The Spectral Book of Horror Stories Read online

  Table of Contents

  INTRODUCTION

  ON THE TOUR

  THE DOG’S HOME

  FUNERAL RITES

  SLAPE

  THE NIGHT DOCTOR

  DULL FIRE

  THE BOOK AND THE RING

  EASTMOUTH

  CARRY WITHIN SOME SMALL SLIVER OF ME

  THE DEVIL’S INTERVAL

  STOLEN KISSES

  CURES FOR A SICKENED WORLD

  THE OCTOBER WIDOW

  THE SLISTA

  OUTSIDE HEAVENLY

  THE LIFE INSPECTOR

  SOMETHING SINISTER IN SUNLIGHT

  THIS VIDEO DOES NOT EXIST

  NEWSPAPER HEART

  CONTRIBUTORS

  The Spectral Book of Horror Stories - A SPECTRAL PRESS PUBLICATION

  All stories and biographical notes are Copyright © 2014 their respective authors

  All other text and Spectral Press logo is Copyright © 2011 - 2104 Spectral Press

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, including electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission of the copyright owners.

  The rights of all authors contained herein to be identified as the Author of their work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  First edition, September 2014

  Editor: Mark Morris

  Publisher: Simon Marshall-Jones

  Layout by John Oakey Design

  Cover art by Vincent Chong © 2014

  Ebook created by Graeme Reynolds of Horrific Tales Publishing

  Spectral Press, 13 Montgomery Crescent, Bolbeck Park, Milton Keynes, Bucks, MK14 6HA

  Website: spectralpress.wordpress.com

  Email: [email protected]

  THE SPECTRAL BOOK OF

  HORROR STORIES

  Edited by

  MARK MORRIS

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  My heartfelt thanks to Simon Marshall-Jones at Spectral Press for having the vision, enthusiasm and sheer guts to give this project the green light. Thanks to all the writers who responded with enthusiasm to the idea of a new annual non-themed horror anthology, especially those who backed the project further by sending me stories. Thanks too to all those editors who have gone before me, and in particular to those whose anthologies have inspired me over the years: Herbert Van Thal, Mary Danby, Robert Aickman, Rosemary Timperley, Christine Bernard, R. Chetwynd-Hayes, August Derleth, Peter Haining, Richard Davis, John Burke, Ramsey Campbell, Karl Edward Wagner, Charles L. Grant, Kirby McCauley, Dennis Etchison, Peter Crowther, Stephen Jones, David Sutton and Ellen Datlow. A special mention must go to Johnny Mains, who for the past decade or so has tirelessly campaigned to keep The Pan Book of Horror Stories in the public eye, and who is now the proud editor of the (hopefully long-running) Best British Horror at Salt Publishing.

  DEDICATION

  This book is dedicated to the memory of Joel Lane (1963-2013) and Lucius Shepard (1943-2014). Both consummate storytellers, both on my original list of potential contributors to this volume, and both very much missed by their families, friends and fans.

  INTRODUCTION

  Mark Morris

  I’m pretty sure that the first horror anthology I read—possibly even the first one I saw—was The 7th Fontana Book of Great Horror Stories, edited by Mary Danby, in late 1972. I was nine years old, and I was back in England for the first time since 1968, having spent the previous three and a half years living in Hong Kong with my parents and younger sister.

  The Fontana anthology belonged to my cousin, and I remember being as fascinated by it, and as drawn to it, as I had been by copies of the magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland and by the Gold Key title Boris Karloff Tales of Mystery, both of which occasionally appeared on the magazine rack in the mini supermarket we frequented in Kowloon Tong. Now and again I had even been allowed to buy one or other of these magazines with my pocket money, and to this day can still recall the dry-mouthed dread I experienced as I slowly and carefully turned each page of Famous Monsters, fearful of encountering an image so terrifying that it might worm its way irretrievably into my mind and haunt my nightmares.

