Hugh Lamb - New Tales Of Terror

[dem bones]

Hugh Lamb (ed.) - New Tales Of Terror (Severn House, 1981)

Introduction - Hugh Lamb

Robert Haining - Sylow Springs
Ken Dickson - The Snorkel, The Starfish And The Salt, Salt Sea
Elizabeth Fancett - A Strange And Awful Coincidence
Brian Lumley - Snarker's Son
Rosemary Timperley - Some Travellers Return ...
Ken Alden - Justice Tresilian In The Tower
Les Freeman - Mind
T. H. McCormick - Morton
Eleanor Inglefield - The Singing Stream
Adrian Cole - Midnight Hag
Elizabeth Fancett - Baby Hate
Robert Aickman - The Fetch

This one's from the 'eighties but there's no great harm including it here. Hugh Lamb had already shown what he could do with rare Victorian and Edwardian stories now with this and Cold Fear he was moving into the kind of territory occupied by David Sutton and Richard Davis in their respective New Writings .../ Years Best Horror series'. Includes:

Robert Aickman - The Fetch: Aickman's strange tales can be hard, if rewarding work, but The Fetch might have been written specifically for those of us who wished he'd try his hand at a straight trad horror story. The appearance of 'Auld Carlin' at Pollaporra portends a death in the family. Brodwick first becomes aware of her on the night of his beloved mother's death and again when his wife Shulie disappears. Now he's holed up alone in the house, abandoned by his second wife Clarrisa (she's run off with her lesbian lover: Brodrick is not a success with women who clearly baffle him though he seems entirely unaware of the fact). As the old woman has to be invited in, he's condemned to a form of living death, incarcerated in the family home.

Ken Dickson - The Snorkel, The Starfish And The Salt, Salt Sea: The night prior to their holidaying on the Costa Brava, Robert celebrates his birthday by making love to wife Moira on the carpet after a romantic meal. Then he slits her throat. In Spain he meets widower Maureen and her little boy Terry. Romance blossoms. All is well until Robert goes diving wearing the snorkel Moira bought him and he is joined by a starfish with sickle scar resembling his murdered wife's face (!) which has been following him since he arrived at the hotel. Alone in the deep he encounters a fiery-eyed red head with vengeance on her mind ... wrong book!

Elizabeth Fancett - A Strange And Awful Coincidence: A man regains consciousness in a dark cave with no recollection of how he got there. In the gloom, he finds another fellow in identical circumstances - they even prepared the same packed lunch. As they frantically search for a way out, the other bloke's whining begins to get on our man's nerves, and he bashes his head in. So, neither of them escapes - but why is only one body ever recovered?

Robert Haining - Sylow Springs: Salesman Sam is forced to spend the night in a run down, unfriendly mining town gone to seed. He takes a room at the once splendid Grand Hotel which is now the decrepit haunt of junkies, prostitutes and petty criminals and gives the impression of decomposing before his eyes. His moribund father, raised in the depression era, has always gloatingly warned him that he won't be so fine when poverty finds him as it must all - it's like a cancer - and so it proves. Panicked by a nightmare, Sam, bolts for the elevator deciding that he'd rather walk home than spend another minute in this evil dump. He presses the button, and ...

Elizabeth Fancett - Baby Hate: Gary is convinced that his newborn son Paul hates his guts and would do him harm if he could. Wife Helen is concerned, especially as the doctor puts the seed in her head that perhaps it is the other way around: Is it not possible that Gary resents his son? The question of just who hates who is settled to everyone's satisfaction in a suitably bloody finale.

Brian Lumley - Snarker's Son: Parallel world fun and games, pretty throwaway. In a mirror version of London, one of her majesty's finest learns why everybody avoids the underground stations at half past ten. Sergeant Scott ignores all warning and steps down onto the nearest platform and gets his first and last meeting with a 'Tuber'.

[jamesdoig]

This is the Magnum paperback of New Tales of Terror, 1980, so predates the Severn House edition:

[Johnlprobert]

I bought this today & will post comments in due course. Just in case anyone else fancies a copy I thought I'd mention that Broadleaf Books in Abergavenny has seven more mint unread copies of this still lying on a shelf at the back of the shop and they're only a pound each!

[Johnlprobert]

The honorable Mr D has provided plot summaries, so it just remains for me to say:

Robert Haining - Sylow Springs - Here's a fun opener with our salesman central character checking in to the once glorious Grand Hotel of a faded mining town. A lot is made of how the town fell on hard times and eventually he finds he's never going to leave. The last page is deliciously ghoulish and grim, with our hero glimpsing his increasingly rotting visage in mirrors and glass. More emphasis on this nasty stuff would have made this even better.

Elizabeth Fancett - A Strange And Awful Coincidence - A tiny story which hinges on a fairly common misconception in ye olde worlde of pulp horror of a particular psychiatric condition (or at least it was at the time - the worst perpetrator was probably the great Robert Bloch).

Brian Lumley - Snarker's Son - Lumley does scary parallel universe and does it neatly and succinctly, with a great Lovecraftian finale.

