THE LODGER IN ROOM 16
By David Dixon
Mr Feith is living on the top floor of a less than salubrious lodging house. He has never met is co-lodger in room 16, but every few nights the elusive neighbour seems to begin operating some noisy hand-cranked piece of machinery.
Complaints to the landlord go nowhere, so Feith takes things into his own hands to investigate.
Good fun, this one in a pulpy, silly sort of way. We get next to no back story on the Lodger of the title, other than he "works in a local cemetery" and, rather more intriguingly, he "came with the house". The few descriptions were get on his appearance talk about him being "horribly fat and grey" and "soft and rotten like an overripe plum".
I think we are led to believe he/it is disinterring bodies from the disused cemetery opposite the boarding house, and grinding down the bones - to what purpose we can only guess.
Feith is painted as a fussy, prim martinet character. Hardly likeable. Quite why he insisted on a room on the upper floor in the first place, when the landlord had told him "rooms up there wasn't for letting", is never expanded upon. But we can, I think, understand his insistence upon getting to the bottom of the nonsense which was going on next door.
Even if, in the end, he did not.
SHE'LL BE COMPANY FOR YOU
By Andrea Newman
After a long, lingering (unspecified) illness Henry's wife Margaret has finally succumbed to the inevitable. Following the funeral Henry just wishes to be alone, but Margaret's pushy friend Barbara not only inveigles her way back to the house, but also has the temerity to suggest Henry may have helped his suffering wife "over the hill".
She also asserts Henry should not be alone at a time like this, so sends over her cat to keep the new widower company for a few weeks.
This short story takes the form of Henry's increasingly hysterical internal monologue, leaving the reader to decide if all the freaky stuff with the cat is truly going on, or if this is just him descending into (possibly guilt-induced) madness.
The author's deftness of touch leaves both options equally open, as she toys effortlessly with the reader. As might be expected from an author responsible for such complex explorations of human interactions as Two into Three Won't Go and Bouquet of Barbed Wire.
Yep, a quality piece of writing this one, and I smiled in acknowledgement as I read the wonderfully insightful piece of dialogue Ms. Newman gave to Henry: "I felt extraordinarily lonely, in the way that is only possible in someone's company".
GROWTH
By R. Chetwynd-Hayes
Harry Broadfield is a man blessed/cursed with an unquenchable "lust for knowledge". So when he reads about a medium who had reportedly summoned up the spirit of Charles Dickens for a chat, he decides to investigate. Harry was particularly intrigued by reports the medium had also succeeded in materialising the body of the long-dead writer from ectoplasm she had extruded from her body whilst in her trance.
Our hero tracks down the medium and arranges for a private session in his house, during which the spirit of Harry's late father materialises spouting useless advice. As the seance is concluding Harry chops off a chunk of the ectoplasm for further investigation later.
Bad move.
This one is written by the author (as ever) with his tongue in his cheek and a twinkle in his eye, as he pokes fun at the whole business of ectoplasmic manifestation. He even has Harry name the piece he lopped off Ecto, as it rampages through the house hungry for more life-force energy to gorge upon.
I also loved the way Harry was able, at extremely short notice, to buy a second-hand sentry box from "an antique shop in the Portobello Road".
IN THE SLAUGHTER YARD
By Anonymous
A chap relates to his buddies how he spent his night in a Whitechapel slaughter yard, in the company of an alcoholic night-watchman, a number of horses (dead and alive) and Jack The Ripper.
A bit of background is required here to help understand what is going on. This story was one of six published in 1890 in a collection called The Adventures Of The Adventurers' Club, credited to "Five Men And A Woman". The premise being that each of the six members of the club would wander out of an evening into London' streets, with the sextet meeting up the following morning to relate their "adventures".
The collection consists of one story from each of the club members; In the Slaughter Yard being the contribution of a member with the fanciful name of Horace Jeaffreson.
