Mary Danby (ed.) - The 11th Fontana Book Of Great Horror Stories (Fontana, 1978)
John Holmes
John Halkin - Bobby
Catherine Gleason - A Question Of Conscience
Rosemary Timperley - The Eye Of The Mandala
Roger F. Dunkley - Surprise! Surprise!
Roy Harrison - The Frogwood Roundabout
Marion Pitman - Dead And Alive
Rog Pile - Mary
Barbara Joan Eyre - For Charity’s Sake
Philip Welby - Buffy
Elizabeth Fancett - Someone In the Room
Sydney J. Bounds - No-Face
Dorothy Kilmurry-Hall - Bert’s Resurrection
Sally Franklin - The People Opposite
Maureen O’Hara - The Rainbow
Adrian Cole - The Moon Web
Roger Malisson - The Salesman
Mary Danby - Nursery Tea Probably my favourite of the horror series as far as original stories are concerned, with great work from John Halkin, Phillip Welby, Rog Pile (who he?), Elizabeth Fancett, Mary Danby, Barbara Joan Eyre, Rosemary Timperley, Roy Harrison and Adrian Cole. Even
Bert's Resurrection is
memorably rotten!
includes:
John Halkin - Bobby: Brack is badly injured in a motorway accident having swerved to avoid the big, stupid child’s face that suddenly loomed up in the windshield. When he learns that others have suffered the same experience, Brack determines to find the boy. A variation on an urban legend, Halkin devises a clever explanation as to the how’s and why’s of the haunting.
Philip Welby - Buffy: North London. Burford “Buffy” Albright is chief among the schoolboy tormentors of trampish alchemist Halliwell. One day he goes too far and the outcast avenges himself by systematically disfiguring the bully by means of black magic.
Rog Pile - Mary: Introduces the uneasy subject of mongolism, then all but taboo in horror fiction and gives the whole thing a queasiness from the first page: you can’t help but feel sympathy for the girl or her parents - what’s going to happen to make the situation worse? The answer is the girl she meets at the pond behind her new home.
Elizabeth Fancett - Someone In the Room: Her husband having walked out after yet another vicious row, she’s alone in the new house save for their son, Peter. She awakens with the awful realisation that there’s an intruder in her room! After an age of suspense as she pretends to be asleep, the woman grabs a makeshift weapon and … and that’s when the horror really starts …
Catherine Gleason - A Question Of Conscience: Pits an idealistic hippy student versus his rich, reactionary uncle, a man given to bullying and blood-sports. I think we’re supposed to sympathise with Mr. Flower Power in this one.
Sydney J. Bounds - No-Face: The Yucatan rain forests, and the pompous, double dealing Elliott makes the mistake of photographing a stone idol.
Barbara Joan Eyre - For Charity’s Sake: Grace is forever losing boyfriends to her flirtatious, self-centred younger sister, so when it looks as though Charity is shaping up to steal Roger she decides to teach her a lesson. By chance, Robin and Charity are bacteriologists working at the same Medical unit and prone to talking shop. Which is how Grace learns of the lethal culture for which they’ve yet to find an ante-dote.
Another full-blooded horror.
Adrian Cole - The Moon Web: Tobias, the solitary old gardener, hopes that the return of heiress Amelia from a Swiss finishing school won’t mean wholesale changes at the Manor house. His worries are well founded. Amelia alternates between tormenting him with her body and showing a keen interest in his closeness to the soil. During her time away, she’s developed a similar love of nature, and the village is rife with gossip about her peculiar fondness for spiders …
Dorothy Kilmurry-Hall - Bert’s Resurrection: I have my suspicions about Dorothy Kilmurry-Hall and her (?)
Bert’s Resurrection. Apologies if I’m doing the author an injustice and it’s nothing more than them sharing a double-barrelled surname, but the laugh a millennium “comic” touch, lines like “When I goes, Maud, scatter me on my favourite vegetable plot, scatter me on them their ‘taters”, and Bert’s eventual reappearance as a half-man, half potato, tend to suggest Ronald Chetwynd-Hayes may be in no small way to blame for this abomination.
Roger Malisson - The Salesman: Brammingham. Struggling insurance salesman Donald Winterbottom and his wife Dorothy are invited to join the local coven. Dot thinks it will do them good to rub shoulders with all their prosperous neighbours, but, when the other women tell her of the obscene carryings on, she vows never to return. Unfortunately, Donald has already allowed the saturnine Mr. Anneheg to talk him into making a wish ….
Rosemary Timperley - The Eye Of The Mandala: A beautiful, narcissistic young woman loses an eye in a car accident. Her psychiatrist persuades her to paint a mandala as a means of therapy and she plunges herself into the task with maniacal fervour. Her creations are monstrous - actually, I’d love to see an artist attempt them as described by RT. Basically, you have to be good at painting eyes.
Sally Franklin - The People Opposite: The new neighbours have something of the Addams Family about them. The terminally inquisitive Jane Varley invites them over …
Maureen O’Hara - The Rainbow: Takes the nightmare of heroin addiction as it’s theme and the famous Finsbury Park rock venue as it’s setting; it’s “horror with a message”, admirable in sentiment but entirely incongruous in this company.
Mary Danby - Nursery Tea: Olivia and Hugh avenge themselves on the despotic nanny who ruined their childhood by putting the old girl through the punishments she once so readily inflicted on them.
