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Dark Terrors 5
The Gollancz Book of Horror
Edited By Stephen Jones &
David Sutton
Scanned & Proofed By MadMaxAU
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Contents
Introduction
the editors
At Home in the Pubs of Old London
christopher fowler
Valentia
caitlín r. kiernan
Barking Sands
richard christian matheson
Everything, in All the Wrong Order
chaz brenchley
Savannah is Six
james van pelt
Now Day Was Fled as the Worm Had Wished
brian hodge
Why Rudy Can’t Read
david j. schow
No Story in It
ramsey campbell
Witch - Compass
graham masterton
The Proposal
nicholas royle
Changes
c. bruce hunter
The Abortionist’s Horse (A Nightmare)
tanith lee
The Handover
michael marshall smith
Pearl
roberta lannes
Beauregard
eric brown
Necromimicos
nancy kilpatrick
The Bootleg Heart
joel lane
Saturday
cherry wilder
The Girlfriends of Dorian Gray
gregory frost
Bottle Babies
mary a. turzillo
Going to Series
kim newman
Haunts
lisa tuttle
My Present Wife
dennis etchison
Alicia
melanie tem
The Haunted Bookshop
brian stableford
Starfucker
mick garris
Destroyer of Worlds
gwyneth jones
The Geezers
peter straub
Honeysuckle
william r. trotter
Final Departure
gahan wilson
Pelican Cay
david case
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Introduction
It is another dark and stormy night...and for many of us, there is nothing more welcome than getting comfortable with a big book of stories specifically designed to induce the hairs on the back of our neck to stand on end and make our flesh creep.
The horror genre has a long and proud tradition of weighty tomes of terror, ranging from Dashiell Hammett’sCreeps By Night, J.M. Parrish and John R. Crossland’s The Mammoth Book of Thrillers, Ghosts and Mysteries, Dennis Wheatley’s A Century of Horror and Christine Campbell Thompson’s The ‘Not at Night’ Omnibus, through Herbert A. Wise and Phyllis Fraser’s Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural, Boris Karloff’s And the Darkness Falls and August Derleth’s The Sleeping & the Dead, to more contemporary collections such as Kirby McCauley’s Dark Forces, Douglas E. Winter’s Prime Evil and Al Sarrantonio’s 999: New Stories of Horror and Suspense.
The bigger the book, the wider the spectrum of fears which can be explored.
For more than a decade we have been fortunate to have the opportunity to compile a number of well-received volumes of contemporary horror. Within these various titles we have been able to present some of the best and most iconoclastic work by established authors in the genre, as well as introducing a number of new and talented writers to a wider readership. But no matter how many different authors we selected, no matter how much we convinced our publishers to allow us to massage the page-count and squeeze the budget, there were always stories we admired which we had to leave out when making our final selection.
When you receive literally hundreds of submissions, as we do when we begin compiling a volume, it is only ever possible to accept a small percentage of the best manuscripts - and trust that those you have regretfully had to reject will find a home in some other anthology or magazine.
Which is why, when we were offered the opportunity to double the size of Dark Terrors, we jumped at the chance. A huge volume of modern horror and dark suspense, published on a regular basis, is exactly what the genre (and we hope the reader) wants. Now we would be able to include more stories by some of our favourite writers; we would be able to give more newcomers a professional forum for their fiction, and we would finally be able to incorporate more of those troublesome novellas, which fall between short story and novel length but which allow writers to flex their creative muscles.
Sure we would.
No sooner had we announced that we were reading than the manuscripts began flooding in. There is no better way than editing an anthology to make you realise that there are simply not enough markets for horror fiction available out there. Of course, much of what we received was unsuitable for one reason or another. But there were still more than enough outstanding stories to fill a big book. And another...and another. In fact, a list of some of the authors we had to reject would make many other editors green with envy.
And in the end, despite having many more words to work with, we once again found ourselves massaging the page-count and squeezing the budget so that we could include just one more story by a favourite author or a talented newcomer.
Which is why we are so proud of this particular volume. As we have said before, we do not expect our readers to agree with all our choices, but we truly believe that this is as powerful and representative a selection of modern horror as we could compile.
So sit back and relax as the night draws in and the wind begins to howl outside. It is time to feel those nape hairs stiffen and the goosebumps tingle as you once again prepare to lose yourself within those dark terrors which follow...
