Favorite Horror Stories: "Charles" by Shirley Jackson (1948)

Before there was The Bad Seed or Damien, there was "Charles." 

The esteemed Shirley Jackson's other famous short story, "Charles" first appeared in the fancy ladies' magazine Mademoiselle in the summer of 1948. It was next included in her landmark short story collection the following year, titled The Lottery: The Adventures of James Harris, and most likely has never been out of print; it is taught in schools to this day—which is not any way I'd like people to be introduced to this story. Like most good things, "Charles" deserves its own special discovery.

 

Original hardcover, Farrar, Strauss & Co.

I can't recall when or how I first read "Charles," but I was a teenager, so that was some decades ago. I've always remembered that frisson of the ending, and the final sentence is a perfect one, upending everything that has come before, adding an unexpected darkness to what had seemed to be a sly, almost whimsical tale of the domestic (Jackson was also famous for her wryly observed stories of her home life, like in Raising Demons, seen below in a 1970s reprint).

Every day young little Laurie heads off to kindergarten on his own, "a swaggering character," and when he returns, regales his bemused mother and father about a classmate named Charles and his unpleasant antics: first Charles uses the Lord's name in vain, then hits the teacher, then bounces the playground seesaw off a girl's head, and more; he even becomes a kiss-ass while other kids get in trouble for things he goads them into doing. Laurie misbehaves more at home, in charming child-like ways, and the name Charles itself even becomes an in-joke whenever a family member makes a mess (akin to something "Britta-d" on "Community").

 

First paperback, 1950, with a more enticing cover and subtitle

Spoiler! Gonna talk about the ending. The parents aren't too upset hearing about Charles's misbehavior, but the upcoming PTA meeting has them both intrigued: perhaps now they can meet the mother of this tiny terrorizer! Mother goes alone while Father suggests inviting the woman home for tea with them after. But at the meeting she sees no woman that looks "haggard enough" to be the boy's parent. She sidles up to the teacher and begins to chat with her, and then finds out the truth: there is no Charles in the class. 

 

1960 Avon reprint

 

Spoiler cont. This revelation may be open to some interpretation, since Jackson, as is her wont, has laced the story with notes of ambiguity (the whole class staying after school for Charles's misdeeds is a clue). But I've always, since the first, taken it to mean that Laurie is the terrible tyke, and has created the persona of "Charles" to separate himself from his evil behavior and avoid being punished by his parents. What a perfect little devil!

 

1971 Bart paperback reprint

 

While "Charles" is not a "horror story" per se, that final line's ability to cast everything before it with a deeply unsettling truth would become a staple of the genre, and Jackson's expert deployment of this tactic should be a beacon to any horror writer worth their salt. "Charles" is simply a must-read.

 

 

Twelve Tales of Suspense and the Supernatural by Davis Grubb (1964)

Known for penning the novel The Night of the Hunter upon which the classic 1955 movie was based, Davis Grubb (1919-1980) was a West Virginia native well-versed in the pride, poverty, tribulations and superstitions that were endemic to that region. This collection of short stories ranging over 20 years, Twelve Tales of Suspense and the Supernatural (paperback edition from Fawcett Crest, June 1965) includes some Weird Tales works as well as tales first published in popular magazines like Ellery Queen, Nero Wolfe, Woman's Home Companion, and Collier's: you know, all the middlebrow publications of the mid-century that your great-grandparents might have read of a TV-less evening (Cavalier too, but that was probably Grandad's privy reading).

Grubb's style has a slightly melancholy, forlorn (the variant "lorn," which I have never come across before, appears in places) note to it and his scenarios are decent time-passers, characters familiar: drawling ne'er-do-wells, laconic sheriffs, expansive judges, tempting women, shrewish wives, innocent children, cool killers. The aptly-titled "Moonshine" got me thinking of those Gold Medal paperbacks from the 1950s of Southern sleaze and backwoods ribaldry. That sensibility is everywhere, but not overwhelming; I wouldn't really call it Southern Gothic, but there is just a hint of it at the edges.

 From hardcover edition, 1964

While reading these stories I couldn't help but think of Grubb's contemporaries in short genre fiction. While his stories aren't quite as sensitively-wrought as Charles Beaumont's or as matter-of-fact believable as Richard Matheson's, as cold and cruel as Shirley Jackson's, Twelve Tales still has appeal. Readers fond of Fredric Brown and Gerald Kersh, two other unclassifiable writers whose fiction has strong echoes of crime, science fiction, suspense, and horror, should take note as well.

