The Mammoth Book of Body Horror
Marie O’Regan is a British Fantasy Award-nominated horror and dark fantasy writer. She has served as the chair of the British Fantasy Society, and has at times edited both their publications Dark Horizons and Prism. In September 2009, Simon & Schuster’s Pocket Books imprint published her anthology (co-edited with Paul Kane) Hellbound Hearts, a collection of stories based on the original novella The Hellbound Heart by Clive Barker, that inspired the movie Hellraiser. Marie lives in Derbyshire, England.
Paul Kane is the award-winning author of numerous horror, dark fantasy and SF stories and books, including The Hellraiser Films and Their Legacy and the bestselling Arrowhead triology of novels. He served for five years as Special Publications Editor of the British Fantasy Society, working on various projects with authors such as Clive Barker, Neil Gaiman, Brian Aldiss, Robert Silverberg, Muriel Gray and John Connolly. Paul lives in Derbyshire, England.
You can visit his site at www.shadow-writer.co.uk.
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THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF
Body Horror
Edited by Paul Kane
and Marie O’Regan
Constable & Robinson Ltd
55–56 Russell Square
London WC1B 4HP
www.constablerobinson.com
First published in the UK by Robinson, an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd, 2012
Copyright © Marie O’Regan and Paul Kane, 2012 (unless otherwise stated)
The right of Paul Kane and Marie O’Regan to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library
UK ISBN: 978-1-78033-039-6 (paperback)
UK ISBN: 978-1-78033-044-0 (ebook)
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First published in the United States in 2012 by Running Press Book Publishers, A Member of the Perseus Books Group
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US ISBN: 978-0-7624-4432-8
US Library of Congress Control Number: 2011930511
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Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
by Stuart Gordon
Transformation
by Mary Shelley
The Tell-Tale Heart
by Edgar Allan Poe
Herbert West – Reanimator
by H. P. Lovecraft
Who Goes There?
by John W. Campbell
The Fly
by George Langelaan
’Tis the Season to be Jelly
by Richard Matheson
Survivor Type
by Stephen King
The Body Politic
by Clive Barker
The Chaney Legacy
by Robert Bloch
The Other Side
by Ramsey Campbell
Fruiting Bodies
by Brian Lumley
Freaktent
by Nancy A. Collins
Region of the Flesh
by Richard Christian Matheson
Walking Wounded
by Michael Marshall Smith
Changes
by Neil Gaiman
Others
by James Herbert
The Look
by Christopher Fowler
Residue
by Alice Henderson
Dog Days
by Graham Masterton
Black Box
by Gemma Files
The Soaring Dead
by Simon Clark
Polyp
by Barbie Wilde
Almost Forever
by David Moody
Butterfly
by Axelle Carolyn
Sticky Eye
by Conrad Williams
Acknowledgements
Special thanks to Rich Henshaw, Michael G. Pfefferkorn, Barry N. Malzberg, Chuck Verrill, Ben Fowler, Richard Christian Matheson, Loreen Brown, Stuart Gordon, Stéphane Langelaan, William Langelaan, Mark Dawidziak, Antony Rotolo, Ted Adams, Susan Ramer, Ray Helmke, Stephen Jones and Duncan Proudfoot for their help and support.
INTRODUCTION copyright © Stuart Gordon 2011.
TRANSFORMATION by Mary Shelley – Originally published in The Keepsake for MDCCCXXXI, 1831.
THE TELL-TALE HEART by Edgar Allan Poe 1843 – Originally published in The Pioneer, January 1843.
HERBERT WEST: RE-ANIMATOR by H.P. Lovecraft – Originally serialized in Home Brew, 1-6, February-July 1922.
WHO GOES THERE? copyright © 1938 – Originally published in Astounding, August 1938. Reprinted by permission of Barry
N. Malzberg.
THE FLY copyright © 1957 – Originally published in Playboy, June, 1957. Reprinted by permission of William Langelaan.
TIS THE SEASON TO BE JELLY copyright © Richard Matheson 1963 – Originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, June 1963. Reprinted by permission of the author and his agent.
SURVIVOR TYPE copyright © Stephen King 1982 – Originally published in Terrors, 1982. Reprinted by permission of the author, his agent and Hodder and Stoughton Ltd.
THE BODY POLITIC copyright © Clive Barker 1985 – Originally published in Clive Barker’s Books of Blood Vol. 4, 1985. Reprinted by permission of the author.
