The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror. Volume 23

There was such a volume of eager shuffling and scraping that Marsden almost wished his ears would fail him. He hauled at the door, which some obstruction had wedged open. He was practically deaf with his frantic heartbeat by the time the door gave, slamming with such force that it seemed to be echoed in another carriage. At once the train jerked forward, flinging him onto the nearest musty seat. He was attempting to recover his breath when the announcer spoke.

Was a window open in the carriage? The voice sounded close enough to be on the train, yet no more comprehensible. It was no longer simply unctuous; it could have been mocking a priest out of distaste for the vocation. Its only recognisable words were “train now departing”, except that the first one was more like Ray — perhaps not just on this occasion, Marsden thought he recalled. He craned towards the window and was able to glimpse that both doors in the exit corridor were shut. Before he had time to ponder any of this, if indeed he wanted to, the train veered off the main line.

“Where are you taking me?” he blurted, but all too soon he knew. The train was heading for the property behind the station, a turn of events celebrated by a short announcement. There was no question that the speaker was on board, though the blurring of the words left Marsden unsure if they were “Ray is shortly alive.” The swerve of the train had thrown open the doors between the carriages, allowing him to hear a chorused hiss that might have signified resentment or have been an enthusiastic “Yes” or, possibly even worse, the collapse of many burned objects into the ash he could smell. As the train sped through a gateway in the railings, he read the name on the sign: not Peacehaven Motors at all, or anything to do with cars. Perhaps the route was only a diversion, he tried to think, or a short tour. Perhaps whoever was on the train just wanted somebody to visit the neglected memorials and the crematorium.

DAVID BUCHAN Holiday Home

DAVID BUCHAN DISCOVERED horror fiction as a teenager and began writing short stories in his early twenties, leading to his first publication on the website Whispers of Wickedness.

Since then his work has appeared in a number of small press publications on the both sides of the Atlantic, including the Sam’s Dot Publishing magazine Champagne Shivers. He is currently working towards an undergraduate degree in Humanities with the Open University.

“I am often struck by the manner in which some killers transport their victims from the scene of the crime,” says Buchan, “and the method used in this story is, somewhat inevitably, inspired by real-life cases.”

IT WAS LAST week he moved his family into the next cottage. I’d asked him if he needed a hand with the luggage. He shook his head and smiled. Just glad to get some peace and quiet, he laughed, hauling the bulging suitcases from the car.

We could see them inside whenever we walked by: the wife and kids slumped in the same chairs, like mannequins; the husband moving about, his form rendered ghostly by the steamed-up window pane and the flies bouncing off its surface.

At the time, it never occurred to me.

STEPHEN JONES & KIM NEWMAN Necrology: 2011

AS WE ENTER THE second decade of the twenty-first century, we are losing many of the writers, artists, performers and technicians we grew up with and who, during their lifetimes, helped shape the horror, science fiction and fantasy genres.

AUTHORS/ARTISTS/COMPOSERS

Best-selling British children’s author Dick King-Smith OBE (Ronald Gordon King-Smith) died in his sleep on 4 January after a long illness. He was eighty-eight. The former farmer’s more than 100 books included the 1983 novel The Sheep-Pig, which was filmed as Babe (1995), and The Water Horse (which was made into a film in 2007). His other titles include The Invisible Dog and The Witch of Blackberry Bottom.

Ruth Evelyn Kyle, who was married to SF fan/writer/publisher David A. Kyle for fifty-three years, died after a brief illness on 5 January, aged eighty-one. The couple met at a science fiction convention. Ruth Kyle was Secretary of the 14th World Science Fiction Convention held in New York City in 1956.

American author and dealer Jerry Weist died of multiple myeloma after a long illness on 7 January, aged sixty-one. Initially inspired by Famous Monsters of Filmland in the late 1950s, he began publishing the fanzines Nightmares and Movieland Monsters, and in 1967 he founded the famed EC comics fanzine Squa Tront, which ran until 1983. His books include three editions of The Comic Art Price Guide, The R. Crumb Price Guide, The Underground Price Guide, Bradbury: An Illustrated Life and The 100 Greatest Comic Books, and he contributed (with Robert Weinberg) a bibliographical index to the revised editions of From the Pen of Paul: The Fantastic Images of Frank R. Paul. In 1974 Weist opened The Million Year Picnic in Boston, one of the first specialty comic stores in the US.

American SF artist and illustrator Gene Szafran (Eugene Szafran) died on 8 January, aged sixty-nine. During the late 1960s and early ’70s he painted more than seventy-five covers for books by Robert A. Heinlein, Robert Silverberg, Poul Anderson, Ray Bradbury and others. His work also appeared in numerous magazines, including Playboy. Szafran’s career was curtailed in the late 1970s when he developed multiple sclerosis.

Prolific American SF, mystery and Western author Edward [Paul] Wellen died on 15 January, aged ninety-one. He began contributing to the SF digest magazines in the early 1950s (including Galaxy, Imagination, Science Stories, Universe and Infinity), while his 1971 novel Hijack was described as “The Mafia takes to space”.

British occultist Kenneth Grant, who claimed to be the “heir” to “the wickedest man in the world”, Aleister Crowley (1875–1947), died the same day, aged eighty-six. After Crowley’s death, he edited and published many of his mentor’s works, but he also became involved in a lengthy controversy over his succession to Outer Head of Crowley’s self-styled Order of the Ordo Templi Orientis. Grant liberally borrowed from Crowley and H. P. Lovecraft in his own novels, poems and occult treatises.

American writer, poet and artist Melissa Mia Hall died of a heart attack on 29 January, aged fifty-five. A former creative writing teacher at the University of Texas Arlington’s Continuing Education programme, she started publishing in 1979, and her more than sixty stories appeared in such magazines and anthologies as Twilight Zone, Shayol, Realms of Fantasy, Shadows 12, 100 Hair-Raising Little Horror Stories, Masques 3 and Cross Plains Universe. Hall also collaborated on stories with Douglas E. Winter and Joe R. Lansdale, edited the 1987 anthology Wild Women, and wrote hundreds of reviews and interviews for Publishers Weekly.

John Barry [Prendergast] OBE, perhaps Britain’s finest and most influential film composer and arranger, died of a heart attack in New York on 31 January. He was seventy-seven. Among many memorable