Mary Danby (ed.) - The 6th Fontana Book Of Great Horror Stories (Fontana, 1971)
"Heart-thumping Horror! 16 Dark Tales of Devilish Delight!!" Fontana's admirable attempt to gatecrash Sev's 'badly-posed covers' thread (it also cuts it as a world's worse spoiler). The Highsmith, Beaumont, de Balzac and Danby stories are particularly effective.
Patricia Highsmith - The Quest For Blank Claveringi
John Collier - Back For Christmas
John B. L. Goodwin - The Cocoon
Graham Greene - The End Of The Party
Pamela Vincent - Hard Luck Story
Saki - Srendi Vashtar
Charles Beaumont - Miss Gentibelle
Basil Tozer - The Pioneers Of Pike's Peak
Truman Capote - Miriam
Sydney J. Bounds - Cold Sleep
Honore de Balzac - The Mysterious Mansion
Robert Graves - Earth To Earth
Ambrose Bierce - The Man And The Snake
John Wyndham - Close Behind Him
Julio Cortazar - Letter To A Young Lady In Paris
Mary Danby - Party Pieces Patricia Highsmith - The Quest For Blank Claveringi: Dr. Clavering has always dreamt of discovering a rare creature and bestowing his name on it, so when he hears rumours of a giant man-eating snail on the uninhabited island of Kuwa, he packs his safari suit and camera and hires a boat. The snail - ten yards long and fifteen high approx. - is certainly no figment, but he hadn't counted on it having a mate. Lumbering and slow they may be, but his prey are possessed of fiendish cunning ....
John Collier - Back For Christmas: On the eve of his departure from Little Godwearing for a three month lecture tour in America, Dr. Carpenter rids himself of his insufferably pushy wife Hermoine by caving her head in with an iron bar, cutting her in pieces and burying them in the cellar. Will he get away with it?
J. L. Goodwin - Cocoon: Butterfly obsessive Danny Longwood, eleven, hides away in his room tending his smelly collection of caterpillars and pupae like a mad scientist. His father, a retired explorer of note and doesn't he let everyone know it, neglects him and his mother ran off five years ago so he's left to his own devices for the most part. When his father refuses to lend him his enormous cigar bowl, Danny has no alternative but to dispose of his prize find - a huge mutant moth with crab and mouth-like simulacra on its wings. But the cyanide jar fails to kill it ....
Charles Beaumont - Miss Gentibelle: The seriously embittered unmarried mother ousts her lover, Drake, and raises their son, Bobbie, as a little girl, 'Roberta', dressing 'her' in frocks, insisting she wear perfume, the works. Whenever Roberta displeases her, the punishment is severe. There's not one of the boy-girl's beloved pets the twisted Miss Gentibelle hasn't killed to teach Roberta a lesson.
Roberta has recently discovered that she is a boy and finally Drake is shamed into shaking off his alcoholic stupor and beginning the process of legal adoption. Meanwhile, the resentment and frustration in his son is building to a pitch ....
Honore de Balzac - The Mysterious Mansion: Also known as
The Grande Bretreche. During the Spanish invasion of France, Madame de Merrett conducts an affair with a strikingly handsome escaped prisoner. One evening, her husband arrives home unexpectedly and almost catches them at it - the prisoner is forced to conceal himself in Madams's closet. Her spouse suspects as much, but she swears on the holy crucifix that no-one is in there. Satisfied, he calls for the stonemason ....
Basil Tozer - The Pioneers Of Pike's Peak: Told in a Colorado saloon. "Mad Harry" relates how the first expedition to the summit of Pikes Peak ended in disaster when one of the party squashed a spider. Billions of its mates turned up and surrounded the mountaineers, eating their eyes and crawling down their throats and things. Even now Harry throws a mental whenever he talks about it and has to be restrained from harming himself.
Sydney J. Bounds - Cold Sleep: Cryogenics. Hughie Clark, hypochondriac, joins the masses of the terminally ill paying to have themselves frozen until such times as a cure is found for their illnesses. He's in for a nasty shock when he reawakens.
Robert Graves - Earth To Earth: Brixham, South Devon during World War II. Elsie and Roland Hedges become disciples of Dr. Eugene Steinpilz who has developed a revolutionary bacteria to reduce even the most stubborn household waste to rich compost. They get a little carried away …
John Wyndham - Close Behind Him: Spotty and Smudger make the mistake of burgling the premises of a black magician and trader in occult paraphenalia. While the robbery is in progress, Spotty is surprised by the owner who grapples with him and sinks his teeth into the thief's leg. Spotty retaliates by bashing him with an iron pipe, killing him outright. He soon discovers that he's being trailed wherever he goes by a pair of bloodied footprints. The haunting doesn't last long, but only on account of Smudger braining him, whereupon the footsteps transfer their attentions to his partner in crime. At first the imprints remain five yards behind his own but soon they're closing with each passing hour, and now bite marks have appeared on his neck ...
Ambrose Bierce - The Man And The Snake: Harker Brayton sneers at the belief that snakes mesmerise their prey before striking. which makes the circumstances behind his death doubly humiliation.
Mary Danby - Party Pieces: Maggie and George throw one of their famous New Years Eve parties, and they will insist on treating their unlovely guests to a
divertissement. Last year it was the "ghost" in the spare bedroom (dry ice and a tape recorder), this time, something altogether more complex for "Tonight is the night when the Bogeyman dies". What follows is a variation on A. N. L. Munby's
A Christmas Game via Bradbury's
The October Game with just enough Danby to give it a further ghastly twist. Bonus point for mentioning wet-look boots.
