Horror: The 100 Best Books (18 page)

***

Robert Bloch more than likely would have come up with this title if Paul Bailey hadn't thought of it first (1946). In fact, way back then he might even have written it. It had been 40 years since I first read
Deliver Me From Eva
, so in order to write about it intelligently for this book I thought I had better re-read it to remind myself why, beyond
Dracula
or
Frankenstein
or
The Phantom of the Opera
or Guy Endore's
Werewolf of Paris
or Virginia Swain's
Hollow Skin
, it stuck in my memory across a gulf of eight lustrums as the book which I found the most horrifying. The book's blurb describes it as "a masterpiece of uninhibited, spine-chilling horror", from a writer of historical novels "an event as rare and unexpected as angels in Hades". The hype and hyperbole continues: "When the editor finished the last gripping line" -- ("God be thanked I'm a lawyer" is a gripping line?) -- "his blood was running as cold as a lizard's belly, and for a week he dared not turn off his lights at night." The Electric Co. must have loved him -- and the author. Finally: "We swear it's the most gosh-awful, horrific spine-tingler imaginable. Like the weird and imaginative flights of Poe, Stevenson and James,
Deliver Me From Eva
will hold you entranced and glued to the chair." Well, now, in the sober light of day, four decades away from this horror novel, I see the comparison should not have been made with Poe
et al
. but Arthur J. Burks, Arthur Leo Zagat, Justin Case or one of the venerable old horror hacks who terrified legions of fans a couple of generations ago in the Pulpy pages of
Terror Tales
and
Horror Stories
and
Dime Mystery
. Yes, if legendary Ray Cummings, one of the maestros of the magazine macabre, had gone on from his novels
The Sea Girl
and
The Shadow Girl
and
The Snow Girl
and given us
The Slay Girl
, it would have read, I believe, very much like
Deliver Me From Eva
. At the time I first read this novel it impressed me as ideal B-movie material. Johnny Eck, the half-boy of Tod Browning's
Freaks
, was born to portray the mad scientist half-man Dr. Craner. (Name suggestive of cranial? -- an appropriate name for a brain manipulator.) And after three years of persistence I sold it to Curtis (
Games
/
Queen of Blood
/
Who Slew Auntie Roo?
) Harrington. It has yet to be made but it is perfect fodder for a follow-up to
Re-Animator
. In fact, if
Deliver Me From Eva
had been made first,
Re-Animator
would have been a natural to follow in its bizarre and bloody footsteps, even if somewhat difficult to do, considering Dr. Craner had no feet or legs. In order to sell
Eva
to the movies as an agent, it was some, er, feat for me to track down the author, and by a trillion to one cosmic coincidence, where was he found to be living? In Horrorwood, Karloffornia, on . . .
Ackerman Drive
! In 1988, as I approach my 72nd birthday, the old "Ackerman drive" is still at work, keeping alive the memory of
Eva
. I hope some antiquarian bookseller can locate a copy for you. Or perhaps it's time for a book publisher to bring out a new edition. If you hear of it in advance, it might be profitable to buy stock in sleeping pills or electric bills. Eva -- Eva -- I'm coming . . . -- FORREST J ACKERMAN

One of the largest, most extensive anthologies of the forties, this volume of macabre stories and (unusually) poems includes contributions by ghost and horror perennials Oliver Onions, E. F. Benson, Guy De Maupassant, Lafcadio Hearn, Ambrose Bierce, Algernon Blackwood, August Derleth, H. R. Wakefield, Edgar Allan Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle, Elizabeth Bowen, John Collier, ClarkAshton Smith and H. P. Lovecraft, but also mainstream names like Paul Verlaine, Ivan Turgenev, Alfred Tennyson, John Galsworthy, Somerset Maugham, Algernon Swinburne, Robert Browning, W. B. Yeats, Charles Baudelaire, Stephen Crane, Jonathan Swift, Nikolai Gogol and Joseph Conrad, not to mention such then-popular figures as John Buchan, F. Tennyson Jesse, William Seabrook, L. P. Hartley, William Irish (Cornell Woolrich) and Dorothy L. Sayers. The pieces in
And the Darkness Falls
, subtitled
Masterpieces of Horror and the Supernatural
, were selected by Karloff from a list of recommendations by Edmund Speare while the actor was touring with
Arsenic and Old Lace
. Karloff also put his name to
Tales of Terror
(1943) and
The Boris Karloff Horror Anthology
(1965).

