The 16th Fontana Book of Great Horror Stories

THE FARMER

By Steve Rasnic Tem

A grandfather chops off his grandson’s hand (as had his own been removed years previous) to bury it in a field of the family farm, to keep the soil fertile.

A bit of a dullard here, to open Font16.  The author does include some evocative passages, such as 

“The day was hot, the land was nervous somehow”

and

“the voices beneath the ground still bothered him, haunted him, their low and incessant murmurings clinging to every good thought like cockleburs”

But the outcome of the whole business is telegraphed way before the end, and the only surprise awaiting the reader is learning exactly which piece of anatomy the boy is going to be saying goodbye to.

The author's name, which at first glance looks like an anagram, is in fact, for the most part, his own.  He was born Steve Rasnic and, for very good reasons I am sure, added the "Tem" as an affectation when he married. 

SEE HOW THEY RUN

By Terry Tapp

A young mother disposes of a mouse by scalding it to death in her kitchen sink, so all it's pals invade the house and eat her.

On the whole, this one is a fairly disposable piece of nonsense.

The only real element of interest is the fact the murine hordes did not do as they did as a bout of revenge against the woman, but were, as the radio informs us, actually rising up in a number of localities.

Although there is some rather neat, if perhaps slightly overcooked, wordplay by the author: he referring to the "tidal wave of mice" and a "whole sea of them", as they "poured out", "gushed up" and "flowed like water".  A clear callback to how the original mouse had been killed. 

THE WHEEL

By H. Warner Munn 

In a remote hacienda in the California hills two men, Bohorquia and Preece, are discussing an oil deal.  But one of the pair has an ulterior motive for hosting the talks, for the two men’s ancestors knew each other back in Inquisition-era Spain.  And a wrong of old has still to be avenged.  

A particularly of clumsy re-write of The Pit and the Pendulum this one (right down to the Spanish Inquisition link), with a preposterously contrived contraption taking the place of the swinging blade.  

If this is not the weakest story in the Fontana series, then there must be a real donkey coming in Font17

BLACKBERRIES

By Roger Clarke

Young Edward is an oddly solitary little chap.  He lives with his widowed mother in their large "Palladian House", his only friend seemingly the imaginary Charlie.

Mother's new beau, whom Edward openly loathes, is coming to dinner tomorrow, so she asks her son to go and pick some blackberries for desert from nearby Barley Lane.  Edwards petulantly insists the fruit from Dodpits, a long-disused limestone quarry, are much better, so off he trots.

Ignoring his mother's warning about the Dead Man who lives there.

A tale of two halves, this one.  The first nine and a bit pages reminded me more than a touch of Patricia Highsmith's The Terrapin - an exploration of a highly dysfunctional mother/son relationship in the absence of a father figure.

But, following mother's unhinged rant about the dangers of Dodpits, the yarn sorta morphs into your average common or garden stalk 'n' slaughter job.

I did spend some time pondering whether or not I was missing something more subtle going on:  did mother somehow summon up the Dead Man to punish Edwards for his disobedience?  Or was the Dead Man actually Edward's father, his body having been dumped in the quarry after being murdered by mother?  But I found both of these notions equally unlikely.

And what were all the rabbits about?

No, regretfully, in the absence of anything more substantial to the contrary, I can only assume the author just ran out of ideas midway through the narrative, so simply shoehorned a big bad bogey man into the narrative to close things out.

THE FEET

By Mark Channing

Richard Haldane Bullen KC (no less) is visiting his eccentric Uncle Harvey for a pre-Christmas meal.

Harvey collects oriental curios, mostly Indian, pride of place going to a tiny pair of woman's feet made of wax.  For he believes these, for reasons never made totally plain, keep him safe from a malevolent ghost which haunts his house.

What to make of this one?  I cannot convince myself the author's tongue was not slightly in his cheek here.  He peppers his prose with references to the Indian Sub-continent: the massacre at Cawnpore, the murderous Thugee cult and the goddess Kali.  But then conjures up the slightly preposterous images of disembodied hands rifling through pockets, and severed feet padding around.  

And I cannot believe it was with a straight face Channing penned the following line:

"... believe me, to see fear in the eyes of a hard rider to hounds is not a pleasant sight."

But is a pleasant enough yarn for all that, which maintains the reader's interest up until those slightly preposterous final few lines.  

CREEPOGS

By Phillip C. Heath

A couple begin hearing weird noises at night in their house, which lies adjacent to a swamp.  The same swamp where the skeletonised remains of a neighbour had been found just a few months earlier.

Pure Creepshow-type pulp horror this one, and a tale which I enjoyed very much, even if I did not quite understand the ending.

THE HORROR OF ABBOT'S GRANGE

By Frederick Cowles

Michael and Joan have been house-hunting for some time, and now Joan has fallen head-over-heels for an old country house called Abbot's Grange, which comes complete with it's own little chapel.

Michael is rather less enamoured with the place, particularly when he encounters the rather creepy portrait of the house's first owner: one William Salton, a monk who had been de-frocked (or whatever) a few hundred years earlier for "practicing black magic".

Michael's reservations notwithstanding, Joan insists they sign a lease and move in straight away.  A housewarming party is soon organised.....at which things start to go awry.

With it's MR James-esque title, and gothic haunted house premise, I had high hopes for this one.  But what a dog's dinner of a mess it proved to be.

Plot holes abound.  To whit: upon moving into the place, Michael is presented by the letting agent with a large key which opens the old chapel, and warned:  

"It has been closed for nearly three hundred years, and Lord Salton (the current owner) particularly requested that you will not enter the place".

Which is fine - but why give Michael the key at all then?

But the agent immediately goes on to contradict himself with:

"If you should feel you want to visit it go in the daytime".

