The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 13 - [Anthology]

by Edited By Stephen Jones

  Following their white pathfinder came a feline army, more than in her dream, dozens of cats, a myriad of them, moving purposefully and in silence across a road closed to them for more than a hundred years, coming to confront their old enemy.

  Jo stood to one side to let the white cat spring lightly down to the floor, and as it did she felt a burning sensation in her back pocket, as if something in there had suddenly gone red-hot. She yelped and hauled it out: it was the antique necklace she’d forgotten picking up, and it burned her hand as she flung it away.

  In mid-air it exploded, a flash of actinic light splashed with sparks like phosphorus and a number of lesser cracks that shot tiny burning shards of shrapnel across the room. At the same time the cats launched themselves like furry missiles at the giant rat, straight through the barrier that confined it. It cowered back, squealing, as the cats tore it to pieces, Jo fled from their fury.

  She stepped up onto her bridge, and though she knew that it was just a narrow plank and there was far too much air below her, she also knew that harmony was restored and the Casa della Scala was complete again, after too long in limbo.

  Rain lashed through the open sides of the bridge as she crossed it, but she took no notice. At the other end she stepped through into the cat tower with a gasp of relief, then sank to the floor, her legs gone suddenly wobbly. She sat and hugged her knees, closing her eyes thankfully for an instant.

  An insistent miaow brought her back to the present, and she looked up to see a pair of bright yellow-green eyes in a white-furred face. Jo stroked the cat, but it wanted to be away, so she got to her feet and followed it down the stair.

  * * * *

  From below, it still looked like a plank, but if she half-closed her eyes and tried not to look directly at it, she could see a kind of ghost of what the bridge should be.

  ‘Yes, I’ve got it,’ said Giordano. ‘How remarkable. I wonder if my cousin Pasquale can see it.’

  ‘Now it’s your turn,’ Jo told him.

  ‘I think you credit me with too much knowledge, if that’s not an oxymoron. I don’t know the contents of all the books in the library.’

  ‘Maybe not,’ she acknowledged as they walked along the calle that led to Roberto’s. ‘But I expect you have some family history you can delve into.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know a huge amount about my wicked ancestor, except that he was said to dabble in black magic. Summoning demons, or trying to.’

  Jo stopped, as she always did, to look in the mask shop. ‘He managed to summon one, anyway,’ she said, watching her own reflection, a palimpsest on the display. ‘With that necklace, I think.’

  The other nodded. ‘Yes, an artefact like that could well be used for summoning a demon.’

  ‘He wanted me to put it on,’ Jo said thoughtfully, starting to walk again.

  ‘It’s a good thing you didn’t.’

  ‘Yes. That rat-thing could have . . . possessed me?’ The modern part of her mind expressed incredulity at the concept.

  ‘Oh, I think so,’ said Giordano. ‘Don’t you?’

  She did not reply, and they walked in silence until they reached the bar. At the door she turned and asked him, ‘How did your “wicked ancestor” die?’

  ‘Arturo Delia Quercia? Nobody knows. He disappeared. No one ever found his body.’ Giordano followed her in, saying, ‘Ciao, Signora Renata’ in passing to the mustachioed proprietress.

  When they had found seats, at a minute table by the window, Jo took the key out of her pocket. ‘I should give you this while I think of it.’

  Giordano eyed it with suspicion. ‘If I were you, I’d throw it in the canal.’

  ‘Okay,’ she said.

  Their espressos arrived, and Giordano spent some time sugaring his and stirring it. After a while he looked up and said, ‘Do you mind telling me where your family comes from?’

  Taken aback by the sudden change of subject, she replied, ‘Well, Portugal, as you might guess from the name. Lisbon. But there was some kind of family feud and the parents came to England before I was born. Why?’

  ‘Because you have blue eyes.’

  ‘What?’

  Her companion looked embarrassed. ‘It’s just that the captain of one of Arturo Delia Quercia’s ships was called Da Silva.’

  ‘It’s a pretty common name,’ said Jo, picking up her cup.

  ‘Maybe,’ Giordano agreed. ‘But they called this chap “occhio azzurro”.’ He shrugged, and picked up his own coffee. ‘Perhaps it’s a coincidence.’

