The Year's Best Horror Stories 9 Read online

  . . . Back he swung in flight along the gallery, but this time he took the other way, making for the reading-cabinet at the end. He floundered in exhausted and slammed the screen door after him. Once in, he knew how futile this move was; there was no way out.

  Already the hideous face was looking through the open woodwork at him. With nightmare fascination he watched it craning its gaunt head about as though blind, then squeeze between the carved foliage, straining its quivering legs against the sides. By some uncanny sense it came straight for him as he stood transfixed. It fastened on him without haste and though he raised his arms to beat it off, they fell limply down again and left him to his fate.

  A fiery glow suffused all vision now as he felt the bristling tendons on his chest and saw the ghastly proboscis nosing up for his throat . . .

  Copyright ©, 1981, by DAW Books, Inc.

  All Rights Reserved.

  Cover art by Michael Whelan.

  FIRST PRINTING, AUGUST 1981

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

  PRINTED IN U.S.A.

  Wickerman eBooks

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The Monkey by Stephen King. Copyright © 1980 by Stephen King for Gallery, November 1980. Reprinted by permission of the author and the author’s agent, Kirby McCauley Ltd.

  The Gay by Ramsey Campbell. Copyright © 1980 by Ramsey Campbell for Fantasy Readers Guide No. 2. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  The Cats of Pere LaChaise by Neil Olonoff. Copyright © 1980 by Editions MSGD for A Touch of Paris, June 1980 (under the title, “I’ll Tell Her You’ll Be Late for Dinner”). Reprinted by permission of the author.

  The Propert Bequest by Basil A. Smith. Copyright © 1980 by Stuart Schiff for The Scallion Stone. Reprinted by permission of the author’s agent, Kirby McCauley Ltd.

  On Call by Dennis Etchison. Copyright © 1980 by Paul C. Allen for Fantasy Newsletter, March 1980. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  The Catacomb by Peter Shilston. Copyright © 1980 by Rosemary Pardoe for More Ghosts & Scholars. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  Black Man With a Horn by T. E. D. Klein. Copyright © 1980 by Arkham House Publishers, Inc. for New Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos. Reprinted by permission of the author and the author’s agent, Kirby McCauley Ltd.

  The King by William Relling, Jr. Copyright © 1980 by Dugent Publishing Corp. for Cavalier. February 1980. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  Footsteps by Harlan Ellison. Copyright © 1980 by The Kilimanjaro Corporation for Gallery, December 1980. Reprinted by permission of and arrangement with the author and the author’s agent, Robert P. Mills, Ltd.

  Without Rhyme or Reason by Peter Valentine Timlett. Copyright © 1980 by Peter Valentine Timlett for New Terrors 1. Reprinted by permission of the author and the author’s agent, Carole Blake.

  To Barbara

  Who loves a good shiver almost as much as she loves a good party.

  Introduction: The Year of the Anthology and Beyond by KARL EDWARD WAGNER

  The year past, 1980, will go down in the annals of horror literature as the year of the blockbuster original anthology. One has to go back to those thousand-page super-dreadnought-class horror anthologies published in England during the 1930’s—particularly those edited by John Gawsworth—to find a comparison.

  Most visible was Dark Forces, edited by Kirby McCauley, a finely produced 550-page hardcover volume containing 23 stories by major authors, published by The Viking Press in the U.S. and by Macdonald in England. Less opulent but a far better value was Ramsey Campbell’s two-volume paperback anthology, New Terrors, offering 37 original stories crammed into 670 pages. This was published by Pan Books in England; regrettably there has not yet been a U.S. edition, but on the brighter side there has been talk of continuing New Terrors as a series. The avowed intent of both of these anthologies was to showcase the cream of today’s horror fiction—the genre’s top writers creating contemporary tales of terror. How often and how well they succeed in achieving that is something each reader will enjoy deciding for himself.

