Masterpieces of Terror and the Supernatural Read online

  Contents

  Introduction

  Fiends and Creatures

  Dracula’s Guest

  Bram Stoker

  The Professor’s Teddy Bear

  Theodore Sturgeon

  Bubnoff and the Devil

  Ivan Turgenev

  The Quest for Blank Claveringi

  Patricia Highsmith

  The Erl-King

  Johann Wolfgang Von Goëthe

  The Bottle Imp

  Robert Louis Stevenson

  A Malady of Magicks

  Craig Shaw Gardner

  Lan Lung

  M. Lucie Chin

  The Dragon Over Hackensack

  Richard L. Wexelblat

  The Transformation

  Mary W. Shelley

  The Faceless Thing

  Edward D. Hoch

  Lovers and Other Monsters

  The Anchor

  Jack Snow

  When the Clock Strikes

  Tanith Lee

  Oshidori

  Lafcadio Hearn

  Carmilla

  Sheridan LeFanu

  Eumenides in the Fourth Floor Lavatory

  Orson Scott Card

  Lenore

  Gottfried August Bürger

  The Black Wedding

  Isaac Bashevis Singer

  Hop-Frog

  Edgar Allen Poe

  Sardonicus

  Ray Russell

  Graveyard Shift

  Richard Matheson

  Wake Not the Dead

  Johann Ludwig Tieck

  Night and Silence

  Maurice Level

  Acts of God and Other Horrors

  Flies

  Isaac Asimov

  The Night Wire

  H. F. Arnold

  Last Respects

  Dick Baldwin

  The Pool of the Stone God

  A. Merritt

  A Tale of the Thirteenth Floor

  Ogden Nash

  The Tree

  Dylan Thomas

  Stroke of Mercy

  Parke Godwin

  Lazarus

  Leonid Andreyev

  The Beast Within

  The Waxwork

  A. M. Burrage

  The Silent Couple

  Pierre Courtois

  Moon-Face

  Jack London

  Death in the School-Room

  Walt Whitman

  The Upturned Face

  Stephen Crane

  One Summer Night

  Ambrose Bierce

  The Easter Egg

  H. H. Munro (“Saki”)

  The House in Goblin Wood

  John Dickson Carr

  The Vengeance of Nitocris

  Tennessee Williams

  The Informal Execution of Soupbone Pew

  Damon Runyon

  His Unconquerable Enemy

  W. C. Morrow

  Rizpah

  Alfred Lord Tennyson

  The Question

  Stanley Ellin

  Ghosts and Miscellaneous Nightmares

  The Flayed Hand

  Guy de Maupassant

  The Hospice

  Robert Aickman

  The Christmas Banquet

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

  The Hungry House

  Robert Bloch

  The Demon of the Gibbet

  Fitz-Fames O’Brien

  The Owl

  Anatole Le Braz

  No. 252 Rue M. Le Prince

  Ralph Adams Cram

  The Music of Eric Zann

  H. P. Lovecraft

  Riddles in the Dark (Original Version, 1938)

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Afterward

  Miscellaneous Notes

  Introduction

  In Search of Masterpieces

  I’ve discovered a curious fact about myself and a few other anthologists who also write fiction. We are naturally pleased when someone expresses a favorable opinion of one of our novels or short stories, but we are even more flattered by praise for the anthologies we edit. At first glance, this may seem puzzling. Shouldn’t one’s own literary effusions be dearer than mere gatherings of other writers’ work?

  The answer is no. Every anthology puts the editor’s taste squarely on the line. Everything he chooses, everything he leaves out, is a testament to and indictment of his education, sensitivity, sophistication and I suppose even his IQ. One may conceal the darkest personal secrets in the labyrinth of character and plot that comprises a novel, nut those who assay to edit a collection of any size and scope run the risk of exposing themselves in public. It is, therefore, perhaps excusable if an anthologist attempts to justify his intentions before streaking naked through Parnassus.

  When I edited Ghosts: A Treasury of Chilling Tales Old and New (Doubleday, 1981). I attempted to gather together sufficient materials in one volume to effectively define the folklore of ghosthood. In so doing, I offered several stories perhaps less artfully written but necessary because of some essential bit of ghost-myth embodied in the plot. This method, however, is inappropriate in the present collection since the title clearly states that the contents consist of “masterpieces.”

  Let me, however, beg the issue. What is a masterpiece? A tale that time has not buried, that still speaks to us long after its author is dead? That is assuredly the best test, but how may it be applied to contemporary fiction? If you peruse the table of contents, you will note the names of quite a few living writers—Robert Bloch, Stanley Ellin, Ed Hoch, Richard Matheson, to name a few. Clearly, the criterion of time cannot be applied in their cases. Then what act of hubris permits me to call their stories masterpieces?

  Frankly, I don’t know. I may very well be wrong about the enduring potential of some of the tales in the pages to come. The word “masterpieces” is employed with some trepidation, on the same theory that if I ever owned a ship I’d call it the Pansy or the Pitifully Insignificant because Poseidon seems to have it in for sea vessels with grandiose names like the Titanic.

