Fine Frights: Stories That Scared Me, ed. by Ramsey Campbell (1988): A Feast of Fiends

Despite it coming out at the height of the Eighties horror boom and published by genre giant Tor Books, I have no recollection at all of Fine Frights: Stories That Scare Me. An anthology of short stories compiled by the great and prolific Ramsey Campbell, the subtitle is the seller here: a story that can frighten one of horror's premier authors will surely reduce regular readers to a slab of shivering Jello. I've owned my minty-fresh copy of the book—never reprinted—for well over a decade, after finding it a library book sale and paying a whopping single dollar for it. The Jill Bauman cover, while perhaps not one of her most accomplished, references one of the stories therein; and if you look closely at the bottom brick on the right corner, you can see her sig: "Jill."

Campbell in 1988, photo by J.K. Potter

Campbell has assembled a dozen stories that he has deemed his favorites, and are actually only "a sampling" of the short works that have scared him over the years. Some of the names readers of science fiction will recognize more than horror fans, some stories are decades old and virtually forgotten, while others are—were—contemporary of the time but had not yet made their bones. I can assure you that, whenever a particular story was written is of no matter; these are top-flight tales of terror, with (almost) each one containing masterful soul-freezing moments of fear, unease, or shock.

Not a moment is wasted as we begin: "Child's Play," by respected Danish literary author Villy Sorensen (pic above), worms right under the skin. Written in the early Fifties, its unassuming title belies the story's utter remorseless cruelties; it's underwritten in a sly, chilling manner, almost like child-speak. This is fitting, as we meet the two little brothers, never named, who happen upon a smaller boy named Peter. A highlight of the entire anthology. "Shut up! We must clear this up before mother gets home."

Two of the best authors of the day are represented: Karl Edward Wagner's classic "More Sinned Against" has been one of my personal favorite horror tales since I first read it back when I was in high school, when it appeared in David J. Schow's essential 1988 antho Silver Scream. Two people trying to make it in the sleazy show-biz environs of Eighties El Lay, with all the ups and downs that requires. This bit of comeuppance is rife with Hollywood grit 'n' glamour, and what happens after the glitter fades. The ending is a total banger, unforgettable lo these many decades later. Candace couldn't have endured it all if it weren't for her selfless love for Rick, and for the coke and smack and pills and booze.

Thomas Ligotti's "The Greater Festival of Masks" is from his Songs of a Dead Dreamer, just after its small press pub in 1985, but prior to the mass market release; only then would his name would gain more and more recognition. All the Ligottian trademarks are here: nameless city, crooked streets, eerie moonlight, shops of bizarre accoutrements, and reflections upon identity and reality. This is not my favorite Ligotti story, but its essence of the esoteric is so strong, so pervasive, its climax so uncanny, I can see why Campbell chose to include it. For these are the declining days of the festival when the beginning and the end, and the old and the new, the existent and the nonexistent all join in the masquerades.

One of the dozens of anthologies in which "Thurnley Abbey" appeared, 1984

Dating from the early years of the 1900s, both "Thurnley Abbey" by Perceval Landon and "The Necromancer" by Arthur Gray work wonders with the musty trappings of classic ghost stories. While the former has to be one of the most anthologized around, Campbell notes in his little intro that he found many of his readers didn't know Landon's story at all; Gray's work is a brief, erudite, M.R. James-style spooker. While these old-fashioned tales-within-tales can, to some modern readers, seem a little dusty and remote, I can assure you they retain their ice-cold powers. "I know that my heart stopped dead, and my throat closed automatically."

"The Fifth Mask" by British author Shamus Frazer (pic above) is certainly a precursor to the output of both Campbell and Ligotti. A nervous man reminisces over double whiskies about a frightful occurrence from his boyhood, when he and a pal, on the Fifth of November, were out and about pranking while wearing masks, which was the style at the time (published originally in 1957, there are several uses of the n-word to describe said masks here). But someone has beat them at their own game of disguise... The entire dank and anxious mood is one that must have affected Campbell greatly, because many of his works have precisely the same vibe. She was as thin as her voice, dressed all in black... there was a stucco wall behind her, patched and discoloured as a gravestone, and the ghosts of winter trees rising above and losing themselves in the twilight.

