The Mammoth Book of Nightmare Stories Read online

  Collection and editorial material copyright © Stephen Jones 2002, 2003, 2019

  Interior illustrations copyright © Randy Broecker 2002, 2003

  Originally published in hardcover as Keep Out the Night

  and By Moonlight Only by PS Publishing.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Skyhorse Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

  Cover design by Brian Peterson

  Cover illustration credit: iStockphoto

  Print ISBN: 978-1-5107-3644-3

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-3646-7

  Printed in the United States of America

  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  NOT TO BE READ AT NIGHT

  THE VIADUCT

  Brian Lumley

  SPINDLESHANKS (NEW ORLEANS, 1956)

  Caitlín R. Kiernan

  HOMECOMING

  Sydney J. Bounds

  FEEDERS AND EATERS

  Neil Gaiman

  NOTHING OF HIM THAT DOTH FADE

  Poppy Z. Brite

  THE UNFORTUNATE

  Tim Lebbon

  ONE OF US

  Dennis Etchison

  IS THERE ANYBODY THERE?

  Kim Newman

  DEAR ALISON

  Michael Marshall Smith

  THE GOSSIPS

  Basil Copper

  IN THE FOURTH YEAR OF THE WAR

  Harlan Ellison®

  INVASION FROM INFERNO

  Hugh B. Cave

  THE ART NOUVEAU FIREPLACE

  Christopher Fowler

  THESE BEASTS

  Tanith Lee

  TIGHT LITTLE STITCHES IN A DEAD MAN’S BACK

  Joe R. Lansdale

  NEEDING GHOSTS

  Ramsey Campbell

  Acknowledgments and Credits

  About the Editor

  In memory of

  Christine Campbell Thomson (1897–1985),

  who led the way …

  INTRODUCTION

  NOT TO BE READ AT NIGHT

  FOR FANS OF classic horror fiction and collectors of the American pulp magazine Weird Tales in particular, the Not at Night series of anthologies is one of the genre’s best-kept secrets.

  Beginning with the book from which the series took its collective name, Not at Night, published in October 1925, literary agent and author Christine Campbell Thomson (1897–1985) edited twelve volumes that appeared from the British publisher Selwyn & Blount during the 1920s and ’30s.

  These comprised the initial volume, along with More Not at Night (1926), You’ll Need a Night Light (1927), Gruesome Cargoes (1928), By Daylight Only (1929), Switch on the Light (1931), At Dead of Night (1931), Grim Death (1932), Keep on the Light (1933), Terror By Night (1934), and Nightmare By Daylight (1936). The final volume in the series was The “Not at Night” Omnibus (1937), which collected thirty-five stories from the earlier books, before Thomson decided to bring the series to an end because of a lack of material that was good enough.

  Thomson had always been a fan of weird fiction, and the Not at Night series drew extensively on stories that were originally published in Weird Tales, providing early hardcover publication for such notable authors as H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, Hugh B. Cave, Edmond Hamilton, Mary Elizabeth Counselman, August Derleth, Frank Belknap Long, Seabury Quinn, H. Warner Munn, Hazel Heald, David H. Keller, and numerous others.

  In fact, after she began selling stories by her husband Oscar Cook to Weird Tales, a mutual copyright arrangement meant that the Not at Night series became the “official” British edition of the legendary periodical (as was sometimes indicated in the books’ preliminary pages).

  Thomson later recalled conceiving the idea for the anthology on the top of an open-top bus and being responsible for the title of the series. Although she never went into detail about her inspiration, as the first volume’s dust-jacket flap confirmed: The Editor has aimed at a collection which should amply justify the title, and be calculated to make any reader disinclined to go to bed after putting down the book.

  When I decided to pay homage to Thomson’s series, I wanted to replicate the intention stated in this jacket copy. However, selling the concept of a “non-themed” anthology can sometimes be a difficult business, as I had discovered previously with my volumes The Mammoth Book of Terror and The Mammoth Book of New Terror. Therefore, just as Thomson had selected many of her stories from among the best Weird Tales had to offer, I decided to approach a number of contemporary horror authors and ask them for their favorite stories and novellas that, for one reason or another, they felt had been unjustly overlooked or ignored.

  The reaction to my solicitation was overwhelmingly positive—all the authors I contacted had examples of their work that they would like to see gain greater recognition—and so this present volume was born.

  Christine Campbell Thomson left behind a legacy of not only one of the first regular series of weird fiction anthologies, but also a dozen volumes that should be considered a cornerstone of any horror reader’s library.

  I believe this current volume broadly encompasses her views and tastes for the series through an impressive lineup of tales that were out of print for far too long or that appear here for the first time in new or revised versions.

  It is my fervent hope that the varied horrors—both supernatural and psychological—that manifest themselves over the following pages will leave a lasting chill down readers’ spines long after they have finished this book …

  But be warned—do not read them at night!

