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Post by dem bones on May 18, 2023 17:48:24 GMT
David A. Sutton - The Evil Bones: Stories from the Dark Side (Shadow Publishing, May 2023) Clinically Dead
The Mutant's Cry
The House of Cats
La Serenissima
Die Spinnen
The Capsule
Monkey Business
Bone Matter
The Dew Shadows
'And I Will Go in the Devil's Name'
Photo-Call
St. Ambrew's Well
A Night at the Hippo
How the Buckie was SavedBlurb: Stories of Darkness & Dread
From award-winning anthologist David A. Sutton, fourteen tales of supernatural horror...
In a Cornish village, evil bones wait for unwary youngsters in an ancient well... From a radical sixties horror film, shadowy celluloid characters become reality...
A very strange building it Italy hides a dark, ritualistic secret...
Plus, supernatural spiders, underworld creatures in Venice and a monstrous ventriloquist's dummy...Available now via: Am*z*n.ukAm*z*n It does, at that. I'm familiar with several, though by no means all the stories from their original anthology/ magazine appearances, and two are revived from the 2020 Black Shuck micro-collection, En Vacances. A Night at the Hippo: (Marc Shemmans [ed.], Second City Scares: A Horror Express Anthology, 2013). Final performance of ventriloquist Henry Hathersage and his dolls, Little Sooty Sam and King Tut at the Hurst Road Hippodrome, Birmingham, during the dying days of vaudeville. His manager urges him to drop the dummies in favour of a TV friendly conjuring act, but Henry is determined to develop his mind-reading mummy turn. Either way, things are looking precarious for Little Sooty Sam. The demon dummy decides he's not ready for retirement. Henry's precarious romance with married Maud Blenkinsop (aka "Little Twite, the Nightingale") provides an opportunity for Sam to get rid of King Tut, ensure he and Hathersage continue as a double act. Photo-Call: (Charles L. Grant [ed.], Final Shadows, 1991). Jeremy Hitching, photographer of the macabre, receives a signed and dedicated copy of a lavish new coffee table book, 'Dreams & Decay' by his hero, Norton Evans Bainbridge, the man whose work he has so shamelessly plagiarised throughout his career. Evidently Mr. Bainbridge bears Hitching no malice, as enclosed is an invitation for "my number one fan" to visit his private studio and discuss a collaboration. Die Spinnen: (Trevor Kennedy [ed], Phantasmagoria #7, Halloween. 2018). An Alpen market trader buys two jars, each containing the body of a rare, lethally poisonous tropical spider, from Sigmund Schmidt, the famous arachnologist. Schmidt is adamant that the lids must never be unsealed as the creatures carry a terrible curse. The above are all new to me, very much enjoyed all three, especially A Night at the Hippo, a particularly bizarre mummy story to add to the listing.
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Post by dem bones on May 22, 2023 18:33:26 GMT
Three supernatural horrors from the excellent The Haunted Bones.. How the Buckie was Saved (Peter Coleborn, Joel Lane & Simon MacCulloch [eds.], Chills #10, 1996). North Sea, summer 1940. When a Scottish coastal steamer comes under attack from German bombers, a dead rookie seaman seizes the opportunity to settle his score with Andrews, the drunken bully of a Captain who got him that way. The late Colin MacGillivray is also instrumental in gunning down the enemy planes. 'And I Will Go in the Devil's Name': (Stephen Jones [ed.], The Mammoth Book of Werewolves, 1994). In the death throes of their relationship, a couple take a mountaineering holiday on Bute. With Douglas pleading incapacity, an angry Samantha climbs Lubas Crag to visit the ruined chapel of St. Blanes, a site once favoured by the island's witches now rich in red-capped fairy mushrooms. Instinctively, she realises that it will only take a bite to set her free. Folk horror before the bandwagon. The Capsule: (David A. & Linden Riley [eds.], Kitchen Sink Gothic 2, 2020). Jug O' Punch Folk Club, Digbeth Civic Hall, Birmingham, one Halloween night in the mid-late 'sixties. A teenage hippie is approached by an oddball Dracula clone. Nigel claims to have undergone abduction and surgical examination by extraterrestrials, who provided him with two black pills, one of which he's dropped, the other he has no wish to take. The youth accepts the capsule which, inevitably, he swallows while drunk. Three decades on, he has only the most ethereal recollections of his life thereafter, and can no longer be sure if he's alive or dead. |
