The Best New Horror 3

by Stephen Jones

  I never move after I hear the door click shut.

  By the time he reaches the bed his breathing is harsher and louder than it ever is during the day. He lifts the sheet and the blanket and the spread. The linen whispers against itself. The cold air goose bumples across my arms and legs.

  I am asleep, I tell myself. I am a piece of stone. I am dead. I don’t breathe and I don’t move. I can’t.

  I have been lying on my back, my arms and legs straight, locked tight. He turns me away from him and bends my hips and knees and slides in behind me and pulls my nightie out of his way.

  I used to sit on his lap. It used to stay flat.

  I don’t move, but he moves me, and he moves around me and in me.

  I click my brain off, because tomorrow I’ll have to kiss him good-bye at the breakfast table, just like Mom does.

  When he’s finished and I am messy, he whispers that if I ever tell Mom about this her heart will break and she’ll die. If I ever tell anybody else they might tell Mom and her heart will break and she’ll die.

  He leaves. After a long time, my brain clicks back on, and I get up and shower and change the sheets and go back to bed and drop into sleep like it was a cliff I fell over.

  My heart breaks, and I don’t die.

  When a zit gets big enough, you can pop it.

  I’ve been sharpening a knitting needle on a whetstone I found in a drawer in the kitchen. This zit is one of the red ones. It’s not big enough yet, even though the bleeding stopped three months ago. I don’t want to wait for it to show. Though sometimes I think about the pearl forming in there, and wonder if it is worth more than I am.

  I think I’ll slide the needle in through my belly button tonight, before he gets here.

  STEPHEN JONES & KIM NEWMAN

  Necrology: 1991

  IN 1991, DEATH CLAIMED far too many writers, artists, performers and technicians who made significant contributions to the horror, science fiction and fantasy genres . . .

  AUTHORS/ARTISTS

  Screenwriter Richard Maibum died on January 1st after a short illness. He was 81. Best known for his scripts for such James Bond extravaganzas as Dr No, From Russia With Love, Goldfinger, Thunderball, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Diamonds Are Forever, The Man With the Golden Gun, The Spy Who Loved Me, For Your Eyes Only, Octopussy, The Living Daylights and License to Kill, he also adapted Ian Fleming’s Chitty Chitty Bang Bang for the screen.

  Everett Freeman, who scripted The Secret Life of Walter Mitty starring Danny Kaye and Boris Karloff, died on January 24th from renal failure. He was 79.

  Leo Katcher, who co-scripted the remake of M (1951), died from a heart attack on February 27th, aged 79.

  Author Michael Hardwick died on March 4th. He continued the adventures of Sherlock Holmes (until restrained by the Conan Doyle estate), and together with his wife, Mollie, novelised the 1970 movie, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes.

  Ian McLellan Hunter, who was blacklisted by Hollywood in the 1950s and still won an Oscar under a “front” name for his script for Roman Holiday, died on March 5th. He also won an Emmy for his TV adaptation of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde.

  Television and film writer Morton Fine died from cancer on March 7th, aged 74. His many credits include I Spy, The Pawnbroker, The Fool Killer and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour.

  Author John Bellairs died on March 8th of cardiovascular disease, aged 53. His books, primarily aimed at children, and often illustrated by Edward Gorey, include The Face in the Frost, The House With a Clock in Its Walls (adapted for television), The Figure in the Shadows, The Mummy the Will and the Crypt, The Dark Secret of Weatherend and The Mansion in the Mist.

  Lyricist Howard Ashman, whose credits include both the stage and film version of Little Shop of Horrors, The Little Mermaid, Aladdin and a musical version of Kurt Vonnegut’s God Bless You, Mr Rosewater, died from AIDS on March 14th. He was 40, and won a posthumous Academy Award for the title song from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast.

  The same day saw the death of Sarah Gourley (Sadie) Shaw, well-known science fiction fan and wife of SF writer Bob Shaw, apparently from liver failure.

  Graham Greene, author of The Third Man and The Quiet American, died from a blood disease on April 3rd, aged 86. A relative of Robert Louis Stevenson, his acclaimed body of work included a few science fiction and ghost stories and such film adaptations as The Third Man, Ministry of Fear and This Gun for Hire.

  George T. Delacorte, pulp and comics publisher and founder of the Dell Publishing imprint, died on April 4th, aged 97. A philanthropist in later life, he gave New York City the Alice in Wonderland bronze statues in Central Park.