Stephen Jones and David Sutton
April, 2000
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At Home in the Pubs of Old London
CHRISTOPHER FOWLER
The Museum Tavern, Museum Street, Bloomsbury
Despite its location diagonally opposite the British Museum, its steady turnover of listless Australian barstaff and its passing appraisal by tourists on quests for the British pub experience (comprising two sips from half a pint of bitter and one Salt ‘n’ Vinegar flavoured crisp, nibbled and returned to its packet in horror), this drinking establishment retains the authentically seedy bookishness of Bloomsbury because its corners are usually occupied by half-cut proofreaders from nearby publishing houses. I love pubs like this one because so much about them remains constant in a sliding world: the smell of hops, the ebb of background conversation, muted light through coloured glass, china tap handles, mirrored walls, bars of oak and brass. Even the pieces of fake Victoriana, modelled on increasingly obsolete pub ornaments, become objects of curiosity in themselves.
At this time I was working in a comic shop, vending tales of fantastic kingdoms to whey-faced netheads who were incapable of saving a sandwich in a serviette, let alone an alien planet, and it was in this pub that I met Lesley. She was sitting with a group of glum-looking Gothic Gormenghast offcuts who were on their way to a book launch at the new-age smells ‘n’ bells shop around the corner, and she was clearly unenchanted with the idea of joining them for a session of warm Liebfraumilch and crystal-gazing, because as each member of the group drifted off she found an excuse to stay on, and we ended up sitting together by ourselves. As she refolded her jacket a rhinestone pin dropped from the lapel, and I picked it up for her. The
badge formed her initials - L,L - which made me think of Superman, because he had a history of falling for women with those initials, but I reminded myself that I was no superman, just a man who liked making friends in pubs. I asked her if she’d had a good Christmas, she said no, I said I hadn’t either and we just chatted from there. I told Lesley that I was something of an artist and would love to sketch her, and she tentatively agreed to sit for me at some point in the future.
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The World’s End, High Street, Camden Town
It’s a funny pub, this one, because the interior brickwork makes it look sort of inside out, and there’s a steady through-traffic of punters wherever you stand, so you’re always in the way. It’s not my kind of place, more a network of bars and clubs than a proper boozer. It used to be called the Mother Red Cap, after a witch who lived in Camden. There are still a few of her pals inhabiting the place if black eyeliner, purple lipstick and pointed boots make you a likely candidate for cauldron-stirring. A white stone statue of Britannia protrudes from the first floor of the building opposite, above a shoe shop, but I don’t think anyone notices it, just as they don’t know about the witch. Yet if you step inside the foyer of the Black Cap, a few doors further down, you can see the witch herself, painted on a tiled wall. It’s funny how people miss so much of what’s going on around them. I was beginning to think Sophie wouldn’t show up, then I became convinced she had, and I had missed her.
Anyway, she finally appeared and we hit it off beautifully. She had tied back her long auburn hair so that it was out of her eyes, and I couldn’t stop looking at her. It’s never difficult to find new models; women are flattered by the thought of someone admiring their features. She half-smiled all the time, which was disconcerting at first, but after a while I enjoyed it because she looked like she was in on a secret that no one else shared. I had met her two days earlier in the coffee shop in Bermondsey where she was working, and she had suggested going for a drink, describing our meeting place to me as ‘that pub in Camden near the shoe shop’. The one thing Camden has, more than any other place in London, is shoe shops, hundreds of the bastards, so you can understand why I was worried.
It was quite crowded and we had to stand, but after a while Sophie felt tired and wanted to sit down, so we found a corner and wedged ourselves in behind a pile of coats. The relentless music was giving me a headache, so I was eventually forced to take my leave.
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The King’s Head, Upper Street, Islington
The back of this pub operates a tiny theatre, so the bar suddenly fills up with the gin-and-tonic brigade at seven each evening, but the front room is very nice in a battered, nicotine-scoured way. It continued to operate on the old monetary system of pounds, shillings and pence for years, long after they brought in decimal currency. I’m sure the management just did it to confuse non regulars who weren’t in the habit of being asked to stump up nineteen and elevenpence halfpenny for a libation. Emma was late, having been forced to stay behind at her office, a property company in Essex Road. The choice of territory was mine. Although it was within walking distance of her office, she hadn’t been here before, and loved hearing this mad trilling coming from a door at the back of the pub. I’d forgotten to explain about the theatre. They were staging a revival of a twenties musical, and there were a lot of songs about croquet and how ghastly foreigners were. I remember Emma as being very pale and thin, with cropped blonde hair; she could easily have passed for a jazz-age flapper. I told her she should have auditioned for the show, but she explained that she was far too fond of a drink to ever remember anything as complicated as a dance step. At the intermission, a girl dressed as a giant sequinned jellyfish popped out to order a gin and French; apparently she had a big number in the second act. We taxed the barman’s patience by getting him to make up strange cocktails, and spent most of the evening laughing so loudly they probably heard us on stage. Emma agreed to sit for me at some point in the future, and although there was never a suggestion that our session would develop into anything more, I could tell that it probably would. I was about to kiss her when she suddenly thought something had bitten her, and I was forced to explain that my coat had picked up several fleas from my cat. She went off me after this, and grew silent, so I left.
