Karl Edward Wagner - Why Not You And I? (Tor, Sept. 1987)
J. K. Potter Into Whose Hands
Old Loves
More Sinned Against
Shrapnel
The Last Wolf
Neither Brute Nor Human
Sign Of The Salamander by Curtiss Stryker with an introduction by Kent Allard
Blue Lady, Come Back
Silted in.He edited
The Years Best Horror Stories for several years and wrote a number of Sword & Sorcery books featuring the brutal Kane, but perhaps the collections that most concern us here are the intelligent pulp horrors,
In A Lonely Place (Warner, 1983),
Why Not You And I? (Tor, 1987) and the posthumous
Exorcisms and Ecstasies (Fedogan & Bremer, 1997).
Sticks is widely considered to be the main inspiration for
The Blair Witch Project (but see also Robert Bloch's
Notebook Found In A Deserted House).
More Sinned Against gives a harrowing account of a porn actress's tragic career, instigated by her loathsome partner.
The River Of Night's Dreaming revives the nightmarish city of Robert W. Chambers' futuristic horror
The Repairer Of Reputations and dumps a half-crazed girl into the thick of it.
Beyond Any Measure is a vampire story set in Victorian days and includes some unnerving episodes in a North London Cemetery. He could even pull off funny, as with
The Slug in which an insufferable bore/ psychic vampire comes to a salty end.
Sign Of The Salamander:
"His hands were shrivelled stumps, the flesh of his face seared and shrunken to his skull - charring and peeling even as they watched. Cullin Shelton was being burnt to a crisp in the passage of seconds, before their horrified gaze - but his clothing was untouched, nor could they feel a trace of the heat that was turning flesh to cinder in a matter of seconds." Surprisingly, given his later tendency toward rather explicit sex and drugs extravaganza's, Wagner's pastiche of a 'thirties horror pulp novella shuns the
Spicy school in favour of something more akin to a Paul Ernst
Dr. Satan romp - with a nod to M. R. James'
Casting The Runes(!)
Sign Of The Salamander, we learn from the introduction, was the first of Curtiss Stryker's many "John Chance vs. Dread" adventures. During World War I Chance and Dr. Gerhard Modred were taken prisoner by the Germans and held at a secret base in the Hartz mountains where brilliant scientists rebuilt their smashed bodies as part of some nebulous 'experiment'. As such, the pair are virtual supermen. Both share a keen interest in the occult but Modred's leanings are toward pure evil and now he's eager to eliminate the competition. To this end, he's summoned forth a fire demon. All Dread has to do is pass you the 'sign' (a blood-red droplet) and you're marked down as the next victim. The only way to avoid incineration is to return it. And now Chance's research assistant and fiancee, Prussian goddess Kirsten Von Brocken, has been singled out for the treatment ...
Blue Lady, Come Back: If
Sign Of The Salamander is an affectionate parody of a
Weird Tale this loose sequel sees Wagner applying the form to the (then) present day - Knoxville in the hippie-drugs early 'seventies.
Four decades on from his
Black Circle Mystery heyday, Stryker has reinvented himself, first as a successful crime novelist and latterly as an authority on the supernatural. Together with a close friend (and Chance fan) psychiatrist Russ Mandarin, he investigates an alleged case of poltergeist activity at the swish home of Gayle Barrington, an attractive, forty-something widow. It's not her husband she suspects of responsibility for the haunting but the dead half of the lesbian couple who owned the place prior to her. Stryker is delighted: the case could be worth as good as an entire chapter in his next masterpiece. But as he delves deeper into the relationship between Gayle and the 'blue lady' it becomes glaringly apparent that somebody's out to stop him. His car is forced off the road and into the river. While no corpse is recovered, not even John Chance could walk away from that one ....
Mandarin, incensed that his late friend's book is to be completed by pompous literary ghoul Brooke Hamilton, resolves to continue the investigation on Stryker's behalf and unwittingly sets in motion a chain of ghastly events ....
It's a wonderful story. Wagner keeps you guessing as to whether or not it's a straight crime story with supernatural trappings right to the last and works in some bitter digs at the publishing game and the author's lot in general.
In The Pines: Marvellous, decidedly non-gentle ghost story with strong vampiric overtones. Gerry, drifting into alcoholism following the death of his son, finds a portrait of a beautiful woman amongst the junk at his new home. When he insists on hanging it, there is an angry exchange with his wife Janet (who is consumed by guilt over her hand in their child's death). Gerry soon finds himself haunted by Renee, the original of the portrait, murdered back in 1925 when her husband caught her fooling around with another man.
Neither Brute Nor Human: SF and Horror writers as psychic vampires draining the vitality from their fans. The fans in turn are bona fide vampires, literally draining the blood from their heroes.
More Sinned Against: Aspiring actress Candace Thornton makes desperate sacrifices to finance her ruthless, abusive boyfriend Rick Justin as he embarks on his Hollywood career - she prostitutes herself, unwittingly cultivates a smack habit, appears in hard-core porn movies, bestiality flicks and even a near-snuff abomination - so it's a kick in the teeth when he finally gets his break in
Colt Savage, Soldier Of Fortune and very publicly humiliates her. But the ruin that was Candace is still together enough to avenge herself and a Colt Savage doll provides her with the means.
According to Ramsey Campbell, "
More Sinned Against was commissioned for a recent anthology of unpublished horror fiction, but the editor rejected it on the grounds that it might encourage young people to take drugs, a curious assumption." (
Fine Frights: Stories That Scared Me, Tor 1988)
Candice has an impressive list of imaginary film credits to her name including the stalk 'n slash
Camp Hell, Black Magic torture porno
Satan's Sluts and the self-explanatory
Jiggle High,
Cheerleader Superbowl,
Sex Clinic,
Malibu Hustlers and
Voodoo Vixens.
Shrapnel: Creepy, automobile's graveyard adventure. Lawyer Harmon, seeking a fender to fit his beloved 1970 Cyclone Spoiler, encounters ex-client Cranshawe, a man he successfully defended against a drink driving charge following a collision in which a teenage girl was killed and her date paralysed for life. Cranshawe was, of course, guilty as sin, and Harmon is not proud to have won the case.
A man in greasy overalls approaches from the direction of the crusher. He's got a toolbox and he's gonna use it ....
MTF