  ‘But you think there’s a connection. Why? Why would Arturo Delia Quercia want that—’ she lowered her voice’—demon to do me harm, if I’m a descendant of someone he employed?’

  Putting his cup down, Giordano eyed her levelly. ‘ “Harm” is rather too mild a term, you know. When you think that “possession” is another word for “owning”. Owning you, in life and death, body and soul. For ever. Whatever he had against the Da Silva family, you were lucky to get out.’

  ‘Well,’ said Jo, looking out of the window at a white cat that had wandered into view, ‘you could say I had help.’

  <>

  * * * *

  STEPHEN JONES

  & KIM NEWMAN

  Necrology: 2001

  Arthur c. Clarke’s iconic date saw the passing of many writers, artists, performers and technicians who, during their lifetimes, made significant contributions to the horror, science fiction and fantasy genres (or left their mark on popular culture in other, often fascinating, ways) . . .

  * * * *

  AUTHORS/ARTISTS

  Children’s author Catherine Storr, whose classic 1958 novel Marianne Dreams was filmed in 1988 as Paperhouse, died on January 6th, aged 87. A former editor at Penguin Books, eleven of her supernatural stories were collected inCold Marble and Other Ghost Stories, while her collection of stories for young children, Clever Polly and the Stupid Wolf, was published in 1955 and remains on the curriculum of many British primary schools.

  Wartime cryptographer and screenwriter Leo Marks died on January 15th, aged 80. He scripted Michael Powell’s cult classic Peeping Tom and Twisted Nerve.

  Gordon B. Love, who produced the fanzineRocket’s Blast/Comicollector in the 1960s, died on January 17th following an automobile accident. He was 62.

  Comics artist Frederic E. Ray, Jr., who illustrated Superman and Tomahawk for DC Comics during the 1940s and 1950s, died on January 23rd.

  Fantasy and military SF writer Rick Shelley died of complications from a massive heart attack on January 27th, aged 54. His books include the ‘Varayan Memoir’ trilogy, the ‘Lucky 13th’ series, plus The Wizard at Meq and The Wizard at Home.

  Canadian-born fantasy and SF writer Gordon R. (Rupert) Dickson died of complications from asthma on January 31st, aged 77. Best known for the ‘Childe Cycle’, ‘Dorsai’ sequence and ‘Hoka’ stories (written with Poul Anderson), the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author published his first story in 1951 and wrote more than eighty books and around 200 short stories. His 1976 novel The Dragon and the George won the British Fantasy Society’s August Derleth Award.

  British horror author Gerald Suster died of an apparent heart attack on February 4th, aged 49. A former teacher before becoming a full-time writer in the late 1970s, his many occult thrillers include such titles as The Devil’s Maze, The God Game andThe Labyrinth of Satan, which formed a loosely linked trilogy. His other novels include The Elect, The Scar, The Offering, The Block, The Force and The Handyman. A devotee of Arthur Machen, whose writing was a major influence on his own work, Suster also wrote a number of non-fiction volumes based on his personal interest in the occult, including Hitler and the Age of Horus, The Truth About the Tarot, The Hellfire Friars and a biography of Aleister Crowley. He also contributed a regular column to the esoteric magazineThe Talking Stick.

  Slovakian-born John L. Nanovic, who worked as an editor under the name ‘Henry Lysing’ for Street & Smith on such pulp magazines as Doc Savage and The Shadow,
died on February 9th, aged 94.

  Peggy (Margaret) Cave, the wife of pulp author Hugh B. Cave, died of cancer complications on February 12th after two weeks in hospital. She was 86.

  Popular horror author Richard [Carl] Laymon died of a massive heart attack on February 14th, aged 54. The current President of the Horror Writers Association, his many novels include the ‘Beast House’ series (The Cellar, The Beast House and The Midnight Tour), along with The Woods Are Dark, Out Are the Lights, Beware!, All-Hallows Eve, Resurrection Dreams, The Stake, Quake, Bite, Cuts, Once Upon a Halloween, The Travelling Vampire Show and Night in the Lonesome October. As well as writing two novels under the pseudonyms ‘Carl Laymon’ and ‘Richard Kelly’, his short fiction was collected in A Good Secret Place and Dreadful Tales, while the autobiographical studyA Writer’s Life appeared from Deadline Press. He was set to be guest of honour at the 2001 World Horror Convention in May.