  Maurice Binder, who created the distinctive title sequences for fourteen James Bond movies, died on April 9th from lung cancer. He also created the credits for Damn Yankees, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, Repulsion, Bedazzled, The Mouse That Roared and the 1979 version of Dracula.

  Playwright and scriptwriter Michael Pertwee (brother of Dr Who Jon) died on April 17th, aged 74. His films include A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Mouse on the Moon, Salt and Pepper and One More Time.

  Holocaust survivor Jerzy Kosinski, author of The Painted Bird and Being There, died from an apparent suicide on May 3rd. He was 57. He had been despondent over failing health and an inability to write.

  Editor and publisher Clarence Paget died on May 18th, four days after lapsing into a coma following a stroke. He was 82. As chief editor at Pan Books, Paget created The Pan Book of Horror Stories in 1959, working closely with the series’ editor, Herbert van Thal. Following the latter’s death, Paget continued the series himself, editing volumes 26–30, and he co-edited the 30th anniversary volume, Dark Voices: The Best from the Pan Book of Horror Stories in 1990.

  Author Sharon Baker, aged 53, died on June 4th from pancreatic cancer. Her first novel, Quarreling, They Met the Dragon, appeared in 1984, followed by Journey to Membliar and Burning Tears of Sassurum. She also contributed to J. N. Williamson’s How To Write Tales of Horror, Fantasy & Science Fiction, and a poem appeared posthumously in Now We Are Sick.

  Science fiction artist Roger Stine died on June 17th of kidney and liver failure after being hospitalized for two weeks. He was 39. Stine, who turned freelance in 1976, did a number of covers for Cinefantastique magazine, plus artwork for Shayol, Asimov’s, Heavy Metal, Oui, National Lampoon, DC Comics’ Star Trek series, paperback publishers and games companies. He won an Edgar for his Sherlock Holmes frontispiece, “The Three Pipe Problem”.

  Distinguished Yiddish writer and Nobel Prize winner Isaac Bashevis Singer died on July 24th, aged 87, after suffering several strokes. His acclaimed books include Gimpel the Fool and Other Stories, The Seance and Other Stories, Satan in Goray and The Magician of Lubin, and he was a contributor to Kirby McCauley’s landmark Dark Forces anthology.

  Writer/producer Oliver Drake died August 5th after a long illness, aged 88. He wrote numerous westerns (such as Riders of the Whispering Skull) and was associate producer of the last in Universal’s Kharis series, The Mummy’s Curse (1944).

  Underground comics artist Rick Griffin, aged 47, died from head injuries on August 17th, following a motorcycle accident. His work appeared in Zap Comix and others, and on album covers for Jimi Hendrix, Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane etc.

  American movie poster artist Reynold Brown died on August 24th after a long illness. He was 73. Brown’s distinctive artwork for such posters as Creature from the Black Lagoon, This Island Earth, The Incredible Shrinking Man, The Time Machine, Masque of the Red Death and Attack of the 50ft Woman, amongst others, was profiled in the March 1988 issue of Cinefantastique magazine.

  Dorothy and Howard Dimsdale used sleeping pills to kill themselves in a suicide pact on August 27th. She was in her 60s, he was 78. He wrote the scripts for The Living Ghost, Somewhere in the Night and Abbott and Costello Meet Captain Kidd, and was blacklisted in the 1950s.

  Author Gerry Davis died from cancer on August 31st, aged 61. He was
story editor on BBC’s Dr Who, created the Doomwatch TV series, and co-scripted the 1980 movie The Final Countdown. His novels include Mutant 59: The Plastic Eaters, Brainrack, The Dynostar Menace (with Kit Pedler) and several Dr Who novelisations.

  Actor turned author Thomas Tryon died from cancer on September 4th, aged 65. After starring in such movies as Moon Pilot and I Married a Monster from Outer Space, he became a bestselling writer with The Other (filmed in 1972 from his own screenplay), Harvest Home (turned into a TV mini-series), Lady, Crowned Heads, Night of the Moonbow, The Wings of Morning and Kingdom Come.

  Composer Alex North died on September 8th from pancreatic cancer, aged 81. His many movie scores include Spartacus, Cleopatra, Shanks, Dragonslayer, Shoes of the Fisherman, The Bad Seed and The Blue Bird. He also wrote “Unchained Melody”, which was featured in Ghost.

