Mary Danby (ed.) - The 5th Fontana Book Of Great Horror Stories (Fontana, 1970)
"Grisly, Gruesome and Grotesque! 15 of the Blood-curdling best!"Daphne du Maurier - The Blue Lenses
Ray Bradbury - The Man Upstairs
William Sansom - A Woman Seldom Found
Henry Kuttner - The Graveyard Rats
Shirley Jackson - The Lottery
H. G. Wells - The Sea Raiders
Edgar Allan Poe - A Tale Of The Ragged Mountains
Roald Dahl - Georgy Porgy
Monica Dickens - To Reach The Sea
R. Chetwynd-Hayes - The Monster
W. W. Jacobs - His Brother's Keeper
Guy de Maupassant - The Hand
E. F. Benson - Mrs. Amsworth
A. M. Burrage - The Waxwork
Mary Danby - Quid Pro Quo Henry Kuttner - The Graveyard Rats: (
Weird Tales, March 1936). Salem. old Masson, the cemetery caretaker, supplements his income by robbing the dead of their gold teeth and jewellery. Comes the rainy night when he digs up a grave to find the rats have gnawed a hole in it and dragged the corpse off along one of they innumerable tunnels. He crawls in after them ..
An incredibly busy plot - Kuttner even drags an animated, festering corpse into the proceedings - in it's day this was probably as ghastly a full-on horror story as had ever been written.
A. M. Burrage - The Waxworks: Raymond Hewson, a journalist down on his luck, decides, for purposes of an article, to spend a night alone in the Murderers Den at the Waxworks. Among the replicas of such charmers as Crippen is a particular model, that of Dr. Bourdette, 'The French Jack The Ripper', which
really disturbs him, and as the night drags on he can't help but be anxious that the cut throat was never captured ...
R. Chetwynd-Hayes - The Monster: Uncle Jake and Auntie Mabs have selflessly concealed Caroline from the outside world for sixteen years, but when they catch her spying on the half-naked boy next door, they realise they did wrong in not handing her over to be sacrificed to Jehovah the moment her parents died. For she is an abomination among men.
Mortified now that her ugliness has been pointed out to her, Caroline escapes and runs off into the night. The villagers surround her with flaming torches and Jehovah's will is done. Anyone who's read Nigel Kneale's
Oh, Mirror, Mirror and the like will see the twist coming a mile off, but those who are only familiar with RCH in his William Kimber years might be surprised that he was capable of writing so unremittingly grim a story.
Shirley Jackson - The Lottery: On the morning of June 27th, the villagers assemble in the square where Mr. Summers will preside over the annual lottery. The lottery seems to have its roots in a nature offering, but that's all forgotten now and there's even talk among the crowd that some places have actually dispensed with the tradition altogether. Old Man Warner scowls at such an outrage: "Pack of crazy fools. Listening to young folk, nothin's good enough for
them."
So, the head of each household takes their turn to draw a paper from the battered black box, hoping they'll be lucky again this year. Because if they're not ...
William Sansom - A Woman Seldom Found: A disillusioned young man on holiday in Rome meets and falls in love with a mysterious and beautiful woman. It seems that his desperate belief that there is such a thing as the perfect encounter is about to be realised ...
I find this extraordinarily creepy mood piece as impossible to do justice to as I would a Robert Aickman story.
Ray Bradbury - The Man Upstairs: Mr. Koberman is strange. He works nights, barely speaks and eats with a wooden fork and sthingy. Neither is he fond of young Douglas, who spies on him through the panes of coloured glass between floors of the lodging house where they both reside. When the glass is smashed, Douglas is blamed and punished. His hatred for Koberman intensifies and when he overhears other boarders discussing a spate of mysterious murders in the town, which one of the men attributes to a vampire, he plans on a course of action.
And then it all gets decidedly weird.
Guy De Maupassant - The Hand: Sir John Rowell keeps the severed black hand of his "best enemy" as a memento of his triumph - a hollow one as it turns out, for he has to keep the shrivelled black relic on a stout chain for fear of it throttling him. One night ....
W. W. Jacobs - His Brother's Keeper: Keller murders Martle in a moment of instantly-regretted anger. On the plus side, nobody knows that Martle was visiting him and he successfully conceals the body beneath a new rockery. But his guilt is a terribly thing and when the rockery is vandalised he starts coming apart. The vandal is himself: he's taken to sleepwalking.
Monica Dickens - To Reach The Sea: Everyone comments on Jane Barlow's beautiful wig, but unknown to her the hair was taken from a girl shorn for adultery prior to her suicide. History repeats.
E. F. Benson - Mrs Amworth: The village of Maxley, Suffolk, is roused from its slumbers with the advent of a very merry 45 year old widow, fresh back in England after a soujourn in India. Only one person doesn’t take the gregarious Mrs. Amworth - Mr. Urcombe, a retired professor with a deep interest in the occult who suspects there’s something of the night about her. when the residents begin falling ill and one young boy teeters ion the brink of death, Urcombe confronts her. She is so angered by his accusation that she walks in front of a car. But a small thing like death isn’t going to stand in the way of her bloodlust.
When it comes to my personal favourite Benson trad. vampire chiller,
The Room In The Tower just about has the edge over this ripping yarn, but
Mrs Amworth is another instant classic from one of our greatest horror authors.
Mary Danby - Quid Pro Quo:
"Sarah stared at the mirror, and a bloated, moulting, deformed creature, half woman, half budgerigar, stared back ..."The Potters are on holiday for a fortnight leaving the hired help, widow Sarah Smedley the run of the place bar their endless lists of do's and don'ts. Their chief concern is that she feed Dicky the budgie, but when her lover Harry (married, three kids) asks her to spend four days with her at a Birmingham hotel she's not going to let a little birdy stand in her way.