The story is still a fine read today, some 130 plus years after it was written, in no small way due to the author not stinting on the grosser aspects of the narrative. Plus the descriptive prose really does project the reader into the grim and ghastly reality of a noxious Victorian knackers' yard.
ACTIVITY TIME
By Monica Dickens
Following the death of his wife, Dick has decided to sell the family house and move into a trailer park. After a while he finds himself becoming forgetful and occasionally confused. This state of affairs gets markedly worse when, following a heart attack, Dick spends a period in hospital before being transferred to an old folks' home.
There must be some kind of way out of here.
A real horror story this one, unstintingly detailing, as it does, the descent of an elderly man into senile dementia, or some clinically similar condition.
I found it a particularly harrowing read now I have reached my mid-sixties, and these days find myself looking at every doddery old gent in the street and asking myself the question: Is that my future?
THEY BITE
By Anthony Boucher
Hugh Tallent is in the California desert spying on some new-fangled glider being tested by the US military. When leaving he encounters Morgan an old acquaintance; someone very familiar with Tallent and his "Secrets for Sale" past.
There is clearly bad blood between the pair, for Morgan immediately threatens to blackmail Tallent, so a meeting is arranged the following day.
That evening Tallent visits a local bar, where he is regaled with a couple of yarns of supernatural events, and told about the shunned "old Carker Place". Carkers being apparently the locals' name for a tribe of cannibalistic semi-humans who exist out in the desert.
Tallent wonders if he can use these rumours to help rid himself of the troublesome Morgan for good.....but in the process stirs himself up a hornets' nest of trouble.
I blew hot and cold throughout when reading this one. Loads of great writing: Tallent frantically scrambling up the mountainside to his spy position, the evocative bar-room scene, the brutal line where Tallent "swung the machete once and clove Morgan's full, red, sweating face in two". And that final terrifying image of the female Carker in the doorway.
But, two scenes really spoiled the story for me;
There is the whopping geographic coincidence we are, as readers, asked to swallow when Tallent encounters Morgan in the desert. For not only has Tallent bumped into another bod on a deserted mountain, but someone who not only knows him but, is apparently, well acquainted with, and prepared to exploit, Tallent's shady past.
Later, there is the rather silly business of the decapitated head of a Carker maintaining it's bite on Tallent's hand. With a machete at his disposal, I should have thought his first option would have been to whack the bone-dry skull, including the jaw, into a million fragments. Rather than deciding self-amputation to be the better course of action.
These two gripes asides, I really enjoyed my first introduction to the rather unique writing style of this author.
HOUSE OF MIRRORS
By Rosemary Timperley
The female narrator of this one has, under duress, made a promise to her ailing mother on her death bed that no changes will be made to the family house after mom dies. The slight problem is that all the walls and ceilings have been mirrored.
Which she hates.
A disappointing entry to Font15 from that stalwart of both the Pan and Fontana horror collections Rosemary Timperley.
The issue I have here is the irritating lack of any back story as to why the house was filled with mirrors in the first place. Additionally, the protagonist here is such a whiny wet, I felt no empathy with or sympathy for her at all.
THE DROP OF BLOOD
By Mor Jokai
Hungarian Doctor K is visited by a patient who claims to be suffering from excruciating pain in the back of one of his hands. The doctor can find nothing obviously wrong but, against his better judgement, is persuaded to excise a small circle of skin from where the patient insists the pain is emanating. To the doctor's surprise this task relieves the patient's agony immediately.
However, a month later the patient returns with the same complaint, and again minor surgery effects an apparent immediate cure.
The doctor half expects to see the man return back after a further month, but instead receives a letter containing a confession.
Clearly a bit of the old Lady Macbeth's going on here, in what is a diverting enough yarn let down slightly by the rather predictable ending.
THE WAGER
By Harry E. Turner
Ken Grange is enjoying a day by the pool in an exclusive Marbella hotel - drinking champagne and ogling the flesh - when he is approached by a dwarf who introduces himself as Ramon Pablo Alvarez.
