John Collier - Of Demons And Darkness: Stories Of The Weird, Fantastic And The Supernatural (Corgi, 1965)
Moses Hadas - Introduction: The Logic Of Lunacy
Bottle Party
De Mortuis
Evening Primrose
Witchs Money
Are You Late Or Was I Too Early?
Fallen Star
The Touch Of Nutmeg Makes It
Three Bears Cottage
Pictures In The Fire
Wet Saturday
Squirrels Have Bright Eyes
Halfway To Hell
The Lady On The Grey
Incident On A Lake
Over Insurance
Old Acquaintance
The Frog Prince
Season Of Mists
Great Possibilities
Without Benefit Of Galworthy
The Devil, George And Rosey
Ah The University
Back For Christmas
Another American Tragedy
Collaboration
Gavin O'Leary
Midnight Blue
If Youth Knew If Age Could
Thus I Refute Beelzy
Special Delivery
Rope Enough
Little Memento
Green Thoughts
Romance Lingers Adventure Lives
Bird Of Prey
Variation On A Theme
Night, Youth, Paris And The Moon. Evening Primrose: New York. Charles Snell, sensitive poet, finds himself locked inside Bracey's Giant Emporium after closing time and decides that this is where he's going to live from now on. All he has to do is hide himself away when the store shuts each evening and avoid the young nightwatchman. He soon learns that Bracey's is home to a commune of like minded souls presided over by the ancient Mrs. Vanderpant who's survived "three mergers and a complete rebuilding, but they still didn't get rid of me!" while Ella, her beautiful young maid to whom Charles immediately takes a shine, was actually born in the store and has been there all her life. But above even Mrs. Vanderpant are the Dark Men - night-squatters at the
Journey's End funeral parlour who the Bracey's people call upon whenever they have a problem. Charles is to see these terrifying ghouls in action far sooner than he'd have wished.
Special Delivery, the story of Albert, who is besotted by a shop dummy called Eva. He writes to an agony columnist, 'Big Brother', about his problem but receives no useful advice, so he abducts her and the pair go on the run. They're sheltered by a kind hearted - if hideously deformed - artist who confides to Albert that yes, he is mad, but no harm will come to the pair in his house. Albert's paranoia gets the better of him and he makes off into the woods with Eva (who's developed the powers of speech). Eva 'dies' and Albert, listening desperately for her heartbeat, is set upon by two thugs who, not realising she's a dummy, want to ravish her. In the ensuing scuffle, Albert is killed and the couple are thrown into the chalk pit.
I've not done it justice, but you'll have to take my word for it that it's a great horror story, especially if you like 'em pretty grim.
Little Memento: Somerset. Eric Gaskell and his wife are newcomers to the little village. On his daily walk he meets an old timer with a telescope who invites him back to his house for a tour of his museum. To all appearances the collection looks as if it was scooped from the local dump and deposited over the house but each item is a piece of local history, mostly pertaining to death, destruction and tragedy of which there's been plenty in recent years, much of it instigated by an anonymous note fiend. as the curator shows Eric around his exhibits he lets slip some idle gossip about local Lothario Captain Felton and Mrs. Gaskell ....
De Mortuis: When Buck and Bud surprise Dr. Rankin at work with pick, trowel and cement in his cellar, they know what must have happened - he's finally discovered he's married to the town floozie and killed Irene! Well, you couldn't say he wasn't provoked and, him being a swell guy and all, they promise they won't dob him in to the law.
Very Roald Dahl in
Tales Of The Unexpected mode.
Are You Too Late Or Was I Too Early: Sad and gentle ghost story. The narrator is convinced that he shares his rooms with the spectre of a beautiful young woman who leaves a wet footprint on his bathroom floor. Although she stays out of sight, he visualises each detail of her body and feels her presence growing ever-stronger, sometimes she even brushes lovingly against him. And then - he hears her speak .... and her words are life-shattering.
Back For Christmas: On the eve of his departure from Little Godwearing for a three month lecture tour in America, Dr. Carpenter rids himself of his insufferably pushy wife Hermoine by caving her head in with an iron bar, cutting her in pieces and burying them in the cellar. Will he get away with it?
Rope Enough: Sceptic Henry Fraser is taught the Indian Rope Trick by a peasant whose life he's inadvertently saved. Back in America, facing ruination and with a demanding and very jealous
memsahib to maintain, he performs the trick for the first time with Mrs. Fraser as his assistant. At the top of the rope he discovers Paradise ... and better still, a very willing beauty to entertain. Unfortunately, his wife appears at this inopportune moment, scimitar between her teeth and madness in her eyes. She slices off Henry's limbs and drops the bloody chunks to earth but there's no cause to worry, it's all in the act and she'll reassemble him below. Then a hunky Maharajah appears ...
Great fun, reminiscent of a Benny Hill sketch except with lashings of gore.
David Stone (
Fantastic, March-April 1953).
: George Postlethwaite meets the Devil in the Horseshoe Bar along Tottenham Court Road. George isn't a particularly bad man but he hates women on the grounds that he's an ugly bastard and they snigger at his advances. When he proclaims "I speak of the fires of Hell - I wish they existed in reality, so that these harpies and teazers might be sent there, and I myself would go willingly, if only I could watch them frizzle and fry", the Devil realises he's just the man to supervise the new annex he's reserved just for women (the original fiery pit is now too over-populated to manage). George enjoys himself immensely for two years - he's very proud of his innovations: "a stocking ladderer and an elastic that would break in the middle of any crowded thoroughfare" - but one day Charon ferries in the saintly, beautiful seventeen-year-old shop-girl Rosie Dixon (surely not
The Rosie
Confessions Of A Night Nurse Dixon, by all that's sacred!) due to an administrative error and George is smitten. How can he get them both back to the land of the living before Satan can consign George to every torture his infinitely evil mind can demise?
Lighter in touch than many of the above but with some good digs at Oxford Street and, probably, Buenos Aires which is, apparently, the closest place to Hell on earth.
Thus I Refute Beelzy: Small Simon Carter, six, worryingly pale and permanently transfixed won’t mix with the other boys, preferring to spend the holiday holed up in the beat-up summer house where he plays with his friend Mr. Beelzy. His father, a dentist, insists that Mrs. Carter and Small Simon refer to him as Big Simon at all times because he’s a smug, overbearing git of the first order. We join him as he’s bullying Small Simon into admitting that Mr. Beelzy is a figment of his imagination but the boy is proving uncharacteristically stubborn so now Big Simon is going to beat him. Even the threat of this doesn’t faze the poor kid as Mr. Beelzy has promised that he won’t allow anyone to harm him. What do you reckon?
Green Thoughts: Torquay. Mr. Mannering cultivates a rare orchid, bequeathed him by a friend who died mysteriously on the same expedition. Mannering is delighted with the specimen but has little time to enjoy it as first cousin Jane's cat and then cousin Jane herself go missing. When the huge buds flower into exact replica's of their heads, the startled Mannering steps up too close to examine the phenomena and is himself assimilated into the terror plant. The trio's dilemma is made all the worse by the fact that they remain fully conscious and aware of their awful plight. Enter Mannering's wretched nephew. Wait until he discovers he's been cut out of "the old skinflint's" inheritance!