  Italian composer Pierro Umiliani died the same day, aged 75. He composed the scores for more than 100 films, including The Amazing Doctor G., Five Dolls for an August Moon, Witchcraft ‘70, Night of the Devils and Baba Yaga.

  Eccentric Irish Ufologist and author Desmond [Arthur Peter] Leslie died in France on February 22nd, aged 79. He collaborated with George Adamski on the controversial 1953 bestseller Flying Saucers Have Landed.

  Film and TV composer Richard Stone died after a long battle with pancreatic cancer on March 9th, aged 47. Besides writing the music for such movies as Sundown The Vampire in Retreat and Pumpkinhead, he also won seven Emmys for his work on Animaniacs and such other cartoon TV series as Freakazoid, Histeria!, Pinky and the Brain and Tazmania.

  25-year-old Jenna A. (Anne) Felice, an editor at Tor Books, died on March 10th of complications from a severe allergic reaction and asthmatic attack after spending nearly a week in a coma. She also worked with her life partner Rob Killheffer on the small-press magazine Century.

  73-year-old bestselling thriller writer Robert Ludlum died of a massive heart attack at his Florida home on March 12th, after recently undergoing heart surgery. A former television and stage actor and theatre director, his first book The Scarlatti Inheritance was written in 1971 ‘as a lark’, since when he sold more than 220 million copies in forty countries. His many titles include The Holcroft Covenant (made into a film starring Michael Caine), The Bourne Identity (made into a TV mini-series with Richard Chamberlain and a theatrical film with Matt Damon),The Matarese Circle, The Scorpio Illusion, The Apocalypse Watch and The Prometheus Deception, which appeared on the bestseller lists of the New York Times, Los Angeles Times and Publishers Weekly.

  Veteran pulp author J. (John) Harvey Haggard died on March 15th, aged 87. A distant relative of H. Rider Haggard, from 1930 until 1960 his stories appeared in such titles as Amazing Stories, Planet Stories, Thrilling Wonder Stories, Future Fiction, Fantastic Universe and Ray Bradbury’s 1939 fanzine Futuria Fantasia. He had two stories reprinted in the 1997 volume Ackermanthology.

  Dr Donald A. (Anthony) Reed, founder and president of The Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films, died of heart failure and complications from diabetes on March 18th in Los Angeles, aged 65. Reed, who founded the Academy in 1972, was instrumental in the promotion of the Saturn Awards and also founded and served as president of the Count Dracula Society since 1962.

  ‘Papa’ John [Edmund] Phillips, who founded the 1960s California pop group the Mammas and the Papas, died of heart failure the same day, aged 65. After years of drug and alcohol abuse, he had had a liver transplant several years earlier. Phillips wrote such classic ‘flower power’ songs as “Monday Monday”, ‘California Dreamin’, ‘Creeque Alley’ and ‘San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Some Flowers in Your Hair)’. He also scored the movies Brewster McCloud, Myra Breckinridge and The Man Who Fell to Earth.

  British supernatural fiction writer R. (Ronald) [Henry Glynn] Chetwynd-Hayes, described by one of his publishers as ‘Britain’s Prince of Chill’, died of bronchial pneumonia in a London nursing home on March 20th, aged 81. His first book was The Man from the Bomb, a science fiction novel published in 1959 by Badger Books, since when he published a further twelve novels, twenty-three collections, and edited such anthologies as Cornish Tales of Terror, Scottish Tales of Terror (as ‘Angus Campbell’), Welsh Tales of Terror, Tales of Terror from Outer Space, Gaslight Tales of Terror, Doomed to the Night, twelve volumes ofThe Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories and six volumes of The Armada Monster Book for children. In 1976 he ghost-edited and wrote almost all of the one-shot magazine Ghoul, and his own short stories were adapted for the screen in the anthology movies From Beyond the Grave and The Monster Club (the author was portrayed in the latter by John Carradine). In 1989 R. Chetwynd-Hayes was presented with Life Achievement Awards by both The Horror Writers of America and The British Fantasy Society for his services to the genre.

