Horror: The 100 Best Books (27 page)

***

For sheer ferocity and general fearlessness of both language and vision, few writers can compare to Harlan Ellison. And strangely enough -- for Harlan has a longstanding loathing to genrification -- few writers have done more to blaze the trail for modern horror. The original splatterpunk, a good twenty years before the advent of that ostensible phenomenon, his work has punched holes in the body of Literature that may never fully heal. With a career as prolific and multifarious as Ellison's, it becomes difficult to try and peg it all down to one book. No analysis of his impact on the contemporary condition of mortal dread is complete without mentioning titles like "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream", "In the Fourth Year of the War", "Try a Dull Knife", "The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World", "All the Birds Come Home to Roost", "Knox", "Croatoan", "Hitler Painted Roses", "Grail", "The Cheese Stands Alone", "All the Faces of Fear", "Mona at Her Windows", and "The Prowler in the City at the Edge of the World". But
Deathbird Stories
, Harlan Ellison's book of gods, a collection written during the decade that began with the hopefulness of
Camelot
and ended with the hardline of
Kent State
, stands out as a definitive must-read. This book, with its presaging
caveat
("Please do not attempt to read the book in one sitting . . .") is not fucking around. The author means what he says. And he means to take large bites out of the reader's coziest assumptions: about life, and death; about hope, and despair. About gods. And devils. It begins with "The Whimper of Whipped Dogs": a story so strong and so mythically precise that it earns the book admission to the
100 Best
on its merits alone. From its initial Kitty Genovese-style killing to its innocence-slaying finale, the story is a masterpiece of grim admission and the price of denial. If you haven't read it, go. Read. Now. It will kick your ass clear down to Hell's lowest level. From there, you're on your own: from the sexual betrayal of "Pretty Maggie Money eyes", "The Face of Helen Borneau", and "Ernest and the Machine God", through the tortured patriotic psychosis of "Basilisk" and god-abandonment of "Neon", the manically kinetic mayhem of "Along the Scenic Route" and the absolute full-tilt slaughter of "Bleeding Stones" (a blitzkrieg splatterfesto years ahead of its time, and yes, a very funny story), it's a long crawl back. And only then, at the very end of the journey, will you find the namesake story of the collection, "The Deathbird": a transformative piece of fiction that takes radical stances in both its narrative structure and concept. "The Deathbird" remains one of my all-time favorite Ellison stories. I first encountered it over twelve years ago, under circumstances so different that it's sometimes tough to fully gauge its impact. But one thing is for sure: it changed me. It was the first story in my experience to suggest, plain as day, that maybe we'd been set up and suckered the whole time -- that God was lying, and the serpent was a victim of bad hype. There's no overestimating the implicit subversiveness, or the importance of that subversion on the modern mind. And Ellison's gift is in articulating the dark side of the higher self, laying waste to the notion that blind subservience to a popular "moral" code is in any way the One True Path to wisdom or compassion. "The Deathbird" stands out: as hauntingly brutal love story, and as allegory for a dangerous age. And it ages well, to boot; Harlan rode the cutting edge of fiction when most of today's new crop of writers were still fresh from cutting teeth, and the ultra-hip of twenty years past sometimes falls on the current palette like a vintage wine that doesn't quite know whether to turn to vinegar. And true, some of the stories in this collection fall prey to one degree or another of the dreaded AHS: ageing hipness syndrome, that peculiar neurological dysfunction that can make you wince at pictures of yourself wearing a nehru jacket and bell-bottomed hip huggers -- or a spiked purple mohawk and safety-pins, for that matter. But this is not a big problem, at least not to the extent that it so much detracts from the work as underscores the time in which it was written (thus supplying the reader with a wealth of handy historical subtext). And regardless, the stories in this collection stand unfazed by Time's relentless onward trudge. "The Whimper of Whipped Dogs" is, in my humble opinion, a classic. And "The Deathbird" remains timeless, ageless, elegant, evocative; a chilling, bittersweet coda that taught me a lot about how we can touch nerves through as simple a thing as words on paper. How the right words, the right
story
, can permanently change the way we see the world.
Deathbird Stories
did that for me, way back when I was too young and hungry and lost in America. And you know what? I still am. It still does. And I think it always will. Thanks, Harlan. -- CRAIG SPECTOR