  Nevertheless, I am meekly prepared to defend my choices on the ground of personal memorability. Any story that gave my jaded spine a chill seemed to present proper credentials for membership in the club. As a further test, I allowed some time to lapse before making up my mind on certain tales. Aickman’s “The Hospice,” for instance. I deleted it from my ghost anthology in 1981 because I found it puzzlingly obscure. Maybe, but I’ve been mulling it over ever since. A story that hangs around that long in the subconscious must have something potent to recommend it.

  As in my other anthologies, I have limited each other to a single entry and have tried to avoid any tale too often anthologized. In a few cases, I waived this point when conscience would not permit me to omit a key work, but most of what follows should serve, I hope, as a complement rather than as a repeat of other collections on the market or in secondhand bookshops.

  Some of the stories you will find herein are gentle excursions into the occult, and one or two items are provided for comic relief, but let the reader be warned…most of this collection is devoted to varying degrees of terror, horror and what the French call the conte cruelle. The publisher offers no guarantees against nightmares, and the cautious customer will do well to nibble sparingly at the mushrooms lest they turn out to be toadstools.

  In Quest of Terror

  In spite of their common confusion in the media, the terms “horror’ and “terror” are not interchangeable. Boris Karloff once delineated between them by dismissing horror as mere insistence on the gory and otherwise repugnant—the numbingly banal atrocities seen on the Six O’Clock News (
and in Hollywood’s dreary splatter films). Terror, according to Karloff, is rooted in cosmic fear of the unknown. It is the more dreadful experience by far, but its very profundity makes it more difficult to achieve artistically. That is surely why most of our contemporary horror writers are nothing more than horror writers. The liberal use of ghastly murders and decaying corpses is the stuff of pornography. The psychology of terror, like true erotica, demands far more technique to comprehend and employ.

  In his cornerstone essay, Supernatural Horror in Literature, H. P. Lovecraft makes much the same point, though he switches terms. But the distinction remains, and Lovecraft devotes a good deal of space recommending tales and novels that sound the note of cosmic fear. It is this dark music which I have sought to bring you in Masterpieces of Terror and the Supernatural. Sometimes it sounds too softly for every listener to hear (see “Oshidori” by Lafcadio Hearn or Stephen Crane’s “The Upturned Face”), while in other instances such as Isaac Bashevis Singer’s “The Black Wedding,” you’d have to be tone-deaf to miss it. Even such horrific exercises as Richard Matheson’s “Graveyard Shift” were not chosen for their inescapable bloodiness, but rather for their icy insights into human nature at its inexplicable worst.

  For a mere extended discussion of terror, as well as miscellaneous notes on a few of the stores in this book, see the “Afterward.” A modest bibliography of other recommended reading is also included for those of you who crave still more punishment.

  Marvin Kaye

  Manhattan, August 1984

  Fiends and Creatures

  In the following tales, agents of Hell hobnob with various kinds of beasties. You will meet a distinguished vampire, giant snails, a tiny but thoroughly nasty demon, some dragons and no less illustrious a clan than Satan himself, his granddaughter and his grandmother (even His Nibs doesn’t know why he never had a mother).

  The promise and threat of power looms over these stories. The diabolical representatives quest for human lives, blood, souls. Some of them—the Erl-King, for instance—simply take what they’re after; others, such as Stevenson’s Bottle Imp, make offers we ought to refuse. Then there are the monsters—Highsmith’s claveringi, Hoch’s thing in the ooze—embodiments of unbridled brute force with no moral law to satisfy but their own appetites.

  Nietzsche stated that the will to power leads the spiritually superior being to perform acts of great benevolence, but the evil brood awaiting you in this section are obviously untutored in philosophy.

  Our first story is distinguished by a guest appearance by none other than Count Dracula himself. (See the “Afterward” for details.) BRAM STOKER, born in Dublin in 1847, left behind a number of uncollected fantasy tales, so his widow gathered some of them into volume form in 1914 and added the following excised episode from her husband’s most popular literary work. “Dracula’s Guest” surely must have been the opening chapter of the book, and its narrator is Jonathan Harker, en route to Transylvania to sell the Count some property in England. (Indeed, the novel itself opens with the words “Left Munich at 8:35 P.M., on 1st May…”) Some canny publisher ought to restore it in some future edition of the great vampire novel; it makes an excellent prologue to the horrors to come.

  Dracula’s Guest

  By Bram Stoker

  When we started for our drive the sun was shining brightly on Munich, and the air was full of the joyousness of early summer. Just as we were about to depart, Herr Delbrück (the maître d’hôtel of the Quatre Saisons, where I was staying) came down, bareheaded, to the carriage and, after wishing me a pleasant drive, said to the coachman, still holding his hand on the handle of the carriage door:

  “Remember you are back by nightfall. The sky looks bright but there is a shiver in the north wind that says there may be a sudden storm. But I am sure you will not be late.” Here he smiled, and added, “for you know what night it is.”

  Johann answered with an emphatic, “Ja, mein Herr,” and, touching his hat, drove off quickly. When we had cleared the town, I said, after signaling to him to stop:

  “Tell me, Johann, what is to-night?”