After some small talk, Alvarez startles Grange by offering him one million pounds if can overcome him in "unarmed physical combat".
Initially sceptical, Grange accepts and is whisked off to Alvarez mansion the following morning.
The tussle is to take place in what is clearly a bull-ring, and alarm bells begin (finally) to ring in Grange's head when Alavarez pitches up wearing a matador's costume.
Typical Turner fare this one: silly and entertaining in equal measure. I did think Alvarez was going to remove Grange's arms before the fight (hence the unarmed combat bit), but perhaps that would have been too silly even for the redoubtable Harry E.
SHREWHAMPTON NORTH-EAST
By Bryn Fortey
A boy and his mum are travelling by train to Lower Mallerton, and have to change at Shrewhampton North-East. There is a two hour wait until their connecting train is due to arrive, so they make their way to the waiting room. Which has a number of folks there already who claim to have been waiting for their train to Lower Mallerton for up to three days.
And, as the station buffet is closed, these people are getting hungry.
I really found it impossible to warm to this story. I do appreciate much of the narrative was written from the boy's point of view, but where the author I think was aiming for quirky, he ended up with irksome.
Here, for example, is the boy describing a station porter he encountered:
"He was nothing like the porter who had stacked, scratched, picked and grinned two stations back. Not that I remembered what that porter had looked like now. But however he'd looked , it was nothing like this one now".
I really enjoyed the author's previous contribution to the series, Merry-Go-Round in Font 12, but this one was just wasn't for me.
LOVE CHILD
By Garry Kilworth
We are in 1950s colonial Malaya here, and Mr. Burnett has been a naughty boy and gotten a local girl Siana pregnant. As he and his wife cannot have children of their own, his plan (I think) is to adopt and raise the child.
With the aid of a local he tracks the girl down to a village deep in the Malay jungle, but discovers upon arrival that Siana has only just recently died.
But all is not lost, and Burnett may yet have a son.
As with The Ghoul in Font14, this one mines the same seam of primitive Malay superstitions/black magic. But, whereas in Sir Hugh Clifford's tale the dead baby is resurrected as a pôlong, here it is as a logi.
The main difference between the two, based upon the evidence of the two yarns at least, is that whereas a pôlong is a nasty critter, all a logi really wants is just to spend some quality time with dad.
THE BLACK DRUID
By Frank Belknap Long
Archaeologist and academic Stephen Benefield is just leaving a New York library after carrying out a bit of research, when he is irked to note someone has moved his overcoat to the opposite end of the coat rack. Harrumphing, he puts on the coat and catches an underground train to make his way home.
But, whilst on the train, he finds himself the object of many curious and distasteful stares, with one terrified young boy yelling out "Black Boogeyman".
Upon reaching his lodgings Benefield receives a further shock when he glances in the mirror in the hall, for facing him is indeed a black something.
What I think we may have here is that rarest of things in the Pan and Fontana collections: a Happy Ending. Or at least, not a grim one. For our hero appears to have succeeded in dodging a bullet by the simple expedient of taking off the black overcoat, which we later discover, was clearly not his. But belonged to, we have to assume, The Black Druid of the title.
Actually, when I think about it, the narrator in Frank Belknap Long's only entry to the PBoHS, The Ocean Leech, also enjoyed a happy(ish) ending.
A sentimental horror writer - whatever next?
ROBBIE
By Mary Danby
As if Ted and Evelyn's hands are not full enough running their small dairy farm, they also have to care for their 11-year old son Robbie, who has what we term today Learning Difficulties.
Ted would like to try again for a "normal" child, but Evelyn is against it. Robbie would also like a brother to play with, so when his parents are not forthcoming with the goods he sets out to make his own.
An excellent entry from our esteemed editor here, the gory denouement of which certainly wrong-footed me. I felt sure either Ted or Evelyn were going to get the chicken treatment here, rather than........well, let's not spoil things shall we.
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