Most stories end with a ingenious image of violence, perhaps that's even the tale's raison d'étre, but we all know this is the pulp template. Nothing cuts too deep or too sharp, but you can see the bone in "One Foot in the Grave" and "The Horsehair Trunk," two good and grim revengers that echo Robert Bloch's punning but without that author's black humor. "Busby's Rat" and "Radio" could have served as minor entries in Ray Bradbury's October Country, and "The Rabbit Prince" is at once sad and sweet as a spinster schoolteacher is given a glimpse of wild abandon that could have come from his pen when he was feeling kinder. "Nobody's Watching!" is set in the high-tech world of TV production, and it's the kind of thing I could imagine Harlan Ellison writing about his early days, the dangers of the mediated image on the human mind... and body.

Hangin' with Bob Mitchum in the '50s. Lucky!

Orphaned children populate several of the short stories; of course endangered siblings form the crux of Night of the Hunter (which, goddammit, I must read!). Grubb has a particular sympathy for them--as who wouldn't?--but he doesn't present them mawkishly as a lesser writer would. "The Blue Glass Bottle" highlights how children misunderstand the grownup world about them. "Murder. It was a word. You heard the men say it at Passy Reeder's Store. Murder. It was black marks on the colored poster at the picture show house where the man clutched the red-haired girl by the throat." Grubb's writing shines here, with a slight To Kill a Mockingbird vibe, and the final lines quite affecting.

One of the oddest stories is "Wynken, Blynken, and Nod," which evokes the famous child's rhyme to a macabre end. You may find the reveal a tad ridiculous but it's handled nicely: "There is a moment--perhaps two--in the lifetime of each of us when the eye sees, the mind recoils, and all conscious thinking rejects what the eyes have seen." You might even think of Daphne du Maurier.

Grubb can imbue a phrase  like "not so much as a single scratch" with the most unsettling of implications. That's from "Return of Verge Likens," one of my faves, two brothers who react quite differently to the murder of their father. It was self-defense! claims the killer, and the cops agree. Too bad the man who did the deed was Ridley McGrath, "the biggest man in the whole state of West Virginia! Why, don't Senator Marcheson hisself sit and drink seven-dollar whiskey with Mister McGrath in the Stonewall Jackson lobby very time he comes to town? Don't every policeman in town tip his cap when Mister McGrath walks by?"

"That don't matter a bit," said Verge.

Arrow UK paperback, 1966

The collection concludes with the "Where the Woodbine Twineth," which was adapted for an episode of "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" and included in Peter Straub's excellent anthology for the Library of America, American Fantastic Tales (2010). A little girl whose parents have been killed now lives with her father's sister Nell, who will not tolerate any dreamy foolishness from her new charge (all probably the fault of her brother's "foolish wife"!). Young Eva natters on about the "very small people who live behind the davenport," you know, Mr. Peppercorn and Mingo and Popo! Aunt Nell will have none of this, but when Captain Grandpa or whatever his name is arrives on a steamer from New Orleans with a Creole doll for Eva, things get interesting. Despite the use of an unwelcome (but context-accurate) racial slur, "Woodbine Twineth" ends on a clear, classic, sparkling note of pure unadulterated horror.

Twelve Tales offers old-fashioned pleasures for genre readers; not a classic by any means, but I think a handful of stories--generally, the last half of the book--are  worth checking out. There's nothing as terrifying as Robert Mitchum lurking inside with love and hate tattooed on the knuckles of his hands, but then again... I'm kinda relieved there's not.

The October Country by Ray Bradbury (1955): The Season in My Veins

That country whose people are autumn people, thinking only autumn thoughts...

There's not much of an autumn here in the American South where I live. We get some chilly mornings and chilly nights, but they're more like winter cold, and at mid-afternoon the sun's glare can make you think it's mid-July and Halloween is a cruel lie. There's little of the crisp smoky coolness that signals the year's end, nothing in the weather here around October that makes me think back on past autumns... and isn't autumn the most nostalgic, the most contemplative of seasons? I believe it is.

