Horror
Times Ten
Cover
blurb:
„Ten
chilling Tales of Horror By such Masters as Ray Bradbury. August Derleth,
Robert Bloch and H.P. Lovecraft”
Edited by
Alden H. Norton
Berkley Medallion Books.
9th
Printing. February 1972. $0.60
My copy.
- 7 · Introduction · Alden H. Norton · in
- 10 · The Trunk Lady · Ray Bradbury · ss Detective Tales
Sep ’44
- 30 · Cool Air · H. P. Lovecraft · ss Tales of Magic and
Mystery Mar ’28; Weird Tales Sep ’39
- 40 · The Lonesome Place · August Derleth · ss Famous Fantastic
Mysteries Feb ’48
- 49 · The Dead Remember · Robert E. Howard · ss Argosy Aug 15 ’36
- 58 · The Captain of the “Pole-Star” · Arthur Conan Doyle · nv Temple Bar Jan, 1883
- 82 · That Receding Brow · Max Brand · nv All-Story Weekly Feb 15 ’19
- 124 · His Unconquerable Enemy [“The Rajah’s
Nemesis”] · W. C. Morrow · ss The Argonaut Mar
11, 1889; Weird Tales Aug ’29
- 135 · The Dead Valley · Ralph Adams Cram · ss Black Spirits and
White, Stone & Kimball: Chicago, 1895
- 145 · The Gorgon’s Head · Gertrude Bacon · ss The Strand Dec,
1899; as by Dorothy Baker in toc.
- 157 · The Skeleton in the Closet · Robert Bloch · ss Fantastic Adventures
Jun ’43
Hi Folks,
This week’s book is “Horrors Times
Ten” edited by “Alden H. Norton” with stories introductions by “SamMoskowitz”. Mr. Norton was editor of
over 30 pulp magazines over the years. He edited “Argosy”, “Famous FantasticMysteries, Fantastic Novels, Super Science Stories, Astounding Science Fiction
and many others. Mr. Moskowitz was one of the original founders of organized SF
fandom, SF-Fantasy& Horror expert/historian, critic and writer. You would
hope that with the combined talents of both men that you would be holding a
first class anthology in your hands. Don’t worry; it is a first class
anthology! “Horror Times Ten” went through 9 printings between June 1968 and
February 1972. This must have been a pretty popular book. This was one of four
horror anthologies that Mr. Norton edited. The others are “Masters of Horror”,
“Hauntings and Horrors” and “Horrors in Hiding”. I never ever saw a single on
of these books in the paperback racks. I was only aware of them through the ads
in the back of “Famous Monsters of Filmland”. Happily (for me) I own all of them now and eventualy I'll cover the others too. I posted scans of these FM ads a
few weeks ago. So scroll down if you want to take a gander at them.
I find “Horror x10” to be an
exceptional anthology. Mr. Norton says in his introduction that he wanted to
include stories that haven’t been included in other anthologies. I’ll admit
that there were quite a few stories that were new to me. The “H. P. Lovecraft”
and “August Derleth” Stories weren’t new to me, but then again how many later
collections reprinted them to death?
“Horror Times Ten” also sports one
of those wonderfully creepy, Halloween kinds of covers that I love. The
sloppily buried reminds me of “Basil Rathbone”. And come to think about it, I
think that he quite making films at about the time this anthology was
originally published.
Now let’s take a look at the
stories!
This is more of a mystery than a
horror story. It’s also a Ray Bradbury story that I’ve never had the pleasure
of reading! It’s only been anthologized twice. That was a very nice surprise!
What makes “The Trunk Lady” even more special is that is such an early story
from Mr. Bradbury that it is totally lacking in any of the whimsy or
sentimental nostalgia that was to become Mr. Bradbury’s trade mark later on.
This is a nice little “vanishing corpse” mystery. A little boy discovers, while
playing in the attic” the body of a recently strangled young woman. He tries to
tell his parents, but sadly, the corpse doesn’t play along and vanishes. No one
seems to want to believe him. And even stranger, they seem to want to shut him
up about the matter completely. Several generations of the boy’s family all
live together in the mansion and all are eccentric enough to be possible
suspects. One of them is even sneaking into the boy’s darkened bedroom at night
while they think he is asleep. So it’s quite natural when little Johnny Menlo
starts becoming quite worried and paranoid. I liked the story a lot. It’s not
your typical Ray Bradbury story. It would have made a great episode on the old
“Alfred Hitchcock Presents”.
Cool Air
I’m
surprised that this was considered a “rare” story. Okay, maybe Mr. Norton meant
that it hadn’t been reprinted outside of Lovecraft collections. I like “Cool
Air”. It’s an enjoyable little non-“Mythos” story from Mr. Lovecraft. All I say
is that if you have any truly odd neighbours, then maybe you should just leave
them alone. And think about ehat happens to all that meat in your freezer when
the electricity fails.
The Lonesome Place
Mr. Derleth’s “The Lonesome Place”
is one of the all time great stories about the horrors of childhood. I could
write an entire post just about how much I love this story. I first read it in
the very early 1970s in “Hauntings: Tales of the Supernatural” (edited by Henry
Mazzeo and illustrated by “Edward Gorey”.). This was one of the best books we
had in the library at Johnny Clem Elementary School in Newark Ohio. I still have a copy. To bad it was
never released in paperback. It is truly a classic anthology.