  STEPHEN JONES

  LONDON, ENGLAND

  THE VIADUCT

  BRIAN LUMLEY

  Brian Lumley produced his early work very much under the influence of the Weird Tales authors, H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, and Clark Ashton Smith; and his first stories and books were published by the then “dean of macabre publishers,” August W. Derleth through his now legendary Arkham House imprint.

  Lumley began writing full time in 1980, and four years later he completed his breakthrough novel Necroscope® featuring Harry Keogh, a psychically endowed hero who is able to communicate with the teeming dead. Necroscope has now grown to sixteen big volumes, published in fourteen countries and many millions of copies. In addition, Necroscope comic books, graphic novels, a role-playing game, quality figurines, and a series of audio books in Germany have been created from the popular series.

  Along with the Necroscope titles, Lumley is also the author of more than forty other books, and his vampire story “Necros” became one of the first episodes of Showtime’s erotic horror anthology TV series The Hunger.

  He is the winner of a British Fantasy Award, a Fear Magazine Award, a Lovecraft Film Festival Association “Howie,” the World Horror Convention’s Grand Master Award, the Horror Writers Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award, an
d the World Fantasy Convention’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

  “‘The Viaduct’ was written in 1974 while I was in the English garrison town of Aldershot,” remembers the author. “This was a weird three or four weeks—a strange time in my life—when quite a bit of surreal stuff was happening. (No, I wasn’t on medication, illicit pharmaceuticals, booze or anything of that sort … I was in fact a S/Sgt in the Royal Military Police on a Unit Quartermaster’s course.)

  “Anyway, Ramsey Campbell had asked me for a story for an anthology he was editing, and despite that everything around me felt weird—or perhaps because of it—I wrote him one that wasn’t. So ‘The Viaduct’ was something of a departure for me, containing nothing supernatural, no vampires, no intelligent octopuses from outer space, none of that stuff … just something terrifying that might actually happen.

  “Out of all my stories, there are only a handful which fit this category—more suspense than purely weird tales. Anyway, I liked the finished product, and whatever feeling of reality it musters probably has its source in its setting—the northeast of England where I grew up.

  “Oh, and by the way, the town where I was born really does have such a viaduct …”

  HORROR CAN COME in many different shapes, sizes, and colors; often, like death, which is sometimes its companion, unexpectedly. Some years ago horror came to two boys in the coal-mining area of England’s northeast coast.

  Pals since they first started school seven years earlier, their names were John and David. John was a big lad and thought himself very brave; David was six months younger, smaller, and he wished he could be more like John.

  It was a Saturday in the late spring, warm but not oppressive, and since there was no school the boys were out adventuring on the beach. They had spent most of the morning playing at being starving castaways, turning over rocks in the life-or-death search for crabs and eels—and jumping back startled, hearts racing, whenever their probing revealed too frantic a wriggling in the swirling water, or perhaps a great crab carefully sidling away, one pincer lifted in silent warning—and now they were heading home again for lunch.

  But lunch was still almost two hours away, and it would take them less than an hour to get home. In that simple fact were sown the seeds of horror, in that and in one other fact that between the beach and their respective homes there stood the viaduct …

  Almost as a reflex action, when the boys left the beach they headed in the direction of the viaduct. To do this they turned inland, through the trees and bushes of the narrow dene that came right down to the sand, and followed the path of the river. The river was still fairly deep, from the spring thaw and the rains of April, and as they walked, ran, and hopped they threw stones into the water, seeing who could make the biggest splash.

  In no time at all, it seemed, they came to the place where the massive, ominous shadow of the viaduct fell across the dene and the river flowing through it, and there they stared up in awe at the giant arched structure of brick and concrete that bore upon its back one hundred yards of the twin-tracks that formed the coastal railway. Shuddering mightily whenever a train roared overhead, the man-made bridge was a never-ending source of amazement and wonder to them … And a challenge, too.

  It was as they were standing on the bank of the slow-moving river, perhaps fifty feet wide at this point, that they spotted on the opposite bank the local village idiot, “Wiley Smiley.” Now of course, that was not this unfortunate youth’s real name; he was Miles Bellamy, victim of cruel genetic fates since the ill-omened day of his birth some nineteen years earlier. But everyone called him Wiley Smiley.

  He was fishing, in a river that had supported nothing bigger than a minnow for many years, with a length of string and a bent pin. He looked up and grinned vacuously as John threw a stone into the water to attract his attention. The stone went quite close to the mark, splashing water over the unkempt youth where he stood a little way out from the far bank, balanced none too securely on slippery rocks. His vacant grin immediately slipped from his face; he became angry, gesturing awkwardly and mouthing incoherently.

  “He’ll come after us,” said David to his brash companion, his voice just a trifle alarmed.

  “No he won’t, stupid,” John casually answered, picking up a second, larger stone. “He can’t get across, can he.” It was a statement, not a question, and it was a fact. Here the river was deeper, overflowing from a large pool directly beneath the viaduct which, in the months ahead, children and adults alike would swim in during the hot weekends of summer.