I miss autumn, a real autumn, so: to what could I turn to give myself a feeling of the season's changing? What could provide the scent of burning leaves, apple cider, pumpkin spice, the early darks and the bonewhite moons, the chilled air that nuzzles your neck, the growing thrill of the arrival of All Hallow's Eve and the macabre treats upon which to feast...? You guessed it: this collection of poisoned confections entitled The October Country, from the incomparable Ray Bradbury (although it's certainly not the first time I've turned to Ray this time of year).

A quick history: in 1947, the esteemed Arkham House published Dark Carnival, Bradbury's debut book, consisting mainly of his stories written for the classic pulp magazine Weird Tales. In 1955 Ballantine Books reprinted the collection, subtracting some of the stories and adding a few others, under the title The October Country. So basically what you have here are Bradbury's earliest works. Does that mean that they're unformed, not quite ready for consumption, perhaps timid things unsure of their footing before Bradbury gained confidence and experience as a writer? Oh, not at all! These stories are amazing. Why, I kept saying to myself as I read, am I only reading this now?

Original paperback cover art (illustrations by Joseph Mugnaini)

The longest story included, "The Next in Line" is one of the best I've read in ages; in it I could sense the seeds of Matheson, Beaumont, King, Campbell, Etchison, others who would come along in the future to join Bradbury in delighting readers with dread. A young couple vacationing in Mexico visit the mummies in the catacombs and learn how the poor bury their dead. Marie, the wife, is struck dumb and cold by the dried-husk bodies:

Jaws down, tongues out like jeering children, eyes pale brown-irised in upclenched sockets. Hairs, waxed and prickled by sunlight, each sharps as quills embedded on the lips, the cheeks, the eyelids, the brows. Little beards on chins and bosoms and loins. Flesh like drumheads and manuscripts and crisp bread dough. The women, huge ill-shaped tallow things, death-melted. The insane hair of them, like nests made and remade...

And much more like that throughout. Yep, Bradbury's unmistakeable style was there from the beginning. Many of you have probably come across "The Small Assassin" somewhere or other; it's been anthologized plenty. Its ingeniousness wins out over its central implausibility because it sounds true: What is there in the world more selfish than a baby? Guess there's one sure way to cure post-partum depression.

Some stories have such plain titles the words themselves take on a simple malevolence: "The Jar" (obviously the basis for the cover art at the top). "The Lake." "The Emissary." "Skeleton." "The Crowd." "The Wind." As someone who finds blowing winds anxiety-inducing, I could really relate to that last one. There's a vaguely Lovecraftian or Algernon Blackwood feel: That's what the wind is. It's a lot of people dead. The wind killed them, took their minds to give itself intelligence. It took all their voices and made them into one voice...

Death appears in myriad forms: on an endless field of wheat, at 92 degrees Fahrenheit on the thermometer, in the very bones in our bodies, down in the earth itself. "The Emissary" starts off innocently autumnal with a sick boy in bed who lives vicariously through his roaming pet dog; it finishes not so innocently at all. Bradbury perennials like sideshows and carnivals feature in "The Dwarf" and "The Jar," and his sense of boundless, mischievous joy buoys "The Watchful Poker Chip of H. Matisse" and "The Wonderful Death of Dudley Stone." There is sadness too: Timothy, the young boy in "Homecoming," yearns and yearns for a monstrous familial identity that will never be his, while "Uncle Einar" wishes he could be a normal father for his brood.

Poised between the sweet and the scary, I see The October Country as a beginner's book of horror; something to be given out like candy to eager children, to satisfy a sweet tooth, to prime burgeoning taste buds for a lifetime of fearsome entertainments. The marvelous Bradbury prose is appropriate for younger readers while offering us adults plenty to appreciate and exclaim over; poetic and playful, with rich veins of darkness powering through, as in "Touched with Fire"...

Some people are not only accident-prones, which means they want to punish themselves physically... but their subconscious puts them in dangerous situations... They're potential victims. It is marked on their faces, hidden like - like tattoos... these people, these death-prones, touch all the wrong nerves in passing strangers; they brush the murder in all our breasts.

(And I haven't even mentioned the stark black-and-white illustrations by Joseph Mugnaini; be sure to go here to see them all. *shiver*.)

