Stuart David Schiff - Whispers 1

[dem bones]

Stuart David Schiff (ed.) - Whispers (Jove, 1987: originally Doubleday, 1977)

Stuart David Schiff - Introduction

Karl E. Wagner - Sticks
David Drake - The Barrow Troll
Fritz Leiber - The Glove
Robert Bloch - The Closer Of The Way
William F. Nolan - Dark Winner
Hugh B. Cave - Ladies In Waiting
Dennis Etchison - White Moon Rising
Richard Christian Matheson - Graduation
Ray Russell - Mirror, Mirror
Brian Lumley - The House Of Cthulhu
John Crowley - Antiquities
James Sallis & David Lunde - A Weather Report From The Top Of The Stairs
Basil A. Smith - The Scallion Stone
Robin Smyth - The Inglorious Rise Of The Catsmeat Man
Charles E. Fritch - The Pawn Shop
Robert Aickman - Le Miroir
Joseph Payne Brennan - The Willow Platform
Manly Wade Wellman - The Dakwa
David Campton - Goat
Ramsey Campbell - The Chimney

The first in a great series that ran for at least five volumes. The majority of the stories originate from Schiff's small press magazine - Whispers, obviously - though David Campton's Goat and Robin Smyth's The Inglorious Rise Of The Catsmeat Man ("Cannibals in S.W.6.") are old friends from David Sutton's first New Writings In Horror selection. Great line-up, some rescued from undeserved horror oblivion, the majority of whom give it their very best shot.

includes:

Robert Bloch - The Closer Of The Way: It had to happen. Bloch has been incarcerated in a private sanatorium by his family, supposedly to convalesce, but he suspects a more sinister motive for their concern. The worst of it is, he can't remember what he's supposed to have done. And then there's Dr. Connors. He detests him. Dr. Connors is trying to restore his memory.

Analysing Bloch's fiction he notes several recurring themes: an obsession with psychopaths: sensational deaths: malefic adolescents: hostility towards psychiatrists.

But it's when the shrink wonders aloud at the scores of decapitations that he really touches a nerve ...

David Campton - Goat: The saturnine Goat Kemp has the uncanny ability of discovering his neighbours' darkest secrets and emotionally blackmailing them against very public revelation. For example, our narrator, the local schoolteacher, would prefer it wasn't widely known that he has an impressive collection of hardcore cecil titles including the infamous erotic works of Henry Spencer Ashbee. Life passes uneasily with Goat loathed, feared but placated with free pints by the regulars of The Ox, until the night Sam Ferlie finally snaps and gives him a kicking for threatening his daughter. Goat retaliates with black sorcery and funerals become a commonplace in the small community.

Ray Russell - Mirror, Mirror: You'd think by now, after the billions of 'Deal with the Devil' disasters we've encountered, that nobody would still be under the delusion they could outwit the arch-fiend. But no. Alan trades in his soul for a mirror that shows the future.

Charles E. Fritch - The Pawn Shop: Much livelier! Multi-millionaire Jonathan Carver owes his obscene wealth and happiness to the Devil who once advanced him $1000 in exchange for his soul. As these things go, the get out clause is fairly reasonable. For every bad deed Carver performs, the loan sum is reduced and should he clear the debt to nothing he will redeem his soul and cheat Hell.

Carver soon establishes that the taking of a life knocks off a whopping $50 a time and, now nearing death and with just the final few dollars outstanding, he resolves on the torture-murder of his employee, James Davis ....

William F. Nolan - Dark Winner: Franklyn meets up with his childhood self - and he always despised the kid he once was. Told by his deeply traumatised wife in an interview with Lieutenant Lyle of the KCPD.

to be continued .....

[redbrain]

I exchanged several letters with Stuart David Schiff back in the 80s. His day job was as a US army (or was it air force?) dentist.

It makes me think of the film The Hill. Roy Kinnear's character (I think) says that it takes a certain kind of man to join the army, and a certain kind of man to join the police. So what does that make the military police, who do both? What would someone be like to both become a dentist and join the military? Mind, my view of dentists may be bleaker than that of most people. Back in the 70s, a dentist tried to pull out one of my teeth before the anaesthetic had started to work. That hurts every bit as much as you'd think - maybe more.

[redbrain]

redbrain said:

I exchanged several letters with Stuart David Schiff back in the 80s.

Actually, I think it was the late 70s. He accepted one of my drawings for publication in Whispers. I don't know whether her ever used it, though.

[PeterC]

There's a few paperback editions of these two series on sale on the 'net. Before spending my hard-earned cash, it would be good to get some feedback on the respective merits of the two series.

Whispers (ed. by Stuart David Schiff) ran to 6 volumes (the 6th being a 'best-of') and Shadows (ed. by Charles L. Grant) went up to 10, I think, again with a 'best of' finale.

Has anybody sampled any of the various volumes?

[dem bones]

I've the first four Whispers and rate them highly, in particular the debut, but, you know how it is, you might not - it's so difficult to recommend for anyone else. They're certainly not 'pulp', more what is often referred to as 'dark fantasy', I guess, but refreshingly devoid of pretentious crap.

