STEPHEN JONES lives in London. He is the winner of three World Fantasy Awards, three Horror Writers Association Bram Stoker Awards and three International Horror Guild Awards as well as being a fourteen-time recipient of the British Fantasy Award and a Hugo Award nominee. A former television producer/director and genre movie publicist and consultant (the first three Hellraiser movies, Night Life, Nightbreed, Split Second, Mind Ripper, Last Gasp etc.), he is the co-editor of Horror: 100 Best Books, The Best Horror from Fantasy Tales, Gaslight & Ghosts, Now We Are Sick, H.P. Lovecraft’s Book of Horror, The Anthology of Fantasy & the Supernatural, Secret City: Strange Tales of London and The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror, Dark Terrors, Dark Voices and Fantasy Tales series. He has written Creepshows: The Illustrated Stephen King Movie Guide, The Essential Monster Movie Guide, The Illustrated Vampire Movie Guide, The Illustrated Dinosaur Movie Guide, The Illustrated Frankenstein Movie Guide and The Illustrated Werewolf Movie Guide, and compiled The Mammoth Book of Terror, The Mammoth Book of Vampires, The Mammoth Book of Zombies, The Mammoth Book of Werewolves, The Mammoth Book of Frankenstein, The Mammoth Book of Dracula, The Mammoth Book of Vampire Stories By Women, Shadows Over Innsmouth, Dancing With the Dark, Dark of the Night, Dark Detectives, White of the Moon, Keep Out the Night, By Moonlight Only, Exorcisms and Ecstasies by Karl Edward Wagner, The Vampire Stories of R. Chetwynd-Hayes, Phantoms and Fiends and Frights and Fancies by R. Chetwynd-Hayes, James Herbert: By Horror Haunted, The Conan Chronicles by Robert E. Howard (two volumes), The Emperor of Dreams: The Lost Worlds of Clark Ashton Smith, Clive Barker’s A–Z of Horror, Clive Barker’s Shadows in Eden, Clive Barker’s The Nightbreed Chronicles and the Hellraiser Chronicles. You can visit his website at www.herebedragons.co.uk/jones

Also available

The Mammoth Book of Awesome Comic Fantasy

The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 14

The Mammoth Book of Best New Science Fiction 16

The Mammoth Book of Bridge

The Mammoth Book of British Kings & Queens

The Mammoth Book of Celtic Myths and Legends

The Mammoth Book of Chess

The Mammoth Book of Comic Crime

The Mammoth Book of Egyptian Whodunnits

The Mammoth Book of Elite Forces & SAS

The Mammoth Book of Endurance & Adventure

The Mammoth Book of Fighter Pilots

The Mammoth Book of Future Cops

The Mammoth Book of Great Detectives

The Mammoth Book of Haunted House Stories

The Mammoth Book of Hearts of Oak

The Mammoth Book of Heroes

The Mammoth Book of Historical Whodunnits

The Mammoth Book of How It Happened

The Mammoth Book of Jack the Ripper

The Mammoth Book of Jokes

The Mammoth Book of Journalism

The Mammoth Book of Legal Thrillers

The Mammoth Book of Literary Anecdotes

The Mammoth Book of Maneaters

The Mammoth Book of Men O’ War

The Mammoth Book of Mountain Disasters

The Mammoth Book of Murder

The Mammoth Book of On the Road

The Mammoth Book of Private Lives

The Mammoth Book of Pulp Action

The Mammoth Book of Puzzles

The Mammoth Book of Roman Whodunnits

The Mammoth Book of Seriously Comic Fantasy

The Mammoth Book of Sex, Drugs and Rock ’n’ Roll

The Mammoth Book of Soldiers at War

The Mammoth Book of Sword & Honour

The Mammoth Book of The Science Fiction Century I

The Mammoth Book of The Edge

The Mammoth Book of The West

The Mammoth Book of Travel in Dangerous Places

The Mammoth Book of True War Stories

The Mammoth Book of True Crime

The Mammoth Book of UFOs

The Mammoth Book of Unsolved Mysteries

The Mammoth Book of Unsolved Crimes

The Mammoth Book of Vampire Stories by Women

The Mammoth Book of War Correspondents

The Mammoth Book of Women who Kill

THE
MAMMOTH BOOK OF

BEST NEW
HORROR

VOLUME FOURTEEN

Edited and with an Introduction by

STEPHEN JONES

ROBINSON
London

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 2003

Collection and editorial material
copyright © Stephen Jones 2003

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.

