The Best New Horror 3 Read online

  STEPHEN JONES is the winner of two World Fantasy Awards, the Horror Writers of America Bram Stoker Award, and nine-time recipient of the British Fantasy Award. A full-time columnist, book and film reviewer, television producer/director and genre movie publicist (all three Hellraiser films, Nightbreed, Split Second etc.), he is the co-editor of Horror: 100 Best Books, The Best Horror from Fantasy Tales, Gaslight & Ghosts, Now We Are Sick and the Best New Horror, Dark Voices: The Pan Book of Horror and Fantasy Tales series. He has also compiled Clive Barker’s The Nightbreed Chronicles, The Mammoth Book of Terror, Clive Barker’s Shadows in Eden, The Hellraiser Chronicles, The Mammoth Book of Vampires, James Herbert: By Horror Haunted and The Illustrated Vampire Movie Guide.

  RAMSEY CAMPBELL is the most respected living British horror writer. After working in the civil service and public libraries, he became a full-time writer in 1973. He has written hundreds of short stories (his latest collection, Alone With the Horrors, commemorates thirty years of chilling spines) and the novels The Doll Who Ate His Mother, The Face That Must Die, The Parasite, The Nameless, Incarnate, Obsession, The Hungry Moon, The Influence, Ancient Images, Midnight Sun, The Count of Eleven, Night of the Claw and The Long Lost. A multiple winner of both the World Fantasy Award and British Fantasy Award, he has also edited a number of anthologies, broadcasts weekly on Radio Merseyside as a film critic, and is President of the British Fantasy Society. He especially enjoys reading his stories to audiences.

  BEST NEW

  HORROR 3

  BEST NEW

  HORROR 3

  Edited by

  STEPHEN JONES

  and

  RAMSEY CAMPBELL

  Robinson Publishing

  London

  Constable & Robinson Ltd.

  55–56 Russell Square

  London WC1B 4HP

  www.constablerobinson.com

  First published by Robinson Publishing 1992

  Best New Horror copyright © by Robinson Publishing

  This selection copyright © by Stephen Jones and Ramsey Campbell 1992

  Cover picture copyright © by Luis Rey, courtesy Sarah Brown Ltd, 1992

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of Robinson Publishing.

  ISBN 1 85487 132 3

  eISBN 978 1 47211 364 1

  A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data for this title is available from the British Library.

  Typeset by Hewer Text Composition Services, Edinburgh.

  Printed in Finland by WSOY

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  For

  HUGH B. CAVE

  Here’s to many more rounds

  at the Gray Toad Inn

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  We would like to thank Kim Newman, Jo Fletcher, Peter Coleborn, Richard Dalby, Neil Gaiman, Humphrey Price, David Sutton and Ellen Datlow for their help and support. Thanks are also due to the magazines Locus (Editor & Publisher Charles N. Brown, Locus Publications, P.O. Box 13305, Oakland, CA 94661, USA) and Science Fiction Chronicle (Editor & Publisher Andrew I. Porter, P.O. Box 2730, Brooklyn, NY 11202–0056, USA) which were used as reference sources in the Introduction and Necrology.

  INTRODUCTION: HORROR IN 1991 Copyright © 1992 by Stephen Jones and Ramsey Campbell.

  TRUE LOVE Copyright © 1991 by K.W. Jeter. Originally published in A Whisper of Blood. Reprinted by permission of the author and the author’s agent.

  THE SAME IN ANY LANGUAGE Copyright © 1991 by Terminus Publishing Co., Inc. Originally published in Weird Tales No.301, Summer 1991. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  IMPERMANENT MERCIES Copyright © 1991 by Kathe Koja. Originally published in Dark Voices 3: The Pan Book of Horror. Reprinted by permission of the author and the author’s agent.

