S. Jones & D. Sutton - Dark Terrors 4

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Stephen Jones & David Sutton (eds.) - Dark Terrors 4 (Gollancz, 1998)

Les Edwards: Cover star is Bernie Maughmstein, who would return to showcase his scabrous comedy routine all over the second half of Stephen Jones' Zombie Apocalypse! Fightback

Stephen Jones & David Sutton - Introduction

Richard Christian Matheson - The Great Fall
Christopher Fowler - Normal Life
Neil Gaiman - The Wedding Present
Ramsey Campbell - Never To Be Heard
Donald R. Burleson - Tumbleweeds
Stephen Baxter - Family History
David J. Schow - The Incredible True Facts In The Case
Roberta Lannes - Mr. Guidry’s Head
Dennis Etchison - Inside The Cackle Factory
Poppy Z. Brite - Entertaining Mr. Orton
Joel Lane - The Country Of Glass
Lisa Tuttle - My Pathology
Thomas Tessier - Curing Hitler
James Miller - Weak End
Jay Russell - Sullivan’s Travails
Conrad Williams - The Suicide Pit
Geoff Nicholson - Making Monsters
Michael Marshall Smith - A Place To Stay
Terry Lamsley - Suburban Blight

Nabbed a copy of this at the market yesterday; took a seat on the wall in the shadow of Christ Church, Commercial Street, and got stuck in. A very appropriate setting, as it turned out.

David J. Schow - The Incredible True Facts In The Case: How a series of entirely unrelated murders over the autumn of 1888 came to be attributed to a bogey figment of the public imagination. Jack the Ripper, perhaps the most infamous London murderer of all, is revealed as a multi-layered fabrication on the parts of a one-off killer, various attention seekers, and the perennial ambitious journalist. Makes a change from blaming Sir William Gull/ Prince Eddy/ J. K. Stephens/ Montague Druitt/' Jill the Ripper'/ the Loch Ness Monster, etc.

Geoff Nicholson - Making Monsters: A progressively-minded psychiatrist-teratologist on the closed ward of the Timothy Ryan Clinic has no joy in procuring prostitutes for his charges. This is no great surprise as the men under his care are both hideously deformed and extremely dangerous. Eventually he persuades Andrea, an aspiring actress notably absent of inhibition, to take the plunge. Andrea soon warms to her work, and the spike to the patients' morale is remarkable. The shrink, who enjoys a huge voyeuristic perve from watching video playbacks of the weekly orgies, decides that he should like to spend a night of passion with Andrea.

Jay Russell - Sullivan’s Travails. When an elderly extra is verbally abused on the set of hit TV soap Burning Bright, male lead Marty Burns gallantly intervenes on her behalf. So begins an unlikely and dangerous friendship with Hollywood veteran Olivia Sullivan, star of innumerable crowd scenes, who, it transpires, has spent the best part of her life paying the price for a youthful act of jealousy. It all goes back to 1937 when the love of her life, director Preston Sturges, threw her over for Veronica Lake. Olivia's response was to have a witch lay a curse on the pair. Now she is haunted day and night by the dead element among Sturges' entourage. Can Marty finally lay the ghosts?

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Christopher Fowler - Normal Life: An absent-minded or just plain slovenly Dennis Nilsen clone is totting up victims faster than he can dispose of their dismembered body parts. When pretty young PC Isabal Lyons calls around on the pretext of answering his ad for a lodger, she makes a fine job of not noticing the rotting leg under the bed, but the muffled cries from the wardrobe are harder to ignore. Having dispatched of the officer and the noisy gagged guy in the closet, the maniac hoot-foots it to Brighton, where a terminally depressed woman immediately recognises his photo from the newspaper. She asks that he do her a big favour ...

Thomas Tessier - Curing Hitler: Testimony of Joseph Bausch, a young doctor assigned to the military hospital at Pasewalk for the duration of the Great War. Among the early casualties, Corporal Adolf Hitler, blinded by a gas grenade at Ypres, who is initially believed to be malingering. Dr. Albert Stadler establishes that, far from feigning, Hitler is desperate to return to the front. His loss of sight is psychosomatic, and he will see again when he's ready. Bausch is wary of the strange convalescent, whose mere presence drains him of every ounce of energy, and Dr. Stadler, too is growing noticeably gaunt.

Unfortunately, Stadler's diagnosis proves correct. When the terms of the Armistice treaty are announced, Hitler is so infuriated that he retains full vision.

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Richard Christian Matheson - The Great Fall: Dingy club, rabid "crowd," and a burnt out crooner dying on-stage, night after night after night.

Poppy Z. Brite - Entertaining Mr. Orton: Clive and Willen rent the tiny Islington flat where Kenneth Halliwell took a hammer to Joe Orton's skull before ending his own life. When the two present-day lovers christen the bedroom, Joe's ghost can't help but join in. In the afterglow of the most satisfying sex of his young life, Willen has inspiration for his first play. Is history gearing up to repeat itself?

Neil Gaiman - The Wedding Present: On returning from honeymoon, Belinda and Gordon sort excitedly through all their wedding gifts. Among the toasters and lots and lots of cheques, an anonymous typewritten account of their big day. As they settle into married life, so the essay updates in the most horrific detail, providing an alternate, nasty chronicle of their lives. Is it, as Belinda suggests their personal equivalent of The Picture of Dorian Gray? What will happen if their uncanny wedding present is destroyed?

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Imminent publication of Darker Terrors: A Best of Dark Terrors reminded me just what a good time I'd been having with #4. Time for another delve.

Conrad Williams - The Suicide Pit: "There were hundreds of photographs here, measuring his span of work in so many permutations of the same demise. His flat, like a crowd of ghouls pushing in for a look, closed around his shoulders."

Proper bleak. Fairbrook's job is to photograph and catalogue the demise of suicides on the underground. His profession has taken its toll, and he's haunted by the ghosts of those who threw themselves onto the tracks. A chance meeting with the similarly spooked Sarah at the local library takes him out of himself for a while until he realises just what he's been sleeping with. It's no spoiler to let on that that Fairbrook is destined to become another suicide pit statistic. One for Mr. Proof's Railways: The End Of The Line thread and no mistake. This really is excellent.