention of our old friend, Augustus The Vampire Of Croglin Grange' Hare. To my crushing humiliation, the 'editor' of truly appalling 'zine in question, VAT spin-off Dog With Sharper Teeth, rejected it as sub sub-standard. Worst of it was, the rag in question was a strictly one-man enterprise.

[dem bones]

Micro-morbidity. The first three are particularly accomplished.

K. C. Mann - A Tale The English Used To Tell: (Rob Meades & David B. Wake [eds.], The Drabble Project, 1988). After such a productive day's hunting it would be unthinkable not to share a morsel with the poor farmer.

M. A. Lyon - American Gothic: (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Dec 1975). Another day, another car runs out of gas in the middle of nowhere. He climbs half a mile to the only hovel in sight, hoping there'll be someone can help.

Jessica Amanda Salmonson - Angel's Exchange: (J. N. Williamson [ed.], Masques, 1984). Death and Sleep exchange professions with interesting consequences.

Stephen Gallagher - Mousetrap: (Rob Meades & David B. Wake [eds.], The Drabble Project, 1988). Taxi driver abandons female passenger in the worst part of the city where an ogre is at large.

Gerald Atkins - The Midnight Lover: 11th Pan Book of Horror Stories filler. Does a vampire really need a hacksaw to break into a morgue? Would have been proper creepy if author had left the necrophilia option open.

Charles Dickens - Captain Murderer: (All the Year Round, Sep 8, 1860). Bluebeard, the MasterChef years. Far less irritating than The Story Of The Goblins Who Stole A Sexton, that's for sure.