Graham Masterton – Scare Care

[dem]

Graham Masterton (ed.) – Scare Care (Tor, 1989)

Kit Reed – Mommy
James Robert Smith – Things Not Seen
Ramsey Campbell – The Ferries
D. W. Taylor – Good Night, Sweet Prince
Celeste Paul Sefranek – Printer’s Devil
Bruce Boston – Mammy and the Flies
John Burke – The Tourists
Roald Dahl – The Wish
J. N. Williamson – Monstrum
James Herbert – Breakfast
Darrell Schweitzer – Clocks
Steve Rasnic Tem – The Strangers
William Relling, Jr. – Table for None
Peter Valentine Timlett – Little Miss Muffet
C. Dean Andersson – Night Watch
Peter Tremayne – The Last Gift
James Kisner – Manny Agonistes
Jeff Gelb – Family Man
Giles Gordon – A Towpath Tale
Marc Laidlaw – Mars Will Have Blood
William F. Nolan – My Name Is Dolly
Alan Rodgers – The Night Gil Rhys First Met His Love
John Maclay – Models
Guy N. Smith – Crustacean Revenge
Roderick Hudgins – Sarah’s Song
Harlan Ellison – The Avenger of Death
Frank Coffey – Cable
Felice Picano – Spices of the World
David B. Silva – Down to the Core
Stephen Laws – Junk
John Daniel – The Woman in the Wall
Ruth Rendell – Loopy
Gary A. Braunbeck – Time Heals
Brian Lumley – David’s Worm
Chris B. Lacher – The Pet Door
Charles L. Grant – By the Sea
Graham Masterton – Changeling
Roland Masterton – In the West Wing

Blurb
For most people, getting frightened is fun. But for thousands of children, being frightened is a daily and nightly reality. Scare Care's imaginary nightmares hope to help relieve real ones. All of the anthology's profits will go to charities that specialize in caring for abused and needy children; the writers have donated their fees as well. Hair-raising horror for a good cause!

We've met several of these before and, thanks to my new, improved custom search engine up top, you'll not be able to find the notes to any of them. Stephen Law’s Junk: murder and mayhem in the ominous setting of a car-crushing plant. John Burke’s The Tourists and a vivisectionist couple become the failed experiment of alien invaders. James Herbert’s contribution is a chapter written for, then deleted from Domain. The editor's Changeling originates from the spicy Hot Blood series, and has a Dr. Jekyll & Sister Hyde theme to it, while his son weighs in with his first ever story. Mars Will Have Blood revolves around a squirm-inducing production of “The Scottish Play” and a prank that goes horribly wrong. You don’t need me to tell you what Crustacean Revenge is all about.

[dem]

William F. Nolan - My Name Is Dolly: After the death of his wife, Mr. Brubaker takes to molesting his adopted daughter, Dorothy. The little girl confides in the local witch, old Meg, who gives her a grotesque life-size, clockwork doll with a huge key slotted into its back. Mr. Brubaker doesn't like Dolly one bit and hurls her into the fire, but it's him who comes off far the worse. To give any more away would be very unfair, but this has to rank among Nolan's most effective horror stories.

Graham Masterton – Changeling: High flying young transport executive Gil Bachelor gets a taste of how the other half live when he meets the mysterious and strikingly beautiful Anna while on a business trip in Amsterdam. Torn between returning home immediately to wife Margaret and the kids in Woking or staying on a few days for round-the-clock crazy sex with a fantasy woman, he chooses the latter. On the third morning of their brief liason he wakes to find that they've exchanged bodies ...

Roland Masterton - In The West Wing: Tim and Martina accept Lady Bertha's invitation to spend a few nights at her mansion house. The door to the west wing is heavily padlocked and their suspiciously agitated hostess explains that it's too dilapidated to live in. Tim investigates a thumping noise in the night. Whatever lurks behind that door isn't friendly.

Marc Laidlaw - Mars Will Have Blood: Blackstone School's doomed production of 'the Scottish Play' utilizes a Martian setting, a cast kitted out in strange, kilted spacesuits, a ghastly musical score by Miss Shelley De Bose and "something like a huge cubist monster with a low, foam rubber belly, giraffe-long legs and a vast fanged mouth missing the lower jaw ..."

