Robert Bloch - Midnight Pleasures

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Robert Bloch - Midnight Pleasures (Tor, April, 1991)

The Rubber Room
The Night Before Christmas
Pumpkin
The Spoiled Wife
Oh Say Can You See
But First These Words
Picture
The Undead
Comeback
Nocturne
Die - Nasty
Pranks
Everybody Needs A Little Love
The Totem Pole

Blurb
MIDNIGHT PLEASURES
Featuring "The Rubber Room,' "Pumpkin,' "The Undead,' and "Die–Nasty'.
"Any time devoted to studying this master is time well spent'.
–Fangoria
"Robert Bloch has become part of the popular psyche. A dark part, to be sure, but a permanent one'.
--Gahan Wilson
"Bloch can do more in 200 words to create a personality and advance a plot than many writers can manage in 200 pages'.
– Washington Post Book World
ROBERT BLOCH Winner of the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement

All of these seem to be from the seventies and eighties except The Totem Pole which goes way back to 1939 and Weird Tales. The Rubber Room - which first appeared in Ramsey Campbell's New Terrors - is arguably the stand out, although I found the last three pages unnecessary (he could have stopped it when Emery tells his solicitor what he did with the body). The Night Before Christmas - which I'm sure has been commented on before - gives a whole new meaning to "my wife's just decorating the tree!" and its another stormer. Comeback is ... well, sweet.

The Rubber Room: (Ramsey Campbell [ed.] New Terrors, 1980). Another from Bloch's stable of mother-fixated psycho's, and it's very effective. Emery is locked up in a padded cell after strangling a little girl. He's convinced that the Jews are a race of terrorists spying on his every move, waiting to strike him down because he knows the truth. Realising nobody will believe his defence that the Jews had sent the child to destroy him, he turns to his idol Adolf Hitler for inspiration as to how he should dispose of the corpse.

Die - Nasty: "North and South Dakota, long ignored as lesser states, captured the public fancy by bringing back the guillotine. Its success prompted Alabama to go them one better in presenting a masked headsman with a quaint and picturesque ax."

From 1991 public executions wow TV audiences all over America and the crime-rate drops to nothing. The answer to the crisis? Do away with the right to a defence and promote relatively minor indiscretions to capital offences.

Comeback: Back in the 'twenties Ray Vance was a publicity man to the stars of the silver screen and his home is a museum to the era. Now closing in on death he throws a Halloween party for all his friends whose ghosts rise from their graves for the occasion.

Undead: (Bruce Francis [ed.] The Undead: The Book Sail, 16th Anniversary Catalogue, 1984). Carol is about to close the bookshop when the customer arrives. His card reveals him to be none other than Abraham Van Helsing, great-grandson of the famed vampire hunter, and he's inquiring after the Dracula manuscript, a hundred pages of which - outlining the King Vampire's plans for world domination - were omitted from the published version.

[Johnlprobert]

This collection has some great stories in it & I have fond memories of reading it on an unforgettable holiday in Turkey where my two travelling companions went off for a Turkish bath & I elected to sit outside our hotel, smoke cigarettes and read this instead. Only half an hour had elapsed before my colleagues returned at haste, running straight past me, a large moustached gentleman waving a scimitar in pursuit.

You really mustn't pick an argument with a Turk.

[dem]

"No uppers, no downers, no rock, no soap operas on TV, no place to go shopping or to get your nails done. You don't even have any beauty parlours." - Spoiled Wife

Harold S. De Lay

The Totem Pole : (Weird Tales, Aug. 1939). A frightful horror was consummated in the Indian wing of the museum. Dr. Bailey, glory seeking museum curator, arrives home from Alaska with an authentic, six-headed totem pole which, he claims, was gifted him by a Shuschoonack witch-doctor. Sadly, the expedition was not without tragedy. Bailey's colleague and rival, Dr. Fiske, "died of fever" while five Indians were killed when their dog sled inexplicably shot over a cliff. Bailey is still congratulating himself when the wooden lips begin whispering to one another ...