THE CHANEY LEGACY copyright © Robert Bloch 1986 – Originally published in Night Cry, 1986. Reprinted by permission of the Estate of Robert Bloch.
THE OTHER SIDE copyright © Ramsey Campbell 1986 – Originally published in the 1986 World Fantasy Convention (Programme Book). Reprinted by permission of the author.
FRUITING BODIES copyright © Brian Lumley 1988 – Originally published in Weird Tales No. 291, Summer 1988. Reprinted with permission of the author and his agent, Barbara Lumley.
FREAKTENT copyright © Nancy A. Collins 1990 – Originally published in Splatterpunks: Extreme Horror, December 1990. Reprinted by permission of the author.
REGION OF THE FLESH copyright © Richard Christian Matheson 1991 – Originally published in Obsessions, 1991. Reprinted by permission of the author.
WALKING WOUNDED copyright © Michael Marshall Smith 1997 – Originally published in Dark Terrors 3: The Gollancz Book of Horror, 1997. Reprinted by permission of the author.
CHANGES copyright © Neil Gaiman 1998 – Originally published in Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fictions and Illusions, November 1998. Reprinted by permission of the author.
OTHERS copyright © James Herbert 1999 – Originally published in Others, 1999. Reprinted by permission of the author.
THE LOOK copyright © Christopher Fowler 2001 – Originally published in Urban Gothic: Lacuna and Other Trips, 2001. Reprinted by permission of the author.
RESIDUE copyright © Alice Henderson 2011
DOG DAYS copyright © Graham Masterton 2011
BLACK BOX copyright © Gemma Files 2011
THE SOARING DEAD copyright © Simon Clark 2011
POLYP copyright © Barbie Wilde 2011
ALMOST FOREVER copyright © David Moody 2011
BUTTERFLY copyright © Axelle Carolyn 2011
STICKY EYE copyright © Conrad Williams 2011
Body Horror
An Introduction by Stuart Gordon
Body Horror. Not dead bodies. Your own body. And something is going very wrong. Inside. Your body is betraying you, and since it’s your own body, you can’t even run away.
Many people believe that Body Horror began in film. The first one I remember was David Cronenberg’s Shivers (or They Came From Within as it was called in its US release). It was 1975 and my wife Carolyn and I were watching it as part of a double bill at a drive-in. I can’t remember what the second film was; I didn’t make it that far. What I do remember was the sight of fist-sized parasites moving under people’s skins and shooting out their mouths into the next victim. Yuck! I started getting woozy. The best Body Horror makes your own body turn against you. Without thinking, I hit the accelerator of our car and tore the drive-in’s speaker right out of our side window as we careened crazily up and down the rows to make our escape.
David Cronenberg has made a career out of Body Horror: Rabid, Scanners and his masterpiece Dead Ringers about deranged twin gynaecologists. He is always inventing new organs, and in his remake of The Fly he built on his idea of “The New Flesh” from Videodrome. Speaking of The Fly, it’s very fitting that George Langelaan’s original story, the one that started it all, is presented in this stomach-churning collection. “Help me! Help me!”
But as Paul Kane and Marie O’Regan, the diabolical masterminds who assembled this truly disturbing book show us, Body Horror has been with us since long before there were movies. The grandad (or grandmum) here is Mary Shelley’s story “Transformation”. Everyone knows that Mary gave birth to Frankenstein when she was just a girl of eighteen. But “Transformation” was a revelation to me, and to anyone who may still think that her famous husband Percy Bysshe Shelley really did her ghost-writing. They’ll have to believe he did it from beyond the grave, as this story, with its shape-shifting dwarf, was written in 1831, nine years after his death. (A grim Body Horror footnote is that when Mary cremated Percy’s body, her friend pulled Shelley’s calcified heart from the flames. Mary carried it with her in a little velvet bag until she died aged fifty-four in 1851.)
It’s clear that if Mary Shelley hadn’t created Frankenstein, there would certainly be no “Herbert West – Reanimator” by H. P. Lovecraft. Her classic story was surely in his twisted mind when he penned the six-part serial for Home Brew Magazine in 1922. But Lovecraft always hated those stories. Why? Because he had been paid in advance to write them. He felt that the stories he created for himself, untainted by filthy lucre, were the true expressions of his tormented soul.
