Read Rudyard Kipling's Tales of Horror and Fantasy Online
Authors: Rudyard Kipling
Rudyard Kipling's Tales of Horror and Fantasy
RUDYARD KIPLING'S
TALES
of
HORROR
&
FANTASY
with an introduction by
NEIL GAIMAN
Edited by
STEPHEN JONES
CONTENTS
The Dream of Duncan Parrenness
An Indian Ghost Story in England
The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes
The Unlimited Draw of Tick Boileau
With the Night Mail: A Story of 2000 AD
As Easy as A.B.C.: A Tale of 2150 AD
The Village That Voted the Earth Was Flat
Afterword: Rudyard Kipling: A Life in Stories by Stephen Jones
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following individuals for their help and inspiration in the compiling of this volume: Jo Fletcher, Mandy Slater, Peter Haining, Sara and Randy Broecker, Kim Newman and The Kipling Society (
www.kipling.org.uk
). Very special thanks to Mike Ashley.
Introduction: Neil Gaiman copyright © September 2006.
âThe Vampire' from
The Vampire
(1897).
âThe Dream of Duncan Parrenness' from
Civil and Military Gazette
, December 25, 1884.
âThe City of Dreadful Night' from
Civil and Military Gazette
, September 10, 1885.
âAn Indian Ghost Story in England' from
Pioneer
, December 10,1885.
âThe Phantom 'Rickshaw' from
Quartette
, December 1885.
âThe Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes' from
Quartette
, December 1885.
âThe Unlimited Draw of Tick Boileau' from
Quartette
, December 1885.
âIn the House of Suddhoo' from
Civil and Military Gazette
, April 30, 1886.
âThe Bisara of Pooree' from
Civil and Military Gazette
, March 4,1887.
âHaunted Subalterns' from
Civil and Military Gazette
, May 27, 1887.
âBy Word of Mouth' from
Civil and Military Gazette
, June 10, 1887.
âThe Recurring Smash' from
Civil and Military Gazette
, October 13,1887.
âThe Dreitarbund' from
Civil and Military Gazette
, October 22, 1887.
âBubbling Well Road' from
Civil and Military Gazette
, January 18,1888.
âThe Sending of Dana Da' from
The Week's News
, February 11, 1888.
âMy Own True Ghost Story' from
The Week's News
, February 25,1888.
âSleipner, Late Thurinda' from
The Week's News
, May 12,1888.
âThe Man Who Would Be King' from
The Phantom 'Rickshaw & Other Eerie Tales
(1888).
âThe Solid Muldoon' from
The Week's News
, June 2, 1888.
âBaboo Mookerji's Undertaking' from
Civil and Military Gazette
, September 1, 1888.
âThe Joker' from
Pioneer
, January 1, 1889.
âThe Wandering Jew' from
Civil and Military Gazette
, April 4,1889.
âThe Courting of Dinah Shadd' from
Macmillan's Magazine
and
Harper's Weekly
, March 1890.
âThe Mark of the Beast' from
Pioneer
, July 12 and 14, 1890.
âAt the End of the Passage' from
The Boston Herald
, July 20,1890.
âThe Recrudescence of Imray' from
Life's Handicap: Being Stories of Mine Own People
(1891).
âThe Finances of the Gods' from
Life's Handicap: Being Stories of Mine Own People
(1891).
âThe Finest Story in the World' from
The Contemporary Review
, July 1891.
âChildren of the Zodiac' from
Harper's Weekly
, December 1891.
âThe Lost Legion' from
The Strand Magazine
, May 1892.
âA Matter of Fact' from
A Matter of Fact
(1892).
âThe Bridge-Builders' from
Illustrated London News
, Christmas Number, 1893.
âThe Brushwood Boy' from
Century Magazine
, December 1895.
âThe Tomb of His Ancestors' from
Pearson's Magazine
and
McClure's Magazine
, December 1897.
âWireless' from
Scribner's Magazine
, August 1902.
âThey' from
Scribner's Magazine
, August 1904.
âWith the Night Mail: A Story of 2000 AD'from
Mclure's Magazine
, November 1905.
âThe House Surgeon' from
Harper's Magazine
, September and October 1909.
âThe Knife and the Naked Chalk' from
Rewards and Fairies
(1910).
âIn the Same Boat' from
Harper's Magazine
, December 1911.
âAs Easy as A.B.C.: A Tale of 2150 AD'from
Family Magazine
, February-March 1912.
âSwept and Garnished' from
Pall Mall Magazine
and
Century Magazine
, January 1915.
âMary Postgate' from
Nash's Magazine
and
Century Magazine
, September 1915.
âThe Village That Voted the Earth Was Flat' from
A Diversity of Creatures
(1917).
âA Madonna of the Trenches' from
Pall Mall Magazine
, September 1924.
âThe Wish House' from
Maclean's Magazine
, October 15, 1924.
âThe Gardener' from
McCall'sMagazine
, April 1925.
âThe Eye of Allah' from
McCall's Magazine
and
The Strand Magazine
, September 1925.
âOn the Gate: A Tale of â16' from
McCall's Magazine
, June 1926.
