John Burke (ed.) - Tales of Unease (Pan, 1966)
D'Arcy Niland - The Sound and the Silence
R.A. Hall - The Other Woman
Andrea Newman - Such a Good Idea
Penelope Mortimer - The Skylight
John Christopher - Rendezvous
Christine Brooke-Rose - Red Rubber Gloves
Michael Cornish - Superstitious Ignorance
B.S. Johnson - Sheela-Na-Gig
Joan Fleming - Gone is Gone
Brian Aldiss - A Pleasure Shared
Jack Griffith - Black Goddess
John Kippax - Reflection of the Truth
Charles Eric Maine - Short Circuit
John Marsh - The Appointment
Cressida Lindsay - Watch Your Step
Paul Tabori - Janus
Marten Cumberland - The Voice
Kate Barlay - A Mistake of Creation
Jeffry Scott - Out of the Country
Alex Hamilton - End of the Road
Dell Shannon - The Practical Joke Not the first book I've got rid of and later wondered what the Hell I was playing at. The first of Burke's three
Unease collections. Here are a few tasters:
Brian Aldiss - A Pleasure Shared:
"Public houses are the inventions of the devil, Mrs. Meacher". A Saint in his own mind, Mr. Cream is fastidious to a fault due to his strict upbringing and there's not a day goes by he doesn't thank his parents for instilling in him a strong streak of self-discipline. Indeed, loose women so annoy him that he invites them back to his lodgings for a damn good throttling. When Flossie Meacher stabs a fellow tenant after he makes drunken advances toward her, she turns to Cream to help her dispose of the body, pointing out that she's just seen Miss Colgrave's corpse propped up in his room.
John Marsh - The Appointment: After squandering his inheritance on gambling, a man on the verge of suicide receives tomorrow's newspaper from a mysterious figure at the tube station. Over the following months he accumulates a fortune but then, on the eve of his wedding to his long term girlfriend, he buys his customary newspaper from the stranger, only to be confronted with the screaming headline
Bridegroom Dies In Sleep. He narrates his story while desperately trying to stay awake.
Jeffry Scott - Out of the Country: short-short in which Mr. Bullivant makes good his promise to smuggle a murderer across the sea - ground up in a hundred tins of dog food!
Alex Hamilton - End of the Road: Disorientated driver Henry winds up taking his nagging wife and sister through the windscreen.
Joan Fleming - Gone is Gone: The ghostly voice of Clowd over the telephone shortly after his funeral is too much for the scheming Comfort to take. For years he's hated the man who was his partner in the antique shop because he would always outsmart him. Now, just as he's about to cheat Clowd's wife out of her estate, Comfort is turned over again - by a gramophone record.
Michael Cornish - Superstitious Ignorance: Edward and Penny go to view their dream home on the outskirts of London. It is currently occupied by Mrs. Laristis and her brood of filthy, wide-eyed silent children and she does all she can to turn them off of buying the place. "This house not good. Not glad. Is evil presences. Is old evil thing, maybe murder, I don't know. Very evil things here. Not good for you." Edward dismisses her as a credulous retard and ignores her protestations. He and Penny step into the shunned room downstairs ....
Another I enjoyed from the first book is
Dell Shannon - The Practical Joke: Griffith's has written a book scoffing at all things supernatural, and his friends decide to put his scepticism to the test. When the quiet Welshman takes a holiday cottage in a remote Somerset village, they rope in some locals to give him the full
Blair Witch Project experience, unaware that the place is only empty in the first place due to its previous owner being an old creep who got his kicks from torturing small animals.
A number of these stories have since appeared elsewhere: the Brian Aldiss and Joan Fleming in
London Tales Of Terror,
Superstitious Ignorance in Mary Danby's
65 Spinechillers and
The Skylight in
The Hamlyn Book Of HorrornightreaderI've been dipping into this one over the last couple of weeks. The story that impressed me the most (so far) is
'Red Rubber Gloves' by Christine Brooke-Rose. It's a very obvious take on 'Rear Window' - invalided narrator spies on his neighbours - but there's one small paragraph that totally turned this on it's head. Don't want to spoil it but for some reason I was impressed with this...
I found 'Black Goddess' by Jack Griffith way too long, it never delivered on it's promise of an evil entity down in the mine. Disappointing. 'Out of the Country' was very short but cheerfully grisly. There's a similar light hearted grimness to 'A Pleasure Shared'. 'The Appointment' didn't really engage me that much, interesting but nothing to linger over. 'End of the Road' - poor Henry, seems like his idea of hell, in the car with his wife and sister...but a bit like the car this doesn't seem to
go anywhere...
demonikYes, I'm sure I know the small paragraph you refer to! There's a clever build-up of tension, too. Another I enjoyed is Andrea Newman's
Such A Good Idea. The narrator locks her husband in his study on a whim, wondering how long it will take him to realise. The situation escalates from the moment he does ....
I read her
She'll Be Company For You (from
More Tales Of Unease) in Mary Danby's
Fontana Horror #15 recently, and that was another stormer. I'm not quite ready to tackle
A Bouquet Of Barbed Wire just yet, though ...
nightreaderI think I preferred Andrea Newman's
Such A Good Idea, I've read
She'll Be Company For You too, but if you're a cat lover it's hard to get too worked up about a kitty in the house
I felt more sympathy for Henry at the start of the story, by the end he was irritating and probably should have been cat food a couple of pages sooner...
Interesting to compare
Splinters to these, very similar in tone but I think these
Unease stories have more of an edge...
demonikI tend to rope the two in together because, from what little I've read from the Hamilton books, they both seem to consciously dispense with the Gothic props and concentrate on contemporary horrors which gives them a very 'sixties feel.
CalentureRed Rubber Gloves was one of the stories I read last night, prompted by comments here. It's definitely a disturbing piece.
Thanks to Peter!
I felt more sympathy for Henry at the start of the story, by the end he was irritating and probably should have been cat food a couple of pages sooner...