  Theodore Seuss Geisel (aka Dr Seuss) died September 24th, aged 87. He was the author and illustrator of such perennial children’s favourites as Dr T, How the Grinch Stole Christmas (recorded by Boris Karloff), The Cat in the Hat, Green Eggs and Ham, Horton Hears a Who!, How the Lorax was Lifted and Beenill. He created more than forty books, which have been translated into twenty different languages and sold well over 200 million copies worldwide. He also won three Oscars in the 1940s and ’50s, and in 1984 was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his contributions to children’s literature.

  Movie publicist Scott Holton died of AIDS on September 27th, aged 52. His many credits include 2010, Quest for Fire, Invaders from Mars (1985) and Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III.

  Lyricist David Huddleston died from a heart attack on September 28th, aged 73. His credits include the Disney movies Robin Hood and The Aristocats.

  Thaddeus E. (“Ted”) Dikty died of a heart attack on October 11th, aged 71. In 1948 he created Shasta Publishers (with Melvin Korshak) to publish the famous Checklist of Fantastic Literature and several other major books in the SF field. After editing a number of anthologies, he formed the publishing house Fax Collectors Editions in 1972 and, later, Starmont House. He is survived by his wife, bestselling writer Julian May.

  Russian science fiction author Arkady Strugatsky died on October 14th in Moscow, aged 66. He often collaborated with his younger brother, Boris, and the first novel to appear under their byline was Country of the Purple Clouds in 1959. Other books include The Far Rainbow, The Final Circle of Paradise, Hard Way to Be a God, The Ugly Swans, Roadside Picnic (filmed as Stalker) and The Snail on the Slope. The Strugatskys were frequently in trouble with the Soviet authorities, who objected to the political content of their books.

  Henry Wilson (“Heck”) Allen, who wrote some of the all-time best Tex Avery cartoons (Screwball Squirral, Swing Shift Cinderella, Uncle Tom’s Cabana etc.) died October 26th from pneumonia. He was 79.

  Photographic archivist John Kobal died from AIDS on October 28th. He was 51.

  Czechoslovakian-born publishing magnate Robert Maxwell died under mysterious circumstances on his yacht near the Canary Islands on November 5th, aged 68. His worldwide multi-media empire was in severe financial trouble and it has been speculated that he could have taken his own life. Maxwell’s extensive holdings included the UK’s Macmillan Publishing Group and its many subsidiary companies, the New York Daily News and several British newspapers.

  Robert Kaufman, who scripted Dr Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine and Love At First Bite, died from a heart attack on November 21st, aged 60.

  Lead singer of Queen, Freddie Mercury, died from AIDS on November 26th, aged 45. His music can be heard in Flash Gordon (1980), the 1984 reworking of Metropolis, and Highlander.

  ACTORS/ACTRESSES

  Actor Berry Kroeger died from kidney failure on January 4th, aged 78. On radio he had the lead in The Falcon, starred in Inner Sanctum and was on Orson Welles’s Mercury Theatre of the Air. He often played a villain in such films as Black Magic, Atlantis the Lost Continent, Chamber of Horrors, The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant, Nightmare in Wax, The Mephisto Waltz and Demon Seed, and on TV in Lights Out, Inner Sanctum, Thriller, The Man from UNCLE and Get Smart.

  John Eckhardt (aka Johnny Eck), “the living half-boy”, who appeared in Tod Browning’s classic Freaks (1932) died of heart failure on January 5th. He was 82.

  Veteran character actor Keye Luke died on January 16th from a stroke, aged 86. He portrayed No. 1 son, Lee Chan, in many of the best Charlie Chan movies (such as Charlie Chan at the Opera) and in the series crossover, Mr Moto’s Gamble, and he appeared as the faithful Kato in the serials The Green Hornet and The Green Hornet Strikes Again. His many other credits include Mad Love, Invisible Agent, How Dooo You Do, Lost City of the Jungle, Project X, Gremlins, Gremlins 2 and Alice. On TV he appeared in The Cat Creature and Star Trek, and he was a regular on Kung Fu.

  Another of the original munchkins from The Wizard of Oz, Nita Krebs, died of an apparent heart attack on January 18th, aged 85. The 3′ 8″ tall actress was also featured in the 1938 western, The Terror of Tiny Town.

  The same day saw the death of Lillian Bond, aged 83, who starred in the The Old Dark House (1932) with Boris Karloff, as well as The Picture of Dorian Gray, Man in the Attic and The Maze.

  Leading man Glenn Langan died January 19th from cancer. He was 73. His credits include The Return of Doctor X, Hangover Square, The Amazing Colossal Man, The Andromeda Strain, Mutiny in Outer Space and Women of the Prehistoric Planet.

