The Mammoth Book of Terror (2 page)

WAKE-UP CALL copyright © David J. Schow 2004.

THE FOURTH SEAL copyright © Stuart David Schiff 1981. Originally published in
Whispers III.
Reprinted by permission of The Karl Edward Wagner Literary Group.

UNLOCKED copyright © Tanith Lee and John Kaiine 2004.

CLOSING TIME copyright © Neil Gaiman 2003. Originally published in
McSweeny’s Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales.
Reprinted by permission of the author.

IT WAS THE HEAT copyright © Pat Cadigan 1988. Originally published in
Tropical Chills.
Reprinted by permission of the author.

FODDER copyright © Tim Lebbon and Brian Keene 2002. Originally published in
Shivers.
Reprinted by permission of the authors.

OPEN DOORS copyright © Michael Marshall Smith 2003. Originally published in
More Tomorrow & Other Stories.
Reprinted by permission of the author.

ANDROMEDA AMONG THE STONES copyright © Caitlín R. Kiernan 2002. Originally published in
Andromeda Among the Stones.
Reprinted by permission of the author.

FLOWERS ON THEIR BRIDLES, HOOVES IN THE AIR copyright © Glen Hirshberg 2003. Originally published on
SciFi.com
, August 2003. Reprinted by permission of
the author and the author’s agents, Anderson Grinberg Literary Management, Inc.

AMERIKANSKI DEAD AT THE MOSCOW MORGUE OR: CHILDREN OF MARX AND COCA-COLA copyright © Kim Newman 1999. Originally published in
999: New Stories of Horror and Suspense.
Reprinted by
permission of the author.

AMONG THE WOLVES copyright © David Case 1971. Originally published in
Fengriffen: A Chilling Tale.
Reprinted by permission of the author.

This one is for Jay,

part of my extended Chicago family by marriage, my good friend and drinking companion by choice.

THE FIRST BOOK I
ever edited in the hugely successful
Mammoth
series was
The Mammoth Book of Terror
back in 1991.

At the time, I wanted to assemble a hefty, non-themed horror anthology featuring some classic stories by many of the biggest names in the field, along with a scattering of tales that would be
original to the book.

The result was more successful than I could have imagined. The volume was reprinted in the UK and went through four printings in the United States. There was also a hardcover version, various
budget editions and even an Italian translation. Even more importantly, the book was a precursor to an entire series of
Mammoth
titles that I have continued to edit up to this day.

So when I was offered the opportunity to put together this follow-up volume, I naturally jumped at the chance. There are still many superb stories of horror and dark fantasy that, for one reason
or another are not currently in print, or have never been previously published on one side of the Atlantic or the other.

It is therefore my pleasure to welcome back to this volume such esteemed authors as Ramsey Campbell, Basil Copper, Dennis Etchison, Brian Lumley, Graham Masterton, David J. Schow, Lisa Tuttle
and F. Paul Wilson. Although they are no longer with us, R. Chetwynd-Hayes and Karl Edward Wagner are also both remembered with examples of their finest work, which will most likely be unfamiliar
to many readers.

Such other respected names as Sydney J. Bounds, Phyllis Eisenstein, Charles L. Grant and E.C. Tubb are also represented with classic tales of unease, and there is more recent or original work
from Pat Cadigan, Christopher Fowler, Neil Gaiman, Glen Hirshberg, Caitlín R. Kiernan, Terry Lamsley, Brian Mooney, Kim Newman and Michael Marshall Smith, many of whom were only just
starting their professional careers when the first volume of
Terror
was originally published.

Finally, I am delighted to present two powerful collaborations between rising stars Tim Lebbon and Brian Keene and the talented writing team of married couple Tanith Lee and John Kaiine, along
with David Case’s classic psychological novella “Among the Wolves” which, like all the author’s early work, deserves to be back in print again.

So there you have it – another bumper volume of contemporary terror, brought to you by some of the finest writers currently working in horror fiction. And remember, if you enjoyed this
volume, then there are many more stories out there just waiting to be told . . .

Stephen Jones

London, England

BRIAN LUMLEY WAS BORN
on England’s north-east coast nine months after the death of H.P. Lovecraft. He claims that is just a coincidence. He was
serving as a sergeant in the Corps of Royal Military Police when he discovered Lovecraft’s fiction while stationed in Berlin in the early 1960s. After deciding to try his own hand at writing
horror fiction, initially set in HPL’s influential Cthulhu Mythos, he sent his early efforts to editor August Derleth. The latter’s famed Arkham House imprint published two collections
of Lumley’s short stories,
The Caller of the Black
and
The Horror at Oakdene and Others
, plus the short novel
Beneath the Moors.

Lumley’s many other books include the
Psychomech
trilogy,
Demogorgon, The House of Doors, Fruiting Bodies and Other Fungi, A Coven of Vampires, The Whisperer and Other Voices
and
Beneath the Moors and Darker Places.