"The War is Over" by David Case is original to this anthology, so maybe Campbell commissioned it. It is grim. Case wrote two cult horror/Gothic novels, Fengriffen and Wolf Tracks (1971 and 1980 respectively, both back in print from, who else, Valancourt Books), but was not overly prolific. This tale is set just after WWII, but the main story is one of enemy soldiers. This one has teeth and no mercy. "The brave soldier was not then so brave. He pleaded, he begged. He called upon God. Soon he could no longer plead with words, for he had no tongue."

From 1963, "The Horror at Chilton Castle" by Joseph Payne Brennan (above) is, I believe, fairly well-known among horror aficionados. I first read it some 10 or 12 years ago, and haven't forgotten it. Brennan was a respected mid-century horror/fantasy writer whose work stretches back to the Weird Tales era; his "Slime" is one of the great novellas of pulp horror ever. Here, Brennan evokes time-honored horror tropes with his narrator traveling through Europe looking for his ancestors. He hopes to visit the legendary Chilton Castle, to which his family has distant connection.

In a pub nearby the castle on a storm-lashed night, he ruminates on its spectral legends, and chances to meet someone who can give him a tour of the place—and, well, things go on from there. Strongly and vividly written, "Chilton Castle" is another fine example of Fine Frights... and the inspiration for the cover art. It would've made one helluva an episode of "Thriller"!

There were variations of the legend. Without doubt the original tale had been embroidered down the centuries, but the essential outline of the story concerned a secret room somewhere in the castle. It was said that this room contained a terrifying spectacle which the Chilton-Paynes were obliged to keep hidden from the world.

The four remaining stories are from science fiction authors; I'm sure that Campbell was reading them in magazines in his adolescence. This is to be expected: before the Paperbacks from Hell era, and even well into the Seventies, horror itself was cloaked in terms of SF, mystery, thriller, suspense, Gothic, speculative, fantasy, et al. Still, the authors know how to pluck a nerve ending.
 

"Cutting Down" by Bob Shaw (above) is by far the most graphic story included, a piece of Eighties grue originally published in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine. I have absolutely no idea how he rates as a science fiction writer, but as a horror writer he does admirably. An Irish author who got his start in SF fandom, here Shaw gets right at one man's disgust, and the lengths he goes to to relieve himself of this ill. Another tale of comeuppance, oh so vaguely reminiscent of Stephen King's "Quitters, Inc." He drove a roughly estimated cubic centimeter of the fluid into his wife's bloodstream, withdrew the needle and stepped back, his breath coming in a series of low growls which he was unable to suppress.

Okay, I kind of guessed where Peter Phillips's (above) "Lost Memory" was going, but still found it fairly gruesome. A Fifties SF tale through and through, in which awkwardly made-up words, clunky characters names, and stilted "scientific" dialogue and description run amok while information is clearly withheld from the reader solely for an effective twist at the end. Not really my kind of thing at all, but I can imagine being a kid back then reading it for the first time, yikes. Chur-chur was muttering to himself about the extreme toughness and thickness of the stranger's skin. He had to make four complete cutting revolutions before the circular mass of white-hot metal could be pulled away by a magnetic grapple.

Not last, but least: John Brunner's "The Clerks of Domesday" is not completely terrible, I get the chilling implications of the narrator's paranoid delusions, but found the execution tedious. Brunner was connected to the New Wave of SF of the late Sixties and Seventies with prophetic novels such as Stand on Zanzibar, The Shockwave Rider, and The Sheep Look Up, and while this story seems to fit his dour predictions and predilections, it was the only one I struggled to finish. It had never been published prior to Fine Frights and has never been reprinted again.

