This brings me to my peroration. In my estimation, the true springs of terror flow from within. Fear of aging and the loss of love, isolation in a cosmos where we do not know the questions, let alone the answers, the fear that all effort may be ultimately useless in the face of what Camus calls the terrible dark wind of the future. When the swan-woman tears her heart out rather than live without her dead lover in Hearn’s “Oshidori,” we tremble at a force stronger than the love of life itself. When Maurice Level’s horrible trio die surrounded by cosmic indifference—by “Night and Silence”—we shiver at the thought it conjures of every irrelevant death occurring throughout the globe while we brush our teeth, make love, listen to music, laugh, or—worst of all—yawn with boredom. Most of all, the cold breath of something beyond terror blows over us when Ed Hoch’s mudcreature feebly sinks back into the ooze in “The Faceless Thing.” The kingdom and the power and the glory are surrounded by a world of night.
Those readers familiar with Boris Karloff’s introduction to Tales of Terror (World Publishing Co., 1943) realize that this Afterword is essentially a sermon based on the Gospel According to the Original Frankenstein Monster. In his introduction, Karloff credited Joseph Conrad with writing the greatest description of pure terror—in all its implications—in the English language. Since I agree, I close this essay with that passage from Conrad’s little-known novel The Shadow Line:
“. . . as I emerge on deck the ordered arrangement of the stars meets my eye, unclouded, infinitely wearisome. There they are: stars, sun, sea, light, darkness, space, great waters; the formidable Work of the Seven Days, into which mankind seems to have blundered unbidden. Or else decoyed.”
Asimov’s original title for the piece displayed his inspiration: “King Lear IV 1 36-37.” This is the passage he cites—“As flies to wanton boys, are we to th’ gods; They kill us for their sport.”
Miscellaneous Notes
Bürger’s “Lenore”
It is a common theme of folk balladry that excessive mourning disturbs the rest of the dead. Variations of this message may be traced in such popular traditional songs as “The Unquiet Grave,” “Lost Jimmy Whelan,” “The Wife of Usher's Well” and its rural American counterpart, “The Lady Gay” and “A Suffolk Miracle,” my own variant of which may be found in Ghosts: A Treasury of Chilling Tales Old and New. “Lenore” expands on the idea by making the behavior of its titular heroine an act of hubris offensive to her god, who abandons her to her demon-transformed lover, who at first appears to be the revenant of the man she loved, but ultimately stands for Death incarnate.
Gardner’s “A Malady of Magicks”
In spite of the success of Vonnegut and the “hitchhiker's guide” trilogy, genre publishers still shy away from what they call whimsy. A. A. Milne is whimsical (and occasionally treacly). The Ebenezum stories are not. They are devastating send-ups of the whole overwritten school of heroic literature, which my friend and collaborator Parke Godwin aptly terms “Swords and Sausage.” For those who thoroughly enjoy Craig's brand of slapstick, as I do, you will want to read the other Ebenezum tales that follow “A Malady of Magicks.” They are “A Drama of Dragons” in Orson Scott Card's Dragons of Light; “A Dealing with Demons” in Lin Carter's Flashing Swords # 5; “A Gathering of Ghosts” in the companion volume to this anthology, Ghosts: A Treasury of Chilling Tales Old and New. A fifth story, “A Whooping of Witches” and an Ebenezum novel have not yet been published.
Lee’s “When the Clock Strikes”
Tanith Lee’s chilling rendering of “Cinderella” is one of many bizarre reworkings of Grimm’s fairy tales in her collection Red As Blood, which in both hardcover and paperback boasts a strikingly effective cover by artist Victoria Poyser. Both the book and the artist were nominated among the best in their respective categories at the prestigious World Fantasy Convention of 1984.
Stoker’s “Dracula’s Guest”
It took me years to track down this tale—in fact, I first read it at the Library of Congress. (Now it is available in several editions.) While I was on its trail back in the 1950s, one of my friends told me it was a bit disappointing because Dracula didn’t appear in it. This is untrue. The tall man that Harker sees at the crossroads surely is the Count himself making sure no harm comes to his guest. The hand that yanks Harker back from the tomb and its vampiric occupant recalls the similar gesture of Dracula when, in the novel, he waves away his undead mistresses with the warning that Harker is the Count’s personal property. In the “guest” episode, when the wolf licks Harker’s throat, it is to protect him from exposure. Dracula is usually thought of as changing to a bat, but in the novel, he takes the form of a wolf on more than one occasion. Finally, if any doubt remains, the letter that arrives at the conclusion of “Dracula’s Guest” shows that the vampire-noble knew just what sort of dangers the headstrong young Englishman just escaped from. The message possesses that grim irony that Dracula more than once displays later on, but then Bela Lugosi always played him with panache!
Tolkien’s “Riddles in the Dark”
The 1938 text is identical to later printings of The Hobbit until page 91 of the Houghton Mifflin edition. The last common sentence till the end of the chapter is “ ‘Both wrong,’ cried Bilbo very much relieved; and he jumped at once to his feet, put his back to the nearest wall, and held out his little sword.” Immediately following, the texts diverge, concluding on page 96 of the 1938 version and page 101 of the revised state. Tolkien rewrote this chapter so that it would conform with the plot of Lord of the Rings, yet he apparently overlooked the passage on page 83 (the same in both Houghton Mifflin editions) in which he says, “Deep down here by the dark water lived old Gollum. I don’t know where he came from, nor who or what he was.” Gollum’s real name and early history are revealed in Lord of the Rings, so we can only assume that when Professor Tolkien fashioned his “Hobbit” rewrite, he skimmed the early part of the fifth chapter a bit too rapidly. Similarly, on page 84 of both hardcover editions, we are told that Gollum refers to himself as “my precious,” whereas it is clearly stated in LOTR that he is actually addressing the One Ring which Bilbo Baggins finds at the beginning of “Riddles in the Dark.”
Masterpieces of Terror and the Supernatural Page 78