Readers unfamiliar with The Year's Best Horror Stories 5 may prefer to read these notes only after reading the anthology.
“The Service” by Jerry Sohl
A photographer, on the verge of death, is visited by a mysterious figure who offers him a reunion with his deceased first love.
“Long Hollow Swamp” by Joseph Payne Brennan
I think that very probably the most desolate region in New England lies northwest of Colbury. As you surmount the inhospitable hills, you drive between ragged meadows, cheerless and not at all picturesque. Tangled, wind-twisted scrub clings to barren ridges. At intervals long stretches of swamp lie motionless and forbidding, screened by acres of reeds and blackthorn bush.
As I drove along in the late afternoon light, a faint mist began to arise from the still waters hidden by the reeds. A sense of emptiness, of acute depression, took possession of me. I have always been peculiarly affected by certain aspects of landscape and terrain, and the countryside through which I was traveling was one of the bleakest imaginable.
Plot: Our narrator’s account of his old friend Mayne Cordiss, who is troubled by the disappearance of wildlife on his three thousand acre property.
“Sing a Last Song of Valdese” by Karl Edward Wagner
A brilliant, dark-hearted historical horror story, with scintillating use of dialogue.
Plot: In the mountains of Halbrosn, a group of travelers seeks refuge at Vald's Cove Inn. They are drawn into a tale of love, betrayal, and revenge, as they uncover the dark secrets of the inn and its inhabitants.
“Harold's Blues” by Glen Singer
Plot: Hanson Kirkland, a blues guitarist, recounts the story of his friend Harold Robinson, a legendary musician who made a pact with a mysterious figure to gain musical talent.
“Harold's Blues” is a clever and acerbic faux-Folkways musician interview. It is also one of the best Lovecraft pastiches: similar in strength and concreteness to Klein's “Black Man With A Horn.”
Cf. “Pork Pie Hat” by Peter Straub
“The Well” by H. Warner Munn
In this ambitious fantasticated adventure novella, an Indian Rajah is imprisoned in a well by his evil twin brother. The Rajah uses his cunning and intelligence to escape and enact revenge.
Cf. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
“A Most Unusual Murder” by Robert Bloch
Over the years [Hilary Kane] strolled the pavements, reading the city sentence by sentence until every line was familiar; he’d learned London by heart.
And that’s why he was so startled when, one bleak afternoon late in November, he discovered the shop in Saxe-Coburg Square.
“I’ll be damned!” he said.
“Probably.” Lester Woods, his companion, took the edge off the affirmation with an indulgent smile. “What’s the problem?”
“This.” Kane gestured toward the tiny window of the establishment nestled inconspicuously between two residential relics of Victoria’s day.
“An antique place.” Woods nodded. “At the rate they’re springing up there must be at least one for every tourist in London.”
“But not here.” Kane frowned. “I happen to have come by this way less than a week ago, and I’d swear there was no shop in the square.”
Hilary Kane, an antique collector, purchases a medical bag believed to have belonged to Jack the Ripper. He and his friend Lester Woods investigate the bag's origins.
Bloch starts strong, depicting walkers in London that will remind the reader of works by Machen and Iain Sinclair.
Cf. “Singing Blood’ (2011) by Reggie Oliver
“Huzdra” by Tanith Lee
Plot: Count Fedesha and Countess Mirromi, a wealthy couple who practice magic, lure unsuspecting travelers to their home on Midwinter's Eve.
Lee's undoubted skill at pseudo-Medieval or neo-Pre-Raphaelite world-building aesthetics, yoked to diamond-sharp prose, makes this melodrama a work of real power.
“Shatterday” by Harlan Ellison
It's head-swimming stuff, the world of 1977: remembering your own phone number; using an answering service; having a savings account; treating your mom like crap; treating the other women in your life like crap, then ghosting them; doing public relations for a strip-mining company.
Plot: Peter Novins dials his own phone number by mistake and answers himself at the other end. He discovers that he has split into two separate beings, and the other guy got the soul. Which gives him the edge, since an ounce of humanity might determine which Peter fades away.
“Children of the Forest” by David Drake
An historical horror story about life after the Black Death.
Lena, a young girl, is taken in by a family of kind wood folk after her parents are killed.
“The Day It Rained Lizards” by Arthur Byron Cover
Love's young dream in a funny and sparkling coming-of-age horror love story.
Plot: Chris Morrison, a troubled teenager, witnesses the arrival of a giant lizard in Blackton County, Virginia.
“Followers of the Dark Star” by Robert Edmond Alter
Plot: Dorp, a treasure hunter, joins three deserters from the French Foreign Legion on a quest to find the lost city of Tenakertom.
This is a backward-looking tale of hard men in the desert looking for a fabled treasure.
“When All the Children Call My Name” by C.L. Grant
Kit, a retired police officer, takes a job as a playground guard. I have written about the story here.
“Belsen Express” by Fritz Leiber
A perfect tale about a present-day U.S. suburban commuter more than a little obsessed with the psychological landscape of Nazi Germany. Eventually the gestures of fellow commuters assume a sinister character.
Plot: George Simister, a man haunted by a fear of the Gestapo, experiences a series of unsettling events that seem to be connected to his past.
“Where the Woodbine Twineth” by Manly Wade Wellman
Plot: A young man from a feuding mountain family meets his lover in secret.
Peace was there, only once in a while at night there’d be a knock at a cabin door, and when you opened it, nobody came in. The hollow was named Lost Soul, and it grew up in the years with brush and with Virginia creeper and honeysuckle, two sorts of vines different folks call woodbine.
Pitch-perfect, as reader's of Manly Wade Wellman expect.
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The Year's Best Horror Stories 5 features many stories that, in form and content, look backward. While writers of these stories are not intentionally seeding nostalgia horror, a strong contrary case could also be made.
“Where the woodbine Twineth” and “Harold's Blues” are accomplished historical horror stories. ‘Followers of the Dark Star” and “The Well” look back to Talbot Mundy. An after school date for the young lovers in “The Day It Rained Lizards” takes place at a snack bar at the local drugstore. “(They didn’t serve malts.)”
“Shatterday” updates “William Wilson” to the dawn of the Carter-Reagan era.
Jay
14 July 2023
