9 stories from The Year's Best Horror Stories: Series XII. Edited by Karl Edward Wagner (1984).

9 stories from The Year's Best Horror Stories: Series XII

Edited by Karl Edward Wagner (1984).

Introduction: Of Fads and Frights

....the public's appetite for junk-food horror has been sated, and that readers have become more sophisticated in their tastes and expectations. To the bewilderment of those who have cashed in on the high tide of the horror fad, people are no longer standing in line to see films like Rototiller Dentist or assaulting the paperback racks to buy novels about giant maggots gobbling up Los Angeles or possessed teenagers turning other teenagers inside out. Readers have been affronted by enough garbage served up as horror; now they demand something better....

3.47 AM by David Langford

Apparently Langford wrote this for a teenage audience. So the emphasis is on the gross-out. 

I have been a reader of Langford's Ansible and an admirer of his contributions to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and the Encyclopedia of Fantasy for several decades. 

"3.47 AM" is, unlike Langford's non-fiction, leaden and obvious. 

Mistral by Jon Wynne-Tyson

Like several other stories in this volume, "Mistral" is about a protagonist meeting up in adulthood with an odd old-school-chum.

....mine is not a psychic or complicated nature. I prefer rational explanations to overimaginative speculation. Nevertheless, when the wind gets up and I am alone—and that is most of the time now that Christine has died and I come out to Gassin more often—I go out onto the terrace and look across to the distant hills of the Maures. And something in me tells me to walk off into the scrub in search of Angelina, who I know cannot possibly still be there. And something else in me, which invariably wins, tells me to come indoors, to close the windows and the shutters, and to lose myself in books until the mistral has blown itself out....

Out of Africa by David Drake

A cool and perfect throwback Great-White-Hunter raconteur tale.

...."The reeds were bucking like a ship's deck now as the jimpegwe ripped through the last few yards of matted vegetation separating us. The screams of my boys, still floundering on the path behind me, were drowned by the sound of the beast's approach as it frothed reeds and water alike into the air. I watched the whipping stalks, waiting for a patch of gray-green hide to flash among them. I was afraid to chance a shot, more afraid of being pulped without firing. I even considered loosing at the blank, swaying mass before me and then trying to follow my boys.

     "When it was within twenty feet—and I still had no fair sight of the beast—the jimpegwe made a wheezing sound and lurched into full view. Its forefeet were upraised. I could see each webbed foot was armed with a horny spike where a man's thumb would be. I squeezed the front trigger when my muzzle steadied a hand's breadth behind the glaring eye, then followed with the left barrel into the red-wattled throat...."

The Wall-Painting by Roger Johnson

Along with Schow and Bradfield's stories, "The Wall-Painting" is one of the strongest stories in the collection

...."How very interesting. Then what was it that caused people to regard him as a saint?"

     "There are the vaguest references to miracles. For the moment, Gifford, you will have to be satisfied with that. You see, all the records that I've come across date from long after Tosti's supposed death." Faragher's long face brightened suddenly. "Ah, yes. That is an interesting matter. A clerk who wrote in about the year 1120 says that Tosti was actually in the midst of an address or sermon to his brothers—that's the word he uses—when he simply disappeared. The statement is quite unequivocal: he did not die, he disappeared. That is the only surviving account of the end of St Tosti, and our clerk says that he had the story from an eye-witness. Curious, eh?"

     "Very curious," I said. "And why do you think that the wall-painting depicts this rather dubious saint?"

     My companion stifled a yawn, and I suddenly realised how tired he looked. "I think," he replied, "that I'll answer that question tomorrow, when you see the picture. Afterwards, perhaps, the two of us could make the journey into Colchester and investigate the Archdeaconry Records. Now, if you don't mind, we'll change the subject. I should like just one more drink, and then I'll be ready for a good night's sleep."

The Ventriloquist's Daughter by Juleen Brantingham

A heartbreaker about a daughter convinced her father has placed her soul in a ventriloquist's dummy. 

Keepsake by Vincent McHardy

A uncanny battle of wits between teacher and student.

....Years and years of collecting made her greedy. She wasn't satisfied with collecting the other children's charms. She smelled out the last great dessert. Swallowed and digested, Biffle rotted in the dark. She wouldn't give him back and Will was powerless to force her. He might work a deal if only he had an offering suitable for exchange. But what? He had nothing. It took all his resourcefulness to push away the snakes, snakes that wouldn't have dared show their heads if Biffle were with him. Alone he was weak, a dry husk shaking with the slightest breeze.

     From his lonely outpost he watched Miss Brock work her magic. Her power as a witch was incomprehensible. She never once used charms, markings or hand movements. She knew what everyone was doing at all times. With her back turned she picked out truants and punished them with a cold determination. No one questioned her authority.

     Will watched a bead of sweat gather at her chin, swell and slide down her neck into deep folds of dress.

The Chair by Dennis Etchison

Another school/reunion tale.

....The figure stood so stiffly for so long that Martin began to wonder if it might be a manikin. Finally he detected movement in the eyes, tiny dots peering out of tunneled sockets. Then the shoulders slumped, the low bulk shuffling aside, the thinning spikes of uncombed hair vibrating in the flare of a dozen or more high-intensity light bulbs which were plugged into every corner of the small room.

     She fidgeted, her tone winding up like a violin string again.

     "You remember Jack, don't you?"

     Her eyes darted nervously between them. The irises were closed down to pinpoints. He could not help but notice now a fine webbing of lines etched around her eyes, radiating outward, imprinted there as if by years of squinting under a merciless sun. The pupils were washed out like a faded photograph.

     "Don't you, Sherm?" she said.

     Martin stared at her.

