Stephen Jones & David A. Sutton - Dark Terrors 3

[dem bones]

Stephen Jones & David A. Sutton - Dark Terrors 3: The Gollancz Book of Horror (Gollancz, 1997)

Bob Eggleton

Stephen Jones & David Sutton – Introduction

Ray Bradbury – Free Dirt
Poppy Z. Brite – Self-Made Man
Neil Gaiman – The Price
Storm Constantine – Such a Nice Girl
Ray Garton – Pieces
Melanie Tem – Aunt Libby’s Grave
Ramsey Campbell – The Horror Under Warrendown
Kathryn Ptacek – Skinned Angels
Conrad Williams – The Windmill
Steve Rasnic Tem – Sharp Edges
Pat Cadigan – This Is Your Life (Repressed Memory Remix)
Brian Hodge – Little Holocausts
Julian Rathbone – Fat Mary
Dennis Etchison – The Last Reel
Mark Timlin – Everybody Needs Somebody to Love
Jay Russell – Sous Rature
Christopher Fowler – Spanky’s Back in Town
Caitlín R. Kiernan – Estate
Michael Marshall Smith – Walking Wounded
Terry Lamsley – The Lost Boy Found

Blurb:

`Very creepy stuff!' - John Landis, director of An American Werewolf in London and Michael Jackson's Thriller

The undoubted highlight in the annual horror calendar, this year's superb collection of chills from masters of the macabre, old and new, continues to push the bound­aries of fear.

The spine-tingling tellers of tales included in Dark Terrors 3 are Ray Bradbury, Poppy Z. Brice, Pat Cadigan, Ramsey Campbell, Storm Constantine, Dennis Etchison, Christopher Fowler, Neil Gaiman, Ray Garton, Brian Hodge, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Terry Lamsley, Kathryn Ptacek, Julian Rathbone, Jay Russell, Michael Marshall Smith, Melanie Tem, Steve Rasnic Tem, Mark Timlin and Conrad Williams.

Once again, multi award-winning editors Jones and Sutton promise to take you beyond the furthest reaches of the imagination!

'A volume designed to grasp the reader's lapels and say "boo" in no uncertain terms' - Locus

With the move to Gollancz and consequent name change, the series bore even less resemblance to Van Thal's sadism-heavy volumes and more to a Best New Horror mega-supplement.

Neil Gaiman - The Price: The Gaimans are adopted by a mangy old stray cat. Each night it prowls the garden, each morning it arrives home more beaten up than the last - in its latest scrap it has lost one eye and part of an ear. What kind of enemy has the poor creature made for itself?

Ray Garton - Pieces: As his repressed memories of parental childhood molestation come flooding back, so his body literally falls to bits.

Poppy Z. Brite - Self-Made Man: Meet Justin, a handsome young cannibal killer who preys upon young men. You'd not want to look in his fridge. Tonight's pick-up from LA's premier gay-goth hang out 'The Stag' is Suko, 19, newly arrived in California from Thailand where he'd already established himself as a veteran of Bankok's live sex shows. Meanwhile, a television newsflash advises an incredulous public that the dead are rising from their graves ...

Written especially for the doomed third volume of Skipp & Spector's Back From The Dead. I'm wary of people who come on like they believe themselves the last word in erotica - in your dreams! - but no denying PZB's contribution enlivens proceedings considerably.

Ramsey Campbell – The Horror Under Warrendown: A Lovecraftian vegetable deity haunts the Severn Valley. Mr. campbell's creepy tale has since resurfaced in Paul Finch's Terror Tales Of The Cotswolds.

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Ray Bradbury - Free Dirt: The young man needs top-soil for his backyard, so when he learns the local cemetery is giving away free dirt, he jumps in his truck. The grave-digger, an old-timer with several grim professional anecdotes at his disposal, tells him to take as much soil as he wants on condition he doesn't bring it back.

For the background story and an alternative version of 'Free Dirt' see Charles Beaumont

Storm Constantine – Such a Nice Girl: Everyone on the Willow Dene Farm Estate agrees. So how could the late Emily Tizzard have been involved in black sorcery and who is the young man she obsessively sketched in a variety of erotic poses? It seems utterly implausible that Emily could know anyone who would murder her in so brutal a fashion. Questions, questions. Nosey neighbour Cynthia Peeling, who has taken a guilty shine to Miss Tizzard's artwork, learns the darker side of candle magic.

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Mark Timlin - Everybody Needs Somebody To Love:Rooted in the music industry, and set for the most part in Old Compton Street and environs from 1973-1989, this is quite possibly the only ghost story ever to reference both Ziggy Stardust & The Spiders From Mars and Rolf Harris's Jake The Peg. And its a beauty. Everybody Needs ... chronicles the romance of narrator Paul and Louise Spencer, his soul-mate, on-off lover and maddest friend, from their initial meeting during the height of glam rock to her tragic, protracted demise sixteen years later - and beyond. When first they meet, he's a young record plugger, while Louise, three years his junior, is a feisty PR girl for numerous name bands. Through all the ups and downs, they never pretended to be faithful to one and other, but it is only five years after her death, when Paul gets serious about another woman, that Louise exhibits a violently jealous streak. Really liked the several intriguing revelations concerning the after-death experience (it seems you can still keep tabs on your favourite TV soap, for example).

