Masterpieces of Horror by D H Keller, H Kuttner and R Bradbury

Bouncing around isfdb, I came upon evidence of the existence of an anthology ostensibly edited by Alden H. Norton but (we are told) in fact edited by SF historian Sam Moskowitz: Masters of Horror, published in 1968.  It seems that Moskowitz and Norton had a sort of regular working relationship, collaborating on a number of anthologies, with Moskowitz sometimes getting credit, sometimes remaining incognito.  We've already read some stories that have appeared in these volumes, like Henry Kuttner's "Time to Kill," which was reprinted in Horrors in Hiding, and Robert Bloch's "Head Man," which was included in Hauntings and Horrors: Ten Grisly Tales.

Today let's read three stories out of Masters of Horror, stories by peeps we are somewhat familiar with from Weird Tales and other fine publications: David H. Keller, the aforementioned Kuttner, and Ray Bradbury.  I can't find a scan of the actual anthology, but will read printings of these stories from other publications in which they appear, scans of which are readily available at the internet archive, world's finest website.

"A Piece of Linoleum" by David H. Keller (1933)

"A Piece of Linoleum" first appeared under a pen name in 10 Story Book, a magazine full of photos of scantily-clad women as well as fiction.  I'm reading the story from a 1974 printing of the 1947 Keller collection Life Everlasting and Other Tales of Science, Fantasy and Horror. 

As you might expect of a story printed in such a periodical as 10 Story Book, "A Piece of Linoleum" expresses a male viewpoint about women and sex.  A guy, Harker, has just killed himself, and his wife has no idea why.  Most of the text of the story consists of her describing her married life to friends, which she considers to have been very happy.  Of course, her description makes clear to the reader that she was a tyrant who controlled every aspect of her husband's life while refusing to have sex with him or give him children, allegedly on account of her frail health.  Obsessed with keeping the house clean, she lay pieces of linoleum by the sink so her husband wouldn't get water on the floor when he washed the dishes every night as well as wherever his visiting friends might sit, in case they smoked, to protect the carpet from ashes.  The story's final sting is the widow's complains that when her husband slit his wrist he didn't have the courtesy to do it over a piece of linoleum and instead let blood get on the carpet.

Not bad.  August Derleth included "A Piece of Linoleum" in his 1963 anthology When Evil Wakes, which reprints a number of stories we here at MPorcius Fiction Log have already experienced, like Clark Ashton Smith's "The Seed from the Sepulcher," Frank Belknap Long's "Death Waters" and Derleth's collaboration with H. P. Lovecraft, "The Shuttered Room."

"Before I Wake..." by Henry Kuttner (1945)

Pedro is a teenager living in a Brazilian fishing village who spends long hours looking at the collection of books of a friendly doctor who lives nearby.  The illustrations of Arthur Rackham, Sidney Syme and John R. Neill fill his young mind with visions of a brighter and better world, a world that does not really exist, and he day dreams about becoming a sailor and visiting that world.  One day he saves a toad from being tread upon by his drunken father, and Kuttner gives us the idea that this little beast is the familiar of a dead witch.  That night Pedro has vivid dreams of swimming underwater among colorful coral reefs.  He sleeps so deeply his parents can't wake him up in the morning, and they call for the local gypsy woman, who manages to rouse him.  Pedro's sleep is even deeper the next night, and the doctor resorts to a hypodermic injection to wake the kid up.  Doc suggests that Pedro be permitted to enlist on a ship as a cabin boy, and Pedro's dad secures his son a berth on a ship setting sail tomorrow.  The third night after the appearance of the toad, Pedro again has vivid dreams of a brilliant world of wonder like that he has seen in books; will Pedro die in his sleep and remain in that fairy tale world, or wake up to sail forth and experience the grimy and disappointing reality of the actual world that lies beyond his village?

"Before I Wake..." feels long and slow.  Individual characters are indecisive and passive--they don't make decisions and they don't accomplish much--and individual scenes consist of dreamy descriptions and little by way of events.  As a result, the story does not engage the reader's emotions or provoke much thought, and so reading it is boring.  The story would have been greatly improved if Kuttner had more vigorously and more transparently constructed it as a struggle over Pedro's soul between the doctor--man of science--and the gypsy woman--agent of the irrational--or maybe between a tag team of doctor and gypsy against the ghost of the witch, modern medicine and traditional medicine joining forces in a battle of good against evil, something like that.  Stories in which people are just pushed around by fate or circumstances are not compelling.  Gotta give this one a thumbs down. 

"Before I Wake..." was included in the Canadian magazine Super Science and Fantastic Stories, of which Norton was editor, later the same year it debuted in Famous Fantastic Mysteries.  Frank McSherry, Jr., Charles G. Waugh and Martin H. Greenberg included it in their 1988 anthology Pirate Ghosts of the American Coast.

