The 13th Fontana Book of Great Horror Stories

COLD SPELL

By David Langford

In order to help out his hospitalised dad, Stephen Carling has agreed to perform with the Lamberstow Morris Dancers in their Winter Solstice celebrations.  Enjoying a post-dance pint, he is more than a touch annoyed to learn he is expected to repeat the performance at midnight, at the nearby Coldrock standing stone.

Carling initially turns up, but stomps off in a huff when it is suggested he change into the remarkably uncomfortable looking Twig costume.

The following morning, three members of the troup pitch up at his doorstep in turn pleading, bribing and then threatening him.  Each impressing upon him he must go back to Coldrock and complete the dance on his own, as "Winter only turns because of the dance". 

Stephen steadfastly refuses...but the sinister Coldrock has a way of compelling reluctant dancers to perform.

We are on the outskirts of Wicker Man territory here.  Clearly things are not going to end well for Stephen; the slightly unexpected twist being the fact Coldrock is able to get it's way without the help of the slightly demented locals.

But, ultimately, this is a fairly tame opener to Font13, for the author takes so little time with Stephen's characterisation his fate is of little import to the reader.

VENDETTA

By Guy De Maupassant

Widow Saverini lives in a small town on the southern tip of Corsica with her son Antoine.  At least she did, until Antoine was stabbed to death during a quarrel, with the perpetrator fleeing across the water to Sardinia.

Without any male relatives to help her seek revenge, the old lady enlists the help of a sheep-dog, a home-made scarecrow and a black pudding!

I am not sure how much of the nuance of De Maupassant's narrative has been lost in the translation from the original French, but there is a stilted nature to the narrative here which screams Lazy Translator.

And the plot here is as dull and simplistic as my precis suggests, for the lady is so effortlessly successful in her aims, that there is no dramatic tension at all.

There are a few interesting side paths, such the mother's relationship with her god.  Before setting out on her task to commit murder, she begs god to "aid and support" her, and to provide the "strength she needed to avenge her son".  Widow Saverini then receives "Confession and Confusion, in an ecstasy of devotion".  

So much for the Christian doctrine of turning the other cheek.

As an aside, does a single case of tit-for-tat represent a "Vendetta"?  Perhaps so.  

THE CIRCUS

By Sydney J. Bounds

Tabloid hack Arnold Bragg is drunkenly driving back from an assignment in Cornwall, when his MG prangs a tree just outside a tiny West Country village.

To kill some time whilst repairs are effected, he decides to attend the decidedly unusual sounding circus which has just pitched up in the village.

Therein the ringmaster introduces first a blood-drinking vampire, a werewolf which transforms before the audiences' eyes, before presenting an animated mummy, then finally some Baron Frankenstein-esque creation gone awry.

Sensing a wonderfully sensationalist headline, at the conclusion of the performance Bragg seeks out the ringmaster.

More Wickerman-type shenanigans going on, with a touch of Tod Browning's Freaks thrown into the mix at the conclusion of proceedings.  Two dimensional Arnold Bragg is such an obvious lamb-to-the slaughter from the get go, there is little real surprise at how things pan out.

Although, the Ringmaster's final line did make me smile.

UNDESIRABLE GUESTS

By William Charlton

City high-fliers Matthew and Julia Brook, and their young family, have found their country retreat a remarkable attraction to friends and relatives, who all seem to want to visit.

Even an old friend - Seraphim Durness - whom they have not seen for many years, has no shame in inviting himself and his exotic new South American wife to stay.

Good fun this one, with perhaps Charlton having more than a little dig at the well-to-do in this supernatural tale of poor babysitter choices.

The tale is hardly unpredictable, and I found I rather guessed where things were going when the author dropped in the word "babysit" just a few lines after referring to Seraphim's "special food".

The impact of the narrative was, in my opinion, increased significantly by having all the gruesome stuff occurring off the page as it were.  With the result that game of "Devil in the Dark" Seraphim plays with the twins feels even more sinister than just "mere" vampirism. 