***

Rarely, if ever, has a marketing gimmick resulted in a better book. You can just imagine the chorus of enthusiasm from the salesmen at the idea of a big fat horror collection edited by Frankenstein himself! And indeed, the taste and personality of one of the greatest actors of the century identified with horror informs this large and stimulating compendium. It was a successor to the critically acclaimed
Tales of Terror
(1943), which contained fewer, but longer, works. While it lacks the virtue of a long introductory essay (present in the earlier book), it more than compensates by the inclusion of informative and often quite extensive story notes by Karloff. Containing 72 stories and poems, it is one of the largest collections of horror fiction ever published. The stories are selected for the most part from the first 40 years of this century, yet the occasional inclusion of excellent work by Gogol, Swift, and others, together with selections from 19th-century poetry by Poe, Baudelaire, Swinburne, Verlaine and others bestows on it the international and literary tone that the editors desired. Karloff's stated intention was to widen the field of consideration from the mere 14 selections of the earlier book to the rich and diverse materials herein, and thus broaden horror readers' taste. The book succeeds admirably in this and it is the basis for its historic importance. Still, the whole does not entirely cohere, because certain selections break the tone and partially dispel the atmosphere of horror (the parodies by Swift and Onions, for instance). And while it is good to see a collection of a variety of material by unfamiliar writers, many of whom wrote little horror, the real strength of this book is in the stories by familiar names (and in the first Inclusion ever in a horror book by Gogol's "Viy", praised by Edmund Wilson as one of the greatest of all stories in the field). Never has "star marketing" been used more effectively in the horror field, with ingenuity and broad-ranging taste: the result is a great anthology. -- DAVID G. HARTWELL

Sub-titled "Fifteen Uncanny Tales"
The Sleeping and the Dead
includes work from both classic British ghost story writers (M. R. James' "A View From a Hill", J. Sheridan Le Fanu's "The Bully of Chapelizod", Lord Dunsany's "The Postman of Otford ", H. R. Wakefield's "Farewell Performance") and the then-young masters of the American
Weird Tales
school (Derleth's own "Glory Hand", Ray Bradbury's "The Jar", Frank Belknap Long's "The Ocean Leech"). H. P. Lovecraft, a staple of Derleth's career as an anthologist, is represented by "The Dreams in the Witch House" and by one of his re-write jobs, Hazel Heald's "Out of the Eons". Derleth's many other anthologies include
Sleep No More
(1944),
Who Knocks?
(1945),
The Night Side
(1946),
Dark of the Moon
(poetry, 1947),
Night's Yawning Peal
(1952),
Dark Mind, Dark Heart
(1962),
Travellers by Night
(1967) and
Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos
(1969).

***

Ever since I was a child I have loved bookshops, especially those that sell second-hand volumes and look as if they might yield the odd treasure or two to the patient searcher. It was back in the early fifties, when I was a teenager, that I came across a rather battered hardcover edition of August Derleth's anthology
The Sleeping and the Dead
in a shop in London's Charing Cross Road -- the name of which I'm afraid I've long since forgotten. I'm not sure now whether it was the title or the unusual editor's name that caught my eye -- it may even have been the rather strange publishers' names on the spine: Pellegrini & Cudahy Inc., who turned out to be American. In any event, I leafed through to the contents page, which to someone just beginning to discover the horror genre promised a host of chilling reading. I'd actually been introduced to the world of macabre stories through -- of all things -- the television (then a small wooden box, with a tiny flickering, black-and-white screen that you watched in a room with the curtains drawn and the lights out). My parents, for reasons that still escape them -- though their action has had a singular effect on
my
life -- decided that the first adult programme I was going to be allowed to stay up and watch (it had been strictly
Children's Hour
until then) was a dramatization of Robert Louis Stevenson's horror classic
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
. To say I sat watching it absolutely terrified would be putting it mildly -- but I know it excited my imagination enough to want to know if there were any more stories like that to be found. By the time I came across
The Sleeping and the Dead
, I had worked patiently through a good number of the classics like
Frankenstein
and
Dracula
. But it was the first anthology I had encountered (they were nowhere near as prolific then as they are today) and I ran through the names of the contributors with increasing interest: M. R. James (who I'd heard wrote ghost stories), Algernon Blackwood (wasn't he the man who read supernatural tales on the radio?), Lord Dunsany (who a school pal said told weird little stories about ancient gods), and a couple of Americans named H. P. Lovecraft and Ray Bradbury. Oh, and there was also a story by the editor himself. I remember I devoured that collection in a weekend. Some of the stories, in particular M. R. James' "A View from the Hill" and Ray Bradbury's "The Jar" so impressed me I read them twice. I thought they were all excellent, and the book gave me for the first time an overview of the range and diversity of the short tale of horror. All the authors, I soon discovered, had produced other works, and I busied myself making a list for my next visit to the library -- as well as one to keep with me for my bookshop browsing.
The Sleeping and the Dead
indeed became for a time the first volume in what is now a several-thousand strong library of horror and fantasy novels and collections in my Suffolk home. I was interested, too, to read the biographical details about August Derleth -- like me a fan of horror since his youth (and a published author at the tender age of 13, no less!) who had written and edited dozens of books of macabre stories as well as starting his own publishing company, Arkham House, which was busy resurrecting the work of H. P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith, and had published the first books of stories by Ray Bradbury and Robert Bloch (who were also to become favourites of mine). Out of admiration for
The Sleeping and the Dead
, I wrote a letter of congratulations to August Derleth -- and initiated what became a friendly and instructive correspondence which continued until his sad death in 1971. August was always generous with his time and advice to this young fan across the Atlantic, and even passed judgement on some of the first selections of stories I was proposing to put together for British publishers. When I found a story difficult to obtain in England, he was almost invariably able to supply a copy of it from his own huge library. August greatly encouraged me in the development of "thematic" collections, which have become my speciality, and no matter what particular theme I wanted to explore, he could always be relied upon to have a few ideas for consideration. I miss his letters and his suggestions, and it is a pleasure to acknowledge my debt to him in these pages. I'm also glad to be able to say that I showed my appreciation of his book in a more positive way while he was still alive. For when my career took me from journalism into publishing, before I finally became a full-time writer and anthologist, I had the great satisfaction of arranging the first publication in Great Britain of
The Sleeping and the Dead
in a paperback edition under the Four Square imprint of New English Library. My only sadness was that it cost me that original copy of the book, for it never came back from the printers. If anyone could help replace it I'd be horrifically grateful . . . -- PETER HAINING