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Post by dem bones on May 29, 2023 16:09:10 GMT
Clinically Dead: (Stephen Jones [ed.], The Mammoth Book of Zombies, 1993). Had forgotten how much this one got to me on first acquaintance - one of those very rare instances of a horror story actually doing what it's supposed to. During daily visits to his dying mother in hospital, Russell Bray notes with mounting alarm that she and fellow terminal patients are taking an inordinately long, painful time dying. It is almost as though they are being kept alive to be used as guinea pigs for experimental surgical techniques. Monkey Business: ( Clinically Dead & Other Tales of the Supernatural, 2006). Gualan, Mexico. "Do it with this on ..." Ramirez, a skinny, malnourished Brazilian drifter, steals a ghoulish monkey headdress from a Quichuan Indian, Hunnac, who is happy for him to do so. The 'howler' is cursed. Hunnac gloatingly informs the wretched theif that the only way he can rid himself of agonising migraines is to fit the rotting relic to the head of an American smuggler, Devereux, last known whereabouts, Los Angeles.
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Post by dem bones on Jun 2, 2023 9:41:35 GMT
Bone Matter: (Rosemary Pardoe [ed.], The Ghosts & Scholars Book of Shadows: Vol. 3, 2016). Richard's mounting obsession with a beautiful young woman he met at the Cropredy folk festival, leads him to her home village of Muntern in the Malvern Hills. Serena, who works at the family funeral parlour gifted him a foul-smelling, ancient bone which he now carries with him everywhere. The search lures him inside a disquieting church and a museum of curiosities housing the grim collection of the late George Baxter, a locally despised antiquarian whose practices evidently extended to black magic and necromancy ... The House of Cats: ( En Vacances, 2020). A holiday in Southern Italy turns to nightmare for British tourists when their fortnight in the sun clashes with the local festival of ghosts and ancient Gods. Matthew and Joan grow uncomfortably aware that they are being watched by the hotel staff who show no concern at the disappearance of an annoying couple last seen entering the bizarre museum of mummified cats .... The Mutant's Cry: (David A. & Linden Riley [eds.], Kitchen Sink Gothic, 2015). Stan reluctantly takes in his trouble-magnet pal, Freddie, sixteen, who has been thrown out by his abusive dad yet again, this time for punching back. Freddie, who seems to be sickening for something disgusting, is anxious they should visit the Jacey Cinema to see this new horror movie the critics are warning against.
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Post by dem bones on Jun 5, 2023 17:11:02 GMT
St. Ambrews Well: (Stephen Jones [ed.], The Mammoth Book of Folk Horror, 2021). Two boys caravaning in Cornwall with parents, slip out after dark in search of a local shrieking bogie, the Gannel Crake, as featured in Cornish Ghosts. They find something a lot worse ... The Dew Shadows: ( En Vacances, 2020). " ... if you can imagine an invisible goat pelt on your back." In a similar vein to above, Bill persuades Cicely that this summer they should holiday on Crete where they spent such a lovely fortnight back in 1992. Of course, now they're here, he might as well follow up his research into the ancient tomb he learned of via a sheaf of papers purchased at a car boot sale.  SMS: (David A. Riley [ed.], Beyond #3, Sept-Oct 1995: Clinically Dead & Other Tales of the Supernatural, 2006). Left till last, as I remember loving it on first acquaintance in Mr. Riley's Beyond. Virgin twin sisters Polyhymia and Euphrosyne Lethbridge fall prey to their trusted guardians, the Fortesque's, two of legion amorous undead seventeenth century plague victims risen from the canals and subterranean ruins of the city. Perhaps the nastiest story after Clinically Dead - not that St. Ambrew's Well is a bed of roses, either. A proper horror selection, highly recommended, particularly but not exclusively to fellow Black Book fans.
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