One more Greenberg revamp and then I reckon you've suffered enough for one day. I've more, some written up, some still to do, but I'll drift them over as I don't suppose you're
that interested in him.
Martin H. Greenberg & Charles G. Waugh (eds.) - Vamps: An Anthology Of Female Vampire Stories (DAW, March 1987)
Cover: Jim Bauman VersandiHeart-freezing tales of those deadly ladies of the night - vampires!
Charles G. Waugh - Introduction: Why There Are So Many 'Ladies Of The Night'
Stephen King - One For The Road
William Tenn - She Only Goes Out At Night
David H. Keller - Heredity
Theophile Gautier - Clarimonde
Robert Bloch - The Cloak
F. Marion Crawford - For The Blood Is The Life
Manly Wade Wellman - The Last Grave Of Lill Warran
Fritz Leiber - The Girl With The Hungry Eyes
Julian Hawthorne - Ken's Mystery
Seabury Quinn - Restless Souls
August Derleth - The Drifting Snow
Manly Wade Wellman - When It Was Moonlight
Mary Wilkins Freeman - Luella Miller
Richard Matheson - Dress Of White Silk
Tanith Lee - Red As Blood
J. Sheridan Le Fanu - Carmilla Very few surprises, but, as an introduction to female vampire stories, you can't go wrong. Odd cover. If I'm not mistaken, the artist was attempting a portrait of the ex-leader of the Vampyre Society (?!!)
Stephen King - One For The Road: A few years after Salem's Lot burnt down at the climax of the vampire epidemic, a stranger from New Jersey bursts into Tookey's Bar in Falmouth during a snow blizzard. Lumley already shows signs of frostbite following his six mile trek from the Lot so things aren't looking too good for his wife and daughter, stranded in their broken down car.
Tookey and our narrator, Boothe, both the wrong side of seventy, bravely accompany him on his heartbreaking mission. They find the car, but the women are missing. Then, from the dark comes a voice "like little tinkling silver bells" and Janey - "the most beautiful woman I had ever seen" - beckons to her husband. He is doomed, and the elderly men are surprised by Francie, the little girl ...
The grand entrance of the vampires is excellent.
Richard Matheson - Dress Of White Silk: Narrated by a little girl who, continually teased about her dead mother by her friend, Mary Jane, tries on the dead woman's frock and does something terrible to her playmate.
Manly Wade Wellman - When It Was Moonlight: An episode in the life of Edgar Allan Poe: Eddie, investigating a reported case of premature burial in Philadelphia, encounters the woman who survived the ordeal, Elva Gauber. His ensuing efforts to get to the truth about the incident almost costs him his life, but it does give him the germ of the idea for "The Black Cat".
Fritz Leiber - The Girl with the Hungry Eyes: "There are vampires and vampires and the ones that suck blood aren't the worst ..."
The lethal beauty at the centre of this acknowledged classic is the Monroe-like projection of man's desires made flesh. Dave, her photographer, finally learns her secret when he finally ignores her warning never to follow her when she leaves the studio ...
August Derleth - The Drifting Snow: Aunt Mary insists the curtains remain drawn after sunset. When Henry decides to open them, he sees two beckoning figures outside. It transpires that a servant girl froze to death on the Western slope after being dismissed from the house during a snowstorm.
F. Marion Crawford - For The Blood Is the Life: Southern Italy: When Christina surprises a pair of thieves burying the fortune they've stolen from the house of a dead miser, they hit her over the head with a spade and bury her where she falls. Thereafter, she lures her lover, Angelo, the miser's ruined son to her grave and drinks his blood.
Manly Wade Wellman - The Last Grave Of Lill Warran: Lill, a femme fatale and reputed witch is dead, shot through the heart with a silver bullet. The reclusive Pos Parrell - the only man who ever truly loved her and one of the few who never had a kiss from her lips -pays for both her coffin and a plot in the Beaver Dam churchyard. Come the morning after the funeral, and her body's been dug up and dumped on his doorstep by some callous soul - or at least, that's how it appears to Pos ..
Regular Wellman psychic sleuth John Thurstone, well-versed in the works of Montague Summers and a colleague of Seabury Quinn's Jules De Grandin, investigates ...
Robert Bloch - The Cloak: Henderson buys a cloak for $5 from a mysterious Hungarian in a costumiers. He wears it to the Lindstrom's Halloween ball, he steals the show, attacking the host and generally causing a stir with his increasingly bizarre behaviour. Famously filmed by Amicus for their "The House That Dripped Blood" omnibus.
William Tenn - She Only Goes Out At Night: Sympathy for the vampire. In Groppa County they'll tell you how old Doc Judd can handle anything, so it's lucky he's around when his son, Steve, falls for Tatiana Latianu, just as a weird epidemic begins to lay low the children of the community. The narrator, a Rumanian, realises there's something wrong about the girl when he starts getting twinges in his wooden leg. The Doc works out a humane solution to the situation and everybody's happy.