  Against these two shelf-benders, the other original horror anthologies of 1980 might well be unjustly overlooked. Charles L. Grant has edited Shadows 3 for Doubleday—a collection that maintains the same level of his previous two entries in the series. Pan Books published The 21st Pan Book of Horror, edited by Herbert van Thal, which unfortunately maintains the level of that long-lived series. Perhaps best of 1980’s crop of original anthologies was New Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, edited by Ramsey Campbell for Arkham House. Instead of the inept and amateurish Lovecraftian pastiches one might have expected (Douglas E. Winter has pointed out in a review that “Cthulhu Mythos” has been given a pejorative connotation in recent years), Campbell asked his authors for (and for the most part received from them) genuinely original and intelligent contemporary interpretations of the underlying concepts of Lovecraft’s synthesis.

  Roy Torgeson edited Other Worlds 2 and Chrysalis 7 for Zebra Books—evidently the last for Zebra, as the series will now be published by Doubleday. From Berkley came the first two volumes of The Berkley Showcase, edited by Victoria Schochet and John Silbersack. Fantasy anthologies offering part original and part reprint fiction included Mummy! edited by Bill Pronzini, Basilisk, edited by Ellen Kushner, and The Phoenix Tree, edited by Robert H. Boyer and Kenneth J. Zahorski. Ostensibly science fiction but not entirely without interest to the horror fan were Interfaces and Edges, both edited by Ursula K. Le Guin and Virginia Kidd, and the continuing paperback series, Destinies, New Dimensions, and Stellar.

  If it was a good year for original anthologies, it was a grim year for magazines. Two of the few surviving newsstand science fiction and fantasy magazines, Galaxy and Fantastic, published their final issues in 1980, as did a promising newcomer, Galileo. Galaxy had been around since 1950; Fantastic since 1952. For those fans who, like myself, discovered imaginative fiction through reading these magazines back when they were the bright new publications in the field, it’s a sad feeling. Of the Golden Age pulps and Atomic Age digests, now only Amazing, Analogy and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction survive. Not all is gloom on the magazine front: 1981 promises the debut of The Twilight Zone Magazine as well as yet another reincarnation of Weird Tales.

  The lively world of the amateur press continues to furnish us with what is perhaps the best new writing in horror fiction. These publications run the gamut from the crudely produced fanzines, which pay their contributors with a free copy or two, to the most lavish of the semi-prozines (amateur magazines that pay competitive rates for material but lack newsstand distribution), whose production values far outstrip those of the prozines (magazines you can find on your newsstand, if you’re lucky).

  Theirs is a fast-changing scene. Two of the best have ceased publication—Midnight Sun and Copper Toadstool. Two others long at the top of the field—Whispers and Weirdbook—did not have an issue during 1980 but promise to return in 1981. Fantasy Tales, Britain’s top semi-prozine, had its sixth issue in 1980, and was joined by a new countryman, Fantasy Macabre. The British Fantasy Society continued to publish The B.F.S. Bulletin, expanded under new editor Carl Hiles, as well as Dark Horizons, its literary journal. Stephen Jones and David Sutton, editors of Fantasy Tales, published Airgedlamh, a beautifully produced fantasy magazine brought out as a posthumous tribute to its editor, Dave McFerran, whose untimely death cost fandom one of its brightest stars.

  Space and Time published its fifty-seventh issue, Dark Fantasy its twenty-second, Nyctalops its fifteenth, Sorcerer’s Apprentice its eighth, Eldritch Tales its seventh, The Argonaut its seventh. Many of the newer small press publications continued to show encouraging grow
th with their latest issues: Night Voyages, Gothic, Just Pulp, Ogre, Cryptoc, 1985 (now Alternaties), Wax Dragon, Pandora, to name just a few. New faces appeared: Skullduggery, devoted to mystery fiction; Paragon, from Chet Clingan who edited The Diversifier; Kadath, from Italy’s Francesco Cova and including English-language fiction; Dragonfields, an amalgam of two Canadian fanzines.

