Gerald W. Page (editor) - The Year’s Best Horror Stories 4

TERROR'SUNDISCOVEREDLANDS

In the fourteen stories here we find our share of ghosts and werewolves and vampires, of monsters, of people trapped in (and out of) time and spacebut these things don't always take the expected form. Our writers still explore lands that have not yet been settled... Our writers know that terra incognita still may lie across a sea or in some uncharted forest; but they also know that it can be as close as the other end of town; or in the same house or building where you now sit reading. It can be locked in your own mind, and with a rusty corroded lock just waiting for a little pressure to make it snap open.

Today's writers are more familiar than the writers of Poe's time with the ways of reaching terra incognita, and they are eager for your company...

Copyright , 1976 By DAW BOOKS, Inc.

All Rights Reserved.

Cover art by Michael Whelan.

DEDICATION

For Jerry Burge and Bill Crawford,

partners in sorcery.

First Printing, November 1976

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

PRINTED IN U.S.A

Wickerman eBooks

The early teller of horror stories, in common with the originators of less horrific fantasy and science-fiction, made sure his stories took place far enough from his audience that they could never challenge his claims. As travel became easier and more common, it was necessary to place those claims even farther out of reach. But eventually no part of this planet was really inaccessible and writers had to resort to placing their stories in other times: the future for science-fiction, the past for fantasy.

Even Edgar Allen Poe resorted to setting some of his most frightening stories in the past, yet it was Poe who recognized that it was never really necessary to go any farther away than the nearest human mind to find the elements of true horror. Among the mazes of human thought and the frustrations and uncertainties of our own personalities he found a greater source of fright than was provided by all the ghosts and phantoms that ever haunted Europe. Almost a century later H.P. Lovecraft realized that a man like himselfa man who did not believe at all in the supernaturalcould find the themes for the sort of horror story he wanted to write in the stuff of science-fiction: time travel, aliens from other worlds and times, travels among alternate universes, the control of one mind by another... or by something altogether alien.

These were revolutionary discoveries in their own time, but today's writers take them for granted. In the fourteen stories here we find our share of ghosts and werewolves and vampires, of monsters, of people trapped in (and out of) time and spacebut these things don't always take the expected form. Our writers still explore lands that have not yet been settled, but they no longer do so merely to prevent their readers from questioning their observations. They take the reader with them as they go and they let the reader see the landmarks and terrain for himself. Our writers know that terra incognita still may lie across a sea or in some uncharted forest; but they also know that it can be as close as the other end of town; or in the same house or building where you now sit reading. It can be locked in your own mind, and with a rusty corroded lock just waiting for a little pressure to make it snap open.

Terra incognita can be right here, separated from you only by the flimsiest web of time and space, or by your own uncertain perceptions, or by the perversity of luck. It is a web that can drop away at any time and there you stand: a stranger, unfamiliar with the natives or the customs of the natives and uncertainbut quite suspiciousof their eating habits. Today's writers are more familiar than the writers of Poe's time with the ways of reaching terra incognita, and they are eager for your company.

So Brian Lumley follows one of our modern superhighways to discover his secret places and comes up with a story which evokes the cold feeling that lies knotted and only partially hidden behind the frustration known by any driver trapped in the insanity of rush-hour traffic. Fritz Leiber takes us for an elevator ride in the most famous of the world's tall buildings, where we find a country with a much less likable monster than King Kong. David Drake returns from a war half the world away to find a more frightening battleground right here. Ramsey Campbell, on excursion in his native Liverpool, shows us a Christmas gift that does not express the joys of the season. On the top floor of a most unpicturesque building Avram Davidson shows us a bookstore with a very strange price list. And R.A. Lafferty takes us to a more affluent part of town where we learn an unpleasant secret that is all too safe.

But you must not imagine that horror is limited to urban settings. Joseph Payne Brennan finds something nasty in a small New England village, and Arthur Byron Cover tells of a home town summer vacation that was not quite as relaxing as might have been hoped. C.L. Grant uncovers a very haunting sort of terror on a farm in winter and Frank Belknap Long takes us to a cottage that's much too close to the sea.

The past is not completely ignored. Hal Clement finds scientific vampirism in Roman times and the alert reader might discover that in some ways the past is not too different from today. Joe Pumilia finds that the past and present aren't different at all and there's something horrible loose and roaming in time. However, G.N. Gabbard goes straight to the traditional with a story of something grim and grisly in the Black Forest. To bring us up to date there's a bonus, a short article by E. Hoffman Price about the controversy recently stirred up by the publication of L. Sprague de Camp's biography of H.P. Lovecraft.

If all this sounds like something your travel agent might have arranged, then so be it. But be warned as well. This agent has tried to arrange a tour that only covers those less than savory places that just might not be as out-of-the-way as you would like.

Gerald W. Page

Perhaps nothing symbolizes the mysterious past better than Stonehenge; not even the pyramids or those fascinating carvings on Easter Island. The following story, never before published in America, starts with Stonehenge and the rites the Druids practiced there, then quickly moves on to other times, other horrorsand other symbols of horror. But then, you do realize the connection between Stonehenge, Dracula, and Jack the Ripper... don't you?

"I don't care whether it makes any sense or not. Walter Deacon was there. You have to believe me. He went with us on the Stonehenge tour in 1883 and I saw him vanish. He stepped into a strange shadow between two big stones, and then he wasn't there. They keep telling me there's no such person as Walter Deacon, that there never was. But I know he doesn't exist only in my dreams. Sometimes when I'm walking through London I'll come on a place where Walter and I would visit, and the memory of him will come to me, and I just know that Walter was a real person, that he doesn't just exist in my mind. That's why I came to you after all these years. It's been preying on my mind. Did he exist or didn't he? Why do I remember him so clearly when no one else does? Please help me, Doctor. My husband says that if I call him Walter again he'll have me put away. You must help me find the truth or I shall go mad."

From the lost notebooks of Sigmund Freud.

The Case of Gertrude Zimmermann.

In the time of the Roman invaders who came from the ends of the Earth to plant the eagle standard in Britain, a conclave was called in the sacred precincts of Salisbury, where the great stones stood, changeless, majestic, awesome, as they had stood, long Ages before the Celts had come.