Moskowitz & Norton - Horrors In Hiding

[dem bones]

Sam Moskowitz & Alden H. Norton - Horrors In Hiding (Berkley Medallion, Feb. 1973)

Introduction

Seabury Quinn - Two Shall Be Born
Robert Bloch - Tell Your Fortune
Henry Kuttner - Time To Kill
August Derleth - Alannah
Ray Bradbury - Luana The Living
A. Conan Doyle - John Barrington Cowles
O. Henry - The Door Of Unrest
John Kendrick Bangs - Thurlow's Ghost Story
Nathaniel T. Babcock - The Man With The Brown Beard

Blurb:

WARNING: Lock your doors before unleashing Horrors In Hiding. Ten grim and gruesome tales of the macabre guaranteed to chill your blood and shatter your nerves

This exciting new Moskowitz section is little more than a glorified image gallery just now, but stick with it for about five years and it will flesh out - promise! Anyhow, this is the fourth in a series after Horror Times ten, Masters Of Horrors and Hauntings Of Horror (all of which we'll meet).

[dem bones]

A. Conan Doyle - John Barrington Cowles: (Cassell's Saturday Journal, 12 & 19 April 1884). "Supposing that every time a man misbehaved himself a gigantic hand were to seize him, and he were lashed with a whip until he fainted" — she clenched her white fingers as she spoke, and cut out viciously with the dog-whip — "it would do more to keep him good than any number of high-minded theories of morality."

Narrator Bob Armitage relates the sad fate of his friend and fellow Edinburgh University medical student, the brilliant John Barrington Cowles, who fell foul of a sadistic femme fatale. Miss Kate Northcott, who lives with a permanently terrified aunt at Abercrombie Place, is quite the most beautiful woman on the social scene, albeit dreadfully unfortunate in love. Her first engagement ended abruptly when, shortly before the big day, the corpse of fiancé William Prescott was recovered from St. Margaret's Loch. Verdict; suicide due to "temporary insanity." Next was the turn of Archie Reeves who, on belatedly learning the true nature of his betrothed, drinks himself to death. Miss Northcott laughs when informed of his fate.

Armitage, worried that his best friend will go the same way, learns that Miss Northcott is the daughter of a military man whose men despised him as "a pitiless, cold-blooded fellow, with no geniality in him." A devil worshipper, Northcott was killed in mysterious circumstances while plundering a sun-worshippers' temple.

Cowles comes to Armitage having broken off his engagement, raving of fiends, vampires and werewolves. Bob persuades his broken friend to accompany him to the Isle of May for a break to regain his health. Cowles recovers something of his old spirit — until he spots his erstwhile fiancée beckoning to him from the clifftop ....

Nathaniel T. Babcock - The Man With The Brown Beard : (The Argosy, Feb. 1896). Tombs prison, New York. On the eve of his execution at for a 'murder' of which he is entirely innocent, Harry Jessop inexplicably exchanges bodies with plump, bearded, Denver residing John 'Jack' Sutherland who, that very day, is to marry his sweetheart, Miss Julie Chambelain. Jack goes to the gallows believing himself the victim of a jolly stag night prank by his pals - until the horrible truth dawns at the last. Jessop, whose breakdown and inability to recognise his bride-to-be drives her into decline, is packed away on a cruise to recover his health. On learning of the bearded man's fate, he decides it is time he too quit this world.

Ray Bradbury - Luana The Living: (Polaris, June 1940). The narrator, a white supremacist, gatecrashes a ceremony in the Indian jungle and opens fire on the heathen revellers. As one of these moon-worshippers lies dying, he curses the American in the name of his God, who duly drives the wretch to lunacy and suicide.

The Conan-Doyle is excellent, and Babcock's macabre vice versa deserving of a second revival.

[dem bones]

Henry Kuttner - Time To Kill: (Strange Stories, June 1940). Harmon's Mind Received a Thundering Torrent of Wave-Impulses. A strangler is loose in a city suffering near constant aerial bombardment from enemy fighters. Soldiers, refugees, women, children, dogs — all fair game to the madman. Holed up in a bomb-damaged building, Rudolph Harmon, a man of extraordinary telepathic abilities, records a message into a dictaphone while under deep self-hypnosis — a detailed confession to the most recent murders. Stanley, a physician, who has lost his own wife and child in circumstances he would prefer not to dwell upon, tries to console Harmon that he isn't the killer, he has just been unfortunate enough to tune into the strangler's brainwaves.

John Giunta

Robert Bloch - Tell Your Fortune: (Weird Tales, May 1950). It looked like an ordinary barroom scales: but the little professor had trafficked with darkness to bring it into being. Big Pete Mosko runs a crooked gambling tavern, the roulette wheel fixed by genius mechanic, Antonio Tarelli, to favour the house something disgusting. Back home in the old country, tiny Tarelli was a university professor and master physicist, but the war changed all that. Now he's an illegal, working for peanuts, on the promise that one day the boss will have Rosa, his eighteen-year-old daughter, smuggled into the country. To speed up the process, Tarelli sells his soul for a pair of black magic-enhanced, infallible fortune-telling scales. Impressed and standing to gain millions, Big Pete reunites Rosa with her old man. It's just a shame she's such a looker that Mosko wants a piece of her and he ain't too fussy how he gets it. All ends as Bloch stories tend to, in violence, insanity and a lousy pay off line.