How the feck does that work?

Michael, to be fair, decides he ain't going anywhere near the chapel, for he knows that freaky looking guy from the picture is buried there, so hides the key in a vase.  But then, at the housewarming party, blabs the whole story to one of the guests who promptly nicks the key, and lets loose the malevolent vampire spirit of old William Salton, who does for a doggie and (eventually) one of the guests.

Michael brings in the god-squad to attempt to help.  He really does say:

"These Roman priests are the only chaps who understand anything about occult phenomena.  I take off my hat to them when it comes to a real tussle with the devil".

But whilst the priest is ineffectually sprinkling his holy water and counting his beads, the current Lord Salton wanders into the narrative, and just so happens to know of a old document hidden in a secret panel in the library which, wonderfully conveniently, informs the assembled rag, tag and bobtails that the vampire can only be up and about for three consecutive days, before being compelled to return to his coffin.

So, after waiting the required three days, the mottley gang open William's coffin, find him lying there, and pop a dagger in the chap's heart and he crumbles to dust.  No jeopardy, no tension.  

And, finally, what are we to make of the author's treatment of the feisty and headstrong Joan?  After a few pages, she pretty much disappears from the story, with Michael at one point dismissively stating: "We had sent Joan off to bed", as if she was a naughty child or an errant puppy.  This, I should add, at a point in the narrative where there was a resurrected vampire stomping about the house.

Silly, silly story.

OBLIGE ME WITH A LOAF

By Dorothy K. Haynes

Having run out of bread late one afternoon Betty rushes out of the house, making her way to Coulter's the small local grocers.  Somehow ignoring the fact that Coulter's grocery store had closed down during WWII, and that both Mr and Mrs Coulter, who ran the establishment were long since in the graves.

But, there the place is, still open!  Surely the couple would oblige Betty with a loaf.

A borderline science-fiction time-slip tale this one, with the business foreshadowed by Betty earlier thinking to herself:

"Suppose the dead go neither back to remembered joys, nor forward to some better or happier place?  Suppose they keep pace with the living, year after year?"

How Betty somehow "forgot" that Coulter's store no longer exists is completely glossed over.  But her encounter with the (now very) elderly couple who run the place is memorably surreal, even if Betty's ability to read the warning signs that all is not as it should be does appear to be almost laughingly flawed.

Perhaps she dreamt the whole encounter?

 

MOTHER'S DAY

By Alison Prince

Dotty Dorothy's grasp upon reality is getting more tenuous by the day, but she nevertheless still expects her son Tom to visit her in the care home each Mother's Day.  

On this occasion Tom brings along Irma his latest girlfriend but, unfortunately, the two women most certainly do not hit it off together.

A slightly long-winded tale which features fifteen pages of interpersonal verbal jousting between the three characters, before the vicious and brutal money shot.

SWITCHING OFF

By Roger Malisson

Poor Mark has not got much going for him: an absent father, a blowsy mother who cares more for her succession of paramours than for her son.  And, worst of all, his vicious bully of a teacher Miss Williams.

Leaving school without any qualifications Mark finds himself a job sweeping up in the local hairdressing salon, run by the delectable Pam.  Consequently, for the first time in many years he feels happy with his lot.

Then Miss Williams wanders in to the salon, looking to have her hair cut and then dried under one of those whopping hooded hair drier contraptions.

A run-of-the mill revenge tale here, which is harmless enough fun.  My sole criticism being the appalling Miss Williams is perhaps painted as just too much of a pantomime villain by the author.

"Oh no, she isn't".  "Oh yes, she is". 

THE BURIAL OF THE RATS

By Bram Stoker

Having been compelled by disapproving (potential) in-laws to spend a year incommunicado with his sweetheart, an Englishman in Paris decides to enliven his exile by studying the chiffoniers.  A stratum of Parisian underclass who live in squalor, eking out a meagre living by poking through the refuse discarded by the city populace.

They are a rough and ready bunch - many being ex-soldiers.  Nevertheless, our hero blithely strolls into their "City of Dust" for a chat; a pair of expensive rings on his fingers.

A peculiar tale this one - not really a horror story at all - more an adventure yarn or thriller, perhaps. 

The narrator's decision making is naive at best, and downright suicidal at worst.  But as the tale is told from a first person perspective, the reader already knows the idiot will somehow fluke his way out.

Which he assuredly does.

The story title refers to the efficient manner the rats, with whom the chiffoniers share their hovels, deal with any corpses they encounter.

CURLEYLOCKS

By Mary Danby

Nineteen-year old Angela has fallen for much older Geoffrey, and before long she is being whisked off to a matrimonial home in the Lake District.  But she soon discovers her new husband has some decidedly old-fashioned views on what a wife should and should not do.  No cooking or cleaning or gardening – the pair of live-in elderly retainers do all that sort of stuff.  

But there is also to be no car, no friends visiting, nor Angela getting her hair cut.  In fact, Geoffrey makes it clear that his new bride shall not “change anything unless I say so”.

Angela’s resentments of such impositions gradually grow, until she discovers a book on Witches and Witchcraft in the library room

The title of this one comes from the old nursery rhyme of the same name, which is quoted in the story:

Curly Locks, Curly Locks,
Will you be mine?
You shall not wash dishes,
Nor feed the swine,
But sit on a cushion
And sew a fine seam,
And sup upon strawberries,
Sugar, and cream.

Curly Locks is one of the simperingly sickly ones Geoffrey calls Angela, alongside Kitten and Baby Girl.  Quite how she put up with such endearments as long as she did before calling up help from the other side is the real mystery with this yarn.

The witchy business with the knots stretches the reader’s credulity more than a touch – but not nearly so much as Danby asking us to believe Alison was still a virgin on her wedding night in 1983!