Gruesome Gateways to New Horrors!

The Gruesome Book edited by Ramsey Campbell London: Piccolo Books, 1983

I remember discovering Ramsey Campbell's work when I was in the sixth grade. He was mentioned a lot by Stephen King, and his name popped up frequently in paperback horror anthologies with lurid covers. While not what I would call a brand-name (especially in the U.S.) the Liverpool-born Campbell has been writing tales of horror since the early sixties with dozens of novels and over a hundred short stories to his name. The Gruesome Book (1983) is an anthology edited by Campbell with the intention of scaring the hell out of younger readers.

CONTENTS:

Calling Card - Ramsey Campbell

The Pond - Nigel Kneale

The Extra Passenger - August Derleth

Hobo - Robert Bloch

Bones - Donald A Wollheim

The Deep-Sea Conch - Brian Lumley

Long Distance Call - Richard Matheson

The Graveyard Rats - Henry Kuttner

3:47 AM - David Langford

In the introduction, Campbell states that the scary story collections he read at the age of eight "wouldn't have scared a neurotic three-year-old." He found child-oriented chillers to be weak and decided to compile his own primer for the younger reader of the macabre. Campbell chose a mixed bag of genre authors for this collection. Some of the bigger names are here (Derleth, Campbell, Bloch, Matheson, and Lumley) combined with those more obscure to the casual reader (Kuttner, Kneale, Lanford). Not all of these stories reach the level of mastery some of these authors are known for, but there are a few horrific entries that prove effective. I will focus on my favorites of the bunch.

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Gradually, as he stood he became aware of a smell. It was wholly unpleasant. Seemingly it came from the weed, yet mixed with the vegetable odor was one of another kind of decay. A soft, oozy bubbling accompanied it. Gases must be rising from the mud at the bottom. It would not do to stay in this place and risk his health. -- Nigel Kneale, The Pond

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Nigel Kneale wrote the screenplays for The Quatermass Experiment (1953), a popular television serial for the BBC that featured horrors from outer space and creeping paranoia on earth. The successful series spawned some feature-length adaptions from Hammer Film Productions, and opened the doors for a new era of science fiction TV programming in the UK.

Kneale's contribution is "The Pond." The story is a basic cautionary tale against animal abuse, charged with a gruesome supernatural revenge at the end. An evil old man is fond of capturing toads, boiling them alive in a pot, and making taxidermy dioramas with their remains. Having terminated most of the toad population of his favorite pond, he considers looking for a new locale. Taking advantage of the old man's gluttony, a supernatural force guides him to the glowing pond one night with the promise of more victims, only to give him an excruciating taste of his own medicine. The ending is clever and echoes the dark humor of Tales from the Crypt and other horror comic titles of the 1950s.

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The boxcar wasn't empty...Sprawling against the opposite side of the wall was the man. He sat there nonchalantly, staring at Hannigan--and he'd been sitting there and staring the whole time. The farther reaches of the car were in total darkness, but the man was just close enough to the opposite door so that flashed of light illuminated his features in passing. --Robert Bloch, Hobo

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Robert Bloch was known for writing Psycho (although his contribution to fantastic literature was immense), and his penchant for lurking knife-wielders is shown in "Hobo." Eager to leave town, Hannigan, a down-on-his-luck drifter hops a train that he hopes will deliver him from his troubles. The main trouble being a lone killer who has been fatally stabbing members of the homeless community. Hannigan finds another man in his boxcar whom he judges to be a kindred traveler. Unfortunately for him, trust in strangers yields gruesome results. Bloch employs his "less-is-more" style of terror effectively here, having the main character do all the talking while the unknown man remains ominously silent.

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A rat was approaching -- the monster he had already glimpsed. Grey and leprous and hideous it crept forward with its orange teeth bared, and in its wake came the blind dead thing, groaning as it crawled. -- Henry Kuttner, Graveyard of Rats

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A friend of H.P. Lovecraft, Henry Kuttner was an avid contributor to the pulp magazine Weird Tales in the 1930s. "Graveyard of Rats" was his first published work, and considered by Campbell to be his scariest. I would have to agree. Although there are some strong thematic similarities to Lovecraft (New England setting, sinister rats, ancient cults), Kuttner's story packs a punch like the best of 1930s pulp fiction and moves at a pace that should appeal to younger readers.

The plot focuses on Masson, the bitter, old caretaker of a cemetery in Salem, MA. He moonlights as a grave-robber, stripping corpses of their valuables before burying them in cheap coffins. Consequently, the rat population nearby has also taken an interest in the cemetery, dragging dead bodies into underground tunnels to eat them. This cramps Masson's style, not only are the rats stealing his merchandise (gold teeth fillings are valuable!) but they make him look like a lazy employee. In addition, he hates the locals, who fear the rats and might be worshiping evil entities that put Salem on the map. Everything comes to a head, when the rats steal a body that had some expensive cuff-links and Masson decides to follow them into their domain. This proves to be a terrible mistake, and he meets horrors beyond rodent infestation.