More recent publications include
Freaks
, a collection from Subterranean Press that includes a new story, and a reprinting of
Khai of Khem
from Tor Books. Delirium has reissued the
first
Hero of Dreams
novel in a very limited leatherbound edition, and the third issue of
H.P. Lovecraft’s Magazine of Horror
is a “Brian Lumley Special” that
features two original tales.

These days Lumley is best known as the author of the popular
Necroscope
vampire series. Published in 1986, the first book in the series made him a best-seller all over the world. That
initial volume was followed by
Necroscope II: Wamphyri!
(aka
Necroscope II: Vamphyrif
),
Necroscope III: The Source, Necroscope TV: Deadspeak
and
Necroscope V: Deadspawn.
The
Vampire World
trilogy appeared in the early 1990s, and that was followed by the two-volume
Necroscope: The Lost Years
, the three-volume
E-Branch
series, and the collection
Harry Keogh: Necroscope and Other Weird Heroes!
Forthcoming is
The Touch
, a new “E-Branch” spin-off.

In 1998 he was named Grand Master at the World Horror Convention, and
The Brian Lumley Companion
, co-edited with Stanley Wiater, appeared from Tor in 2002.

“‘Fruiting Bodies’ won a British Fantasy Award in 1989,” reveals the author. “It had some stiff competition and I count myself lucky to have won. Whether it’s
frightening or not is for you to decide. If it’s entertaining, and gives that certain
frisson
, then I’m satisfied.

“One thing’s for sure, there isn’t any blood here: mushrooms don’t bleed.”

My father had taken me there one spring when the tides were high. I remember how there was still some black, crusty snow lying in odd corners of the fields, coloured by soot and smoke, as all
things were in those days in the north-east. We’d gone to Easingham because the unusually high tides had been at it again, chewing away at the shale cliffs, reducing shoreline and derelict
village both as the North Sea’s breakers crashed again and again on the shuddering land.

And of course we had hoped (as had the two hundred or so other sightseers gathered there that day) to see a house or two go down in smoking ruin, into the sea and the foaming spray. We witnessed
no such spectacle; after an hour, cold and wet from the salt moisture in the air, we piled back into the family car and returned to Durham. Easingham’s main street, or what had once been the
main street, was teetering on the brink as we left. But by nightfall that street was no more. We’d missed it: a further twenty feet of coastline, a bite one street deep and a few yards more
than one street long had been undermined, toppled, and gobbled up by the sea.

That had been that. Bit by bit, in the quarter-century between then and now, the rest of Easingham had also succumbed. Now only a house or two remained – no more than a handful in all
– and all falling into decay, while the closest lived-in buildings were those of a farm all of a mile inland from the cliffs. Oh, and of course there was one other inhabitant: old Garth
Bentham, who’d been demolishing the old houses by hand and selling bricks and timbers from the village for years. But I’ll get to him shortly.

So there I was last summer, back in the north-east again, and when my business was done of course I dropped in and stayed overnight with the Old Folks at their Durham cottage. Once a year at
least I made a point of seeing them, but last year in particular I noticed how time was creeping up on them. The “Old Folks”; well, now I saw that they really were old, and I determined
that I must start to see a lot more of them.

Later, starting in on my long drive back down to London, I remembered that time when the Old Man had taken me to Easingham to see the houses tottering on the cliffs. And probably because the
place was on my mind, I inadvertently turned off my route and in a little while found myself heading for the coast. I could have turned round right there and then – indeed, I intended to do
so – but I’d got to wondering about Easingham and how little would be left of it now, and before I knew it . . .

Once I’d made up my mind, Middlesbrough was soon behind me, then Guisborough, and in no time at all I was on the old road to the village. There had only ever been one way in and out, and
this was it: a narrow road, its surface starting to crack now, with tall hedgerows broken here and there, letting you look through to where fields rolled down to the cliffs. A beautiful day, with
seagulls wheeling overhead, a salt tang coming in through the wound-down windows, and a blue sky coming down to merge with . . . with the blue-grey of the North Sea itself! For cresting a rise,
suddenly I was there.

An old, leaning wooden signpost said
EASINGH
– for the tail had been broken off or rotted away, and “the village” lay at the end of the road. But right
there, blocking the way, a metal barrier was set in massive concrete posts and carried a sign bearing the following warning:

Severe Cliff Subsidence

No Vehicles Beyond This Point

The windows of these derelicts, where there were windows, seemed to gaze gauntly down on approaching doom, like old men in twin rows of deathbeds. Brambles and ivy were rank; the whole place
seemed as despairing as the cries of the gulls rising on the warm air; Easingham was a place no more.

Not that there had ever been a lot of it. Three streets lengthwise with a few shops; two more, shorter streets cutting through the three at right angles and going down to the cliffs and the
vertiginous wooden steps that used to climb down to the beach, the bay, the old harbour and fish market; and, standing over the bay, a Methodist church on a jutting promontory, which in the old
times had also served as a lighthouse. But now –