  John threw his second missile, deliberately aiming it at the water as close to the enraged idiot as he could without actually hitting him, shouting: “Yah! Wiley Smiley! Trying to catch a whale, are you?”

  Wiley Smiley began to shriek hysterically as the stone splashed down immediately in front of him and a fountain of water geysered over his trousers. Threatening though they now were, his angry caperings upon the rocks looked very funny to the boys (particularly since his rage was impotent), and John began to laugh loudly and jeeringly. David, not a cruel boy by nature, found his friend’s laughter so infectious that in a few seconds he joined in, adding his own voice to the hilarity.

  Then John stooped yet again, straightening up this time with two stones, one of which he offered to his slightly younger companion. Carried completely away now, David accepted the stone and together they hurled their missiles, dancing and laughing until tears rolled down their cheeks as Wiley Smiley received a further dousing. By that time the rocks upon which their victim stood were thoroughly wet and slippery, so that suddenly he lost his balance and sat down backward into the shallow water.

  Climbing clumsily, soggily to his feet, he was greeted by howls of laughter from across the river, which drove him to further excesses of rage. His was a passion which might only find outlet in direct retaliation, revenge. He took a few paces forward, until the water swirled about his knees, then stooped and plunged his arms into the river. There were stones galore beneath the water, and the face of the tormented youth was twisted with hate and fury now as he straightened up and brandished two which were large and jagged.

  Where his understanding was painfully slow, Wiley Smiley’s strength was prodigious. Had his first stone hit John on the head it might easily have killed him. As it was, the boy ducked at the last moment and the missile flew harmlessly above him. David, too, had to jump to avoid being hurt by a flying rock, and no sooner had the idiot loosed both his stones than he stooped down again to grope in the water for more. Wiley Smiley’s aim was too good for the boys, and his continuing rage was making them begin to feel uncomfortable, so they beat a hasty retreat up the steeply wooded slope of the dene and made for the walkway that was fastened and ran parallel to the near-side wall of the viaduct. Soon they had climbed out of sight of the poor soul below, but they could still hear his meaningless squawking and shrieking.

  A few minutes more of puffing and panting, climbing steeply through trees and saplings, brought them up above the wood and to the edge of a grassy slope. Another hundred yards and they could go over a fence and onto the viaduct. Though no word had passed between them on the subject, it was inevitable that they should end up on the viaduct, one of the most fascinating places in their entire world …

  The massive structure had been built when first the collieries of the northeast opened up, long before plans were drawn up for the major coast road, and now it linked twin colliery villages that lay opposite each other across the narrow river valley it spanned. Originally constructed solely to accommodate the railway, and used to that end to this very day, with the addition of a walkway, it also provided miners who lived in one village but worked in the other with a shortcut to their respective coal-mines.

  While the viaduct itself was of sturdy brick, designed to withstand decade after decade of the heavy traffic that rumbled and clattered across its triple-arched back, the walkway was a comparatively fragile affair. That is not to say that it was not safe, but there were certain
dangers, and notices had been posted at its approaches to warn users of the presence of at least an element of risk.

  Supported upon curving metal arms—iron bars about one and one-half inches in diameter which, springing from the brick and mortar of the viaduct wall, were set perhaps twenty inches apart—the walkway itself was of wooden planks protected by a fence five feet high. There were, however, small gaps where rotten planks had been removed and never replaced, but the miners who used the viaduct were careful and knew the walkway’s dangers intimately. All in all the walkway served a purpose and was reasonably safe; one might jump from it, certainly, but only a very careless person or an outright fool would fall. Still, it was no place for anyone suffering from vertigo …

  Now, as they climbed the fence to stand gazing up at those ribs of iron with their burden of planking and railings, the two boys felt a strange, headlong rushing emotion within them. For this day, of course, was the day!

  It had been coming for almost a year, since the time when John had stood right where he stood now to boast: “One day I’ll swing hand over hand along those rungs, all the way across. Just like Tarzan.” Yes, they had sensed this day’s approach, almost as they might sense Christmas or the end of long, idyllic summer holidays … or a visit to the dentist. Something far away, which would eventually arrive, but not yet.

  Except that now it had arrived.

  “One hundred and sixty rungs,” John breathed, his voice a little fluttery, feeling his palms beginning to itch. “Yesterday, in the playground, we both did twenty more than that on the climbing-frame.”

  “The climbing-frame,” answered David, with a naïve insight and vision far ahead of his age, “is only seven feet high. The viaduct is about a hundred and fifty.”

  John stared at his friend for a second and his eyes narrowed. Suddenly he sneered. “I might have known it—you’re scared, aren’t you?”

  “No,” David shook his head, lying, “but it’ll soon be lunchtime, and—”

  “You are scared!” John repeated. “Like a little kid. We’ve been practicing for months for this, every day of school on the climbing-frame, and now we’re ready. You know we can do it.” His tone grew more gentle, urging: “Look, it’s not as if we can’t stop if we want to, is it? There’s them holes in the fence, and those big gaps in the planks.”