Our final story is from the mighty Philip K. Dick (above), an early work, dated 1954, entitled "Upon the Dull Earth." If at first it is obscure, it will become haunting and forlorn; Dick's powers at evoking an emotional response was there from the beginning of his career. A young couple, angels, stars, an alternate plane of reality; a myth of the underworld, and lost in it. Dick's long interest in spiritual lives, esoteric religion, heretical beliefs, day-to-day reality versus cosmic illusion: all here. It was a terrified reflection that showed out of the mirror above the bowl, a face, tear-stained and frantic. The face was difficult to catch—it seemed to waver and slide. Grey eyes, bright with terror.

There you have it! And it should be no surprise that Ramsey Campbell has assembled such a high caliber anthology; the various styles of horror represented gives the book a wide appeal. It's a no-brainer: Fine Frights is a fine feast, a repast of morbid morsels that belongs on the shelves of any and all paperback horror collectors.

The Face That Must Die by Ramsey Campbell (1979): I'm Determined and I'd Rather See You Dead

When it comes to horror titles, Ramsey Campbell's first two novels, 1976's The Doll Who Ate His Mother and 1979's The Face That Must Die, must be considered as some of the most provocative of their day; in their tasteless glories they shout like cheap tabloid headlines. Yet within the books readers will find an imagination that is fine and not crude; sensitive and not exploitative; authentic and not postured. Indeed, the introductory essay included with the 1985 Tor edition, "At the Back of My Mind: A Guided Tour," is Campbell's well-known account of his worsening relationship with his mother as she sank into dementia over many years. These days mainstream memoirs and fiction of life with crazy parents are a dime a dozen, but Campbell's piece has no distancing irony or comic effect. Harrowing and sad and enlightening, it is Campbell's explanation for ''why I write what I write," and readers can come to their own conclusions about how this influenced The Face That Must Die.

Campbell in 1980

Face is the story of the aptly-named Horridge, a nobody kind of fellow in a precisely-drawn Liverpool, whose growing paranoia is exacerbated by his obsession/revulsion with an overweight, effeminate older man who lives in his Liverpool neighborhood. After reading in the papers about a "man whose body was found in a Liverpool flat was a male prostitute" and studying the accompanying suspect police sketch, Horridge comes to realize "he had seen the killer three times now, in as many days. That was no coincidence. But what was he meant to do?" His conviction that random events are a secret code to him alone is unshakeable.

Horridge finds out the man's name is Roy Craig by searching through library records (and mildly creeping out library clerk Cathy Gardner, who with her long-haired boyfriend Peter actually lives in the same building as Craig), Horridge begins systematically stalking and harassing the man. Craig's homosexuality—Horridge is correct in his presumption—offends him to his core: "If he was a homosexual he was perverted enough for anything." Which of course means he will continue to kill, and must be stopped by any means necessary--actually he can be stopped by any means necessary, because Horridge is doing away with degenerates and doing society a favor.

Campbell does a solid job of making the reader feel uneasy. Everywhere, things seem off: conversations are snippy, irritated, impatient; graffiti stains walkways and alleys (Horridge keeps seeing the word "killer"); the wheezing buses are crowded and smoke-filled; twilight is always seeping into Horridge's apartment; his limp is painful and insistent; library customers are resentful, grumbling at the clerks wielding petty powers (in a scene Campbell admits is autobiographical); fog prevents everyone from seeing clearly. Liverpool is as much a character as Horridge or Cathy or Peter, and at times even seems conspire against Horridge; he sees the tower blocks, rundown flats, loud pubs, grimy gutters, grey skies, and bare concrete as one big institution, a prison ready for its cowed inmates. Everywhere the banal, the mundane, threaten to swallow the sane and insane alike; the suffocation is palpable.