A strangely Gothic Western,
Track of the Cat
is a complex work which subliminally integrates the Death of King Arthur and a stern critique of the pioneer ethic into its snowbound family melodrama and neurotic outdoors adventuring. It was filmed by William Wellman -- who had also adapted Van Tilburg Clark's best-known book in
The Ox-Bow Incident
(1943) -- in 1954, with Robert Mitchum, Teresa Wright and Tab Hunter. In an attempt to match the book's bizarre, psychological feel, Wellman shot in CinemaScope and WarnerColor but restricted himself almost entirely to the use of blacks and whites.

***

Mystic dreams. A half-mad, half-shaman Indian who carves portents of the future from bits of wood. Three brothers on a rite of passage that will see two of them dead and one the victor over an old, cunning evil. A snowstorm that tears at the soul, and a landscape of white mountains where crevasses lie hidden under smooth, deceptive powder. The land of the black painter, and blood on the snow. A Western novel. Right. Walter Van Tilburg Clark, who wrote
The Track of the Cat
, is probably most famous for
The Ox-Bow Incident
, another Western-based novel that builds tautly to its conclusion in which a group of innocent men are mistakenly hanged for a murder that never happened. American high school students know
The Ox-Bow Incident
from Cliffs' Notes. Very few people know about
The Track of the Cat
, which is a horror novel dressed up in cowboy duds and riding a horse. A panther has been attacking the livestock at an isolated ranch, and as a snowstorm gathers its fury the three Bridges brothers -- the eldest Arthur, the hothead and "manly" Curt, and the naive, youngest Harold -- go out into the mountains on the track of the cat. Arthur has had recurring dreams: the voice of a loved one, lost and searching in the storm. The dreams call him, and he must answer. Curt can hunt and shoot any animal; he's not afraid of any panther, no sir! Not even the spectral "black painter" that their Indian ranch hand Joe Sam says cannot be killed. Harold, on the eve of his wedding, suffers under Curt's bullying weight, and he walks in the shadow of his older brothers. Arthur is killed by his dreams; he is "day-dreaming", a habit Curt warns him about, when the panther -- not black after all, but an ordinary yellow cat -- leaps upon him from a snowy ledge. From this portion of the novel,
The Track of the Cat
enters true nightmare country. Hunting the cat on his own in the mountains, Curt steadily roams farther from the ranch and familiar landmarks. He's so intent on bringing back the cat's hide -- and impressing Harold's bride-to-be with his killing prowess -- that he lets the hunt seduce him. A large part of the novel focuses on Curt, as the weather closes in and the snow falls and he begins to run out of matches. This is the center of
Track of the Cat
: the stalking enemy, the brutal and beautiful land, both murderous and seductive. Nothing is familiar to Curt; everything is white, dreamlike, and every shadow holds a panther. The mountains slowly break Curt down into a gibbering child who fires his rifle at darting, imaginary shapes and who feels weeping swell inside him when he loses all sense of direction. The mountains are cruel, and as Curt flees from the sound of snow slithering from a tree he steps into a crevasse and falls to his death. Harold and Joe Sam find the panther and Harold shoots it, regretting that such a beautiful animal must die. He has found his harmony with the mountains, with the land that can so quickly turn monstrous. It's not a black panther after all, Harold says, as he looks at the carcass. And Joe Sam sweeps his hands in a circle that includes the sky and mountains, and he says, "Black painter. All black painter."
The Track of the Cat
is a great horror novel because it takes a huge landscape and slowly narrows it until the reader is squeezed into a cramped cave with Curt Bridges, frantically talking to one of Joe Sam's carved cat figures as the meagre fire flickers and the storm roars outside. He is one match away from freezing to death, with the sense that the cat is now tracking him, and the hunt has turned into a struggle for survival. The Western setting gives
The Track of the Cat
a particularly American, folksy flavor, but underneath the cowboy's flesh beats a heart of true horror. A great horror novel -- but, first and foremost, a great novel. -- ROBERT R. McCAMMON