     What the hell is she doing? he thought. What kind of sick game is this?

     The man in the bedroom smoothed his hair and rubbed his soft hands over his white face, and straightened.

     Martin had no choice. He stepped over the threshold.

     There was a closeness in the air, a sickly-sweet incense that was a mixture of old clothes and unchanged bedding and slow currents of exhaled air circulating and recirculating above overheated lamps. The man made an effort to draw himself up to his full height, and Martin was overcome with disbelief.

One for the Horrors by David J. Schow

Schow ploughed his furrow wide and deep in the 1980s. Yet for all his "black-leather required" schtick, in "One for the Horrors" he gives the reader a tender and melancholy masterpiece about loss, horror, and the consolation of films.

....Next on the roster was King Kong.

     The college kid who vended Clay's ticket that evening after work was gangly and bearded, his forehead mottled, as though by a pox. Five years ago, Clay would have dismissed him as a hippie; ten years, a queer. Now hippies did not exist and he regarded the gay community with a detached, laissez-faire attitude. He queued before the cramped snackbar to provision himself.

     He had taken a dim view of the uninspired "remake" of the 1933 RKO Studio's King Kong—in fact, had avoided an opportunity to see it for free. The chance to again relish the original on a big screen was pleasant; in this one, unlike the new version, the only profiteering fame-grubbers were the characters on the screen.

     Clay conjured various other joys of the original while conversing with the lobby-smokers: the glass-painted forests, the delightfully anachronistic dinosaurs of Skull Island. He was told that this was not a "butchered" print, that is, not lacking scenes previously excised by some overzealous moralist in a position of petty authority—shots of Kong jawing a squirming man in tight closeup, picking at Fay Wray's garments with the simian equivalent of eroticism, and a shot of Kong dropping a woman several stories to her death were all intact.

     This time around, Clay was more palpably disturbed. He clearly recalled reading an article on King Kong concerning scenes that had never made it to the screen in the first place—not outtakes, or restorative footage, or bandaids over some editor's butchery—and among those were bits that were now streaming out of J.A. Bijou's projection booth.

     Carl Denham's film crew was perched precariously atop a log bridge being shaken by an enraged King Kong. One by one, the marooned explorers plummeted, howling, into a crevasse and were set upon greedily by grotesque, truck-sized spiders. It stopped the show, the film's original producer had claimed, over forty-five years ago. It was enough justification to excerpt the whole scene; no audience had ever seen it, because it would have stopped the show.

     It certainly does, thought an astonished Clay, as he watched the men crash to the slimy floor of the pit. Those who survived the killing fall confronted the fantastic black horrors; not only giant spiders but shuffling reptiles and chitenous scorpions the size of Bengal tigers. The audience sat, mouths agape.

     New wonders of Skull Island manifested themselves: A triceratops with a brood of young, plodding along via stop-motion animation, and a bulky-horned mammal Clay later looked up in a paleontology text and found out it was an Arsinoittherium. Incredible.

     "Where did you come across this print?" he questioned the bearded kid, with genuine awe. He was not alone. Fans, buffs, and experts had been drilling him since the beginning of the week, and the only answer he or the other staff could offer against the clamor was that they had nothing to do with it. The films came from the normal distribution houses, the secretaries of which were unable to fathom what the J.A. Bijou employees were babbling about, when they phoned long-distance—an expense just recently affordable. Word of mouth drew crowds faster than Free Booze or Meet Jesus signs, and the theatre's limited capacity was starting to show the strain of good business. No one else had ever seen these films. In all of history….

The Flash! Kid by Scott Bradfield

Bradfield revels in the new and challenging, all the while savoring masters like Emil Zola, Ray Bradbury, Georges Simenon; readers who watch his YouTube channel get a doctorate in literature purely by osmosis.

"The Flash! Kid" is unlike any other horror story I have read. It has a disturbed teen, neglectful parents, and strange powers, but Bradfield accommodates them by turning all our genre expectations inside out. It's a thing of beauty.

....The van's door slammed shut, bolts were thrown. Rudy chewed pepperoni, mozzarella, briny anchovies.

     The van's engine erupted, along with a nervous spasm in Rudy's gut.

     The van moved out. An air vent communicated with the driver's seat.

     Everything will be fine, Rudy. They dig out a tiny chunk of your brain—no bigger than a sausage. You'll be happy, then. People will like you; you'll like people. We'll start you on an exercise regimen, a diet. Hell, with your money, you can just take your pick of the ladies. You won't be lonely anymore. You'll be just like everybody else.

     But I'm not like everybody else, Rudy reassured himself, and placed his palm against his stomach. Something percolated deep inside, his bowels contracted. He tried to hold it in. Father would get very mad. Father hated when Rudy smelled up the car, and rolled down all the electric windows.

     Just you wait and see, Rudy. We can command top dollar from the university, once I inform them of your condition. Let me handle it. Did I tell you they fired me? I used to know Johnny Carson and his wife personally. Now what's my doctorate worth? All-night-delivering pizzas to junkies, high school parties, perverts. But I've learned. This time they'll deal on my conditions. This time I'll demand tenure—

     The pressure mounted in Rudy's stomach. He cried out.

     What's that? Watch your temper, Rudy. I don't want you ending up like the others at UC Med. Armstraps and thorazine—very uncomfortable. And more than anything, Rudy, I want you to be comfortable. The fridge at our motel is packed with Candy Cakes, Twinky Pies, Rice Puffies, and plenty of that white soul food—mayonnaise and Wonder Bread.

     Rudy returned the final slice of pizza to the container, closed the lid. He had lost his appetite.

     —Did I mention the color teevee?

Jay

13 September 2020