  I don’t know what it was that drew me to the dark and scary stuff as a kid, but drawn I certainly was. As soon as my eyes alighted on The 7th Fontana Book of Horror Stories I knew I had to have it—or at least, I had to borrow it from my cousin, and read it.

  As I write this introduction, I have a copy of the very edition of the book on my desk, and—as with The Eleventh Pan Book of Horror Stories, which frightened me so much that it gave me my first genuinely sleepless night on New Year’s Eve 1975—the cover still provokes in me a delicious frisson of shivery fear. With hindsight the bubbly and cartoonish ‘Horror Stories’ logo is somewhat less than sinister, and yet I love it because I associate it with (almost certainly erroneous) memories of being curled up in bed on many a cold and rainy winter’s night, reading by torchlight until well past the point at which I should have gone to sleep, and frightening myself silly with stories of cannibals and living mannequins and man-eating plants.

  Below the ‘Horror Stories’ logo the photographic cover image is washed with a sickly yellowish-green hue, and depicts a rat skulking between glass bottles on a laboratory bench, its beady black eyes fixed on the reader. It’s not a particularly inspiring or well-designed cover, to be honest, and yet, for me, nostalgia lends it a power and an elegance that far transcends the sum of its rather lacklustre parts.

  The same is true of many of the anthologies I owned—and indeed, still own. Back in the 1960s and ‘70s the cover art for mass market genre anthologies was often shabby, the paper the books were printed on cheap, the print itself eye-strainingly small—and yet in the four years or so between 1972-1976 I devoured dozens and dozens of such anthologies, and developed a love for them which endures to this day. During that time I worked my way voraciously through a great many of the Pan and Fontana Books of Horror and Ghost Stories, most of the Armada Books of Ghost, Monster and SF Stories, and through numerous stand-alone anthologies, many of whose titles are now lost in the mists of time, which I borrowed on a regular basis from the local library. By the time I read my first ‘proper’ horror novel, which (if you don’t include Jaws by Peter Benchley) was probably James Herbert’s The Fog round about 1976, I had read hundreds, perhaps thousands, of short horror and ghost stories, many of them by established masters of the form such as M.R. James, Algernon Blackwood, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Bloch, Ray Bradbury, Robert Aickman, Roald Dahl, Elizabeth Bowen, Ambrose Bierce, Joan Aiken and L.P. Hartley.

  I have often maintained that short fiction is the lifeblood of the horror genre, and as such it will probably come as no surprise to learn that I have harboured an ambition to edit my own non-themed anthology of horror and/or ghost stories ever since my career began over twenty-five years ago. Now, with The Spectral Book of Horror Stories, I have finally fulfilled my ambition, and my hope is that there is enough of an interest among readers for The Spectral Book of Horror Stories to become not only an annual fixture in the horror calendar, but to continue to prosper and grow in the years ahead.

  My ambition, in fact, is for The Spectral Book of Horror Stories to become a watchword for genre excellence. I hope that each year’s new volume will provide a showcase for the very best short fiction that this wonderful genre has to offer.

  With this in mind, I was determined
to make as much of an impact with this first volume as possible, and so contacted all the writers I could think of working within the field whose short fiction I particularly admired. I explained my vision for the book and invited each of them to submit a story for consideration. I had no idea what sort of feedback I would get, and so was extremely heartened not only by the enthusiastic response I received, but by the amount and sheer excellence of the stories that immediately began to fill my inbox. Such was the quality of the stories, in fact, that I found myself quickly faced with the onerous task of having to turn down good stories by established writers—even, in some instances, having to say no to personal friends. In the end, though, it was worth it, because I’m delighted not only with the line-up for volume one, but with the quality and range of fiction that the contributors have produced.

  You’ll find supernatural and non-supernatural stories within these pages; you’ll find stories of madness, of dread, of warped longing and twisted love. You’ll find humour juxtaposed with gore; you’ll find forbidden rites and ancient forces, and moments of surreal terror. Most of all, you’ll find that the horror genre has very wide parameters—and very sharp teeth.