Sometimes he thought the planners had faked those paths, to teach people to obey without questioning... the tunnel was treacherous with mud and litter; the walls were untidy webs of graffiti. All the overhead lights had been ripped out. He stumbled through, holding breath; the place smelled like an open sewer... A dread which he'd tried to suppress was creeping into his thoughts—that sometime, perhaps in fog, he would come home and be unable to distinguish his own flat.

Immersed in Horridge's psyche, the reader is also both fascinated and revolted by his thought processes as they cycle through mania and grandiosity, memories of a painful childhood, and his ever-present desire to clean up the filth (moral and literal) he sees growing everywhere around him. Every tiny detail, every sliver of dialogue, every simile, drips with an uneasy threat of everything about to fall apart, as if reality itself were trembling on the precipice of chaos. Campbell allows us a few views outside of Horridge's, but overall we feel as he does: threatened, maligned, powerless. Then he lashes out in anonymous—and unwittingly ironic—calls to Craig: "Just remember I'm never far away. You'd be surprised how close I am to you."

 1st UK paperback, Star Books Dec 1979

The novel also offers some insights into contemporary British life. Craig's backstory of his marriage breaking up is sad and all too common, I'm sure. His wife discovers his gay porn, is horrified, and her last words to him are, "I think I could have borne it if it been another woman." In his opening essay, Campbell talks about his non-use of illicit drugs, but he sure gets the details right describing the dregs of late '70s drug culture, the desultory nature of trying to score, the hangover of 1960s radical politics ("I bet he thought I'd have to be middle-class and polite. No chance, brother"), and the nagging suspicions that the Establishment is just waiting to pounce. Peter and Cathy are growing apart due to his continued use of marijuana and LSD; they're a counterculture couple suffering relationship ills of the bourgeois. They and Craig, along with bohemian artist Fanny who also lives in the building, will have their confrontations with Horridge, moments in which a razorblade flashes its brilliance in dingy rooms...

There is one scene I must point out. Horridge goes to the cinema to see a film, but the only title that resonates is the one that contains the word "horror" ("Horror films took you out of yourself—they weren't too close to the truth"). Check it out:

Was it supposed to be a musical? He'd been lured in under false pretenses. It began with a wedding, everyone breaking into song and dance. Then an engaged couple's car broke down: thunder, lightning, lashing rain, glimpses of an old dark house. Perhaps, after all—They were ushered to meet the mad scientist. Horridge gasped, appalled. The scientist's limp waved like snakes, his face moved blatantly. He was a homosexual.

This was a horror film, all right--far too horrible, and in the wrong way.

Yes: Horridge inadvertently attends a screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show! One of the funniest and most telling—and most deserved—moments I've ever read in a horror novel (AFAIC all homophobes should have Tim Curry's Dr. Furter shoved in their faces and, yes, down their throats).

Scream/Press hardcover, Oct 1983, art by J.K. Potter

Campbell keeps the story moving quickly as Horridge's fears grow and grow. He's a bit of a walking textbook of serial killer tics and tactics, but it's not just serial killers who display these attributes. His hatred of homosexuality (his hatred of any sexuality: at one point late in the novel, Cathy is running after him, trips and falls, and Horridge hopes the breasts she flaunts have burst); his belief that society is degrading more and more; his hatred of foreigners and anyone different, gay or not; the shades of his disappointed parents hovering about him—is this an indictment of Thatcher-era England? All I know about English culture I learned from '70s punk rock, but this sounds about right. Campbell is also wise to draw a parallel between Peter and Horridge, who are both aware of how out of step they are with modern society and the paranoid fantasies this engenders in them.