Published by the North Carolina imprint, Carcosa,
Murgunstrumm and Others
is almost 500 pages long and collects together 26 tales of horror -- the best of Hugh B. Cave's hundreds of published stories, covering forty years of writing. Rarely reprinted since their original appearances in the pulp magazines
Weird Tales
,
Strange Tales
,
Ghost Stories
,
Argosy
, etc., this line-up of lurid chillers includes "The Isle of Dark Magic" and "The Death Watch", Cave's only two contributions to H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos; "Horror in Wax", a grisly tale of vengeance from the single issue of
Thrilling Mysteries
; "The Affair of the Clutching Hand" and "The Strange Case of No. 7", two early tales of Cave's occult investigator, Dr. Ronald Hale; "The Whisperers", "The Strange Death of Ivan Gromleigh", "Prey of the Nightborn", "Purr of a Cat" and "The Caverns of Time", all written under Cave's jokey pseudonym, "Justin Case" for
Spicy Mystery Stories
; and "Murgunstrumm" itself -- a 30,000 word short novel about the cursed Gray Toad Inn and its vampiric inhabitants. The book is gruesomely illustrated with more than thirty-five original drawings by
Weird Tales
artist Lee Brown Coye. Winner of the 1978 World Fantasy Award for Best Collection.

***

I started reading the
really
weird stuff in my early teens. By then I'd already explored all I could of Haggard, Wells, and some Poe -- Poe was a little more difficult. Mainly I loved adventure stories, and the stranger the adventures the better. Then I got lucky: I gained access to a secondhand book market littered with piles of old American pulps.
Weird Tales
may well have been the "unique" magazine, but it was only one of many, many pulps. Back in 1950-51 I could buy 15-to 20-year-old copies of
Strange Tales
,
Ghost Stories
,
Black Book Detective
,
Argosy
, and many other titles for as little as sixpence (2p to you --or maybe four cents to you) per copy! Certain names would recur in the contents pages: names like Robert Bloch, Henry Kuttner, Robert E. Howard, until I got to remember them and started to look for them, just as in a few more years I'd be hunting for Lovecraft, C. L. Moore, Clark Ashton Smith. The reason I looked for them was because I'd learned they wouldn't let me down -- or rarely. Oh, these were only "pulp" stories, no doubt about it, but their authors had something; and someone who had an awful lot of it was one Hugh B. Cave. I'd had some bad old times with
that
bloke! The years intervened. Times changed. Titles I remembered had been extinct even
before
I had read them! Long before! All of those magazines were collectors' items by the time I became a soldier. And I stayed a soldier until December 1980. But in 1977 Karl Edward Wagner's Carcosa Press had published this book called
Murgunstrumm and Others
-- by one Hugh B. Cave -- and I had sworn to buy a copy. Actually meeting Cave at Worldcon in Providence, October 1986, galvanized me into action -- at long last. We spoke only briefly but . . . Hugh was so nice and easy to talk to! You had to like him. He had what his stories had. And that was why I bought the book: to see if it was still there, that certain something which had kept me turning over those piles of old pulps which (God help me for a cretin!) I really should have bought up and kept, each and every copy, by means of which I'd now be halfway to rich. That certain something was still there in Lovecraft, I knew, and in Bloch and Moore. But was it there in Cave? I needn't have worried. Yes it was still there: treasure. A treasure "Cave". A veritable Aladdin's "Cave"! I didn't remember all of the titles but I certainly remembered some of the stories. "The Watcher in the Green Room" and "The Crawling Curse" were both from
Weird Tales
, and "Boomerang" from
Argosy
. But . . . talk about a
book
! Pushing five hundred pages of book! And 43 wide lines to the page. And illustrated (profusely simply does
not
do it justice) by the entirely alien and yet superbly earthy Lee Brown Coye. He was from
Weird Tales
too. With a book like this . . . I mean, which story do you read first? And what wonderfully grotesque illo do you study? "Murgunstrumm", the title story, is itself a short novel -- and after that there are twenty-five more stories! But describe them? Hint at their contents? Not here, friend! No way -- no room -- and anyway, how to start? The best I can do is steal a line from a Karl Wagner letter to Cave, which goes: "For sheer unrestricted horror, I don't think there's ever been anything like it". And about Coye's artwork: "Turning Coye loose on something like this is like giving a straight razor to a psychopath." And about the pair of them together: "You (Cave) and Coye ought to flood the coronary care units all across the country!" Now I know Karl personally and he's said a few true words in his time, but none truer than these. So here's me stuck for space, just a few more words, and not having said anything very much about my subject. Some things are like that: too
big
to allow room for trivial observation.
So
big that even detailed observation might appear trivial. But if I had to choose my favourite book again next year, it would still be this one. That is, unless someone had been damn busy between times! Hugh B. Cave is still alive -- is he ever alive! His latest weird story (or one of them), "No Flowers for Henry", can be found in
Whispers
for October '87. It's polished -- an example of Cave's art perfected. On the other hand many of the stories in
Murgunstrumm
have rough edges too. These are the ones that tore my imagination and put splinters in it back when I was a kid. And reading them anew . . . why, the scars start itching all over again! -- BRIAN LUMLEY