  MA QUI Copyright © 1990 by Alan Brennert. Originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction No.477, February 1991. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  THE MIRACLE MILE Copyright © 1991 by The McCammon Corporation. Originally published in Under the Fang. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  TAKING DOWN THE TREE Copyright © 1991 by Steve Rasnic Tem. Originally published in Pulphouse No.8, December 1991. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  WHERE FLIES ARE BORN Copyright © 1991 by Douglas Clegg. Originally published in Tekeli-li! Journal of Terror, No.2, Summer 1991. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  LOVE, DEATH AND THE MAIDEN Copyright © 1991 by Roger Johnson. Originally published as ‘Mädelein’ in The Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories 2. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  CHUI CHAI Copyright © 1991 by S.P. Somtow. Originally published in The Ultimate Frankenstein. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  THE SNOW SCULPTURES OF XANADU Copyright © 1991 by Kim Newman. Originally published in Ego No.3, June 1991. This version first published in Interzone 51/Million 5, September 1991. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  COLDER THAN HELL Copyright © 1991 by Edward Bryant. Originally published in Cold Shocks. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  RAYMOND Copyright © 1991 by Nancy A. Collins. Originally published in The Ultimate Werewolf. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  ONE LIFE, IN AN HOURGLASS Copyright © 1991 by Charles L. Grant. Originally published in The Bradbury Chronicles. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  THE BRAILLE ENCYCLOPEDIA Copyright © 1990 by Grant Morrison. Originally published in Hotter Blood. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  THE BACCHAE Copyright © 1991 by Elizabeth Hand. Originally published in Interzone 49, July 1991. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  BUSTED IN BUTTOWN Copyright © 1991 by David J. Schow. Originally published in Reflex No.21, December 1991. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  SUBWAY STORY Copyright © 1991 by Russell Flinn. Originally published in Stirring Within. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  THE MEDUSA Copyright © 1991 by Thomas Ligotti. Originally published in Fantasy Tales Vol.13, No.7, Winter 1991. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  POWER CUT Copyright © 1991 by Joel Lane. Originally published in Skeleton Crew, April 1991. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  MOVING OUT Copyright © 1990 by Nicholas Royle. Originally published in Skeleton Crew, January 1991. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  GUIGNOIR Copyright © 1991 by Norman Partridge. Originally published in Guignoir and Other Furies. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  BLOOD SKY Copyright © 1991 by William F. Nolan. Originally published in Blood Sky. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  READY Copyright © 1991 by David Starkey. Originally published in Grue No.12, Winter 1991. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  THE SLUG Copyright © 1991 by Karl Edward Wagner. Originally published in A Whisper of Blood. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  THE DARK LAND Copyright © 1991 by Michael Marshall Smith. Originally published in Darklands. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  WHEN THEY GAVE US MEMORY Copyright © 1991 by Dennis Etchison. Originally published in Final Shadows. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  TAKING CARE OF MICHAEL Copyright © 1991 by J.L. Comeau. Originally published in Borderlands 2. Reprinted by permission of the author and the author’s agent.

  THE DREAMS OF DR LADYBANK Copyright © 1991 by Thomas Tessier. Originally published in Night Visions 9. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  ZITS Copyright © 1991 by Nina Kiriki Hoffman. Originally published in Iniquities: The Magazine of Great Wickedness, Volume 1, Number 3, Autumn 1991. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  NECROLOGY: 1991 Co
pyright © 1992 by Stephen Jones and Kim Newman.

  CONTENTS

  Introduction: Horror in 1991

  THE EDITORS

  True Love

  K.W. JETER

  The Same in Any Language

  RAMSEY CAMPBELL

  Impermanent Mercies

  KATHE KOJA

  Ma Qui

  ALAN BRENNERT

  The Miracle Mile

  ROBERT R. McCAMMON

  Taking Down the Tree

  STEVE RASNIC TEM

  Where Flies Are Born

  DOUGLAS CLEGG

  Love, Death and the Maiden

  ROGER JOHNSON

  Chui Chai

  S.P. SOMTOW

  The Snow Sculptures of Xanadu

  KIM NEWMAN

  Colder Than Hell

  EDWARD BRYANT

  Raymond

  NANCY A. COLLINS

  One Life, in an Hourglass

  CHARLES L. GRANT

  The Braille Encyclopedia

  GRANT MORRISON

  The Bacchae

  ELIZABETH HAND

  Busted in Buttown

  DAVID J. SCHOW

  Subway Story

  RUSSELL FLINN

  The Medusa

  THOMAS LIGOTTI

  Power Cut

  JOEL LANE

  Moving Out

  NICHOLAS ROYLE

  Guignoir

  NORMAN PARTRIDGE

  Blood Sky

  WILLIAM F. NOLAN

  Ready

  DAVID STARKEY

  The Slug

  KARL EDWARD WAGNER

  The Dark Land

  MICHAEL MARSHALL SMITH

  When They Gave Us Memory

  DENNIS ETCHISON

  Taking Care of Michael

  J.L. COMEAU

  The Dreams of Dr Ladybank

  THOMAS TESSIER

  Zits

  NINA KIRIKI HOFFMAN

  Necrology: 1991

  STEPHEN JONES & KIM NEWMAN

  INTRODUCTION:

  HORROR IN 1991

  Despite many predictions that the horror genre would collapse in 1991, there were only slightly fewer titles published in the field than in the previous year. However, although the market looked as healthy as ever, the overall quality of much of the material being published left a good deal to be desired.