The cover art and illustrations for this book were provided by Ivan Lapper, and more than live up to the title. Worm-eaten skulls, rotting undead creatures, and all sorts of horrific images adorn this book. Not for the easily repulsed, Lapper's work here is graphic and definitely more in line with the the artwork found on scores of 1980s adult horror paperbacks than anything geared towards a younger audience. Likewise, the illustrations definitely compliment the stories and present this book as something infinitely scarier than most anthologies targeted at youth audiences.

Ultimately, this is one of those books that I think would appeal to the younger YA crowd who are ready to step from the Christopher Pike / John Bellairs level of scary fiction to the more adult arena of authors like H.P. Lovecraft, or Stephen King. The best stories here provide gruesome shocks, alternating between chilling horror and pitch-black humor. This collection gives a decent introduction to obscure authors for the curious reader, although finding a copy of this book might prove equally challenging.

On a side note, I find it interesting that visceral horror fiction in the early eighties seemed like something a young reader would have to really seek out, depending on anthologies like this one to discover new gems. This is quite a contrast to the recent upsurge in mainstream popularity of vampires and zombies in current fiction geared towards a YA (and sometimes younger) audience. I would like to write about this phenomenon in more detail at a later date, although I am curious what readers of this blog might think.

Here, Child, Finish Your Nothing

Mirror
by Suzy Lee
New York : Seven Footer Kids, 2003

Mirror, by Suzy Lee, is a very simple, elegant wordless book that, if read properly, will trigger an existential crisis (or philosophical breakthrough) in readers of any age. If your child is too young for Sartre, but old enough to feel the burden of consequence and self-determination, then this is the perfect introduction to instill that lasting sense of angst, guilt and self-doubt.

Despite the austerity of the artwork, there is whimsy in its pages, but by the last page, all such feelings of merriment are dashed. The cover encapsulates this dynamic perfectly; the girl, facing away from her reflection, may have a hint of a smile on her lips, but it never quite reaches her eyes. There is a sense that she is disconnected from herself, perhaps dissatisfied with the stark world in which she has been drawn, even as she plays with her own medium. Of course, this could all be projection...

"We do not know what we want and yet we are responsible for what we are..."

One of the most interesting things about this book is the way the book itself is part of the unspoken narrative. The "mirror" is actually the crease between pages. It is no simple mirror, however, as the girl is not simple reflected in its pages. At one point, the girl mischievously moves into the crease, emerging with her reflection facing in the same direction she is. Of course, we all know what generally happens when little girls walk into mirrors.

"If you are lonely when you're alone, you are in bad company."

In its way, the artwork in Mirror is sweet, and the girl's interactions with her own reflection are the product of playful innocence. Don't be fooled, though. In the last few pages, the girl becomes annoyed with her reflected self, and in a fit manages to push her other, knocking down the mirror (Lee's work here is brilliant, by the way) and shattering it. Spoiler alert: the last page consists of the little girl curled in on herself, and you can almost hear her sobbing into her arms. It came as a shock, I have to admit; though we review horror for children, I have rarely seen a story for kids with such an unrelentingly depressing ending. I have to say, I respect it.

So, if you're ready to crush your child's innocence, or they're already showing a predilection for German expressionism and long-sleeve black turtlenecks, this is a great book. Just know what your child may grow into:

"We are our choices."

Children in the Aftermath

The Pack
by Tom Pow

New Milford, CT: Roaring Brook Press, 2006, ©2004

Tom Pow's The Pack is like a children's primer for Cormac McCarthy. It is a story of desperation and identity, set in a bleak, post apocalyptic setting which is just recognizable enough to be truly disturbing even to veteran fans of the genre. This book occupies a nebulous place between childrens' and young adult literature; though it is ostensibly about children, its themes are somewhat more mature than typical juvenile fiction. Pow's writing style does not coddle his readers, whatever their age, and the subject matter is starker still.

The story in The Pack centers around three feral, orphan children living with wild dogs on the edge of what's left of civilization. The children are named after the storefronts they were found in front of, Bradley, Victor and Floris (the 't' was broken), while the dogs are meaningfully named Hunger, Fearless and Shelter. The pack survives under the tutelage of an old woman, whose stories teach them to retain the last shreds of their humanity. When Floris is kidnapped by a local warlord, the rest are forced into a quest to save her, for their own sakes as well as hers.

There are two reasons that this book is best for advanced readers: one, the story is written in a tone of unflinching brutality, devoid of comfort or ease; two, the literary eloquence of the book, while beautiful, can also be abstract in the extreme, and requires a well-developed sense of reading comprehension. The brutality comes in several forms; one of the crucial turns in the plot centers around a pair of dog fights, described in graphic detail, and several times during the story, characters defend some atrocious behavior by claiming it was necessary to survive.