Futura UK reprint, 1990

Readers who enjoy the experience of being thrust into the killer's mind will enjoy Face; no, it's no American Psycho or Exquisite Corpse, it's not nearly so deranged or explicit, but for its time it's a brutal expose. A more accurate comparison could be made to Thomas Tessier's Rapture; both books are able to make their antagonist's irrationality seem rational, which is where the horror sets in. Despite a meandering chapter here and there, The Face That Must Die is an essential read for psychological horror fans. Many times Campbell hits notes that only now are we beginning to hear and understand about the minds of Horridge and his like. When Horridge finds one of Fanny's paintings is of himself, he slashes it apart with his beloved razorblade (see the Tor edition's cover, thanks to Jill Bauman); somewhere inside he knows, but can never admit, that the face that must die is only his own.

Night Show by Richard Laymon (1984): Master of Chills is Pulling Your Strings

If you're a regular reader of this blog, then you know I'm not much of a Richard Laymon fan. The two novels of his that I've read, Resurrection Dreams and The Cellar, struck me as dopey and lame, and in the case of the latter book, boring and stupidly repulsive at once. This puts me at odds with many horror fiction fans, since the late Laymon has become a cult writer with a large (and vocal!) following. Many think he is the ultimate horror writer, one who shocks and goes too far and cares not a whit for taste or restraint. Fine for his fans, sure, but my problem with Laymon is simply that he is, going by what I've read, a terrible writer. When it comes to putting pen to paper he cannot deliver. He writes like a rank amateur and it drives me fucking crazy, reading "prose" so lunkheaded and dull, so square and humorless.

Some readers agree with me and can't understand his popularity either. Cool. But I'm also kinda intrigued by what his fans see in him, so I have been open to giving him another chance. I found Night Show (Tor 1986, originally published in the UK by Futura, 1984) online for cheap. Always liked the cover (thanks Jill Bauman, a Tor regular), and it takes place in Hollywood and the main character is a female Tom Savini. All right, not bad, I thought, let's check it out, see if Laymon can do this.

Aaaand... he doesn't. He can't. His scenario is fine - weirdo horror-filmmaker wannabe wants to apprentice with female FX expert and so begins to stalk her - but Laymon's delivery fails in every aspect: it's all dreary, insipid hackwork, same as before. There's not one moment of believable human behavior in Night Show, not one second of fear, not one new twist, nothing to make it stand out among the hundreds of legit horror paperbacks already on my shelves. Laymon even pads out the novel with passages describing onscreen mayhem. Like, not-real mayhem he was tricking you into thinking was real at first. That's right, he actually relates what's going on in the various horror movies being made or being watched. God, now that's lame - hell, in a horror novel it's practically a fucking crime.

I had no sense that Laymon cared or was excited by what he wrote in Night Show (or in the other two novels of his I've read), unlike pulp writers such as Graham Masterton or Shaun Hutson, both of whom at least seem to be having a high old time creating dumb mayhem, which of course translates to enjoyable reading. I had a problem believing in any of the events occurring, and Laymon makes no effort to convince the reader of any truth. As for horror itself, there's virtually none. I had read reviews of the novel that noted this, so I wasn't expecting graphic splatterpunky horror - but when there is blood-spilling, Laymon describes it, more than once, as "red gore." Come on dude, really?

 Original first edition, 1984 Futura UK paperback

Beginning with the abduction of a teenage girl, Night Show is comprised of two interlocking story arcs with nutjob Anthony Johnson being the thread between them. Young bald Tony calls himself the Chill Master and gets off on scaring people. Not hurting them, mind you, but just freaking them out. Like grabbing them in the movie theater, or throwing them into a car and then tying them up in an abandoned house. Sure! But he wants more, so he moves to Hollywood to get close to Dani Larson, gore effects specialist extraordinaire (Laymon does an okay job detailing her FX work at least). He follows her in his hearse (duh) through the LA streets, then finally gets close enough to engage her. Tony wants to be her apprentice in horror but her partner in work and life, Jack, is getting in the way (poor stalkers, ain't that always the way?). The other storyline features teenage Linda, the girl kidnapped and tied up in a spooky old house. She's looking for her assailants - in her escape she runs into the road and is hit by a car - and she'll stop at nothing to get them. Her misadventures mingle Laymon's staple puerile sex and death in a couple ridiculous set-pieces till she ends up in Hollywood hot on Tony's trail.