AN AMERICAN ORGAN

By Anthony Burgess

In this one, an unnamed narrator spirits away a number of his "wife's mother's...knick knacks" which have been cluttering up their tiny home, since the old lady passed away.

He trades them at a local antique shop for an American Organ - which I learned is "a type of reed organ resembling the harmonium, but in which air is sucked (not blown) through reeds."

With the help of the coal delivery man, he is able to install the instrument on the landing, just outside the tiny bathroom.  Whereupon he promises to give his wife an organ recital (no sniggering, please), as she bathes.

But she gets something else completely.

Anthony Burgess's deft hand means this one is a delight to read, even if the reader is left baffled as to the narrator's motivation for the crime he commits.

But we are well-warned early on in the yarn that we may be dealing with an Unreliable Narrator, when he states he "wasn't allowed to work, you see, because I am considered unstable".

Similarly, why the antique dealer should be so myopic, and why the coalman who helps deliver the organ should have a cleft-palate is never expanded upon.

Burgess also liberally peppers the prose with references to the music played by the narrator: Tannhauser, Lohengrin, Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony and the like.  It is oft-forgotten, that Burgess was actually a very prolific and successful composer in his own right.....as well as a more than passable scribbler. 

THE WARRIOR'S RETURN

By Ken Alden

The "warrior" of this one is John who, we are told, spent much of WW2 in a Japanese POW camp.  Now, after a lengthy spell in hospital recuperating, he has been sent home to the bosom of his family.

But his son shrinks away from the cadaverous apparition, likening him to Lon Chaney in Phantom of the Opera.  And, although wife does her best to put a face on things, she is more than a little troubled by the smell of rotting flesh which emanates from her husband.

Not too much to say about this one.  It is a harmless enough yarn, with what little punch it has packed into the scene the reader is left with of Marjorie having to come up with the old conjugal rights.  

Even though what has found itself into her house is clearly no longer hubby John.

ONE OF THE DEAD

By William Wood

A married thirty-something American couple (Ted and Ellen) purchase a plot of land in a very desirable area in the outskirts of Santa Monica.  Not even the remarkably low asking price, nor learning from the seller of the number of times sales have fallen through at the last minute, deters the pair.

The plan is to build their dream home, and start a family - although Ellen conceiving has proved to be impossible thus far in the marriage.

A number of incidents and accidents occur during the building process, but Ted and Ellen bash on, and eventually are able to move in.  

But then begin the noises in the night.

By some way the strongest story in this volume, and certainly one of the most intriguing in the whole Fontana collection, I feel.

I took me a couple of readings to attempt to collect all the clues scattered around, and even then I am not sure I have all the pieces.

My take on events, are that the tree which stood on the plot of land purchased by the couple was once used to hang a "Spanish Don", whose malevolent spirit has been compelled (for reasons never made clear) to linger around the spot.

The ghost somehow succeeded in attracting Ted and Ellen's neighbour Sondra to the area some years back, whereupon the spirit was able to impregnate her - the resulting child being so mentally disabled his parents packed him off to a local asylum.  This arrival of the spirit in the "real world" heralded by the slaughtering of Sondra's pet cat, a similar calling-card having being used when the spirit turns it's attentions to Ellen.

The impression we are left with at the end of the tale, is that the ghost of the executed Spaniard has also succeeded in making Ellen pregnant.  Something Ted realises when he recognises the "familiar reptile eyes" he has seen in an apparition of the hanging Spaniard, as being the same as he had noted in his neighbours' disturbed boy.

But, having said that, all of the supernatural stuff could well be the result of Ted's paranoia.

Or, I could be completely wrong, and something else has gone on entirely, and I have utterly misread things.

This ambiguity which compels the reader use a bit of grey matter, just elevates the tale immensely.

ANAESTHETIC

By Barbara Joan Eyre

Awaking from an unspecified gynae op which represented the "last desperate measure to allow her to conceive", Samantha finds herself in an austere, cheerless recovery ward populated by brusque unfeeling nurses.