  As I said, the amateur press field is a lively one—and just as active outside the United States. Well, you can’t tell the players without a program, and fortunately for the fantasy fan there is a program: Fantasy Newsletter (which itself publishes an occasional story) is a monthly magazine that keeps fans up to date on all that’s happening within the fantasy genre. Subscriptions to Fantasy Newsletter are available from Paul C. Allen at P.O. Box 170A, Rochester, New York 14601. For those fans not fortunate enough to live close by a well-stocked science-fiction and fantasy bookstore, two established specialty dealers who issue regular catalogs are Robert Weinberg (15145 Oxford Drive, Oak Forest, Illinois 60452) and J. S. Hurst (P.O. Box 236, Vienna, Maryland 21869).

  And so from the year of the anthology we come now to the anthology of the year, The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series IX, presenting the best of the best from 1980’s bumper crop of horror fiction. The selection is never easy; in addition to everything else it demands a good bit of luck and not a little presumption. In selecting these stories I have tried to read all eligible material from this past year—basing my choices without regard to taboos or to story length, considering each story on its own merits without regard to the renown of the author or the prestige of the original publication. Some of these stories follow traditional guidelines, others reinterpret these patterns or move off to establish new models. My definition of horror fiction is a broad one, without quibbling over the various genres and subgenres. Most of these stories are fantasy, some are not; they all convey a convincing mood of fear.

  Because a horror story asks its readers to accept as truth certain facts which the reader knows are contrary to the ordered universe (as he has been led to believe it exists), it is absolutely imperative that the author convince the reader of the reality within his story. Catsup isn’t blood no matter how liberally it’s spattered. Rubber monsters aren’t frightening no matter how many fangs and tentacles. Cardboard sets and wooden characters don’t scare us for all the cobwebs and screams. If you don’t believe it, you aren’t frightened.

  These authors have brought all their considerable talents to bear for the purpose of convincing you, of frightening you. And they will frighten you. Believe me.

  THE MONKEY by Stephen King

  One of the bright spots for horror fans during the 1960’s was a series of shoddily produced magazines edited by Robert A. W. Lowndes for something called Health Knowledge, Inc. Longest running of their several titles were Magazine of Horror and Startling Mystery Stories; for the most part they reprinted otherwise inaccessible stories from sources such as Weird Tales and Strange Tales—with an occasional original story, usually unreadable, by someone you’d never heard of. Ramsey Campbell, already with one book to his credit, was one of these obscure writers, and another was Stephen King, who sold his first two stories here (for a combined total of $65).

  Born September 21, 1946, in Portland, Maine, King started writing at age twelve. Success was not instantaneous. After graduating from college, he worked in a laundromat for $60 a week before landing a $6400 a year high school teaching job. His first few novels earned only rejection slips, but in the men’s magazines, particularly Cavalier, King found a ready market for short horror fiction, and he decided to try his luck with the popular horror novel. Here King fared somewhat better: his first novel, Carrie, was published in 1974, followed by ’Salem’s Lot, The Shining, Night Shift (a collection), The Stand, The Dead Zone, and Firestarter. These have done well enough that King is unlikely to need his job at the laundromat back. “The Monkey” was published as a separate booklet inserted in the November, 1980 issue of Gallery—one of the more unusual first editions for collectors to chase after. Since reading it, I’ve been trying to remember whatever happened to that wind-up toy monkey I had when I was a kid. Trying hard to remember . . .

  When Hal Shelburn saw it, when his son Dennis pulled it out of a moldering Ralston-Purina carton that had been pushed far back under one attic eave, such a feeling of horror and dismay rose in him that for one moment he thought he surely must scream. He put one fist to his mouth, as if to cram it back . . . and then merely coughed into his fist. Neither Terry nor Dennis noticed, but Petey looked around, momentarily curious.

  “Hey, neat,” Dennis said respectfully. It was a tone Hal rarely got from the boy anymore himself. Dennis was twelve.

  “What is it?” Petey asked. He glanced at his father again before his eyes were dragged back to the thing his big brother had found. “What is it, Daddy?”