  Not that this affected the bestsellers. Dean R. Koontz began and ended the year with new novels: Cold Fire was a psychic thriller in his usual mould, while Hideaway, about near-death experiences, was more of a welcome departure. Dan Simmons strayed into Stephen King territory with his bulky Summer of Night, a coming-of-age novel set in a small town beset by evil forces, while Robert R. McCammon took the same route, though with less emphasis on the horror, in Boy’s Life. King’s own Needful Things was billed as “the last Castle Rock story”, as the author finally destroyed his own small town. He also published the third volume in his offbeat “Gunslinger” series, The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands, which was another sure-fire hit.

  Clive Barker demonstrated at length what he means by the fantastique with his immense novel Imajica, which was joined on the bestseller lists by the first separate English-language edition of The Hellbound Heart. Peter Straub brought out the complete version of his story “Mrs God” (abridged in Houses Without Doors) as a short novel, and another tale which finally saw solo publication was L. Ron Hubbard’s 1940 novel Fear, packaged with an enthusiastic quote from Stephen King.

  Whitley Streiber returned to form with The Wild, a down-to-earth werewolf novel, and Dennis Danvers’ Wilderness was an acclaimed first novel about a female werewolf falling in love. Brian Stableford’s The Angel of Pain was a nineteenth-century sequel to his The Werewolves of London. Michael Cadnum published Saint Peter’s Wolf, an exultation of the Lycanthropic state (as well as Sleepwalker, an atmospheric tale in which a bog man is revived, and Calling Home, a young adult mystery novel).

  It was more the year of the psychopath and in particular the vampire, however. Brian Lumley concluded the adventures of vampire hunter Harry Keogh in Deadspawn, the fifth in his bestselling “Necroscope” series, while the fifth volume in Les Daniels’s chronicles of vampire Don Sebastian was No Blood Spilled. P. N. Elrod continued the “Vampire Files” series with Art in the Blood and Fire in the Blood, the fourth and fifth books to feature Jack Fleming, an undead reporter and private investigator, pursuing vampires in prohibition Chicago, and Tanya Huff’s Blood Prince varied the theme by teaming a female private investigator with a vampire in contemporary Toronto. Brian Aldiss’s Dracula Unbound, like his earlier treatment of Frankenstein, was what used to be called science fantasy, and had Bram Stoker trying to destroy a race of time-travelling vampires. In the Blood was Nancy Collins’s eagerly awaited sequel to Sunglasses After Dark. T. M. Wright set his The Last Vampire after the holocaust, while Jeffrey N. McMahon’s Vampires Anonymous was a black comedy about a hip, gay vampire. Counteracting all this interest was a revised edition of The Highgate Vampire by the Reverend (now Bishop) Sean Manchester.

  The literary fashion for serial killers gained Thomas Harris’s Red Dragon and The Silence of the Lambs a belated and entirely deserved success, but Sliver marked a disappointing return to the theme by the author of A Kiss Before Dying, Ira Levin. In a year which saw the unexpurgated Marquis de Sade in British paperback, it seemed appropriate that Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho sneaked the prose equivalent of the worst of the video nasties onto the mainstream fiction shelves. Pretty nearly as explicit, though less widely discussed, was Dennis Cooper’s Frisk, about a gay serial killer. The author of Dirty Weekend, Helena Zahavi, apparently saw a serial killer as a role model for her female readers. Ramsey Campbell’s The Count of Eleven was published as horror, but was at least equally a comic novel, featuring what one reader described as “the most sympathetic serial killer in fiction”.

