The Year’s Best Horror Stories XV (DAW Books, October 1987). Cover by Michael Whelan

It’s been awhile, but given a nudge from John O’Neill I’m back with the ongoing perusal of DAW’s Year’s Best Horror series.

The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series XV was the fifteenth in the lineup and the seventh volume edited by the great Karl Edward Wagner (d. 1994). This book was copyrighted and printed in 1987 and represents the best short horror in the field for 1986. Michael Whelan’s art appears for the twelfth time as a cover for the series. Whelan’s art here depicts a gruesome scene of a severed, but wrapped, human arm in the meat drawer of a refrigerator. A sign of horror trends in the mid- to late 1980s?

Series XV contained eighteen short stories by nineteen different authors (one story co-authored). All the authors were male but two. Thirteen were American authors, five were British, and there is again the returning German-born but American author, David J. Schow. Eight of these stories came from professional magazines. Three came from anthologies, two from collections (books). Three came from fanzines, one from a chapbook, and one from a booklet (publication by a small group).

All of Wagner’s choices were strong, and represent a whole panoply of different approaches to the genre, and from an array of regular heavy hitters, like Robert Bloch, Joe Lansdale, Brian Lumley, Ramsey Campbell, as well as names I was less familiar with.

For example, Ron Leming’s “Retirement” (from Outlaw Biker, March 1986) was a kind of dark fantasy. Imagine being at a local biker bar and the Angel of Death himself comes in for a drink. After some brief banter, Death offers you his job. You become the new — one and only — Angel of Death! Rather than being horrific, Leming’s story is more in the line of “The Devil and Daniel Webster.”

Ron Wolfe’s tale, “The Man Who Did Tricks with Glass” (from Stardate, March-April 1986), is also more like a fantasy tale, or possibly science fiction. A sadistic man hires an expert in making mirrors which have special properties that can affect people. The hired job backfires horrifically (and purposely?) on the client.

John Alfred Taylor’s “Bird in a Wrought Iron Cage” is by far the shortest story in the volume (just over three pages) about an animated severed hand in a cage that can reliably predict (by paper and pen) the future. The story is told from the perspective of a man who has inherited this bizarre creature from his forefathers. The hand is responsible for the family’s wealth, due to its accurate predictions of markets. But it also reliably predicts people’s deaths. The whole premise, and description of the hand, is quite creepy.

“What are you?” I would ask. “Where did my great-grandfather find you?” The hand would pick up the pen, shuffle and slide across the page, and all it would leave would be HAHAHA or WOULDN’T YOU LIKE TO KNOW (p. 131).

Dennis Etchison’s “The Olympic Runner” (from Fantasy Tales, Winter 1896) was a very good story, and very poignant, about a woman who is slowly losing her family, and perhaps her sanity. Not the scariest story, but very well written and engaging. I also greatly enjoyed Jack Dann’s “Tattoos” about a Jewish tattoo artist who seemed able to take people’s pain and heartache by giving them certain tattoos. Again, not incredibly scary but very touching.

My favorite stories from horror anthologies are usually those that, while I’m reading, I’m not always super-impressed with, but later I begin to ponder more and more; or at or at least the imagery within lingers and haunts my mind. In short, my favorite horror stories are usually the ones that stick with me. R. Chetwynd-Hayes’ “Acquiring a Family” (from his collection Tales from the Shadows) is one of those.

On the surface, Hayes’ story is a typical ghost or haunted house tale. A lonely, and sad, middle-aged woman moves into an old Victorian mansion. Soon she begins to see and hear glimpses of non-existing children. She is of course a bit freaked out. But, over time, she begins to harbor a fantasy about being an adoptive mother of these ghostly entities, which appear to be five phantom children. The ghostly encounters continue in frequency and potency, and the woman eventually pledges her undying devotion to the children.

However, locals begin to notice that she is slowly wasting away: not eating, not sleeping, nor even bathing. She clearly becomes more and more deranged as the story proceeds. But is she simply going crazy, or are there really five ghost children? I’ll end with the last paragraphs of that story, after a local parson has attempted to help the woman:

They came in through the sitting-room window, the one the Reverend Rodney had inadvertently left open. Tall burly men in blue uniforms., followed by a more slender one in a neat gray suit.

He was the only one to be actually sick. One of the others exclaimed: “Oh, my God!” but generally speaking they were all fairly immune against being upset by the extremely unpleasant. Two made their way to the cellar steps, only to return a few minutes later, when the one with three white chevrons on his right arm, stated briefly:

“The missing parson isn’t missing any more. At the bottom of the steps, what’s left of him. Oh, my Gawd! Look at them!”

Shouts that expressed horror, disgust and downright loathing, followed five bloated rats as they raced up the stairs (p. 300).

The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series XV was another strong volume in the series. Wagner clearly had a great sense for horror fiction.

Here’s the complete Table of Contents:

“Introduction: What’s in a Name?” by Karl Edward Wagner
“The Yugoslaves” (Night Cry, Spring 1986) by Robert Bloch
“Tight Little Stitches in a Dead Man’s Back” (Nukes, 1986) by Joe R. Lansdale
“Apples” (Halloween Horrors, 1986) by Ramsey Campbell
“Dead White Women” (from Eldritch Tales, No. 12, 1986) by William F. Wu
“Crystal” (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Aug. 1986) by Charles L. Grant
“Retirement” (Outlaw Biker, March 1986) by Ron Leming
“The Man Who Did Tricks with Glass” (Stardate, April 1986) by Ron Wolfe
“Bird in a Wrought Iron Cage” (The Chill Winds of October, 1986) by John Alfred Taylor
“The Olympic Runner” (Fantasy Tales, Winter 1986) by Dennis Etchison
“Take the ‘A’ Train” (Not One of Us, Oct. 1986) by Wayne Allen Sallee
“The Foggy, Foggy Dew” (The Foggy, Foggy Dew, 1986) by Joel Lane
“The Godmother” (Ghosts & Scholars 8, 1986) by Tina Rath
“Pale Trembling Youth” (Cutting Edge, 1986) by W. H. Pugmire and Jessica Amanda Salmonson
“Red Light” (Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone Magazine, Dec. 1986) by David J. Schow
“In the Hour Before Dawn” (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Aug. 1986) by Brad Strickland
“Necros” (The Second Book of After Midnight Stories, 1986) by Brian Lumley
“Tattoos” (Omni, Nov. 1986) by Jack Dann
“Acquiring a Family” (Tales from the Shadows, 1986) by R. Chetwynd-Hayes

Previous installments in this series include:

Introduction To DAW Books’ The Year’s Best Horror Stories (1972–1994)
The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series I (1972)
The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series II (1974)
The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series III (1975)
The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series IV (1976)
The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series V (1977)
The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series VI (1978)
The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series VII (1979)
The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series VIII (1980)
The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series IX (1981)
The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series X (1982)
The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series XI (1983)
The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series XII (1984)
The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series XIII (1985)
The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series XIV (1986)