Ramsey Campbell - Waking Nightmares

[sean]

A collection from the early 90's. Quite a bit of humour in this one, which is not to say that its a bundle of fun. The genreal bleakness and sense of foreboding is still there by the bucketload. The stories (with two exceptions) were all written during the 1980s.

Tor (1991)


Little, Brown (1992)


Warner paperback (1992)


Blurb:

Ramsey campbell has been voted the Horror Writer's Horror Writer, and this collection confirms his mastery of the genre. The ninteen stories within it are vintage Campbell: atmospheric, wonderfully subtle evocations of the evil that lurks round many an innocent looking corner.

In Waking Nightmares we meet such characters as a man carefully following directions to his own destruction, and a creature from a pop-up book so terrifying that you might never want to read again. In dark, seductive style, campbell takes us through forests of wood demons and houses haunted by the future rather than the past...

Written with all the brilliant skill and emotional force Campbell's readers have leared to expect, Waking Nightmares is horror at its most gripping and short fiction at its finest.


This collection contains three of RC's most enjoyable stories (IMO), two of which are, surprisingly enough, non-supernatural.

The Guide
A grandparent, on holiday with his family, buys a guidebook by M.R. James which he finds has been annotated in pencil. By James himself, or someone who followed him? A meeting with something that inhabits a ruined church makes everything clear.

Next Time You'll Know Me
A writer, whose best ideas are 'stolen' from him by the authors of recent bestsellers, gradually looses the plot and...

A brilliant paranoid gem.

Second Sight
Something nasty (a leftover from a chidhood experience in a World War 2 bombing raid during which a nearby graveyard was hit) haunts a blind music critic.

The Trick
A tale that previously appeared in Dark Companions

In the Trees
A man attempts to replace a carved stick which has been thrown in the road by some schoolchildren, and then gets himself lost in the woods where things aren't quite what they seem.

A creepy one, this.

Another World

After his (by all acounts, crazy) religious father fails to rise from the dead on the third day, his son is forced to leave the 'safety' of the home to search for the Kingdom of God.

As he inched the door open his mouth filled with the taste of the disinfectant his father used to wash his food.

Yum.

Starts with a dead parent, and ends with fire, this is a particularly grim peice.

Playing the Game
An aging witch doctor causes a journalist to play a variation on a well known board game, but in real life, with monsterous beings...

Bedtime Story
Jimmy and his parents are forced to stay with his grandmother. Family strife reaches a high pitch and, as Jimmy and his family leave, he has time to pay one last visit to the furnace in the cellar.

Watch the Birdie
RC appears as a character in this one, a light(ish) tale of evil beings called up by graffiti found in the men's room, and by the strange words spoke by a parrot...

Old Clothes
An old coat belong to a medium causes some difficulties for the man that wears it.

Beyond Words
A writer begins to suffer from what is diagnosed as tinitus, but which in fact is something that proves to be much worse for his mental health.

A great, unusual ending.

Jack in the Box
One of the EC comic type tales, this one has zombies, with a twist.

Eye of Childhood
Little children should not be allowed to read books of magic...

The Other Side
A teacher (in fact a friend of the bloke from 'Cold Print') has trouble from pupils across the river, but he seems to have a double that is carrying out his work for him.

Creepy, almost surreal, with lots of axework near the end. I like this one lots.

Where the Heart Is
This one takes the form of a suicide to be, whom has already chosen the place that he wishes to haunt.

More moving than horrific, this one.

Being an Angel
A teenager has a voice in his head which helps him with his exams and securing a job at a local library. It becomes apparent that he is related to this guided spirit...

One scene had somebody reading an extract from my desert island book, much to his listeners disgust! (it is a pretty gross bit, to be honest)

It Helps If You Sing
Spooky zombie-like followers of a certain Father Lazarus do the door to door religious thing with a vengeance. Nasty.

The Old School
A teacher walking in the grounds of an old, abandoned school grounds meets some of its former pupils, no longer strictly of this world.

Another genuinely creepy one.

Meeting the Author
The dislikable author of a child's pop-up book dies, but does he live on in his work? Erm, yes indeedy.

[dem bones]

A shared collection, but I'll shove it in here as three of the stories reappear in Waking Nightmares and besides, I'm not over-keen on the rest of the book!