  The journey begins. Tread carefully.

  – 15th July 2014

  ON THE TOUR

  Ramsey Campbell

  As soon as Stu looked into Yesterday’s he saw Jaz sitting near the bar. “They’ve remembered me,” Stu told him. “They’ve got me on the bus.”

  The smallest man at Jaz’s table took a mouthful of bitter and wiped his wry lips with the back of his fist. “Which one’s that, pops?”

  “The tour bus. The Beatles tour that goes past my house.”

  “Are we supposed to know who you are?”

  “He used to be with Scotty and the Scousers,” Jaz said. “He was the drummer.”

  “Ever meet the Beatles?”

  “We were on with them,” Stu declared. “Ringo bought us a drink, only John pinched mine and made out it was a joke. Scotty said he should buy me another but John wanted to settle it outside, and then Paul said it wasn’t worth it and George got me one instead. We always thought John knew the others wouldn’t let him fight and that’s why he was safe to start it.”

  “That’s your claim to fame, is it? That’s what they’ll be saying about you on the tour.”

  Jaz made to intervene until Stu said “I don’t know what they’re saying yet. I’m off home to hear.”

  “Sounds like you’re taking after your friend Lennon, not getting us a round.”

  “I never said he was a friend. He didn’t like us being bigger on the bill than they were.”

  The man was opening his mouth when Jaz said “Stu’s right. I’ve seen his poster.”

  Just the same, as Stu made for the street he heard the man laugh. The fellow seemed determined to stay unimpressed, and Stu called to Jaz “You know about the band. You tell him.”

  Early partygoers were already heading for the clubs. All the girls were dressed for a hot night, though it was April. On Church Street, where a police van was the solitary vehicle exempted from the ban on traffic, a musician was picking coins out of his guitar case. Everybody waiting at the bus station appeared to be on their own, and the line Stu joined was as silent as a photograph. At least the homeward bus arrived before the wind through the glass shelter could start his knees clapping together. The downtown hotels gave way to tall Victorian houses that had fissured into apartments, and then the buildings set about shrinking almost as small as his house.

  The bus left him at the end of the road next to his. The house where he’d grown up was just his now, and looked as dilapidated as he felt when he let himself. The tree outside the gap-toothed wooden fence smeared the dusty brownish bricks with twilit shadow, which sprawled on the dead leaves strewn across the untended token garden and had settled in both front rooms. Like its neighbours, the house was boxed in by the pair that flanked it, from one of which came the mumble of a television. Stu twisted the key in the rusty lock and barely paused to slam the door on the way to tramping up the variously resonant stairs to his bedroom. He shoved the sash of the window high and dragged the sheet over the corner of the mattress before pulling the quilt up to the pillow as a preamble to throwing clothes off the chair onto the bed. He brought the chair hobbling to the window and propped his elbows on the sill.

  At first he wasn’t sure that he was hearing the tour guide, especially since he couldn’t see the bus. Was the blurred voice coming from the television next door? When the small white single-decker coach appeared at the end of the road Stu succeeded in making out some words, and rubbed his bruised stomach as he sat down from craning over the sill. One of the quirkiest Liverpool bands of the sixties… Their only album was a collector’s item… People used to say the drummer was the star. Once Ringo had said he was the better musician, and here was his house.

  Stu waved to the passengers who were gazing up at him. Some of those on the far side of the vehicle leaned into the aisle to see him, and several people waved at him as the tree on the pavement set about blocking his view. He didn’t shut the window until the bus had coasted out of sight. As an afterthought he said “Catch us next time”—the invitation the band shouted at the end of every gig.

  After dinner from Wong’s Pizza round the corner he listened to the album. He’d had his copy made into a computer file, which preserved fifty years’ worth of clicks and pops. He didn’t mind them; in fact, they meant he didn’t regret selling his vinyl quite so much. He sang along with Annie from Anfield, matching the falsettos from half a century ago, and Sally the Scally and All the Big Ships, where the band had used Liverpool street songs they’d overdubbed and he’d performed the riff Ringo had admired. “You could be better on the skins than me, man,” he remembered Ringo telling him.

