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Post by dem bones on Dec 4, 2007 12:39:04 GMT
Charles Birkin (ed.) - The Tandem Book Of Horror Stories (Tandem, 1965) Glenn Stewart: Dormer Cordaianthus! Francis King - The Puppets H. R. Wakefield - Old Man's Beard ( Old Man's Beard: Fifteen Disturbing Tales, Bles, 1929) Shamus Frazer - The Cyclops Juju A. E. Coppard - Arabesque: The Mouse ( Adam and Eve and Pinch Me, Knopf, 1921) Guy Preston - Thirty (Charles Lloyd [Birkin] (ed.) Terrors, 1933) Charles Birkin - The Medicine Cupboard Hester Holland - Dormer Cordaianthus (Christine Campbell Thomson (ed.) - Grim Death, Selwyn & Blount, 1932) R. Anthony - The Witch-Baiter ( Weird Tales, Dec. 1927: Christine Campbell Thomson (ed.) - By Daylight Only, Selwyn & Blount, 1929) George Langelaan - Cold Blood ( New Worlds of SF, Oct. 1951) Shamus Frazer - The Fifth Mask ( London Mystery Magazine #33 1957) John Betjeman - Lord Mount Prospect ( The London Mercury, December 1929) Published in the US as The Witch-Baiter (Paperback Library, 1967) Victor Kalim Another wonderful cover scan provided by Curt at Groovy Age Of Horror Thanks to a kindly soul who wishes to remain Nemonymous, I at last have a copy of Tandem Horror 2 so what better excuse to have a crack at the short series?
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Post by dem bones on Apr 7, 2008 15:04:16 GMT
Shamus Frazer - The Fifth Mask: ( London Mystery Magazine #33 1957). Even after all these years, November 5th is still a time of dread for Fred Tucker due to a dark and horrific episode in his childhood when he and friend Robin Truby encountered a weird woman in the fog on Failing town fields and requested "a penny for the guy". Having first got them to lift their horror masks she then removes her own. And the one beneath that. And the one beneath that and .... A "little Lord Fauntleroy" joins them and persuades the crone to remove her fifth and final mask and with it the pennies from her eyes. What he sees - Fred and Robin having fled before she's finished - causes his little heart to give out. Guy Preston - Thirty: J. Bassett Antique Shop, West Malby. The proprietor's depression and sense of a dreadful impending retribution can be traced to the moment he acquired a Roman coin and placed it in his breast pocket. His nightmares centre around suicide, and he even tries to hang himself with the bell-chord in his sleep. Come the night when he finds himself face to face with the spectre of one of the most notorious figures in history. Hugh Rankin ( Weird Tales, Dec 1927) R. Anthony - The Witch-Baiter: Justice Mynheer van Ragevoort tries and condemns 'witches' with commendable impartiality: one a confession has been tortured from them, they're hung and quartered in keeping with the law. Comes the night when he's blindfolded and bundled from his home by the men of the village to preside over the trial of 'the witch of witches'. Having passed sentence, he's again abducted, this time by members of the Vehmgericht, a secret society who've decided that his insane reign of terror must be curtailed. He's given an extended session in the dungeon, and then released to discover his latest victim .. A. E. Coppard - Arabesque: The Mouse: Filip, alienated and "driven half mad by reading Russian novels", sits in his bleak room reminiscing over his tragic life and watching the antics of a mouse as it scavenges for food. He finds the little creature strangely fascinating but won't remove the trap in the cupboard for fear of being overrun. Sure enough, the mouse makes for the cupboard. The tragic life I mentioned: The nadir was when his mother had to have both hands amputated when a heavy cart collapsed on her. She died soon afterward and he still dreams of bleeding stumps. The incident has stunted him and he's never loved ... save for that one brief encounter with the young and exuberant beauty, Cassie, at the village fair. We never learn the outcome of their night together as Coppard cleverly cuts away to the snap of the mousetrap at the crucial point, but I get the strong impression that Filip had an "all beauty must die" moment ... Filip checks the trap: the mouse has survived ... but it has been mutilated in much the same manner as his dead mother. He performs a mercy killing - a brutal one - and hurls the tiny rodent corpse into the street. Overcome by grief he goes out looking for it. But not before he's reset the trap. Hester Holland - Dorner Cordainthus: Another demon flower story, this one set in Surrey. Palaeobotanist Dormer patiently cultivates the maggot-like seed he's brought back from his travels in Gondwana Land. The thing rapidly grows into a many-tentacled, carnivorous monstrosity that crushes and devours every living thing that strays too close.
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Post by humgoo on Jan 23, 2023 10:02:54 GMT
Shamus Frazer - The Cyclops Juju: Imagine a slave ship fitted with a figurehead of Polyphemus the Cyclops. A revolt breaks out on her, with the slavers captured. Then comes a storm and the ship falls apart. The natives go ashore, with the surviving whites and the figurehead in tow. The figurehead has now become their new idol, and it demands the kind of sacrifice that befits a Cyclops. A juju, modelled on the idol, is seized from a witchdoctor when the colonizers raid the tribe many years later. Inevitably, the police chief just has to send the juju to his stepson in England.
All this means drama galore in a public school. Of course they happen to be about to perform a Latin play about Ulysses and Polyphemus on Prize Day. But this is not all, as this is a most busy and terrific story.
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Post by helrunar on Jan 23, 2023 15:08:19 GMT
What an intriguing premise for a story. I will have to have a look at that (and now view earlier installments of this thread to find out if this book is one of those that sells for upwards of 300 bucks on Abe).
The US version, The Witch-Baiter, is available at a reasonable price, it turns out. Yay!
cheers, Hel.
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Post by helrunar on Apr 20, 2023 0:30:28 GMT
I thought the Langelaan story was good of its type. An early foreshadowing of cryogenics (which is a massive spoiler but I thought the premise was fairly obvious after the first couple of pages).
Sir John Betjeman's "Lord Mount Temple" is a very curious choice; almost like the editor playing a joke upon the reader. The tale is farce with one vaguely sketched grotesque image providing the punch-line. I enjoyed it for what it was.
In the US this volume bears the title "The Witch-baiter." It was a gruesome little sketch, possibly suggested to the author by Sheridan Le Fanu's much longer story "Mr Justice Harbottle." "The Witch-baiter" was marred, for this reader, by the histrionic style displayed by the author. It did work somewhat because he kept things short. Brevity is often the soul of horror as well as of wit. I found myself thinking from the first sentence onward that it would have been perfect for the kind of thing Wright tended to seek out for Weird Tales, and that indeed proves to be where this storyette first saw the light of day.
Hel.
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