1992 UK reprint (in the book both head and monster are fake)

Laymon sets everything up in the most banal, one-dimensional manner possible. Plodding along from one chapter to the next, riddled with corny tone-deaf dialogue, nothing in Night Show seems dangerous and nothing that feels real is at stake. Why do I care about these people? Dani deals with Tony in an entirely inappropriate, unbelievable way, inviting him to hang around and even sharing beer with him while Jack looks on bemusedly. And Dani has no strength whatsoever; how in the world did she make it in the movies? A female artist so successful in the horror industry in the 1980s who's not a scream queen is unique, but I had the feeling the character is only female so she can be menaced as the victim. And teenage Linda's storyline is simply a cheap, pale imitation of I Spit on Your Grave: abused woman goes after her attackers, using her sexuality as bait. Since I knew nothing about Linda, I had no reason to believe she had such fortitude to kill and kill again.

So Linda is the real psychopath, while Tony is a total twerp who needs his clock cleaned, but he never really hurts anyone. Was Laymon making an attempt at irony? Perhaps - and certainly not a bad idea at all - but his writing is so lazy, so enervated, that the irony seems more inadvertent than intended. There's no suspenseful build-up, and then when the two storylines do collide, the resultant climax - which is basically the same as a 1970s made-for-TV thriller or a by-the-numbers '80s stalk 'n' slash - goes off like a damp squib. Just... yawn.

I almost feel bad criticizing Night Show like this since it's such a lame little dud, no ambition in it, barely a wisp of an actual novel by and for adults. But I shouldn't. Here Laymon takes the tiredest horror tropes and puts no gloss or originality on them; I find no enjoyment in this kind of cynical exploitation of the genre. Fans make the argument that Laymon's books need to enjoyed in a sort of B-movie way, that they're fast reads that don't require any brain work, that he's raw and lurid, that he peels his prose to the bone and doesn't get bogged down in unnecessary details. I don't buy that argument, and contend that pulp schlock still needs to be competent and fun. I've read plenty of fast, pulpy, lurid horror novels that still have time to give me a unique character trait, an unsettling scene or three, a fresh writing style, a surprising plot twist. Laymon's lack of all that is what so frustrates me. To continue the movie metaphor: the camera's out of focus, the boom mic is visible, the fake blood is red finger paint, and somebody spilled coffee on the only copy of the script so the actors have to come up with their own dialogue on the spot. Yeah, B-movies are wonderful, definitely, but if Laymon's Night Show were a flick, it'd be grade-Z through and through.

Cast a Cold Eye by Alan Ryan (1984): Blood Will Follow Blood

The late Alan Ryan really hit a high note with his Irish ghost story Cast a Cold Eye (Tor Books, Jul 1984/cover art by Jill Bauman). Contributing to its success is the vivid sense of place, somber prose, and convincing characterization, as well as a slowly mounting sense of dread reaching out from a horrific past which can never be forgotten. Yes, a ghost story that has its roots in the real-life horrors of the Great Famine.

Writer Jack Quinlan comes to the rocky, sea-lashed coastal Irish village of Doolin, meets a young lovely lass named Grainne at the local bookshop, and begins working on his book about the Famine. The developing relationship between the two is drawn well and truly by Ryan, and he handles their differences - he a well-traveled published New York author, she a Catholic virgin still under the yoke of her parents - with a sensitivity that speaks of experience. It's a relaxed give-and-take between two real people that really grounds the story.

Dark Harvest hardcover, 1984

But as Jack researches the Famine, he soon finds himself face-to-face with people who seem to have stepped whole and starving from that horrible era: a ragged man unconscious in the mud on the side of the road, vomiting green rot; a young girl who was only bone covered in skin in tattered clothes; tortured shapes milling through the cold fog and damp air and mud surrounding his cottage. He puts this all to his readings, an overworked imagination, but still dreams of facing his own corpse. Soon he meets Father Malcolm Henning, the local priest and seanachie, a sort of historian and storyteller in one. Father Henning wields a gentle hand over Doolin, both in church and in the pub: the two most popular places for these provincial people.