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The Pineapple, Leverton Street, Kentish Town
This tucked-away pub can’t have changed much in a hundred years, apart from the removal of the wooden partitions that separated the snug from the saloon. A mild spring morning, the Sunday papers spread out before us, an ancient smelly Labrador flatulating in front of the fire, a couple of pints of decent bitter and two packets of pork scratchings. Sarah kept reading out snippets from theNews of the World, and I did the same with the Observer, but mine were more worthy than hers, and therefore not as funny. There was a strange man with an enormous nose sitting near the gents’ toilet who kept telling people that they looked Russian. Perhaps he was, too, and needed to find someone from his own country. It’s that kind of pub; it makes you think of home.
I noticed that one of Sarah’s little habits was rubbing her wrists together when she was thinking. Every woman has some kind of private signature like this. Such a gesture marks her out to a lover, or an old friend. I watched her closely scanning the pages - she had forgotten her glasses - and felt a great inner calm. Only once did she disturb the peace between us by asking if I had been out with many women. I lied, of course, as you do, but the question remained in the back of my head, picking and scratching at my brain, right up until I said goodbye to her. It was warm in the pub and she had grown sleepy; she actually fell asleep at one point, so I decided to quietly leave.
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The Anchor, Park Street, Southwark
It’s pleasant here on rainy clays. In the summer, tourists visiting the nearby Globe fill up the bars and pack the riverside tables. Did you know that pub signs were originally provided so that the illiterate could locate them? The Anchor was built after the Southwark fire, which in 1676 razed the South Bank just as the Great Fire had attacked the North side ten years earlier. As I entered the pub, I noticed that the tide was unusually high, and the Thames was so dense and pinguid that it looked like a setting jelly. It wasn’t a good start to the evening.
I had several pints of strong bitter and grew more talkative as our session progressed. We ate Toad-in-the-Hole, smothered in elastic gravy. I was excited about the idea of Carol and I going out together. I think she was, too, although she warned me that she had some loose ends to tie up, a former boyfriend to get out of her system, and suggested that perhaps we shouldn’t rush at things. Out of the blue, she told me to stop watching her so much, as if she was frightened that she couldn’t take the scrutiny. But she can. I love seeing the familiar gestures of women, the half smiles, the rubbing together of their hands, the sudden light in their eyes when they remember something they have to tell you. I can’t remember what they say, only how they look. I would never take pictures of them, like some men I’ve read about. I never look back, you understand. It’s too upsetting. Far more important to concentrate on who you’re with, and making them happy. I’d like to think I made Carol feel special. She told me she’d never had much luck with men, and I believe it’s true that some women just attract the wrong sort. We sat side by side watching the rain on the water, and I felt her head lower gently onto my shoulder, where it remained until I moved - a special moment, and one that I shall always remember.
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The Lamb & Flag, Rose Street, Covent Garden
You could tell summer was coming because people were drinking on the street, searching for spaces on the windowsills of the pub to balance their beer glasses. This building looks like an old coaching inn, and stands beside an arch over an alleyway, like the Pillars of Hercules in Greek Street. It’s very old, with lots of knotted wood, and I don’t suppose there’s a straight angle in the place. The smoky bar is awkward to negotiate when you’re carrying a drink in either ha
nd - as I so often am!
This evening Kathy asked why I had not invited her to meet any of my friends. I could tell by the look on her face that she was wondering if I thought she wasn’t good enough, and so I was forced to admit that I didn’t really have any friends to whom I could introduce her. She was more reticent than most of the girls I had met until then, more private. She acted as though there was something on her mind that she didn’t want to share with me. When I asked her to specify the problem, she either wouldn’t or couldn’t. To be honest, I think the problem was me, and that was why it didn’t work out between us. Something about my behaviour made her uneasy, right from the start. There was no trust between us, which in itself was unusual, because most women are quick to confide in me. They sense my innate decency, my underlying respect for them. I look at the other drinkers standing around me, and witness the contempt they hold for women. My God, a blind man could feel their disdain. That’s probably why I have no mates - I don’t like my own sex. I’m ashamed of the whole alpha male syndrome. It only leads to trouble.
Dark Terrors 5 - The Gollancz Book of Horror - [Anthology] Page 1
