David A. Sutton - En Vacances

[dem bones]

"Not just a few parasites. A plague"

David A. Sutton - En Vacances (Black Shuck, 2020).

The House of Cats
Those of Rhenea
Dead Water
Tomb of the Janissaries
The Holidaymakers
The Dew Shadows

Blurb
A series of micro collections featuring a selection of peculiar tales from the best in horror and speculative fiction. Nice dedication.
Number Twenty four: En Vacances by David A. Sutton

Another of Black Shucks attractively presented samplers, this one comprised of five reprints and an original.

Tomb of the Janissaries: (Joel Lane [ed.], Beneath the Ground, 2003: Clinically Dead & Other Tales of the Supernatural, 2006). Vrontisi Monastery, Crete. The visit of a four-strong party of English tourists coincides with the anniversary of the massacre of a party of the Ottoman's troops by their reluctant hosts. The corpses were hidden in a cave since known as the Tomb of Chatepa. A lone cowled figure, who seems to have appeared from nowhere, invites the bickering holidaymakers - two of whom are particularly unpleasant - for a private viewing of the piled skulls and scattered bones.

The late Frank Bough, colourful TV presenter (Grandstand, Nationwide, etc), pays fleeting but welcome guest appearance via photograph, but otherwise story is very much reminiscent of a 'thirties Gothic pulp - at least, it is to this reader.

TBC ...

[dem bones]

The House of Cats: Original to the collection. "We're being watched. You'll notice soon eno'. The waiters, the bar staff, ay, and the others in reception ...."

Unknown to Matthew and Joan, their holiday in Sant-Angelo coincides with the local festival of Ghosts and Ancient Gods. Fair to say, they have a terrible time of it. The hotel is gloomy and unwelcoming, the prying staff indifferent to the disappearance of a couple last seen lurching zombie-like toward a bizarre local attraction, the Museum of Mummified Cats, whose roof has been colonised by upward of forty living strays. On one occasion, Matt opens a window to find one of the latter stood upright on its hind legs glaring straight back at him. And why has the mystery red head in high heels taken such an interest in their comings and goings?

When Joan slips away stark naked in the night, a panicked Matt follows her inside the museum of horrors, a shrine to Bastet and her bloody daughters .......

[dem bones]

Those of Rhenea: (Skeleton Crew, Nov. 1990: Clinically Dead & Other Tales of the Supernatural, 2006). More bloody tourists. While holidaying in the Greek isles, Elizabeth visits the Museum of Antiquities on Nexos, where she briefly fall under the hypnotic spell of spiral engravings on the lids of two cylindrical trinket boxes (see cover illustration). A phantom voice informs her that these are the breasts of Hecate, "queen of ghosts." The following day Elizabeth and Mike, the American tourist she's befriended, take the boat across to the isle of Delos. The tour guide is adamant they be back at the jetty by 4.30pm sharp, as they do not belong on the island after dark. Overcome by heat and drowsiness, the couple miss the boat back to Nexos. Stranded until morning, they shelter in a cave .... The island is far less desolate than they'd been led to believe.

[helrunar]

Ooohhh I need to read this one! Chaire Hekate!

Sorry, I just had a religious moment there.

cheers, Hel

[dem bones]

Apr 15, 2022 4:30:00 GMT helrunar said:

Ooohhh I need to read this one! Chaire Hekate!

Sorry, I just had a religious moment there.

Be warned - the centuries have not been kind, to the point where I'm almost inclined to add Those of Rhenea to the mummy biblio, alongside the more obvious The House of Cats. This next is personal overall favourite of those read to date.

Dead Water: (Charles Black [ed.], The Fourth Black Book of Horror, 2009: Dead Water and Other Weird Tales, 2015). Competitive bird spotters David, 52, and Harry, 56, on vacation in the South of France. With their wives off horse-riding, the boys cycle out on the salt marshes to indulge their shared vice. Maybe they should have heeded that rotted 'No Trespassing' sign ... At nightfall, their scores even, they make the unhappy discovery that the bikes they've hired are lamp-less. Nothing for it but to very carefully retrace their tracks through the treacherous, mite-infested waters ...

[dem bones]

The Holidaymakers: (Clinically Dead & Other Tales of the Supernatural, 2006). On to Lake Como, Lombardy now - what's left of us - with Nigel, 35, and partner, Tricia, whose preference is to remain sunbathing by the pool while he takes the ferry across to Isola Melzi to explore the ruins of an Etruscan Temple. Nigel hooks up with Alan Marshall, a 25 year-old would be photographer, and, very briefly, Gabriella, a stunningly attractive Italian who relates the gory legend of the local deities, the Maenads, while mocking a sombre party of old men bearing offerings of wreaths and bouquets. The pensioners in turn admonish the holidaymakers - " Isola Melzi is not for tourists."

On reaching dry land, Gabriella vanishes, the old timers make for the woodland, the tourists following their lead. Alan sets to bragging about what he'd like to do with Gabriella, and what he has done with a kinky English holidaymaker. Nigel flinches, sick to the stomach. From the lensman's description of the woman's repertoire, it sounds as though Tricia has been entertaining all comers behind his back!

Nigel and Alan arrive before a stone sculpture of a topless woman clutching an ivy-clad staff, one of several statues scattered about the dense foliage. They've reached the temple ruins where the faithful revel after dark and unwelcome intruders undergo appalling transformation .....

[dem bones]

Of the stories new to me, this was the one I was most looking forward to, and it's now fighting it out with Dead Water for first place in personal overall best of rewarding super-sampler.

The Dew Shadows: (Rosemary Pardoe [ed], A Ghosts & Scholars Book of Folk Horror, 2018). An exciting car boot sale purchase — a document wallet, dating from the early years of WWII, and containing letters, monochrome photo's and a hand-drawn map — decides Bill to suggest Crete as this years summer holiday destination, and happily, wife Cicely agrees. He's determined to locate the small, beehive-shaped tomb the late archaeology student, Benjamin, refers to in his letters home to Professor Wellman in Oswestry. The tomb, long looted, has local significance as a shrine to Pan (or deity very much like him). Perhaps this played on Benjamin's subconscious, as he remarks an inability to rid his nostrils of an overpowering stench and worse, the sensation that something clings to him - " ... if you can imagine an invisible goat pelt on your back." And what of the darting figures briefly glimpsed in shadow?

Bill loves adventure as he does a mystery, With Cis spending the morning at a foot spa, he sets off in search of the tomb in the olive groves. Man, this is going to be the best holiday ever!

[andydecker]

You sold me on this. I bought it today and ordered the Reggie Oliver one also. The series seems to be a great way to sample writers which are unfamiliar.

[helrunar]

I read this on my commute last week, and most of the stories were fairly well composed, I thought. My favorite was "The Holidaymakers." "The Dew-Shadows" also had a very interesting concept, one whose secret was only hinted at--it's good to read a tale where certain things are suggested rather than unfurled in slo-mo.

cheers, Hel

[dem bones]

May 1, 2022 1:22:01 GMT helrunar said:

I read this on my commute last week, and most of the stories were fairly well composed, I thought. My favorite was "The Holidaymakers." "The Dew-Shadows" also had a very interesting concept, one whose secret was only hinted at--it's good to read a tale where certain things are suggested rather than unfurled in slo-mo.

cheers, Hel

Glad you enjoyed it, H. Bit of a gamble to compile six of the tourists in peril stories in one volume and still somehow omit the glorious La Serenissima. As title suggests, the Anna Taborska sampler, Shadowcats, is a selection of evil feline stories, so perhaps Black Shuck favour theme anthologies? Your post reminded me to update our David A Sutton Bibliography (long overdue).