  Other books were published on the fringe of the field. Elizabeth Engstrom’s Lizzie Borden added an occult twist to the famous case. Mark Jacobson’s Gojiro (the Japanese name that is translated as “Godzilla”) was inspired by comic books and that jolly green monster that keeps stomping Tokyo. Outside the Dog Museum showed that Jonathan Carroll’s imagination still knows no bounds. Thomas M. Disch’s The M.D. twisted the scalpel nicely, though we gather that even if the book’s subtitle was “A Horror Story”, the author objected to being reviewed by Gahan Wilson. The introduction to Secrets of the Morning admitted that the late V. C. Andrews didn’t write her latest family saga, but it failed to mention that Andrew Niederman did. Theodore Roszak’s Flicker was one of the more challenging horror novels of the year, a book about the occult power of movies which raised moral and aesthetic issues which most horror writers appear to prefer to ignore.

  Joe R. Lansdale gave the Dark Knight an even darker twist when he pitted him against Indian magic and a killer car in the original novelization Batman: Captured by the Engines. An Ouija board set evil in motion in Darkness, Tell Us by Richard Laymon, who also came up with a rain that drives people insane in One Rainy Night. Steve Harris achieved the same results with a hybrid cattle disease in Wulf. The Fetch was a superior new horror novel by Robert Holdstock, and NeverLand added to Douglas Clegg’s growing reputation. Pulp veteran Hugh B. Cave returned to the voodoo theme in Lucifer’s Eye, and Robert Weinberg kept the pulp tradition alive with The Armageddon Box and The Black Lodge. Garry Kilworth’s The Drowners was a haunting ghost story for young adults. Charles L. Grant entered the young adult market with the psychic thriller Fire Mask, and chilled his older readers with Something Stirs. The underrated Bernard Taylor published a welcome new novel, Charmed Life. The Burning (aka The Hymn) and Black Angel (aka Master of Lies) all appeared by Graham Masterton. Stephen Gallagher’s The Boat House featured psychological terrors, and Peter James’s Twilight again reflected that author’s fascination with the supernatural.

  Mark Morris consolidated his growing reputation with a second novel, Stitch, as did Kim Newman with hi
s latest and biggest novel Jago. Graham Joyce’s first novel, Dreamside, also made quite an impact. Reprisal was F. Paul Wilson’s sequel to Reborn, itself a sequel to The Keep. Helltracks proved that Willaim F. Nolan has lost none of his energy as a novelist. An evil mailman with psychic powers attacked an innocent family in Bentley Little’s The Mailman, and the inmates of a county jail were made away with by monstrous plants in J. N. Williamson’s The Night Seasons. Ecological horrors ran wild in The Bridge by John Skipp and Craig Spector, the first horror novel to come equipped with its own soundtrack album! Ray Garton’s The New Neighbor and Lot Lizards both appeared in specialist editions. Also worth noting were House Haunted by Al Sarrantonio, Dark Twilight by Joseph A. Citro, Dark Lullaby by Jessica Palmer, Captain Quaid by Sean Costello, Wurm and the novelization of Child’s Play 3 by Matthew J. Costello, and Cold Whisper by Rick Hautala.

  John Saul gave his readers what they expected with Darkness, about an unpleasant swamp-horror, and the same reliability might be claimed for Guy N. Smith (The Black Fedora and The Resurrected) and Shaun Hutson (Renegades and Captives, which once again proved that you can’t judge a book by its cover).

  Dell’s “Abyss” line enlivened the horror field with several standout novels during its first year, including The Cipher by rising star Kathe Koja, Nightlife by Brian Hodge, and Prodigal by Melanie Tem.

  Waking Nighmares collected nineteen tales by Ramsey Campbell. Grimscribe His Lives and Works was a fix-up of short stories by Thomas Ligotti. Robert Holdstock returned to the mysteries of Mythago Wood in The Bone Forest, a collection of eight tales, and ten recent stories were included in Night of the Cooters, subtitled “More Neat Stories”, by the unclassifiable Howard Waldrop. Sexpunks & Savage Sagas was a self-published collection of fourteen tales by Richard Sutphen, whose Spine-Tingling Press also released a number of audio tapes based on his own and other authors’ work.

  While the number of collections may have been down, the anthology market was as crowded as ever. Byron Preiss et al tried to edit by numbers three anthologies loosely linked to vague anniversaries of movies, but The Ultimate Werewolf, The Ultimate Dracula and The Ultimate Frankenstein, despite their titles, weren’t. Ellen Datlow chose eighteen tales of a wide range of vampirism for A Whisper of Blood, the superior successor to her Blood Is Not Enough, while Under the Fang, edited by Robert R. McCammon and set in a world overrun by vampires, consisted of seventeen stories by members of the Horror Writers of America.