Pain control is minimal, she is allowed no visitors and, bleakest of all, is informed she has had a hysterectomy with "everything taken away".

Could things get any worse?

I rather liked this one initially, keen find out what the heck was going on, and what Samantha's fate would be.

But the tale just dribbles to a close, utilising probably the most over-used and cliched narrative device ever used by authors to explain away weird stuff. 

THE WEREWOLF

By Frederick Marryat

A pair of travellers, Philip and Krantz, are navigating a small boat (a peroqua, in fact) through the Malacca Strait, when Krantz relates a lengthy tale from his childhood.

He tells of how he, along with his brother and sister, were forced to flee with their father from Transylvania to Germany, after their father had murdered their mother and her nobleman lover.

Their quiet life in a remote woodland shack in the Harz Mountains is interrupted by the arrival of a huntsman who claims to be their father's cousin, and his beautiful, yet vaguely vulpine daughter.

Krantz presently finds himself with a new step-mother, but soon begins losing siblings. 

This one is cut wholesale from Marryat's 1859 novel, The Phantom Ship - so we have no back story as to why the pair have set out on their journey.  Rather fancifully, Goa on the western cost of India is stated as their ultimate destination.

But for all that, the tale stands on its own rather well I feel, with Krantz's nested story of his childhood really quite riveting.

The only downside to the narrative is the slightly silly denouement, whereby (spoiler alert) a post skinny-dipping Krantz is whisked off naked into the Malay jungle in the jaws of a tiger.  

SAFE AS HOUSES

By Nyki Blatchly

Desperate to obtain cheap accommodation near to the university he is attending, a student (despite the vague warnings from the landlady) takes a room in an old house.

But a few days after he moves in, a leaden lethargy descends upon the boarder - diagnosed by his doctor as anaemia.

I thought I had encountered most horror entities in my time, but a vampire staircase was a new one on me.

The author enjoys a neat turn of phrase:  upon first seeing the house, the student describes how the "windows...seemed to glare out bad-temperedly at the world going by; and the door snarled at me as I approached".  This description foreshadowing the impression of the house front perceived by the student at the end of proceedings.

The pace of the narrative begins sedately but incrementally quickens once the landlady announces her intention to sell the property for development.  But, as the tale is told retrospectively in the first person by the student, there is never any doubt the chap is going to escape unbowed (if a touch bloodied) from the place. 

HERBERT WEST - REANIMATOR

By H. P. Lovecraft

Lovecraft's narrator in this one relates the life and career of his friend, the titular Herbert West, who has succeeding in developing a "reanimating solution", which he is sure will bring a corpse back to life.

If only Herbert can obtain a specimen fresh enough.

Originally published just over 100 years ago, Reanimator is generally regarded as one of Lovecraft's weaker works, even by the author himself apparently.

But I rather enjoyed it.  Things rattled along at a fair old lick; I enjoyed Herbert's descent into utter bonkers-ness and, best of all, none of Lovecraft's tedious Cthulhu menagerie were shoehorned into the adventure.

The narrative takes a slightly disjointed form, a result of the fact the story was originally published in six weekly instalments.  Consequently the first five parts each end in an, at times rather contrived, cliff-hanger.  Whilst parts 2-6 each open with a precis of the previous part's action.  

But I didn't mind that - it helped this old man keep up.

WOODMAN'S KNOT

By Mary Danby

One evening at a funfair, Sandra bumps into tall, burly Daniel Carne, who kills her newly-won goldfish in the process.

Nevertheless, romance flourishes, and Sandra is soon Mrs Carne and settling down to married life in the nearby hippie commune Woodman's Knot.

All goes swimmingly until she falls pregnant, whereupon her new hubby seems to lose interest in her completely.  And the poor girl finds herself being looked after, almost guarded, by the ladies of the community.  

All of whom are eagerly awaiting the arrival of Woodman's Knot's newest member.

A much darker contribution than usual from Ms Danby here - one which feels at times as if it is going to veer into PBoHS Alex White territory.  It does not quite go there, with the slightly incongruous last-line joke lightening the tone more than somewhat.