In fact, Lovecraft hated the Re-Animator stories so much that August Derleth, the man who saved his mentor from obscurity by republishing his stories after his death, failed to include these lurid tales of Herbert West and his ghastly experiments in his subsequent Arkham House editions. It wasn’t until 1983, when a young theatre director in Chicago went looking for them, that these tales again saw the light of day. How do I know this? Because I was that director.
I was bemoaning the fact that back then (like today) all Hollywood was producing were vampire stories. “Why doesn’t someone make a Frankenstein movie?” I complained to a friend. She asked me if I had ever heard of Herbert West. I’d thought I knew Lovecraft pretty well, but didn’t know what she was talking about. My curiosity was aroused and I began scouring old bookstores looking for the story. Finally, in desperation, I checked the card catalogue of the Special Collections at the Chicago Public Library. Amazingly there it was. I was told to fill out a postcard requesting the book, and several months later I received a notice to come to the huge downtown library.
When I got there it was like the scene in Citizen Kane. I was led to a large table and a book was removed from a metal box and placed in front of me. The librarian informed me that I could not take the book out of the building but would have to read it there, and when I was done return it to the metal box. As I began to turn the pages, the yellowed pulpy paper began to literally crumble in my hands. “Could I Xerox it?” I pleaded. The librarian thought about it for what seemed like an eternity and then nodded.
Reading the stories that night, I realized I had hit pay dirt. Unlike much of Lovecraft, which can be vague, internalized, arcane or just “too horrible to describe”, these stories were packed with action and bloody shocks. They rocketed along, getting more and more outlandish and horrific by the page. And they were funny. West’s recurring line, “It wasn’t quite fresh enough!” became a running joke, punctuating each disastrous failed experiment. It was love at first sight.
I’m thrilled that the stories have been republished due to the success of the film. I started reading Poe because of Roger Corman’s films and now I was returning the favour for Mr Lovecraft. Old H. P. has never been more popular. His books have moved from the Horror/Sci-fi shelves to Literature, and there are games, comic books and T-shirts galore. Merchandising! Too bad he didn’t live long enough to collect the residuals. And there has even been talk of a big-budget film adaptation of his masterwork At the Mountains of Madness. Unfortunately this project has yet to be greenlit; partly, I believe, because the story of a doomed expedition to Antarctica that discovers frozen alien corpses and makes the mistake of thawing them out has already been made . . . twice.
No, not the Lovecraft story, but a tale that borrowed many of the same elements. Instead of a vast, ancient alien-built city, here it’s a flying saucer under the ice. And, like Lovecraft’s
shape-shifting Shogoths, we have The Thing, a creature that can become anyone or anything. Filmed three times, once in 1951 by Christian Nyby (with help from his mentor Howard Hawks) and again by John Carpenter in 1982, with a second remake due soon, this very popular story by John W. Campbell can be read in this collection under its original title, “Who Goes There?”. How did Campbell know about Lovecraft’s Mountains? It might have something to do with the fact that from 1937 to his death in 1971 he was the editor of Astounding Science Fiction (later Analog).
Lovecraft’s tentacles intertwine with several other stories in this volume. Robert Bloch, best known as the author of Psycho, and an actual disciple of Lovecraft, is represented here with “The Chaney Legacy”, which explores a very different type of shape-shifting. And Brian Lumley and Ramsey Campbell, who both continue to contribute to Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos, have a pair of stories you won’t be able to shake out of your mind: Lumley’s atmospheric (and elegantly disgusting) “Fruiting Bodies”, and Campbell’s hallucinogenic bad trip, “The Other Side”.
Let’s not forget Stephen King, who called Lovecraft “the twentieth century’s greatest practitioner of the classic horror tale”. His story, “Survivor Type”, follows his own three rules of disturbing: try for Dread, if not dread, then Shock and if all else fails – go for Gross-out. (Don’t read this one on an empty stomach.)
Clive Barker borrows a few pages from W. F. Harvey’s “The Beast with Five Fingers” in a story that may tickle you in all the wrong places. And speaking of body image, you’ll never look at the fashion world in the same way again after “The Look” by Christopher Fowler.
But do yourself a favour and save Nancy A. Collins’s “Freaktent” for last. Because I can promise you won’t be able to sleep after you’ve read it. It reminds me of the time I was at an early screening of Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs and the projector broke. I escaped into the men’s room to discover Wes Craven at the next urinal. “I’m not going back in there,” he told me.
I couldn’t resist saying, “But, Wes, it’s only a movie.”
He shook his head. “I don’t care,” he told me. “It’s too damned real.”