But Father Henning's tales in the pub are grim and foreboding, filled with gruesome "Monkey's Paw"-style ironies, although they seem to ease the aging pains of a group of old, old men Jack sees around the town. One in particular is John MacMahon, practically a cadaver now, who is treated with a deference that befits a mortal responsibility nearly impossible to bear. Jack is drawn into this circle when Henning confirms that the visions accosting him aren't simply... visions. Perhaps Jack isn't an interloper; perhaps Jack's Irish heritage means that he was meant to come to Doolin, meant for something greater than just writing a book, meant to be part of a ritual where blood is everywhere.

The whole book is a quiet horror, er, delight, despite its nightmarish source, and will make you seek out Ryan's other work (he published plenty of stories in various '80s horror anthologies like Whispers, Shadows, and Year's Best Horror; I've liked all the ones I've read). It'll also make you lament that Ryan didn't write another novel. It's much more effective than his previous work, 1983's Dead White, and evinces a cozy fireside feel one finds in the classic tales of the weird and uncanny. There are creeps and chills to be sure, but the real power lies in the setting and the characters. And I have to say there's a lovemaking scene - that's truly what it is, I can't phrase it any other way - that is about the best I've ever read in a horror novel.  

Cast a Cold Eye is a chilly, atmospheric read in which one can feel the salt spray of the ocean, the icy air working its way inside your clothes, the sense of real history in every stone building and rotting fence, and grasp the sad, earthbound horrors that lurk in the Doolin graveyard. "Blood is everywhere," Father Henning has said, and we will learn the truth of that all too well. I really appreciated this kind of fact-based historical horror, where unrelenting reality collides with our primitive notions of supernatural agents. The ghosts that haunt are the shameful memories of the diseased and the dead, our guilty conscience manifested in shades and shadows that seem to our hand and eye more real than our very selves. 

Song of Kali by Dan Simmons (1985): The Only Evil Ever

It was the mighty Harlan Ellison who first got lots of people talking about Dan Simmons back in the early 1980s. Duly impressed by one of his short stories (I believe it was "The River Styx Flows Upstream") at a writers' workshop, Ellison apparently dismissed everyone else in attendance - of course he did! - and the story ended up in (the now long-gone) Twilight Zone magazine and garnered more praise in the field. How do you follow that up? By winning the World Fantasy Award for a debut novel, Song of Kali, and beating out major genre writers Clive Barker and Anne Rice. Well damn!

Song of Kali is a very personal horror favorite of mine, and has been ever since I tracked it down around 1989 or '90 and had to place a special order for it even then. Can't recall how I'd heard of it; probably some interview with Ellison somewhere. The glorious red textured paperback cover was like manna from heaven for me, while thanks go to Jill Bauman, for a cover illustration actually relates to the plot. For years I'd kept my original paperback (Tor, November 1986) in perfect condition, and I also bought this beat-up used copy so I could reread it - three times now! - and mark my favorite passages, for instance: 

 I think that there are black holes in reality. Black holes in the human spirit. And actual places where, because of density or misery or sheer human perversity, the fabric of things comes apart and that black core in us swallows all the rest.  

An aspiring American poet named Robert Luczak, his Indian wife Amrita, and their infant daughter trek to Calcutta so he can track down a lauded and mysterious old Indian poet, M. Das, whose unsettling new work has been making the rounds of the literary world - after his supposed death some years before. But the young American finds an exotic and dangerous world beyond his worst... oh, you know. You know. But Song of Kali also has something to say, as its dour anxieties address (inherent?) xenophobia, fear of women (manifested in the devouring goddess of Kali), the all-too-real fear of our children being harmed, as well as our unholy, unending passion and capacity for violence.