âThe Appeal' from
Collected Verse
(1939).
Afterword: âRudyard Kipling: A Life in Stories' copyright © Stephen Jones 2006.
Your Gods and my Gods â
do you of I know which are the stronger?
âNative Proverb
Years ago, back when I was just starting to write
Sandman,
I was interviewed, and in the interview I was asked to name some of my favourite authors. I listed happily and with enthusiasm. Several weeks later, when the interview had been printed, a fan letter arrived at DC Comics for me, and was forwarded to me. It was from three young men who wanted to know how I could possibly have listed Kipling as a favourite author, given that I was a trendy young man and Kipling was, I was informed, a fascist and a racist and a generally evil person.
It was obvious from the letter that they had never actually read any Kipling. More to the point, they had been told not to.
I doubt I am the only person who writes replies to letters in his head he never sends. In my head I wrote many pages in reply, and then I never wrote it down or sent it.
In truth, Kipling's politics are not mine. But then, it would be a poor sort of world if one were only able to read authors who expressed points of view that one agreed with entirely. It would be a bland sort of world if we could not spend time with people who thought differently, and who saw the world from a different place. Kipling was many things that I am not, and I like that in my authors. And besides, Kipling is an astonishing writer, and was arguably at his best in the short story form.
I wanted to explain to my correspondents why âThe Gardener' had affected me so deeply, as a reader and as a writer â it's a story I read once, believing every word, all the way to the end, where I understood the encounter the woman had had, then started again at the beginning, understanding now the tone of voice and what I was being told. It was a tour de force. It's a story about loss, and lies, and what it means to be humanand to have secrets, and it can and does and should break your heart.
I learned from Kipling. At least two stories of mine (and a children's book I am currently writing) would not exist had he not written.
Kipling wrote about people, and his people feel very real. His tales of the fantastic are chilling, or illuminating or remarkable or sad, because his people breathe and dream. They were alive before the story started, and many of them live on once the last line has been read. His stories provoke emotion and reaction â at least one of the stories in this volume revolts me on a hundred levels, and has given me nightmares, and I would not have missed reading it for worlds. Besides, I would not have told my correspondents, Kipling was a poet, as much a poet of the dispossessed as he was a poet of Empire.
I said none of those things back then, and I wished that I had. So when Steve Jones asked me to write the introduction to this book, I said yes. Because I've said them now, to you. Trust the tale, not the teller, as Stephen King reminded us. And the best of Rudyard Kipling's tales are, simply, in the first rank of stories written in the English language.
Enjoy them.
Neil Gaiman
A fool there was and he made his prayer
(Even as you or I!)
To a rag and a bone and a hank of hair,
(We called her the woman who did not care),
But the fool he called her his lady fairâ
(Even as you or I!)
Oh, the years we waste and the tears we waste,
And the work of our head and hand
Belong to the woman who did not know
(And now we know that she never could know)
And did not understand!
A fool there was and his goods he spent,
(Even as you or I!)
Honour and faith and a sure intent
(And it wasn't the least what the lady meant),
But a fool must follow his natural bent
(Even as you or I!)
Oh, the toil we lost and the spoil we lost
And the excellent things we planned
Belong to the woman who didn't know why
(And now we know that she never knew why)
And did not understand!
The fool was stripped to his foolish hide,
(Even as you or I!)
Which she might have seen when she threw him asideâ
(But it isn't on record the lady tried)
So some of him lived but the most of him diedâ
(Even as you or I!)
âAnd it isn't the shame and it isn't the blame
That stings like a white-hot brandâ
It's coming to know that she never knew why
(Seeing, at last, she could never know why)
And never could understand!'
THE DREAM OF DUNCAN PARRENNESS
Like Mr Bunyan of old, I, Duncan Parrenness, Writer to the most Honourable the East India Company, in this God-forgotten city of Calcutta, have dreamed a dream, and never since that Kitty my mare fell lame have I been so troubled. Therefore, lest I should forget my dream, I have made shift to set it down here. Though Heaven knows how unhandy the pen is to me who was always readier with sword than ink-horn when I left London two long years since.
When the Governor-General's great dance (that he gives yearly at the latter end of November) was finisht, I had gone to mine own room which looks over that sullen, un-English stream, the Hoogly, scarce so sober as I might have been. Now, roaring drunk in the West is but fuddled in the East, and I was drunk Nor'-Nor' Easterly as Mr Shakespeare might have said. Yet, in spite of my liquor, the cool night winds (though I have heard that they breed chills and fluxes innumerable) sobered me somewhat; and I remembered that I had been but a little wrung and wasted by all the sickness of the past four months, whereas those young bloods that came eastward with me in the same ship had been all, a month back, planted to Eternity in the foul soil north of Writers' Buildings. So then, I thanked God mistily (though, to my shame, I never kneeled down to do so) for license to live, at least till March should be upon us again. Indeed, we that were alive (and our number was less by far than those who had gone to their last account in the hot weather late past) had made very merry that evening, by the ramparts of the Fort, over this kindness of Providence; though our jests were neither witty nor such as I should have liked my Mother to hear.