“The Lonesome
Place” deals mainly with a child’s fear not so
much of the dark, but of what can be hiding in the darkness. The narrator
(Derleth?) recalls how during his childhood he would have to walk home after
dark down long un-lit tree lined streets. The worst part of his walk home is
past a darkened and tree lined lumber yard. He becomes convinced that something
is hiding among the piles of lumber waiting to get him. His best friend is also
convinced that something is hiding there at night. By the end of the story this
fear of a monster is confirmed when something terrible happens on the exact
same spot a few years later. Wonderful, wonderful story! It works on every
level and is in my opinion the very best story Mr. Derleth ever wrote.
One of
the reasons I love this story is that even thought it takes place in a small
town in Wisconsin, it reminded me so much of my own hometown of Newark Ohio which
only had a population of about 35,000 people back then. The neighbourhood that
I grew up in was almost at the edge of town. Rugg
Avenue was also one the last street built before
WWII. The neighbourhood between us and the edge of town was built in the 1950s.
So I lived on a street built around 1900 with old style houses. That basically
means we had front porches and side walks. Rugg
Avenue was also one the very few streets still
paved with brick. It was long and narrow with one street light at each side
street. There only three of these along the entire street. What made it worse
was that every single house in this part of town had two huge old maple trees
that not only touched side by side, but arched across the street to touch each
other. This made for some very long and very dark walks home. And don’t forget
that 40+ years ago most people were home for the day by 6PM. The concept of
24/7 didn’t exist back then. My friend Rod lived on the parallel street a block
over and at the opposite end. He had a huge collection of pre-code comics that
were passed down from his dad and uncle. So walking home early evenings down
very long dark streets with a head full of gory horror comics wasn’t very
induceful to a peaceful state of mind. Most of the times no one even had a
porch light on. So being the over imaginative little dork that I was, I ended
up running home quite a few times after becoming convinced that something was
out there with me.
That’s
why I love this story so much.
The Dead Remember
This is a nifty story by REH that is
told entirely in flashback through letters and sworn court affidavits. A
drunken racist cowboy murders a black couple who he stopped by visit while on
his way to town. The cowboy looses at playing dice and accuses his host of cheating
him. A heated argument ensues and the innocent pair gets murdered by the
cowboy. The woman curses the cowboy with here dying breath. What follows is a
short, but suspenseful “revenge from the
grave” story. I liked it. It’s a shame thought that Mr. Howard didn’t break
into to Argosy until after his death!
The Captain of the “Pole-Star”
I have this in a collection of Conan
Doyle horror stories, but had never gotten around to reading it. That was a
mistake since this is one genuinely creepy story. Doyle himself had been a
Doctor on a whaling ship above the Artic circle and those experiences add a
weight of authenticity to this sad and scary story. With out giving too much
away the story is about a whaling ship that is threatened to be cut off by
shifting ice flows near the North Pole. To make matters worse, the Captain himself
appears to be haunted or at least going insane. And this haunting/insanity
seems to be spreading through the ship. This is a genuinely creepy story that
you won’t quickly forget.
That Receding Brow
„Max Brand“is remembered today for
being one of the greatest western writers who ever lived. He was also one of
the greatest pulp writers of his day. He wrote over 500 novels under 19
pseudonyms. His real name was Frederick Schiller Faust. He was killed during
WWII in Italy while working as a front line
correspondent.
“That Receding Brow” is an
interesting, but fairly odd kind of story. It starts out as “lost world science
fiction” and turns into supernatural horror revenge story. I won’t say too much about it. I just want to
point out though that if you are going to befriend a missing link Sasquatch
creature then don’t go and murder his mate. You shouldn’t do this especially if
he turns out to be some kind of nature Elemental. I enjoyed this genre mash-up
myself, but I couldn’t really recommend to most other readers.
His Unconquerable Enemy (“The
Rajah’s Nemesis”)
This is one mondo bizzarro revenge
tale taking place in India back in the 19th
century. It reads almost like proto torture porn. A servant angers a Rajah and keeps getting
limbs lopped of. In the end he’s just a torso in a bag when he finally gets his
revenge on the Rajah. What is so weird is the matter of fact narration by a
visiting British M.D. Who not only witnesses the entire events, but even
completes the amputations of the disgruntled servant’s arms and legs after each
attempted at severing a limb is botched by the royal executioner. Our
disinterested narrator even watches the “human caterpillar” carry off his final
revenge against the Rajah without even batting an eye or lifting a finger to
intercede in the unfolding tragedy. This story is so bizarre that it has to be
read to be believed. It even has a dismembered child in it to spice things up.
As if the dismemberment and torture of servants isn’t enough to make this story
a full fledged creep out.
The Dead Valley
This one was pretty good. A couple
of Swedish kids discover a lost valley full of deadly fog with a bone
surrounded dead giant dead Oak tree in the middle of it. This is aA short and
weird, but not very memorable story. It makes for a nice filler story. And it might be mostly of interest to completists.
The Skeleton in the Closet
This one is a short piece of
humorous horror that Mr. Bloch loved so well to write.
Mr. Bloch was a wonderful author. He
liked to try to write funny stories at times. Some of these of stories even had
their own kind of charm since he liked to end them with some of the most groan
inducing puns that the world has ever seen. It’s sad to say though that this
isn’t one of them.
A young man inherits his late
Uncle’s mansion only to discover a living talking skeleton hanging in the
closet. It turns out that his uncle was a magician, that he was murdered and
this is his skeleton. So the two of them go on a zany search to find out who
killed the uncle and placed him in this state.
In his introduction to the story,
Sam Moskowitz, says that they wanted to end the collection on a lighter note.
As much as I love and admire Mr. Bloch, I think that this story ends the
anthology on a weak note. I found the story to be lame and terribly dated.
All in all, I think that “Horror
Times Ten” is a very good anthology with several rarely seen stories. It’s a book that’s well worth seeking out.
That’s it for this week.
Thanks for stopping by.
Doug