"The Candy Skull" by Ray Bradbury (1948)

"The Candy Skull" first appeared in Dime Mystery Magazine and in 1960 was reprinted in Britain in Detective Tales.  I am reading it in a scan of the 1984 collection of Bradbury's 1940s crime stories entitled A Memory of Murder.  The wikipedia page on A Memory of Murder describes the strange circumstances under which the collection was published and suggests that Bradbury was neither thrilled about some of the included stories nor about seeing them reappear before the public eye.  

The first scene of "The Candy Skull" sees Old Tomas, the retired bullfighter, sitting around the plaza, showing the little kids the scar on his hip where he was gored, then licking his lips as a "young Spanish woman" with "black and shining" hair and clad in a "gray gabardine suit" walks by, then finally spitting on the plaza tiles after seeing a "clean, loud, tourist American," a "young pink, blond man," up on a hotel balcony. Maybe this scene isn't politically correct, but, with its intimations of danger, lust and filth, it sets a tone and seizes the reader's interest.

The blond American is writer Roby Cibber, the beauty with the black hair is Celia Diaz, and the plaza and hotel are in the center of Guanajuato, Mexico.  Bradbury doesn't paint Mexico as some kind of charming vacation spot.  "There was a smell of death through Mexico you never got away from," we are told, "no matter how far you went," and that is just a small sample of barrage of negative characterizations of the land south of the border.

The story starts on the morning on the Day of the Dead, and Roby begins the day by finding that somebody left him a little gift while he was sleeping--sugar skull with his name written on it!  

Roby is in Guanajuato because it is the last place from which Roby received a letter from his friend, Douglas McClure; Celia knew Doug when he was here.  One day Doug and his luggage just vanished.  A lot of people suggested Doug had gone to Acapulco, and Roby looked there before coming to Guanajuato.  Roby has more luck at the next place he looks for Doug--the catacombs under the local cemetery on the hill above Guanajuato!  Poor Doug's body is right there among the mummies!  (Didn't something like this happen to somebody in the 1955 story we read by Bradbury when we were reading stories by SF figures that appeared in Playboy?)  Now Roby is scared somebody is going to try to murder him! 

There is a loud street party that night, with people shooting off fireworks and Old Tomas dancing around with a papier-mâché bull that is full of exploding firecrackers.  Amid the noise and raucous confusion Roby is hit by a Roman candle--no, wait, that was a gunshot!  Roby is bandaged up, and when he gets back to his room at the hotel he has another shock--somebody has left him another gift, a little miniature funeral, complete with miniature priest and miniature altar boys...and on the altar a little photo of Roby himself!  Old Thomas comes by to hint that Celia is the one who left the funeral and the sugar skull before it!  Was it beautiful Celia, a modern woman living in an ancient land, who killed Doug and is now gunning for Roby?  Or Old Tomas, the only other character in the story?

Bradbury does a good job of making of Mexico a scary place full of death and full of hatred for us gringos, a place where no one is to be trusted, not the police, not the doctors, not the retired bullfighters and not even the hot chicks!  The gruesome ending, in which Old Tomas, who is jealous over beautiful tradition-busting Celia, who ignores the retired bullfighter and chases after americanos, forces Roby to play the role of bull in a reenactment of his glorious career as a toreador, is pretty good.  So thumbs up for "The Candy Skull," a fun bit of pulp fear and violence that isn't afraid to exploit white uneasiness about non-white cultures.

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The Keller and Bradbury stories from Masters of Horror are tight and economical, affecting your emotions and leveraging your suspicions as a white man of women and foreigners and the ridiculous beliefs women and foreigners all seem to have and in explicable behavior they are always engaging in.  Kuttner tries to do something perhaps a little more sophisticated and perhaps more acceptable to the 21st-century palate, evoke the feeling of fairy tales and of a child's wonder at the world--at least the fantasy worlds created by imaginative writers and artists.  But because his story is slow and because it lacks clear human conflict, Kuttner's story ends up being boring.  The Bradbury and the Kuttner are an interesting contrast, because both men try to build an atmosphere with descriptions of strange places, but Bradbury's Mexico succeeds in instilling anxiety and fear in the reader and encouraging him to keep reading to find out what is going to happen, while Kuttner's descriptions of coral reefs and islands and clipper ships just made my eyes glaze over and hope the story would end soon.  

It is sad to see a guy we like, Henry Kuttner, misfire, but the reading life is full of ups and downs--for another example, we liked today's Keller piece, but railed against the last thing we read by Keller.  Well, stay tuned to MPorcius Fiction Log for more ups and downs, genre fiction fans.