Rosemary Timperley - Some Travellers Return .... A bit odd this one. We have a girl dressed in white renting a white room from a man whose wife used to dress all in black and had the room painted black. She's gone the way of all women married to psycho murderers and soon Miss White ends up the same way. Next thing you know the room's painted red and there's a girl renting it dressed in...

Ken Alden - Justice Tresilian In The Tower. Ken is obviously a history buff and this is the first horror story I've read with a couple of considerable footnotes detailing historical events. In his intro Hugh Lamb says he's never read a story like this & I must confess I haven't either. Paul Finch has come close but this is really weird. It's the time of Richard II and the tower in which Judge Tresillian is currently imprisoned is covered in ravens, symbols of an ancient British god whose head is buried beneath the Tower of London and has the power to send bolts of lightning at the fellow in question.

[dem bones]

you landed a great bargain with this one, Lord P. What did you make of Baby Hate?

It's such a shame that Robert Haining doesn't appear to have a collection to his name as i can't remember him writing a dull story. Hugh ran five of them in all, the rest being This House is Evil, The Wall, An Emissary Of The Devil and Montage Of Death, his brother Peter had at least two (Spring Violets and The Mad Trist, a posthumous collaboration with Edgar Allan Poe), and Mary Danby used The Vigil in Fontana Horror #14. After which he seems to have disappeared off radar. i guess his professional career didn't leave him enough spare time to spend on his macabre fiction, but science's gain was the genres loss.

[Johnlprobert]

A bargain indeed Mr D!

Les Freeman - Mind: A ghostly train ride that ends in insanity, this one could have done with a little bit of editing to make it a real classic. The author's just a bit too keen to explain what's going on, which makes you feel as if you're being poked a bit too often by someone saying 'are you sure you get what I mean?'

T. H. McCormick - Morton: Who is/wasT H McCormick? Hugh Lamb's intro says he was a journalist but he's the only person I've read who does spot on 1970s NHS hospital horror. Man with a Knife from Pan 12 is a favourite of mine (I know - it would be, wouldn't it? ) but this one's just as good if not better. A new houseman takes up a post at a mouldering old hospital where, back in 1871 the insane head surgeon got into all sorts of trouble for trying out live organ transplants without anaesthetic. The room where he used to operate is now kept locked but our intrepid (and let's face it a bit stupid really) young doctor has a key. Does it all end in tears? Well yes, but blood as well - lots of it. In the words of today's youth - big respect to Mr McCormick, who gets all the little details exactly right.

Eleanor Inglefield - The Singing Stream. The lead character in this is a Cornish NIMBY who's lamenting the construction of the dual carriageway that was my lifeline to civilisation for the year that the city-loving jet-setting, cosmopolitan JLP was stuck working in Truro. Consequently I didn't have the greatest sympathy for them, or for the old lady who says it will only be built over her dead body. Which it is. Hurrah for concrete.

Adrian Cole - Midnight Hag. Another West Country tale, this one loaded with sex and an evil old lady who smells of lavender. Every time I see Adrian Cole's name I can't help but think of his David Eddings rip-off The Vulgariad which was one of the funniest fantasy spoofs I've ever read. This isn't funny at all, though, and has a double twist ending that works well.

Elizabeth Fancett - Baby Hate. Oh yes! If babies scare you (and they're high on the list at Probert Towers) then killer babies are even worse. Quite possible one of the best horror story titles ever as well.

Just the Aickman to go!!!!

[dem bones]

After reading the above, i've scheduled a rematch with New Tales Of Terror as its clearly overdue. i remember nothing of the McCormick, Inglefield, Freeman or Cole stories which is pretty bad form as they all sound so my type. top stuff, lord P!

[Johnlprobert]

The Fetch - Robert Aickman. Dem's actually summarised this very nicely. It's a much more traditional type of tale than we usually expect from Mr A but oh my it takes a looong time to get to where it's going, at the same time missing out on an opportunity for a seriously claustrophobic climax as Brodrick does indeed end up trapped in the house on the moor with that wet lady ghost trying to get him

PS - Dem you've crossed out the Ken Dickson story but it IS in there! I just forgot to say anything about it!

[dem bones]

Ken Dickson - The Snorkel, The Starfish And The Salt, Salt Sea: The night prior to their holidaying on the Costa Brava, Robert celebrates his birthday by making love to wife Moira on the carpet after a romantic meal. Then he slits her throat. In Spain he meets widower Maureen and her little boy Terry. Romance blossoms. All is well until Robert goes diving wearing the snorkel Moira bought him and he is joined by a starfish with sickle scar resembling his murdered wife's face (!) which has been following him since he arrived at the hotel. Alone in the deep he encounters a fiery-eyed red head with vengeance on her mind ... wrong book! Right book after all. i knew i should've checked!

Thanks Lord P. Such a pity Mr. Lamb didn't get a crack at a series of New Tales Of Terror. Hugh once mentioned that he'd persuaded the truly gifted Oswell Blakeston to revise The Hut, a particularly grisly story from the Creeps books, to be used in a Star Book Of Horror type effort, but the deals had either dried up or HL retired from the game before we got to see the results.