ISBN 1-84119-794-7
eISBN 978-1-78033-716-6

Printed and bound in the EU

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank David Barraclough, Kim Newman, Hugh Lamb, Nick Austin, Richard Dalby, Mandy Slater, Andrew I. Porter, Brian Mooney, Douglas E. Winter, Robert T. Garcia, Andy Cox, Rodger Turner and Wayne MacLaurin (sfsite.com), Harris M. Lentz III, Bill Congreve, Gordon Van Gelder, Sara and Randy Broecker, David J. Schow, Robert Morgan, Barbara Roden and David Pringle for all their help and support. Special thanks are also due to Locus, Interzone, Science Fiction Chronicle, Classic Images, Variety and all the other sources that were used for reference in the Introduction and the Necrology.

INTRODUCTION: HORROR IN 2002 copyright © Stephen Jones 2003.

OCTOBER IN THE CHAIR copyright © Neil Gaiman 2002. Originally published in Conjunctions 39: The New Wave Fabulists. Reprinted by permission of the author.

DETAILS copyright © China Miéville 2002. Originally published in The Children of Cthulhu: Chilling New Tales Inspired by H.P. Lovecraft. Reprinted by permission of the author and the author’s agent, Mic Cheetham Literary Agency.

THE WRETCHED THICKET OF THORN copyright © Donald Tumasonis 2002. Originally published in All Hallows 29, February 2002. Reprinted by permission of the author.

THE ABSOLUTE LAST OF THE ULTRA-SPOOKY, SUPER-SCARY HALLOWE’EN HORROR NIGHTS copyright © David J. Schow 2001. Originally published in The Spook, Issue No.6, January 2002. Reprinted by permission of the author.

STANDARD GAUGE copyright © Nicholas Royle 2002. Originally published in Thirteen. Reprinted by permission of the author.

LITTLE DEAD GIRL SINGING copyright © Stephen Gallagher 2002. Originally published in Weird Tales, Issue #327, Spring 2002. Reprinted by permission of the author.

NESTING INSTINCTS copyright © Brian Hodge 2002. Originally published in Lies & Ugliness. Reprinted by permission of the author.

THE TWO SAMS copyright © Glen Hirshberg 2002. Originally published in Dark Terrors 6: The Gollancz Book of Horror. Reprinted by permission of the author and the author’s agent, Anderson/Grinberg Literary Management, Inc.

HIDES copyright © Jay Russell 2002. Originally published in Stranger: Dark Tales of Eerie Encounters. Reprinted by permission of the author.

THE UNBEHELD copyright © Ramsey Campbell 2002. Originally published in The Spook, July 2002. Reprinted by permission of the author.

ILL MET BY DAYLIGHT copyright © Basil Copper 2002. Originally published in Cold Hand on My Shoulder. Reprinted by permission of the author.

CATSKIN copyright © Kelly Link, 2002. Originally published as a limited edition in Catskin: a swaddled zine and McSweeny’s Quarterly, Winter 2002-03. Reprinted by permission of the author.

20TH CENTURY GHOST copyright © Joe Hill, 2001. Originally published in High Plains Literary Review, Vol. XVII, No.1-3, 2002. Reprinted by permission of the author.

EGYPTIAN AVENUE copyright © by Kim Newman 2002. Originally published in J.K. Potter’s Embrace the Mutation. Reprinted by permission of the author.

THE BOY BEHIND THE GATE copyright © James Van Pelt 2002. Originally published in Dark Terrors 6: The Gollancz Book of Horror. Reprinted by permission of the author.

NOR THE DEMONS DOWN UNDER THE SEA copyright © Caitlín R. Kiernan 2002. Originally published in The Children of Cthulhu: Chilling New Tales Inspired by H.P. Lovecraft. Reprinted by permission of the author.

THE COVENTRY BOY copyright © Graham Joyce 2002. Originally published in The Third Alternative, Issue 32, Autumn 2002. Reprinted by permission of the author.

THE PROSPECT CARDS copyright © Donald Tumasonis 2002. Originally published in Dark Terrors 6: The Gollancz Book of Horror. Reprinted by permission of the author.

THE CAGE copyright © Jeff VanderMeer 2002. Originally published in City of Saints and Madmen. Reprinted by permission of the author.

DR PRETORIUS AND THE LOST TEMPLE copyright © Paul McAuley 2002. Originally published on SciFiction, September 2002. Reprinted by permission of the author.

NECROLOGY: 2002 copyright © 2003 by Stephen Jones and Kim Newman 2003.

USEFUL ADDRESSES copyright © Stephen Jones 2003.

In loving memory of my father

‘Jim’ Jones

(1914–2003)

for all his support and encouragement over the years.

‘When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.’

—Samuel Johnson (1709–84)