1991 Tor reprint

"All violence is power," this mysterious old M. Das will say. "Sometimes there is no hope. Sometimes there is only pain." And that, I don't need to tell you, is the crux of all great horror fiction, and Simmons doesn't hesitate in taking us far down that stinking, miasmic river to the heart of all darkness. He is a sure and unflinching guide. Luczak's knowledge of classic poetry, particularly Yeats, and Amrita's intelligence and instinct, infuse this novel with a moral weight most horror writers either fake or never bother with in the first place.

Simmons also does the nearly unbelievable job of bringing an unhallowed, nightmare version of Calcutta to life on the page - I believe he was in the city for only several days to do research - a dank dreadful atmosphere, swarming noxious crowds, shadowy cult secrets, and bloated, rotting corpses. It's so palpable, and strikingly unique in the annals of '80s horror fiction. And those with some knowledge of India's ancient religious myths will find the tale all the more disturbing. But in the end the only true evil, the only evil ever, is human and never divine.

The song of Kali is now sung, the age of Kali has begun. Listen.

"The world is pain/O terrible wife of Siva/ You are chewing the flesh/Your tongue is drinking the blood, O dark Mother! O unclad Mother/O beloved of Siva/The world is pain." 

Oh. Hells. Yeah. And still in print. Pick it up.

 

Hearts Full of Hell: Horror Anthologies of the 1980s, Part 2

More modern horror mayhem in the form of short stories by all our favorites! Bookstore racks in the '80s were crammed full of anthologies published by Tor, Pocket, Berkley, and Avon Books; more, too, as everyone wanted in on the horror craze. Short fiction in particular highlights the genre, of course, and rather than simply anthologizing old classics by Lovecraft and the like, which seemed to be the standard for books in previous decades, all the newest - and biggest - names were featured. Some names have lasted while others, alas, have not. You'll see that the covers vary widely in quality and "quality."

Editor extraordinaire Etchison went far and wide for his three-volume Masters of Darkness (Tor 1986 - 91), culling good old stories from Nigel Kneale, Ray Bradbury, and Richard Matheson, as well as newer works from Clive Barker, Lisa Tuttle, and Joyce Carol Oates. The covers aren't exactly eye-catchers, and I haven't included Volume II because frankly that cover sucks.

Now these New Terrors (Pocket 1982 - 84) from Ramsey Campbell, that's more like it! I particularly like the woman's blonde hair fanned out on the pillow as her bed comes alive... As for that poor guy who's become a monkey necklace - oof. Gotta find out which story that appears in!

Really boring covers for the unimaginatively-titled Modern Masters of Horror (Ace 1982/Berkley 1988). I had no idea Romero wrote any stories... who's read it? Also contains stories by Masterton, Laymon, Hallahan, and Davis Grubb, who wrote the original novel Night of the Hunter (1953), as well as one of my most desired books (most desired because I came across a paperback copy about five or six years ago and didn't buy it), Twelve Tales of the Supernatural (1964).

Oh man, hilarious. Skulls and eyeballs once again!

I rather dig these covers, both by Tor regular Jill Bauman, for Grant's Midnight titles (Tor 1985/1986), although that first one is kinda tasteless in a somewhat sexist way, what can I say? The creeepy clown is a great touch though!

J.N. Williamson published the best of the best in his Masques series that ran throughout the 1980s, but only this last Best of was published in paperback in the States, in '88. Looking at the contents, I know all the names but not all the stories. Has anyone read King's "Popsy" from '87? I've been hearing about it for, oh, 20+ years...

Tropical Chills (Avon 1988) features lots of science fictioners like Brian Aldiss, Pat Cadigan, George Alec Effinger, and Gene Wolfe (been meaning to read all those writers!). I've seen it on various bookstore hunts but never pick it up; Koontz's name on the cover turns me right off. Thanks but no thanks!