  Daniel Counihan, British journalist, radio reporter and author of the children’s fantasy Unicorn Magic (1953), died on March 25th, aged 83.

  82-year-old Italian comic-strip artist Luciana Giussani died in Milan after a long illness on March 31st. With her sister Angela (who died in 1987) she created the popular crime comic Diabolik in 1962 (filmed by Mario Bava in 1967 as Danger: Diabolik) and together they founded the Astorina publishing house.

  Novelist and TV scriptwriter Gene Thompson, a teenage protégé of Groucho Marx, died of cancer on April 14th, aged 76. He wrote the occult novel Lupe and scripts for such shows as Gilligan’s Island, My Favorite Martian, Love American Style and Columbo.

  Judy (Judith) Watson, the 61-year-old wife of science fiction/fantasy writer Ian Watson, died on April 14th of heart failure brought on by emphysema, from which she suffered progressively for the past few years. Her artwork appeared in New Worlds and Oz, and she bequeathed her body to the Department of Human Anatomy of the University of Oxford.

  New York singer/songwriter and drummer Joey Ramone (Jeffrey Hyman) died after a long battle with lymphatic cancer on April 15th, aged 49. He formed his punk band The Ramones in March 1974. Following a fist fight in 1983, Ramone underwent emergency brain surgery. The band released twenty-one albums until they disbanded in 1996 and they appeared in the cult 1979 movie Rock V Roll High School and recorded the theme for Pet Sematary.

  Film and TV scriptwriter George F. Slavin, whose credits include Mystery Submarine, The Rocket Man and the Star Trek episode ‘The Mark of Gideon’, died on April 19th, aged 85.

  Noted anthropologist and former SF writer Dr Morton Klass died on April 28th of a heart attack, aged 73. The brother of Philip Klass (aka author William Tenn), his short fiction appeared in the 1950s and 1960s in Astounding, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and Worlds of If.

  39-year-old Chicago model, singer, artist and writer Lynne Gauger (Lynne Sinclaire), best known as a companion to late horror authors Karl Edward Wagner and R. Chetwynd-Hayes, died on May 2nd after a long illness. She had been taking a variety of painkillers and other medication ever since being injured in a car crash several years earlier, and had apparently lost the will to live. Her collaborative story with Rex Miller, ‘Vampires of London’, appeared in the anthology The Hot Blood Series: Kiss and Kill.

  British songwriter Michael Hazlewood, whose best-known hits were probably ‘(All I Need is) The Air That I Breathe’ and ‘It Never Rains in Southern California’, died of a heart attack on May 6th while on vacation in Florence, Italy. He was 59, and his other hits included the Pipkins’ irritating ‘Gimme Dat Ding’ and the equally awful ‘Little Arrows’ by Leapy Lee.

  American songwriter James E. Myers died on May 9th from leukaemia, age 81. With more than 300 songs to his credit, Myers co-wrote ‘Rock Around the Clock’ in 1953 (as ‘Jimmy De-Knight’) and changed the world. The two-minute, eight-second song was recorded by Bill Haley 8t His Comets the following year and quickly went to No.1 in the charts. It has since been recorded by more than 500 other artists, and used in more than forty movies, earning Myers a reported $10 million in royalties.


  49-year-old British author Douglas [Noel] Adams died of a massive heart attack on May 11th while exercising in Santa Barbara, California. His writing career began with the BBC, working as a script editor and writer for Doctor Who from 1978 to 1980. At the same time, he wrote a humorous SF radio series entitled The Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The original six episodes were so popular that they led to a novelization that would eventually sell more than fourteen million copies worldwide, a television series and a stage show. Various sequels followed, including The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Life the Universe and Everything, So Long and Thanks for All the Fish and Mostly Harmless, along with Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency and its sequel The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul; the comedy dictionary The Meaning of Liff (with John Lloyd); a non-fiction book on conservation, Last Chance to See; and the computer game Starship Titanic. Eleven chapters from his unfinished 1996 novel, The Salmon of Doubt, were included in a collection of the same title published exactly a year after the author’s death.