I like the Shadows collections too, which is more of a surprise. The late Charles Grant's preference is for 'quiet horror', psychological chills over gore (although he admitted a sneaking fondness for Guy N. Smith nasties). Maybe it's just me, but in some respects they're not dissimilar to a more modern, Americanized continuation of John Burke's Tales Of Unease?

What kind of prices are they asking? if reasonable (by which I mean up to £3 or thereabouts), I don't think you could go too far wrong sampling one of each. Maybe the Best Of's (neither of which i have) or my choices would be Whispers I and Shadows 3.

[dem bones]

Karl E. Wagner - Sticks: Spring 1942. Having just received his call-up papers, pulp artist Colin Leverett decides upon a fishing expedition in the desolate Mann Brook region. Tramping the cairn alongside the stream, Leverett is intrigued by the profusion of latticed stick symbols strewn through the trees, each of which "remind ... him unpleasantly of some bizarre crucifix." Having sketched several of these weird stick figures, he investigates a decrepit farmhouse where he discovers far, far worse. The events of that day haunt him far worse than anything he experiences during the war and, when he returns home, his obsession with the sticks sees him incorporate them in much of his increasingly gruesome illustrative work which by now even Weird Tales is reluctantly rejecting as too horrific.

Several years later, Leverett is offered a commission to illustrate a collection of H. Kenneth Allard's stories by specialist publisher Gothic House. His acceptance of the job sets in motion a grisly chain of events that sees the brutal murder of several horror luminaries and culminates in his final encounter with the abomination he first saw in the farmhouse cellar thirty years previous.

In his afterword, Wagner reveals that the inspiration for Sticks came from a real-life experience of Weird Tales regular Lee Brown Coye and, naturally, the truth was eerier by far than the fiction ....

Hugh B. Cave - Ladies In Waiting: New England. The first time they viewed the vacant Creighton place, Linda ran screaming into the night having "seen something", so husband Norm - who himself hated it on sight - can't think why his young bride would keep insisting they give it a second look. The house is haunted by half-glimpsed things in the shadows, one of which slips down the zipper of the modest Linda's dress without her even noticing, and soon the couple are lured to separate rooms. Norm can hear his wife's familiar gasps of ecstasy through the walls but - well, lots of couples are swingers, might as well lay back and enjoy a treat from his own nocturnal visitor .....

After the Second World War Hugh B. Cave moved on from Weird Tales, Strange Tales, the shudder pulps & Co., to concentrate on the more respectable (and better paying) the slicks, but fortunately Karl E. Wagner, David Drake and editor Schiff lured him back to the horror genre in the 'seventies. Ladies In Waiting, likely qualifies as a Cthulhu Mythos story although Cave doesn't bog it down in the usual cosmic codswallop. As a result, the Salem witches take centre-stage and they've never looked more spectacularly hideous!

The following pair first appeared in David Sutton's New Writings In Horror & The Supernatural (Sphere, 1971)

Robin Smyth - The Inglorious Rise Of The Catsmeat Man: "Frenzied Ghoul Axes Mother And Lover". How Boysie came to be incarcerated in Broadmoor in the 'thirties after his beloved mum reneged on her promise not to sleep with the merchandise. You see, prior to this mother and son had built up a successful business supplying the neighbourhood with the delicious cats-meat the world has ever known by chopping up her would-be bed-mates and recycling them .....

[Will E.]

I think I read this series when I was first getting into horror fiction as a young teenager. Love to get a hold of them again, see if any of the stories hold up.

[cauldronbrewer]

I recently read the first four Whispers books and enjoyed them enough to recommend them. The first one includes not only the Karl Edward Wagner classic "Sticks" but also one of Joseph Payne Brennan's better stories ("The Willow Platform," about a village loafer and the cursed book that he finds) and a story by the reliably good Manly Wade Wellman ("The Dakwa," all about a legendary lake monster). Each of the latter two tales has a likable horror-in-the-backwoods ambiance.

[Will E.]

I'm finishing up the first WHISPERS this very day, and enjoyed it a lot. The quality of the stories and writing is top-notch, KEW's "Sticks" (of course) probably being my favorite. The tales by Wellman, Matheson, Leiber, Brennan, Campbell, Campion and Lumley were great ghoulish fun. Can't wait to read the rest of the series!

[dem bones]

Fritz Leiber - The Glove: Evelyn Mayne, 65, a suicidal alcoholic, is raped in her room by a masked man in a weird silver wig. Due, in no small part, to the insinuations of friendly neighbour Mr. Angus (aka "Mr. Helpful", or just plain "Baldy"), suspicion falls on our narrator, Jeff Winters, who is known to intensely dislike the victim. Fortunately for him, the culprit left behind a glove, a special one with a mind of its own and a keen sense of justice.

James Sallis & David Lunde - A Weather Report From The Top Of The Stairs: Revolt of the abused toys. Based on an Edward Gorey cartoon and you're given a choice of ending (I went for #2). Another good one, reminiscent of Wire's skull pounding From The Nursery.

[dem bones]

Richard Christian Matheson - Graduation: Told in a series of letters home to Mom and Dad. Those who fall foul of a bolshie young Philosophy student tend to meet with horrible, fatal accidents. A black comedy, not dissimilar in sentiment to Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds mirthfully miserable When I First Came To Town. (I'm going through another gloompunk phase at the moment. Its lasted about 150 years)