999_ Twenty-Nine Original Tales of Horror and Suspense - Al Sarrantonio [0]
Twenty-nine Original Tales of
Horror and Suspense
edited by
A L S A R R A N T O N I O
For
The Editors:
Harlan Ellison,
Kirby McCauley:
Lewis and Clark of no less daunting territories.
Contents
Introduction
Kim Newman
AMERIKANSKI DEAD AT THE MOSCOW MORGUE
Joyce Carol Oates
THE RUINS OF CONTRACOEUR
Thomas M. Disch
THE OWL AND THE PUSSYCAT
Stephen King
THE ROAD VIRUS HEADS NORTH
Neil Gaiman
KEEPSAKES AND TREASURES: A LOVE STORY
T. E. D. Klein
GROWING THINGS
F. Paul Wilson
GOOD FRIDAY
Chet Williamson
EXCERPTS FROM THE RECORDS OF THE NEW ZODIAC
AND THE DIARIES OF HENRY WATSON FAIRFAX
Eric Van Lustbader
AN EXALTATION OF TERMAGANTS
Tim Powers
ITINERARY
Nancy A. Collins
CATFISH GAL BLUES
Ramsey Campbell
THE ENTERTAINMENT
Edward Lee
ICU
P. D. Cacek
THE GRAVE
Thomas Ligotti
THE SHADOW, THE DARKNESS
Rick Hautala
KNOCKING
David Morrell
RIO GRANDE GOTHIC
Peter Schneider
DES SAUCISSES, SANS DOUTE
Ed Gorman
ANGIE
Al Sarrantonio
THE ROPY THING
Gene Wolfe
THE TREE IS MY HAT
Edward Bryant
STYX AND BONES
Steven Spruill
HEMOPHAGE
Michael Marshall Smith
THE BOOK OF IRRATIONAL NUMBERS
Joe R. Lansdale
MAD DOG SUMMER
Bentley Little
THE THEATER
Thomas F. Monteleone
REHEARSALS
Dennis L McKieman
DARKNESS
William Peter Blatty
ELSEWHERE
PART ONE
Chapter One
Chapter Two
PART TWO
Chapter Three
Chapter four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
PART THREE - DÉJÀ VU
Chapter Twelve
Epilogue: 1997
Acknowledgments
About the Editor
Nationwide Praise For 999
Copyright Notices
Copyright
About the Publisher
Notes
Introduction
What you now hold in your lap (yes, I know it’s heavy) is a feast.
Quite simply, it’s the biggest, the most lavishly appointed, and (we think, hope, and pray) the finest collection of brand-new horror and suspense stories ever published.
Part One: Reasons
In 1996 I set myself the goal to put together, by the end of the millennium, a huge original horror and suspense anthology. My initial inspiration was Kirby McCauley’s groundbreaking 1980 book Dark Forces, which for many became, and remains, the best collection of new stories in the genre. In turn, McCauley’s inspiration was Harlan Ellison’s Dangerous Visions, which had, almost single-handedly, changed the way readers thought about science fiction. Since Ellison had been at least partially successful in redefining sf as a literary rather than a “ghetto” genre, McCauley decided, at the end of the 1970s, that it was time to do the same thing for the horror field, which was just gaining, due to the trickle-down effect of the best-selling efforts of Ira Levin, William Peter Blatty, and a Young Turk named Stephen King, “ghetto” status of its own. The time was ripe, McCauley reasoned, to elevate the burgeoning horror genre to literary status.
There were successors to McCauley, notably Douglas E. Winter, whose Prime Evil gave a booster shot to the idea of horror’s literary viability in 1989. But I came to believe that the horror field, here at the end of the millennium, was still to a great extent stigmatized with the ghetto label and that there was more work to do in gaining for it the literary respect it deserves.
So, twenty years after McCauley’s effort, I concluded that it was time to prove, once and for all, that the horror and suspense genre is a serious literary one.
I had other reasons for tackling the project. One was my abhorrence of the fact that there are, as I write this, literally no professional markets for good horror fiction. While on the face of it this might prove that the genre has indeed gained literary acceptance—moved
out of its ghetto, so to speak—the truth is exactly the opposite: it has been squeezed even tighter into its niche and nearly smothered there. While an occasional story by Stephen King or Joyce Carol Oates might appear in one of the slick literary magazines like The