It's no surprise to state, finally, that The October Country is a horror classic for all ages for all the ages, one that I wish I had read years ago; it is a must-read, a must-have, preferably in one of these musty old paperback editions, creased and worn from years of seasonal readings, of visits again and again to a country where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights linger, and midnights stay.

Thinking only autumn thoughts.

October Reading Update!

The ghoulfriend and I threw a monster of an early Halloween party last night; it took us 10 days to prepare for it so as you might imagine, I'm a bit behind on my seasonal reading. I've been making my way through the Weird Tales-era work of Ray Bradbury, collected in his classic The October Country, as well as re-re-re-reading a vintage King, both for future review. So here are some covers of Bradbury's book to hold you over till I get myself back together after last night's ghoulish gala...

Our Lady of Darkness (1977) and others by Fritz Leiber

More vintage paperback editions of famous horror/fantasy novels by elder genre statesmen Fritz Leiber: Our Lady of Darkness, Conjure Wife, and Night's Black Agents. I first wrote about Leiber's work here last year. Above you see the Ace Fantasy edition of Our Lady from 1978, with cover art by Norman Walker. Rather well-done, keeping very much to the nature of the story itself. In England it was published by Fontana that same year, art by Roy Ellsworth.

Two editions of Night's Black Agents (originally published by Arkham House in 1947): first from Ballantine Books in 1961 - complete with "Leiber" misspelled - then Berkley 1978, cover art by the incredible Wayne Barlowe. This later edition contains two of Leiber's most famous tales, "Smoke Ghost" and "The Girl with the Hungry Eyes." First paperback edition emphasizes "horror," while the latter, after his reputation was made, "fantasy."

First paperback for Conjure Wife from Lion Books in 1953, cover art by Robert Maguire. Lovely classic Gothic imagery, although the story is set on a sedate college campus and most definitely not in a remote mountaintop castle.

Here's the movie tie-in edition, from Berkley Medallion 1962. You can now watch Burn, Witch, Burn on Netflix Instant! Highly recommended, not least because the screenplay is by - hot damn! - Richard Matheson and Charles Beaumont! The Ace paperback from 1977 has an almost mainstream-thriller die-cut cover. Reprinted again by Ace Fantasy in 1984, you can see it's meant as a companion volume to Our Lady at the top.

And finally, in 1991 Tor Books published one of their double editions collecting both of Leiber's stellar novels about dark and mysterious women, again with art from Barlowe.

Fritz Leiber 1910 - 1992

The Hounds of Tindalos by Frank Belknap Long (1946): Hunt You to the Ground They Will

While countless horror writers have contributed works to Lovecraft's immortal Cthulhu mythos, it is Frank Belknap Long (pic below) who was the very first to write such a story after encouragement from Lovecraft himself. One of Lovecraft's close friends and correspondents, Long's "The Hounds of Tindalos" first appeared in the March 1929 issue of Weird Tales. These nightmarish creatures became part of Lovecraftian mythology and were used by other writers in the field such as Ramsey Campbell.


I first read the story in high school, thanks to a beat-up paperback of August Derleth's Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, Vol. 1, furtively passed to me during some droning lecture or another in the auditorium. With other works by Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard, J. Vernon Shea, Derleth himself, etc., it was a good intro to the Lovecraft circle. But it was always Long's tale that somehow stuck with me; read, if I recall correctly, in high-school detention hall (did a lot of horror-fiction reading there, which was actually the cafeteria).

Original Arkham House hardcover, 1946

"The Hounds of Tindalos" themselves are extra-dimensional entities who move slowly through outrageous angles of space/time - not the curves - and seek to consume men who, like Chalmers, the rebel "scientist" whose misadventure the narrator relates, discover the abyss before life itself. Aided by a drug he claims was used by Lao-Tse to discover the Tao, Chalmers finds his way to this fourth dimension and is terrified by these "hounds," whom he describes thusly:

All the evil in the universe was concentrated in their lean, hungry bodies... They scented me. Men awake in them cosmic hungers... But they are not evil in our sense because in the spheres through which they move there is no thought, no moral, no right or wrong as we understand it... There is merely the pure and the foul. The foul expresses itself through angles; the pure through curves.

