Moonlight over a lonely town. Swirling fog. Whispering shadows. Footsteps
in the forest. A voice from the darkness. A movement seen from the
corner of your eye. A slowly spreading stain of red.
New Jersey-born writer and editor
Charles L. Grant (
1942–2006)
championed these hallmark details of old-fashioned horror tales, even in spite
of their simplicity, their overuse, indeed, their corniness, because he
knew in the right hands such subtle details would build up to an
overall mood of dis-ease and weirdness. Evoking fear of the unknown, not
the graphic revelation of a psychopath with a gore-flecked axe or an
unimaginable, insane Lovecraftian nightmare, is what a truly successful
horror writer (or, for that matter, filmmaker) should do. And especially
during the 1980s, when he published dozens of titles through the Tor Books
horror line, Grant did precisely that.
Grant was a prolific, well-respected, and award-winning horror
novelist, short story writer, lecturer, and editor throughout the late
1970s until his death in 2006. He was perhaps the most vocal progenitor
of what came to be known as “quiet horror.” In cinematic terms, Grant
had more in common with the horror film classics of Val Lewton and Roman
Polanski than he did with the writings of
Stephen King or
Clive Barker:
suggestion, suggestion, suggestion, that was Grant's motto.
Algernon Blackwood,
Arthur Machen,
Richard Aickman, and
Shirley Jackson were forebears;
Ramsey Campbell,
T.E.D. Klein,
T.M. Wright, and
Dennis Etchison fellow
travelers. Many of the writers that appeared
in Grant’s long-running horror anthology series
Shadows (1978—1991) also belonged to this sub-subgenre.
These were tales, like Grant’s own, of subtle chills, crafted prose,
and (sometimes overly) hushed climaxes that might leave readers looking
for stronger stuff a bit perplexed. But when quiet horror worked (which
was quite often) you felt a satisfactory bit of
frisson knowing you were in the hands of a master teller of terror tales.
Shhhh... Lewton's The Seventh Victim (1943), w/ Kim Hunter
Like many horror writers of the ’70s and ’80s, Grant had grown up in
the 1940s and ’50s and therefore was a great lover of the classic
monster movies from Universal Studios, whose stars have become legend.
The (then) lesser-known works of producer Val Lewton also made a huge
impression on Grant, and in an 1990 interview with
Stanley Wiater in the book
Dark Dreamers, he expressed his admiration for Lewton’s style
of light and dark, sound and shadow, with only mere hints of madness and
violence... and all the more frightening for that.
In 1981 Grant spoke with specialty publisher
Donald M. Grant
(no relation), ruefully noting that the classic monsters like Dracula,
the Mummy, and the Wolfman had become objects of fun and affection (and
breakfast cereal) rather than the figures of terror they had been
intended. As a lark, the two Grants decided to produce new novels
featuring the iconic creatures, although still in a 19th century
setting.
Original Donald M. Grant hardcover editions
All three take place in Grant’s own fictional Connecticut town of Oxrun
Station—the setting for about a dozen of his novels and many of his
short stories—these books “would be blatantly old-fashioned. No
so-called new ground would be broken. No new insights. No new
creatures,” according to Grant. Setting out to recreate the moonlit
mood, graveyard ambience, and cinematic stylings of those old monster
movies, Grant delivered three short (all around 150 pages) novels for
those hardcore fans of black-and-white horror.
The first title, issued in hardcover in 1982, was
The Soft Whisper of the Dead.
In the late '80s they were republished in mass-market paperback editions from Berkley Books. Here you see the October 1987 reprint featuring a kinda-sorta
Dracula (one presumes Universal wouldn’t allow the use of Lugosi’s
image) in classic pose. In the intro Grant also expresses a fondness for
Hammer horror, so I threw on a mix of
James Bernard’s Dracula scores as
I began reading (I often read with background music playing; soundtracks for films like
Silence of the Lambs,
Cat People,
Sorcerer,
The Thing, and
Crash make for uber-creepy ambience).
Like lots of Hammer horrors, you get upper-crust polite society and
regular folks and then the help, and does Count Brastov like the help!
Pity the poor. Anyway this night creature wants Oxrun Station all to himself, along with
the help of Goth gal-pal Saundra Chambers, who can get him invited into
all the best parties. Lots of description of weather and damp stone and a
black wolf prowling about, some bloody fang-action, couple drained
bodies turning up, lots of Brastov’s speaking imperiously and a chilly
climax make
Soft Whisper more a novel of “classic terror” than the other way ’round.
The next volume followed only a month or two later. Although we see Chaney’s Wolf Man about to pounce on the cover of
The Dark Cry of the Moon,
the werewolf that appears in the novel is actually a white-furred
creature of much greater viciousness than we remember from the 1944
movie. I’m not a great fan of werewolf fiction (I prefer something like
Whitley Strieber’s wonderful
Wolfen) because the appeal of them lies in
seeing the transformation.
The emerging snout and sprouting hair and teeth becoming fangs simply
don’t have the same gasp-inducing awe in cold print, but Grant does a
nice brief bit of attempting it:
A baying while the figure began to
writhe without moving, began to shimmer without reflecting, began to
transform itself from shadow black to a deadly flat white. The baying,
the howling, a frenzied call of demonic triumph.
Last is
The Long Dark Night of the Grave, and here we get the
Mummy. Mummy fiction, huh, I dunno. The Mummy was never really all that
scary, was he? Perhaps it’s his implacable sense of vengeance and not
his speed that’s supposed to terrify; he won’t stop, not ever, like an
undead Anton Chigurh, I suppose. There’s no reasoning, there’s nothing
behind those shadowed sunken eye sockets (remember the ancient Egyptians
took out the brain through the nasal cavity). This mummy goes after
unscrupulous Oxrun Station fellows dealing in Egyptian artifacts,
creeping up on them and then when they turn around he’s got ’em by the
throat. Never saw it coming. Well, maybe a shadow and a scent of sawdust
and spice...
Overall, these three novels are very light, very minor entries in Grant’s
Oxrun Station series; maybe imagine scary 1940s flicks never made. I
think it’s obvious he wrote them more to satisfy his own nostalgia than
anything else, a vanity project. His other fiction is more astute and focuses on modern
fears than these simple, sincere, cobwebby tales. They certainly won’t
appeal to readers who like their horror cheap and nasty; I felt they were quieter even than "quiet horror," and there's lots of meandering in plot, dialogue, and action. Grant should have concentrated more on the beloved Universal monsters rather than the relationships between people you can hardly keep track of. The scattered moments of goosebumps are rare, all too few and far between.
Those looking for Grant in top form would be best served by his
Shadows anthologies and his own short fiction—collected in
A Glow of Candles and
Tales from the Nightside (both 1981).
While nicely written and offering some mild, Halloween-y spookiness and
old-timey charm, Charles L. Grant’s Universal novels are probably more
collectible for their illustrated covers (artist unknown, alas) than for what’s
between them.
(This post originally appeared in slightly altered form as part of "The Summer of Sleaze" on the Tor.com website)
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