  “It’s a monkey, fartbrains,” Dennis said. “Haven’t you ever seen a monkey before?”

  “Don’t call your brother fartbrains,” Terry said automatically, and began to examine a box of curtains. The curtains were slimy with mildew and she dropped them quickly. “Uck.”

  “Can I have it, Daddy?” Petey asked. He was nine.

  “What do you mean?” Dennis cried. “I found it!”

  “Boys, please,” Terry said. “I’m getting a headache.”

  Hal barely heard them—any of them. The monkey glimmered up at him from his older son’s hands, grinning its old familiar grin. The same grin that had haunted his nightmares as a child, haunted them until he had—

  Outside a cold gust of wind rose, and for a moment lips with no flesh blew a long note through the old, rusty gutter outside. Petey stepped closer to his father, eyes moving uneasily to the rough attic roof through which nailheads poked.

  “What was that, Daddy?” he asked as the whistle died to a guttural buzz.

  “Just the wind,” Hal said, still looking at the monkey. Its cymbals, crescents of brass rather than full circles in the weak light of the one naked bulb, were moveless, perhaps a foot apart, and he added automatically, “Wind can whistle, but it can’t carry a tune.” Then he realized that was a saying of his Uncle Will’s, and a goose ran over his grave.

  The long note came again, the wind coming off Crystal Lake in a long, droning swoop and then wavering in the gutter. Half a dozen small drafts puffed cold October air into Hal’s face—God, this place was so much like the back closet of the house in Hartford that they might all have been transported thirty years back in time.

  I won’t think about that.

  But the thought wouldn’t be denied.

  In the back closet where I found that goddamned monkey in that same box.

  Terry had moved away to examine a wooden crate filled with knickknacks, duck-walking because the pitch of the eave was so sharp.

  “I don’t like it,” Petey said, and felt for Hal’s hand. “Dennis c’n have it if he wants. Can we go, Daddy?”

  “Worried about ghosts, chickenguts?” Dennis inquired.

  “Dennis, you stop it,” Terry said absently. She picked up a wafer-thin cup with a Chinese pattern. “This is nice. This—”

  Hal saw that Dennis had found the wind-up key in the monkey’s back. Terror flew through him on dark wings.

  “Don’t do that!”

  It came out more sharply than he had intended, and he had snatched the monkey out of Dennis’s hands before he was really aware he had done it. Dennis looked around at him, startled. Terry had also glanced back over her shoulder, and Petey looked up. For a moment they were all silent, and the wind whistled again, very low this time, like an unpleasant invitation.

  “I mean, it’s probably broken,” Hal said.

  It used to be broken . . . except when it wanted to be fixed.

  “Well, you didn’t have to grab,” Dennis said.

  “Dennis, shut up.”

  Dennis blinked at him and for a moment looked almost uneasy. Hal hadn’t spoken to him so sharply in a long tim
e. Not since he had lost his job with National Aerodyne in California two years before and they had moved to Texas. Dennis decided not to push it . . . for now. He turned back to the Ralston-Purina carton and began to root through it again, but the other stuff was nothing but shit. Broken toys bleeding springs and stuffings.

  The wind was louder now, hooting instead of whistling. The attic began to creak softly, making a noise like footsteps.

  “Please, Daddy?” Petey asked, only loud enough for his father to hear.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Terry, let’s go.”

  “I’m not through with this—”

  “I said let’s go.”

  It was her turn to look startled.

  They had taken two adjoining rooms in a motel. By ten that night the boys were asleep in their room and Terry was asleep in the adults’ room. She had taken two Valium on the ride back from the home place in Casco. To keep her nerves from giving her a migraine. Just lately she took a lot of Valium. It had started around the time National Aerodyne had laid Hal off. For the last two years he had been working for Texas Instruments—it was $4,000 less a year, but it was work. He told Terry they were lucky. She agreed. There were plenty of software architects drawing unemployment, he said. She agreed. The company housing in Arnette was every bit as good as the place in Fresno, he said. She agreed, but he thought her agreement was a lie.