Dark Forces

Editor McCauley (Frights) has set out to do for supernatural horror what Harlan Ellison's Dangerous Visions did for science fiction: a collection of original, quirky tales unshackled by editorial taboos and market demands. But these 23 all-new pieces only sometimes seem worthy of the concept. Somewhat outside the genre: Ray Bradbury's time-traveling "A Touch of Petulance," in which a man returns from 20 years hence to help himself avoid murdering his wife. A curiosity: "The Stupid Joke," a sly Edward Gorey picture story in which a boy pretends he's too sick to get out of bed and then finds he really can't. And, in more classic traditions of the genre: Dennis Etchison's "The Late Shift," a lurid tale of old buddies turned into zombies and then farmed out as store clerks; Joyce Carol Oates' less successful "The Bingo Master," in which a spinster fails to get herself seduced by a bizarre bingo-caller; Robert Bloch's familiar but effective "The Night Before Christmas," with an unforgettable final image of a dismembered adulteress "decorating" the Christmas tree. Perhaps the best-written story here is the most modest, I. B. Singer's "The Enemy," about an old friend wrestling with the astral double of a snotty shipboard waiter, while the anthology's longest piece, a short novel by Stephen King (about an octopoidal, caterpillary, incredible bloodsucking mist sucking up the state of Maine), is swamped with supermarket brand names and clanging stereotypes. Mixed blessing. (Kirkus Reviews)