One minor gripe. I'm no proof reader, but on p. 239 Paul tells us Louise died in 1989. Ten pages later, he's revised this to shortly after Easter, 1991, but then I guess bereavement will do that to the worst of us.

[pulphack]

Damn you, Dem, I'm going to have to search this out just for this story now. I love MT and have never read this...

[dem bones]

Jan 13, 2015 5:56:09 GMT pulphack said:

damn you, Dem, I'm going to have to search this out just for this story now. I love MT and have never read this...

It's terrific. Sometimes I've not been able to make head or tail of vast swathes of the Dark Terrors selections (they tend to be on the "experimental" side), but Everybody Needs Somebody To Love is relatively traditional. Mr. Timlin's comments on how the story came into being suggest that he can be a bit of an abrasive fellow when he wants to be!

[pulphack]

Indeed he can. But then he road managed The Who at the height of their rock pig phase, so I'd guess he needed to be a bit handy. Iain Sinclair refers to him bodyguarding Derek Raymonde/Robin Cook at crime writer conventions when DR was getting frail and ill, and there is a story about how he fell out with a producer on The Bill after being invited to write for them, and said producer ended up with a broken nose. I have no idea how true that is, mind, but it does make you want to put him in there with the likes of Jim Thompson and Chester Himes as crime writers you wouldn't want to get on the wrong side of...

[dem bones]

Jan 13, 2015 9:27:54 GMT pulphack said:

Indeed he can. But then he road managed The Who at the height of their rock pig phase, so I'd guess he needed to be a bit handy. Iain Sinclair refers to him bodyguarding Derek Raymonde/Robin Cook at crime writer conventions when DR was getting frail and ill, and there is a story about how he fell out with a producer on The Bill after being invited to write for them, and said producer ended up with a broken nose. I have no idea how true that is, mind, but it does make you want to put him in there with the likes of Jim Thompson and Chester Himes as crime writers you wouldn't want to get on the wrong side of...

On this occasion, Mr. Timlin was invited to participate in the first 'One Day Novel Competition' spread over two twelve-hour sessions at the Groucho Club one weekend in 1994. It seems there was a Green Room. With an inexhaustible supply of free booze. And he wasn't enamoured of his fellow contestants. That should give you enough to go on ....

Michael Marshall Smith - Walking Wounded: For Richard, the stress of moving home from Belsize Park to "a tiny hole in Kentish Town" is compounded by the discovery that he's still in possession of too much of his ex, Susan's junk. Though he's come to terms with their break-up, there's still the nasty business of what happened to the guy she left him for (see Adobe James' The Revenge). Most traumatic of all are the stigmata-like wounds appearing all over his body .....

Conrad Williams - The Windmill: Claire Osman is using their break on the Norfolk Broads to decide whether or not she should stay with her selfish, foul-tempered boyfriend, Jonathan Chettle. Oddest thing about their miserable holiday is that, bar a brief stop off at a dreadful pub, the only people they've seen are women and birdwatchers. By the time they've reached their remote destination, Claire has resolved to ditch sweary-boy for good, but the matter is already out of her hands. Mr. Williams' take on it all. "I reckon this is the nastiest story I've ever written." It certainly would not have been out of place in one of the more repulsive Pan Horror collections.

[dem bones]

Pat Cadigan – This Is Your Life (Repressed Memory Remix): A family funeral in Massachusetts. Father's parting gift to estranged daughter Renata is a video confession during the course of which he admits to repeatedly molesting her as a child, hence her "seventeen different personalities". All of which is news to Renata, who protests that this must be a sick joke, none of it has any basis in reality. But neighbourly Dr. O'Brien knows best, and the family rally around to have her committed into his psychiatric care.

[dem bones]

Dennis Etchison – The Last Reel: "I'm back in Australia next week for Bun Boy Goes Down Under." Hollywood Hell. Rob "Skippy Boomer" Muller, one hit 'seventies child star of soap, The Boomer Family, is invited to write and direct a big-moneyed adult production for porn mogul Donn Hedgeman. Hedgemann has high hopes for his latest piece of meat, 'Celestine Prophet,' a hopelessly out of her depth Jonesville gal who recently made her screen debut in slasher porn crossover, Last Whorehouse on the Left ("I've only been in the business a month.") Christopher Fowler once said he wrote horror "for people who don't like horror" and I tend to think of Etchinson that way.

Storm Constantine - Such a Nice Girl: Young Emma Tizard has not long moved into Wren's Nest on the Willowdale Farm Estate, but her neighbours are unanimous in their approval - she really is such a nice girl. Which makes it all the more shocking that the police suspect Miss Tizard's mutilation murder is almost certainly linked to her involvement with black magic.

Julian Rathbone – Fat Mary: Set in Dorset during the 1950's, rationing, etc. A pupil at Minster Hill board school develops a massive lust-driven crush on an even more massive pig farmer. The boy turns stalker, eventually breaking into her cottage. Fat Mary knows he's there and what for. Gross.

Jay Russell – Sous Rature: Demise of Dr. Paul Klein, the mad maths genius, whose ultimate revelation saw him murder his wife before killing himself. Brainy horror, chaos theory, sums, is the world a logarithm?, etc. Entirely wasted on dense likes of self, who understood not a word of it.