Narrated by traumatised night-watchman Arthur Shurm over several stiffeners.

Nocturne: (Charles L. Grant [ed], Greystone Bay, 1985). A lonely, troubled twenty-three year old College kid finally gets to lose his virginity when the car driven by the gal of his dreams breaks down in thick fog. It's not improbable Bloch dreamt up the sick punchline first and worked backwards.

The Spoiled Wife: (Roy Torgeson [ed.], Chrysalis 3, 1978). Randy maintenance man Jerry Clayborn visits the Cryopreservation laboratory to buy a wife. He eventually decides on beautiful redhead Robin Purvis, 23 years old when she was frozen circa mid-1970's after a fatal drug overdose. It is not long before the reanimated Robin realises that modern life is too terminally tedious to endure, and Jerry's first marriage comes to a squelchy end.

The Picture: (Charles L. Grant [ed] Shadows, 1978). Leo Farley, Wife murderer and Black Sorcerer, trades his soul to in return for a night of sizzling sex with his former High School Queen, Linda Durrell. Let down by a puny pay off.

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George Chastain

Pumpkin: (Twilight Zone, Nov-Dec. 1984). Cast-strapped David and Vera move to the old farmhouse in the woods left them by his late Uncle George. David, unemployed and bitter at losing his accountancy job to a computer, seems more upset at leaving behind the city than he ought to be, and his drinking is getting out of hand. On the verge of hysteria, he warns son Billy against playing in the woods or setting foot in the garden of the derelict house next door. Finally he confides in his wife. Turns out he fell foul of the cantankerous, child-hating old timer who lived next door when he was a kid. Said Jed Holloway is long dead and buried in the woods, but David's memory of the terrifying, white-bearded human scarecrow still sets him on edge. Legend has it he was a wizard or Black Magician or some such tomfoolery.

Tonight is Halloween, and Billy just has to have that lone, plump pumpkin growing beside Jed's grave. Please Dad. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE. David relents and goes fetch it for him ....


The Night Before Christmas Kirby McCauley [ed.] Dark Forces, 1980). One of my all-time favourite Bloch horrors. Struggling artist Arnold Brandon finally gets a break when Argentinian shipping tycoon Carlos Santiago, a stocky brute of a man, definitely not someone to cross, offers him a small fortune to paint his beautiful trophy wife, Louis. Over several sittings, Louis pours out the sob story of her life, focusing on her joyless marriage to a monster. Artist and model recklessly embark on a passionate affair and Louis plans for a new life as a very merry rich divorcee. Santiago, wise to her infidelity, arranges a sadistic Yuletide surprise.

But First These Words: (MFSF, May 1977). Irate at playing a very poor second fiddle to TV celebs like Johnny Carson, the Lord proves he is a jealous God by throwing a hissy fit, destroying world *, etc. Everyone is too busy watching the Superbowl to notice.

* 'World' in this instance presumably equals America.

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Oh Say Can You See: (Ben Bova [ed.] Analog Yearbook, 1978). Not really my thing, but OK for what it is (though for once I sussed the ending long in advance). Murder suspect Arthur Hale is prepared to provide the secret police chief with information regarding an alien invasion in return for immunity. His own people, the Vespixians, have long infiltrated the Mafia, only to learn that another extra-terrestrial life form beat them to it. Who is pulling the strings of those pulling the strings?

Finally, two commented upon elsewhere. Having reread both last night, they're my pick of the Midnight Pleasures alongside The Night Before Christmas and The Rubber Room.

Pranks (Alan Ryan [ed.], Halloween Horrors, 1986). The secret behind the disappearance of thirteen kids on Halloween night. Eerie chills!

Everybody Needs a Little Love: (J. N. Williamson [ed.], Masques, 1984). Still fragile after his break up with the wife, David Curtis takes up with a shop window dummy - but you call Estelle that at your peril!