  He slept more soundly than he had for weeks. He mightn’t have wakened in time for work if his bladder hadn’t sent him a message and then a reminder. A bus twice the size of the tour coach and crammed with passengers took him downtown. He had breakfast at the Calorie Counter near both the Philharmonics—the concert hall, which had never booked the Scousers, and the pub—and then marched downhill to Vin’s Vintage Vinyl.

  Though the shop wasn’t due to open for ten minutes, Vin was already staring out between the nostalgic posters on the window. Several turns of a red rubber band secured his greying ponytail and seemed to tug his lined forehead higher, his long glum face thinner. “How’s your diddle, Stew?” he said.

  “How’s yours?”

  “Hanging right last time I looked.” Whenever Vin made what was presumably a joke his face grew yet more lugubrious. It stayed that way while he said “Get your coat off, then. Let them see where you belong.”

  Stu could tell he’d only just switched on the heater, which creaked as it lent the shop the smell of burning dust. He thought he saw his own breath as he hung his padded jacket in the mouldering back room that barely had space for a toilet and a sink. Like Vin, he wore a T-shirt printed with an image of a vinyl record that said VIN’S on the label. “Look proud of my twelve-inch,” Vin said.

  This joke and variations on it were so familiar that his face stayed routinely morose as he opened the shop and looked for an album to attract customers. Stu didn’t recall ever having seen the chosen band; he’d never shared a gig with them. Once the first side of the album—cover versions sung with basic sixties harmonies, standard twangs on two guitars and a bass, doggedly dull drumming—had failed to entice the public, Stu said “Can’t we have mine on?”

  He didn’t need Vin’s look to tell him he sounded childish. “Me and the Scousers,” he insisted.

  “Is that what you’re calling it now?” Vin’s expression didn’t relent as he said “Go on, give it a spin.”

  Though he could always go straight to an album if it was in stock, they weren’t in any order. Stu had a sense where some of them were, but by the time he found the Scousers he was struggling not to ask Vin to find the album for him.
He peered at his own youthful face—angular features concentrating on a grin to match the rest of the square of faces, cropped hair bristling with a hint of rebelliousness—and then he picked the arm off the rival album halfway through a track. “Watch it,” Vin protested. “What’s your rush?”

  After just a couple of jittery attempts Stu succeeded in locating the spindle on the turntable with the hole in the middle of the record. As he propped the sleeve against the till he noticed the dog-eared price tag. “Maybe it’s worth more now I’m on the tour.”

  The ageing bell gave a clang or at any rate a clunk before Vin could answer, and a couple wandered into the shop. Stu thought the music was responsible, especially when the man raised his eyes from browsing in the racks to glance towards the till. “That’s me,” Stu said as he heard himself brushing the cymbal in the fadeout of Fly Away, Liver Bird. “That was my band.”

  “You reckon,” the man said while the girl looked no less bored than she did with the shop in general.

  “He’s saying he was on the drums,” Vin said. “That’s our era, us.”

  “You just heard there’s more to it than that.” When nobody seemed to understand or find the effort worth making, Stu said “They talk about it on the Beatles tour.”

  “About Ringo,” the man told his partner. “Remember, they did.”

  “Him as well,” Stu said and had to raise his voice to be heard over his own drumming. “There’s me again. Stu Stewart with the Scousers. That’s why they’ve got me on the tour.”

  “Don’t remember you,” the man told him, and the girl took a moment to shake her head.

  “Maybe I haven’t been there long. I only realised just this week.”

  Vin was working on a hint of a smirk. “What’s he been saying about you on the bus?”

  “She,” Stu informed him. “They can be, you know.”

  He might have expected the girl to appreciate that, but he knew how frustratingly unpredictable they were. “You’re not saying what they’re saying,” Vin said.