  Character actor John McIntire died from emphysema and cancer on January 30th, aged 83. His numerous credits include Francis, I’ve Lived Before, Psycho, Herbie Rides Again, Cloak & Dagger, the TV movie Goliath Awaits and such shows as Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Twilight Zone, Fantasy Island and The Incredible Hulk.

  Jean Rogers, who portrayed Dale Arden in the ’30s serials Flash Gordon and Flash Gordon’s Trip to Mars, died on February 24th, aged 74.

  Eileen Sherman, who appeared in such 1920s serials as The Great Radium Mystery, The Diamond Queen and Terror Trail, died on March 15th. She was 93.

  Gloria Holden who portrayed Countess Maria Zaleska, the title character in Dracula’s Daughter, died from a heart attack on March 22nd. She was 82. Her other films include Miracles for Sale, The Corsican Brothers, Strange Holiday and Dodge City.

  Veteran character actor Aldo Ray, aged 64, died on March 27th from complications due to throat cancer and pneumonia. Among his many low-budget credits are The Power, Psychic Killer, Haunts, The Lucifer Complex, Human Experiments, The Centerfold Girls, Haunted, Bog, Nightstalker, Mongrel, Vultures, Evils of the Night, Biohazard, Prison Ship Starslammer, Frankenstein’s Great Aunt Tillie, Night Shadow, Don’t Go Near the Park, The Secret of NIMH and Shock’em Dead.

  Also on March 27th, Ralph Bates, who during the 1970s looked as if he was being groomed to be the new Cushing or Lee at Hammer Films, died from cancer, aged 50. His credits include Taste the Blood of Dracula, Horror of Frankenstein, Dr Jekyll & Sister Hyde, Persecution, Fear in the Night, Lust for a Vampire, Devil Within Her and TV’s Moonbase 3.

  7′ 2″ actor Kevin Peter Hall, who starred in the movie and TV series Harry and the Hendersons and also appeared as the alien in Predator and Predator 2, died from pneumonia on April 10th, aged 35.

  Ken Curtis, who starred in The Killer Shrews and produced both that movie and The Giant Gila Monster, died April 27th, aged 74. He also appeared as Festus in Gunsmoke and in many classic John Ford westerns.

  Veteran British character actor Wilfred Hyde-White died from congestive heart failure on May 6th, aged 87. He co-starred as Dr Goodfellow in the 1980s TV series, Buck Rogers, and his numerous film credits include Murder By Rope, The Third Man, The Ghosts of Berkeley Square, Ten Little Indians (1965), Chamber of Horrors, Skullduggery, The Million Eyes of Su-Muru, The Cat and the Canary (1977), King Solomon’s Treasure, the TV movies Fear No Evil (1969) and Ritual of Evil, and the pilot for Battlestar Galactica.

  Character actor Ronald Lacey died on May 15th from cancer. He was 55. His many credits include Raiders of the Lost Ark, Dance of the Va
mpires, Crucible of Terror, Gawain and the Green Knight, The Final Programme, The Hound of the Baskervilles (1983), The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, Sword of the Valiant, Into the Darkness, Red Sonja, Disciple of Death, Firefox and the 1987 TV version of The Sign of Four. He often turned up as a villain on TV in The Avengers, The New Avengers, Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), Blake’s 7 etc.

  Australian actress Coral Browne died from cancer on May 29th, aged 77. Her second husband was Vincent Price, who she met on Theatre of Blood, and her other credits include Dreamchild, The Ruling Class, Dr Crippen and the short-lived TV series with Price, Time Express.

  Jazz diva Bertice Reading died from a stroke on June 10th, after collapsing during rehearsals for Notre Dame, a musical version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame. She was 54, and also appeared in the musical movie version of Little Shop of Horrors.

  Distinguished stage actress Dame Peggy Ashcroft died June 14th from a stroke, aged 83. Her film credits include The Wandering Jew (1933) and the 1935 version of The 39 Steps. She won an Oscar and BAFTA Award for her supporting role in A Passage to India.

  Producer/actor and Founder of London’s Mermaid Theatre, Lord Miles of Blackfriars (aka Sir Bernard Miles) died the same day, aged 83. His movie appearances include Midnight at Madam Tussaud’s, Great Expectations, Moby Dick, The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), tom thumb and Heavens Above.

  1940s leading lady, Joan Caulfield, also died on the 14th, aged 69. She was menaced by a homicidal Claude Rains in The Unsuspected (1947).