And chaos ensues as Chalmers vows to return and then meets either the hounds again or the Doels - I have no idea who they are, Long simply inserts a reference to them. Are they the Lovecraftian dholes? Perhaps. As in the other stories here, Long also invokes ancient Greek myths, but it's been awhile since I've dipped into Hamilton's Mythology, so I was glad for the refreshers he provides. Chalmers' final writings include a hilarious "ahhh" as if he were transcribing his own screams! Oh, Lovecraftian cliches, how we love them so...

Belmont Books, 1963 (contains only 9 stories from original hardcover)

I picked up this science-fictiony style collection in a great used bookstore in Hollywood; it doesn't even list Long's name on the spine, as it only reads The Hounds of Tindalos: "Science Fiction Masterwork." I have never seen anything like that on any other book. Personally I really dislike this cover; there are no astronauts in this collection, one-eyed or not. Just seems like some artwork the publisher had lying around the office, just waiting to be used. It contains about half of the stories from the original 1946 Arkham House hardcover; from Jove in 1978 came its second paperback reprint as part of the "early Long" series, which included some perfectly grotesque cover art by Rowena Morrill (see top). Publication history gets confusing but I believe the other half was republished in paperback form in The Dark Beasts, which has a cool Edward Gorey cover.

As for the other short stories herein, I must say nothing really jumped out at me as much of anything special; a lot of standard-issue pulp product, decently written but certainly not deathless. "The Space-Eaters" is somewhat atmospheric and has a character who is obviously Lovecraft himself, but it seems to be part of that "Christianizing" of the mythos, reducing the drama to simplistic good vs. evil battles - despite Long considering himself an agnostic and sharing Lovecraft's skepticism of religious claims. "Dark Vision," has a young man who can read the thoughts of others, finding minds are cesspools of maggoty hate and carnality and revolting spite. In "Fisherman's Luck" a Greek god with a love of pranks returns; "The Black Druid" concerns an evil overcoat. Weird Tales completists will probably enjoy these stories the most.

Despite nearly 70 years as a prolific author, Long died in abject poverty in 1994.

Shirley Jackson: The Paperback Covers

"The Lottery" is easily one of the most famous, and notorious, short stories of the 20th century (I love making big pronouncements like that but in this case it can be said truly). When it was published in The New Yorker in 1948, it caused unforeseen outrage amongst that venerable publication's readership; canceled subscriptions and indignant letters poured in. Author Shirley Jackson was nonplussed and surprised by the reaction; some letter-writers actually wanted to know where they could go to watch such "lotteries." Even her parents, she said, did not like it! It's a deceptively chilling and primal tale, simple in its effect, perhaps bewildering in its meaning, ultimately unforgiving in its indictment of humanity. Long an essential text in American schools, I'm sure "The Lottery" has stunned and maddened countless kids who were forced to write essays on that most famous bane of frustrated high-schoolers, the dreaded symbolism. It isn't fair, it isn't right, indeed. I was thinking about the "The Lottery" because earlier this week I read Jackson's story "The Daemon Lover" (found in the utterly lovely two-volume set American Fantastic Tales from The Library of America, which I received for my recent birthday) which apparently is the subtitle of these collections. Editor Peter Straub was wise to choose this one over the ubiquitous "Lottery." Jackson's hapless bride-to-be (at age 34 no less!) slowly realizes her fiance is, on the morning of their wedding, nowhere to be found. Detail by detail Jackson ratchets up suspense as she combs the nearby city streets asking if anyone has seen a rather tall, fair man in a blue suit, possibly carrying flowers... "Daemon Lover" was published originally in Woman's Home Companion in 1949. The anxiety of a marriage that may never come - surely one for many of that periodical's audience - is unpleasantly literalized. I do wonder what the reaction to that story was! How about this poor disheveled young woman? Obviously the cover was part of that long-ago era when publishers tried sexing up the paperback art for authors like Hemingway, Faulkner, and Orwell to pique the interest of the American philistine and get him to shell out two bits. As for other Jackson works, I really dig the logo of Jackson's name and the imagery, thanks to artist William Teason, on these 1970s paperback reprints from Popular Library; my collection boasts a few Jackson titles, all of which I've loved, but you really need to check out the unmissable Shirley Jackson Book Cover Project for the rest. On a personal note, I'm heading off on vacation to Los Angeles on Monday for 7 or 8 days, so this will probably be my last post till I get back. However I've scoped out the used bookstores and plan on coming home with plenty of vintage horror paperbacks for the new year!