George R. R. Martin (ed.) - Night Visions (Legend, 1989)

George R.R. Martin - Introduction

Ramsey Campbell

In The Trees
This Time
Missed Connection
Root Cause
Looking Out
Bedtime Story
Beyond Words

Lisa Tuttle

Riding the Nightmare
From Another Country
The Dragon's Bride

Clive Barker

The Hellbound Heart

Blurb:
A lonely woman with a need to embrace death... the desperation of a man trapped in a forest of unnatural vegetation... an American relives her horrifying childhood on the bleak English moors... a train carrying people no sane person would be seen dead with... and a neighbourhood where Druids still permeate the daily lives of the residents...

These are just some of the Eleven chilling stories by three talented young authors, which will haunt your dreams...

Bedtime Story: Seven-year-old Jimmy and parents move in with his grandmother for the holiday while father looks for a new teaching post. From the first Jimmy is menaced by his reflection in the bedroom mirror which grows increasingly hideous as relations with his mother and Gran deteriorate. Jimmy was born out of wedlock and Gran will never forgive her daughter-in-law for that. When Jimmy is caught, half undressed, playing Mums and Dads with the little girl next door, gran shows him a photograph in a medical magazine of what looks like a decaying log and warns him this is what will happen to him if he plays around with girls. The face in the mirror grows to resemble the log ...

The ending, with the mirror now shattered, freeing the evil reflection to take over complete control of jimmy and leading him down to join Gran by the furnace is decidedly creepy.

Missed Connection: Campbell's Dr. Terror's House Of Horrors? The nightmare that is a train journey. As if being wedged in next to a fat lady snoring convulsively and opposite a squalling brat and its exasperated mother in a packed carriage isn't bad enough, Ted also has to endure a ghost train, glimpsed infrequently out of the window ....

Root Cause: A well-meaning, do-gooder Librarian on his probation period in the job, cracks under the strain after reporting a number of undesirables - a mother pimping her daughter, teenage dog torturers - only to receive an iron bar through his window in reward. He discovers that the overpass is built on the site where Druids performed human sacrifice - obviously, that's why the locals play up so abominably. Now a bus-load of schoolkids are heading straight for the dreaded spot ...

Beyond Words: The breakdown of Ward Smith, aspiring fantasy author, tormented by a constant stream of mumbling in his ear. From a reasonably contented (nobody in Campbell's world is overjoyed at their lot) husband with a pregnant wife, he fast degenerates into a tramp.

In The Trees: "The hut had no floor. The earth between the walls was planted with carved sticks that looked as if they were growing there, not sticks but stunted trees with atrophied branches. All had faces. Some had more than one. All the faces gave the impression of being not so much carved as straining to free themselves from the wood."

Spooky adventure for Threfal who experiences "the desperation of a man trapped in a forest of unnatural vegetation." It doesn't really lend itself to a dem attempt at plot summary but another exceptionally creepy one.

[The Lurker In The Shadows]

Mar 6, 2008 10:20:49 GMT @sean said:

The Guide
A grandparent, on holiday with his family, buys a guidebook by M.R. James which he finds has been annotated in pencil. By James himself, or someone who followed him? A meeting with something that inhabits a ruined church makes everything clear.

A great favourite of mine since I first encountered it, read by Ramsey himself, on the BFI's DVD of "Whistle and I'll Come to You". A brilliant tribute to, and pastiche of, MRJ.

I wonder if the name of the protagonist, Kew, is a reference to Karl Edward Wagner?

[stuyoung]

The Campbell tales in the Night Visions book are good. Not read the Tuttle and Barker offerings yet.

And Waking Nightmares, that's the book that persuaded me to check out more of his work. Good stuff.

[valdemar]

I've not read much Ramsey Campell yet, but it's an omission I plan to correct soon. Years ago, I read a short story of his that was so weird, it kept me awake [doing it's job too well, methinks], but I have no idea of the title. It's main protagonist is a man in a cottage near a hill, and he sees a man running, seemingly for his life, down that hill. Over and over again, not getting any closer , and he suddenly realises that he's watching his fetch from some point in the future. What is this story? I was trying to explain it to a friend, and it's doing my head in.

[dem bones]

Been a long time since i read it, but my uneducated guess would be Run Through from Hugh Lamb's Star Book Of Horror (and later Ramsey's Strange Things & Stranger Places).