Ricardo watches in despair as his once-friend Neal (MacBeth) pulls love-of-his-life Cory Fordyce (Lady M.) and, after a bloodied nose from the former, plots his revenge. His means of getting even is to sprinkle himself in vampire's blood and put the willies up his enemy with an unscheduled appearance as Banquo's ghost. As the production lurches from one calamity to another, Ricardo falls to his death. In his final seconds of life, he catches a glimpse of the red planet - and it's terrifying.

James Robert Smith – Things Not Seen: Bill and Annie love their new home but they'd prefer not to be reminded that the previous owner, AL Anderson, was executed for the sadistic murder of his wife and son. The little boy's terrified ghost still hides in the larder wondering why these adults don't see all the blood on the floor.

[dem]

Guy N. Smith - Crustacean Revenge: A coda to Killer Crabs. Ten years have passed since Klin sparked the inferno on Hayman Island that finally did for the crabs. Now he returns to the coral reef just in time to witness a pair of the man-eating monsters tearing apart a nude sunbather. Klin is glad of an opportunity to avenge the death of Caroline Du Brunner, the only woman he ever loved, and sets about luring the cow-size crustaceans into another fire-trap. But the enemy have learnt from bitter past experience and their Queen, blinded in the original conflagration, has her own score to settle.

Ruth Rendell - Loopy: Colin, 42, is the big hit of the Christmas pantomime, his spirited performance as the Big Bad Wolf culminating in a terrific assault on Red Riding Hood, "an attack so sudden and unexpected the whole audience had jumped to its feet and gasped." Sadly for fiancée Moira, Colin has grown very attached to the wolf costume, provided by his doting - and equally barking - Mum, and even insists on wearing it to bed.

Moira has grave doubts that she will ever cut Colin loose from his his mother's apron strings and make a man of him. He's as squeamish at the prospect of sex after marriage as he's been squeamish at the prospect of sex before it, and now he's insisting that, once they've tied the knot, she moves in with him and the batty old dear! Moira would rather stick forks in her eyes. You sense that Moira's nagged herself out of Colin's affections long before that nasty business when she drops by unexpectedly to show off her brand new sheepskin coat ....

Roald Dahl - The Wish: A little boy devises an exciting game. If he can cross the carpet without stepping on the red (fire) or black (snakes) squares, then tomorrow he'll receive a puppy as his birthday present. Slowly progressing toward the door, the task becomes increasingly terrifying: snakes strain toward his bare ankles, flames lick at his clothes. Will he make it? Let's hope not.

James Herbert - Breakfast: The nuclear bomb has laid waste to London but the Blitz spirit prevails and the few survivors attempt to carry on regardless. Oblivious to the flies, maggots and assorted creepy crawlies feasting on her very dead husband Barry and the kids, the old woman gets on with the business of preparing their morning meal. A suitably bleak and horrible vignette, originally intended for inclusion in the bloated Domain

[dem]

"Many of the stories touch on childhood experiences (although my editorial policy was strict - no children to be chopped up). From Graham Masterton's introduction.

Kit Reed – Mommy: Whenever Tilda gains weight, she takes it out on little daughters, Penny and Sally. As no adult will believe that Tilda is anything other than the model mum, the girls are forced to take desperate measures. After one beating too many, they contrive an elaborate ritual involving a Barbie Doll and a mini feast to bring back every ounce of fat Tilda claims to have shed in the past five years.

John Maclay – Models: Little boy loses his father in an air-plane disaster. Dad's presence lives on aboard the airfix model they built together.

Peter Tremayne – The Last Gift: Erotic ghost story. Fisherman Sobey Trevossow drowned off the Cornish Coast, but a watery grave couldn't prevent his paying the wife a final visit to give her what she craved above everything in the world.

Bruce Boston – Mammy and the Flies: Mammy Jordan locks the weird orphan kid in the cellar days and nights while she entertains Gentleman. It sure is dark and damp in their with all the bluebottles. The kid takes to swatting the flies, imagining they're people who've done him wrong. His father's Houngan blood works its voodoo.

William Relling, Jr. – Table for None: Corpulent salesman Mr. Capillari insists nothing beats his mother's cooking, but is forced to concede that the spaghetti in Daly's motorway cafe ("All you can eat, $3.95") comes close. Unfortunately, the chef doesn't believe him when he insists "I couldn't manage another mouthful."

