999: New Stories of Horror and Suspense [Hardcover]

`You felt as if you were bleeding to death, only inside your head...' This excellent description of feeling uncomfortable comes early on in the new Stephen King story to be found in this horror anthology. In the story, the narrator is viewing a particularly horrible painting, which is going to have a particularly horrible effect on his life. But it's also an appropriate description of how a good horror story should make a reader feel: threatened, in danger, in a quiet way. Reading horror is different to watching it at the movies - it's easy to feel scared in a dark cinema. A bit harder, though, to do it through a book. 999, a collection of previously-unpublished work in the horror genre, does it - and does it many times. The anthology contains a short novel from William Peter Blatty, author of the famed scary novel The Exorcist; novellas by David Morrell (creator of the Rambo books and also a fine horror writer) and Joyce Carol Oates; and more than two dozen shorter pieces - including an effort from Stephen King, The Road Virus Heads North. Many readers will turn to the King story first, and they won't be disappointed. It's short, sharp and shocking, and will frighten even the most sceptical realist. In the story, bestselling horror novelist Richard Kinnell buys a painting at a yard sale. It shows a deathly figure driving a car, and it's theme of horror and death appeals to Kinnell. From the moment he buys the picture, Kinnell is doomed. The reader knows this, but it's a tribute to King's skill at the macabre that over twenty pages of steadily-mounting paranoia and suspense pass before the bloody conclusion is reached. Once done with King readers will turn to the less well-known authors here, hoping that standards aren't too bad. For example, the first story in 999 is by Kim Newman, an writer of moderately prominent vampire tales. Newman's story, Amerikanski Dead at the Moscow Morgue, is almost as good as King's. It is set in a gruesome Moscow of the near-future and has American citizens from all walks of life wandering around the Russian capital as zombies, with an appetite for fresh human flesh. The atmosphere of freezing fear in a chaotic Moscow is brilliantly conveyed in the story, and the horror of how the zombies have to be dealt with chills the bones. Most of the other stories in 999 are of a similarly high standard - they will provide chills of fear and horror in a hot Perth summer. The apocalyptic theme to many of the stories is summed up in the book's title. 999 is a contraction of the year of its publication, but it is also 666 - the Number of the Beast and the figure that heralds the End of Days.

Unlike some of the others, I thought Stephen King and Joyce Carol Oates' stories were beneath their usual genius, but I loved "Rio Grande Gothic" and "Mad Dog Summer." However, it amazes me that fewer people have singled out the return of William Peter Blatty with "Elsewhere." The story is arguably the best in the "999" collection, as several characters (including the flamboyant Terence Dare) wander through a haunted mansion in search of spirits. Doesn't sound too original, I know, but we are in the hands of the master of "The Exorcist." "Elsewhere" shines.

In his introduction to this book, editor/contributor Al Sarrantonio makes clear his high hopes that 999 will prove a worthy successor to such landmark horror anthologies as DARK FORCES and GREAT TALES OF TERROR AND THE SUPERNATURAL. The dust jacket even goes so far as to declare of 999: “Not only is this the largest anthology of original horror/suspense fiction of all time…but it is also the finest.” As it turns out, however, neither the editor’s high hopes nor the dust jacket’s hyperbole are justified. 999 is in fact a very average collection of horror tales, with stories that range from pretty awful at worst to quite good, though not exactly excellent, at best, and the bulk of material falling somewhere between those points.

Frankly, there are few high points in this collection. Furthermore, the high points of 999 are not particularly striking as far as horror tales go, and are only distinguishable as the points of greatest contrast to the indifferent and unmemorable horror storytelling that comprises most of 999’s entries.

Still some readers might enjoy Tim Power’s haunting & unusual ghost story “Itinerary,” my favorite story here, which manages to be witty, fantastic (in the truest sense of the word), and melancholy without straining for effect. Kim Newman’s lead-off story, set in a U.S.S.R. under siege from walking dead American tourists, is a great, well-written combination of creepy horror and understated black humor, and makes a strong start for the book. Thomas M. Disch’s “The Owl and the Pussycat” delivers a deep bite in the gentle tones of an innocent children’s story. Ramsey Campbell’s “The Entertainment” lacks the potency of much of his stunning short fiction and bears a little too much resemblance to Robert Aickman’s classic chiller “The Hospice,” but is nonetheless a thoroughly sinister piece of work suggesting the unnatural horrors that can hide behind seemingly harmless grins.

But then there’s no avoiding the negatives. Bentley Little’s “The Theater” starts off as a dully written reprise of Ramsey Campbell’s infinitely more frightening “The Show Goes On,” and quickly segues into a goofy psychodrama driven by the zero-personality main character’s unhealthy obsession with vegetables. Stephen King cruises through with a by-the-numbers tale of a demonic painting that could make for a passable episode of NIGHT GALLERY—one could be forgiven for thinking the editor was satisfied enough just having King’s name to plaster on the cover, so minor is his contribution. Peter Schneider’s “Les Saucisses, Sans Doute” might be well-intended in its mockery of the pretensions and cheesy glamor rife in “extreme” splatter-shock horror, but this short piece is too slight, the kind of thing one might scribble up to pass a lazy lunch-hour. Quite disappointingly, T.E.D. Klein’s “Growing Things,” a surprise contribution from this all-too-unprolific writer, also turns out to be a little insubstantial.

The best that can be said is that there are some fine, if unremarkable stories between the covers of 999. However, the “good” stories are not good enough nor in sufficient proportion to invite comparisons with truly exceptional horror anthologies, such as the two volumes mentioned at the beginning, or THE OXFORD BOOK OF ENGLISH GHOST STORIES, THE DARK DESCENT, and the SHADOWS series, to name but a few others.