  He crossed himself, as he answered laconically: “Walpurgis nacht.” Then he took out his watch, a great, old-fashioned German silver thing as big as a turnip, and looked at it, with his eyebrows gathered together and a little impatient shrug of his shoulders. I realized that this was his way of respectfully protesting against the unnecessary delay, and sank back in the carriage, merely motioning him to proceed. He started off rapidly, as if to make up for lost time. Every now and then the horses seemed to throw up their heads and sniffed the air suspiciously. On such occasions I often looked round in alarm. The road was pretty bleak, for we were traversing a sort of high, wind-swept plateau. As we drove, I saw a road that looked but little used, and which seemed to dip through a little, winding valley. It looked so inviting that, even at the risk of offending him, I called Johann to stop—and when he had pulled up, I told him I would like to drive down that road. He made all sorts of excuses, and frequently looked at his watch in protest. Finally I said:

  “Well, Johann, I want to go down this road. I shall not ask you to come unless you like; but tell me why you do not like to go, that is all I ask.” For answer he seemed to throw himself off the box, so quickly did he reach the ground. Then he stretched out his hands appealingly to me, and implored me not to go. There as just enough of English mixed with the German for me to understand the drift of his talk. He seemed always just about to tell me something—the very idea of which evidently frightened him; but each time he pulled himself up, saying, as he crossed himself: “Walpurgis nacht!”

  I tried to argue with him, but it was difficult to argue with a man when I did not know his language. The advantage certainly rested with him, for although he began to speak in English, of a very crude and broken kind, he always got excited and broke into his native tongue—and every time he did so, he looked at his watch. Then the horses became restless and sniffed the air. At this he grew very pale, and, looking around in a frightened way, he suddenly jumped forward, took them by their bridles and led them on some twenty feet. I followed, and asked why he had done this. For answer he crossed himself, pointed to the spot we had let and drew his carriage in the direction of the other road, indicating a cross, and said, first in German, then in English: “Buried him—him what killed themselves.”

  I remembered the old custom of burying suicides at cross-roads: “Ah! I see, a suicide. How interesting!” But for the life of me I could not make out why the horses were frightened.

  Whilst we were talking, we heard a sort of sound between a yelp and a bark. It was far away; but the horses got very restless, and it took Johann all his time to quiet them. He was pale, and said: “It sounds like a wolf—but yet there are no wolves here now.”

  “No?” I said, questioning him; “isn’t it long since the wolves were so near the city?”

  “Long, long,” he answered, “in the spring and summer; but with the snow the wolves have been here not so long.”

  Whilst he was petting the horses and trying to quiet them, dark clouds drifted rapidly across the sky. The sunshine passed away, and a breath of cold wind seemed to drift past us. It was only a breath, however, and more in the nature of a warning than a fact, for the sun came out brightly again. Johann looked under his lifted hand at the horizon and said;

  “The storm of snow, he comes before long time.” Then he looked at his watch again, and, straightaway holding his reins firmly—for the horses were still pawing the ground restlessly and shaking their heads—he climbed to his box as though the time had come for proceeding on our journey.

  I felt a little obstinate and did not at once get into the carriage.

  “Tell me,” I said, “about this place where the road leads,” and I pointed down.

  Again he crossed himself and mumbled a prayer, before he answered: “It is unholy.”

  “What is unholy?” I enquired.

  “The village.”


  “Then there is a village?”

  “No, no. No one lives there hundreds of years.” My curiosity was piqued: “But you said there was a village.”

  “There was.”

  “Where is it now?”

  Whereupon he burst into a long story in German and English, so mixed up that I could not quite understand exactly what he said, but roughly I gathered that long ago, hundreds of years, men had died there and been buried in their graves; an sounds were heard under the clay, and when the grave were opened, men and women were found rosy with life, and their mouths red with blood. And so, in haste to save their lives (aye, and their souls!—and here he crossed himself) those who were left fled away to other places, where the living lived, and the dead were dead and not—not something. He was evidently afraid to speak the last words. As he proceeded with his narration, he grew more and more excited. It seemed as if his imagination had got hold of him, and he ended in a perfect paroxysm of fear—white-faced, perspiring, trembling and looking round him, as if expecting that some dreadful presence would manifest itself there in the bright sunshine on the open plain. Finally, in an agony of desperation, he cried:

  “Walpurgis nacht!” and pointed to the carriage for me to get in. All my English blood rose at this, and, standing back, I said:

  “You are afraid, Johann—you are afraid. Go home; I shall return alone; the walk will do me good.” The carriage door was open. I took from the seat my oak walking-stick—which I always carry on my holiday excursions—and closed the door, pointing back to Munich, and said, “Go home, Johann—Walpurgis nacht doesn’t concern Englishmen.”

  The horses were now more restive than ever, and Johann was trying to hold them in, while excitedly imploring me not to do anything so foolish. I pitied the poor fellow, he was so deeply in earnest; but all the same I could not help laughing. His English was quite gone now. In his anxiety he had forgotten that his only means of making me understand was to talk my language, so he jabbered away in his native German. It began to be a little tedious. After giving the direction, “Home!” I turned to go down the cross-road into the valley.