[dem]

Celeste Paul Sefranek – Printer’s Devil: "In the Good Book, Jesus says that when an evil spirit goes out of a man, it travels for a while and then comes back, bringing along seven of its buddies, all worse than itself." In life Bill Freeny, senior editor of The Clarion, was an incorrigible practical joker, and the grave has done nothing to curb his passion for pranking. Mildly amusing to begin with, his tricks take an increasingly malicious turn, resulting in the gory death of one machinist, the maiming of a second. Then things turn really nasty.

Peter Valentine Timlett - Little Miss Muffet: Miss Amelia Moffat inherits 'Chandira,' her late brother's country cottage. George's passion was for exotic spiders though, fortunately for Amela, who is arachnophobic, his collection has since been donated to a zoo. Or has it?

Frank Coffey - Cable: Since he had cable installed, Jerry's TV has been acting funny. People and a dog of his acquaintance have somehow been transplanted into reruns of Lassie, The Fugitive, The Dick Van Dyke Show & Co., where they invariably meet with gory ends. Within days of the broadcast, these same people die in real life. Maybe Jerry can use the psychic TV to his advantage.

[dem]

Brian Lumley – David’s Worm: A flatworm exposed to radiation by Professor Lees, is transformed into an amorphous, vaguely globular blob with band-saw teeth. Let loose by the scientist's son, the spongy grey-white mass absorbs any and every living creature to stray within its path.

Jeff Gelb – Family Man: A widower lands the old colonial home of his dreams for a ridiculously generous price on account of Irv, the current owner, is pathetically desperate to sell up and return to Idaho. "I'm getting a divorce - guess you could say I'm just not a family man." How could he up and quit on such a beautiful wife and two kids? It doesn't take long for the newcomer to find out.

C. Dean Andersson – Night Watch: As she rots in a chair, the dead mother tries to make the best of a triple family tragedy by protecting a nest of baby sparrows from a killer squirrel.

[pbsplatter]

Ramsey Campbell - The Ferries: Narrator, who works at a publishing house, visits his ailing uncle, who was always full of sea yarns. Now, nearing death, he tells a story of a ghost ship that you only see twice--the first time, it guarantees that you'll see it again. And when that happens. . .Uncle subsequently vanishes, but our narrator finds a ship in a bottle and brings it back to London. Weirdness ensues. . .

Not my favorite RC story but the images of a dried up river of grass are evocative, and nobody does slow descents into madness like him. 

DW Taylor - Goodnight, Sweet Prince: Nicholas decided that monkeying with mom's food would be a wizard wheeze, but now he's in bed awaiting his mother's wrath. Instead of the switch, though, she tells him the story of Prince, a bad little boy who went from urinary indiscretion to brutally murdering a pet puppy (a genuinely difficult passage) to sabotaging her career and driving away her alcoholic husband. Finally, she makes good on her promise to lock him up forever. Nicholas wouldn't want the same thing to happen to him, would he . . .?

Very unsettling story, with a good use of ambiguity. Makes Jack Ketchum's "The Rifle" seem a barrel of laughs by comparison. 

Darrell Schweitzer - Clocks: A guilt and grief wracked old man makes his yearly pilgrimage to his old house, full of ticking clocks. Each year, once a night, as long as the clocks keep running (he believes) he is able to relive the last time he made love with his wife before her death in a car crash. 


This is a moving and effective story, feeling like modernized Poe. Still, it's not clear that this ritual at all bothers the spirit of his wife, so his guilt seems a bit misplaced. 

Roderick Hudgins - Sarah's Song: Graham's note in the foreword that there were 'no kids to be chopped up' isn't really honored here at all. GM admits as much in the introduction, where he says he went back and forth on including this one, but decided that the sheer quality of writing won out. He must have been talking about some other story, for what we have is some boring cruelty as mentally disabled Sarah rebels against her family's abuse and father's molestation by butchering them one by one. 

Alan Rodgers - The Night Gil Rhys First Met His Love: Was expecting some sort of Gilles des Rais reference here, and maybe there is one I'm too obtuse to understand. Follows Gil as he follows around a mysterious, beautiful woman in hopes of losing his virginity. Said woman doesn't seem to mind too much, even after he tries stabbing her to death. 


Weird story that starts off with a little Miracle Mile flavor before lapsing into Pan style chop 'em 'up blather, and then winds up with a confusing supernatural twist.


Giles Gordon - A Towpath Tale: Rather unhappily married man has vivid dream about watching his wife drown while walking their dog along the towpath one day. Sometimes, dreams come true. . .


Impeccably well-written--it feels like Aickman with a touch of Highsmithian cruelty, right down to the 'barking mad' ending.