As for literary abstraction, the main character, Bradley, explicitly follows the form of the Hero's Journey. Though the term itself is never directly invoked, the constant references to stories and dreams (not to mention the narrative style) make it clear that this is the form the pack's movements take. Also, the question of identity is brought into play, as is the barrier between human and animal, boy and girl, civilization and collapse. Finally, there is a level of social commentary which I won't describe in detail, because it is integral to the "big reveal" at the end of the book. Suffice it to say, the Invisible City and its surrounding Zones bear a shocking resemblance to the world as it already is, placed in a smaller sandbox and given a different context.

To what extent the childrens' world is actually "post apocalyptic", in the traditional sense, is never made perfectly clear beyond vague allusions to the "Dead Times". By the end of The Pack, the nature of the world these children live in is less defined than it was at the beginning, and that mystery is part of its charm. In the words of the old woman, repeated as a refrain throughout the book, the world is made of dust and ashes, but stories cannot crumble, burn or be broken.

Taking the Sparkles Out of Your Gothic

Gothic! Ten Original Dark Tales
edited by Deborah Noyes
Cambridge, Mass. : Candlewick Press, 2004

Gothic! is a fantastic collection of short stories by some of the best contemporary writers of YA and horror fiction, including Neil Gaiman, Garth Nix, Caitlin R. Kiernan and Vivian Vande Velde. Like all good collections, the stories in Gothic! explore the theme from a number of angles, ranging from loving homage to wry satire (and sometimes both at once).

Hands down, my personal favorite is "Forbidden Brides of the Faceless Slaves in the Nameless House of the Night of Dread Desire", by Neil Gaiman; it's probably not as funny if you aren't familiar with old-school penny dreadfuls, but if you are it's a laugh riot. My other two favorites come right in the beginning of the book: "Lungewater", by the late Joan Aiken (who died the year this book was published), tells a modern story in the language of gothic horror, while "Watch and Wake", by M.T. Anderson, blends contemporary suburban fantasy with traditional (but terrifying) folk myths.

Some of the stories in this collection are more silly than scary, but all delight in the morbid and macabre. All of the authors are current or rising stars of their craft, so for the teen reader who's looking for something with all the aesthetic flavor of Edgar Allan Poe or HP Lovecraft (but have read the entire collected works of both, repeatedly), this is the place to start. The beauty of a short story collection is its ability to showcase new talent, and connect readers to the authors of the sort of story they are looking for. This is especially true for the YA set, who might not want to commit to a whole book without having a taste of the author's style first.

The Internet Will Eat You

kimmie66
by Aaron Alexovich
New York, NY : Minx (DC Comics), 2007

Kimmie66 is a fantastic little graphic novel that blends elements of cyberpunk, goth and various internet cultures, narrated by Telly Kade, a fourteen year old girl from the 23rd Century.

Telly, like everyone else from her time, spends almost all of her time in a lair - one of the many immersive virtual worlds where people work, play and socialize in the future. The lairs are strangely familiar reflections of modern Internet subcultures, structured to their aesthetic tastes. Telly's own lair of choice is a vision of the collective modern Gothic id; a fusion of Victorian and industrial influences. (Full disclosure: I would probably live there, too.) Her story begins when her best friend, Kimmie66, sends her a suicide note - and then starts making appearances in all the lairs, haunting the virtual world.

Like all good cyberpunk (and all good YA fiction), Kimmie66 is loaded with social commentary and the exploration of identity in an age of technology-enabled anonymity. In searching for the truth about Kimmie, Telly is faced with the realization that she truly knows less than nothing about the girl she thinks of as her best friend. She also confronts a society rigidly divided into isolated cliques and clubs, when travel between social circles isn't simply frowned upon - it's forbidden. Telly herself is already a rebel in this sense; the first scene we see is her travelling between isolated groups, looking for her friend Nekokat ("cat cat") to share the grim news. Telly is an explorer at heart, which is really what the story is about, incidental to the plot.

Aaron Alexovich's art may seem familiar: this is because he worked on Invader Zim (one of the all-time best subversive cartoons) with Jhonen Vasques (that name again...) and, more recently, contributed character designs for Avatar: the Last Airbender. The blurb on the back of the book describes his hallmark style as "spookycute", which very much applies to Kimmie66, which sports the most adorable ghost-bleeding-from-her-eyes scene ever. Find it, read it, love it.

A note about the publisher - we'll probably see a lot of their work here on SB/SC. Minx is an imprint of geekery giant DC Comics, specializing in graphic novels for teenage girls. Many of these stories are simply amazing, and a good number of them are qualifiers for Spooky Books treatment.