David Warwick returns to England from New York because he instinctively feels that his twin brother, Colin, has died. In Hillingham, the village where Colin lived, David begins to gather the full extent of a series of tragedies which have recently claimed the lives of Colin and his wife, Helen. Moving into Garrard's Hill Cottage -- which has a history of unhappy owners meeting violent ends -- David begins to suspect that murder has been done. When David's American girlfriend, Shelagh, joins him, the girl becomes the focus of a series of attacks David at first thinks are the work of Jean Timpson, a local woman who helps out at the cottage. Gradually, he learns that the place is home to a malevolent, jealous female spirit who has notched up many victims over the years. Taylor's second novel, which follows his
The Godsend
(1976), has been called by Douglas Winter "one of the finest ghost stories ever written". Subsequently, Taylor has written the novels
The Reaping
,
The Moorstone Sickness
,
The Kindness of Strangers
,
Madeleine
,
Mother's Boys
and
Wild Card
, along with such non-fiction studies as
Cruelly Murdered
,
Perfect Murder
(with Stephen Knight) and
Murder at the Priory
(with Kate Clarke).

***

Ghosts were a reliable staple of dark fantasy long before they were ever shrouded in fiction and put to paper. And because of their longevity, and their evident tenacity, there is by now little new about them. We know what they are, what they represent, what they portend -- usually before the author gets around to his own explanation. Yet, whether these ghosts are pranksters or tragic figures or something in between, they persist in our literature. Perhaps as reminders of our own mortality, or as promises of life after death, or as warnings that life after death isn't what we hope or pray it will be. The viewpoint depends on the writer, and the reader, and just as often does not really matter. Just as often, a ghost is a ghost is a ghost, no further explanation necessary. The author who attempts such a story must be aware that he's walking on well-trod ground, and his tread has no recourse but to be different if the story is to be notable, and lasting. That difference does not have to be drastic, nor need it be even visible at first glance. But to add substance to the canon requires
something
that has not been done, or done well, before.
Sweetheart, Sweetheart
, by Bernard Taylor, is then the best ghost story (in novel form) I have ever read, and am ever likely to read. Nothing on either side of the Atlantic has thus far even come close. Any number of elements make this novel special: that it is a true novel, and not some spawn of a television generation noted primarily for its minuscule attention span, marks it out as distinctive; that its elegant use of language demonstrates no condescension, signals a respect for the reader's intelligence far too often lacking in contemporary fiction of any stripe; and that it achieves its effects without artifice speaks volumes about the care and caring that went into its writing. A ghost story ought to have a certain unease, an anxiety, an air near palpable tension that is played upon by the writer to summon and engage as much of his reader's imagination as possible, in what amounts to active collaboration. Through this, the fact that we already know this is a ghost story means nothing. What are important are the lives of the characters, the
people
, who are involved, and how they deal with the real and preternatural forces which oppose them. Or lure them. And rather than opt to pile explicit horror upon gruesome horror, throw one body atop another, toss one cliche after another into the pot to satisfy what such a story is "supposed to be", Taylor has successfully created both a world and a population we can reach and understand with all our senses, and all their attendant, honest, emotions. In dark fantasy, to give one an honest chill through a story that holds and entertains us is a mark of success; to multiply those chills without dissipating them, to entertain without pretense, and at the same time conclude an already emotionally draining story with a wrench that is at once heartbreaking and horrifying, is the mark of a potential classic.
Sweetheart, Sweetheart
is precisely that. -- CHARLES L. GRANT