Gerald W. Page - Year’s Best Horror 7

[dem bones]

Gerald W. Page (ed.) - The Year’s Best Horror Stories #7 (DAW, 1979)

Michael Whelan

Introduction - Gerald W. Page

Dennis Etchison - The Pitch
Stephen King - The Night of the Tiger
Charles R. Saunders - Amma
Manly Wade Wellman - Chastel
Tanith Lee - Sleeping Tiger
Janet Fox - Intimately, with Rain
Jack Vance - The Secret
Charles L. Grant - Hear Me Now, My Sweet Abbey Rose
Darrell Schweitzer - Divers Hands
Ramsey Campbell - Heading Home
Lisa Tuttle - In the Arcade
David Drake - Nemesis Place
Michael Bishop - Collaborating
Robert Aickman - Marriage

One of the few I've read cover to cover, but other than the Campbell, Wellman and King stories, it's a complete blur to me now, even Marriage, although almost certain to remember it when next I get around to a re-read. The Campbell story is one of his E. C. homages, a delightful Frankenstein job told from the point of view of an animated severed head. The only one I have notes for just now is Wellman's novella which hearkens back to his pure pulp roots.

Manly Wade Wellman - Chastel: Judge Pursuivant, now 87 years young, and Lee Cobbett, a latter-day Wellman hero, join forces to combat an outbreak of vampirism centering around The Land Beyond The Forest - a musical version of Dracula - featuring Gonda Chastel, the 'daughter' of an actress Pursuivant had loved in his youth. The appearance of a pale, sharp-fanged face at his window heralds the vampire's first attack ...