Scare Care

A generous (416 pp.) and generally satisfying horror anthology of mostly original stories unified not by theme but by cause: all profits - publisher's, editor's, and writers' - will be donated to charities (chosen by author/child-advocate Andrew Vachss) for abused and needy children thirty-eight writers heeded editor Masterton's summons: conspicuously absent are horror's biggest names (King, Straub, Strieber), but in their place stand top authors from other fields (e.g., mystery's Ruth Rendell, with "Loopy," an ironic tale of lycanthropism, and sf's Harlan Ellison, with "The Avenger of Death," a frenzied story of one man vs. the Grim Reaper). And although there's no overriding theme, stories about child abuse do crop up, with the abused child often balancing the scales, as in Kit Reed's poetically vengeful "Mommy" and Bruce Boston's shocker, "Mammy and the Flies." Most of the tales here, however, run the stylistic/thematic gamut, with the accent on the old-fashioned - from ghost story (Ramsey Campbell's shivery "The Ferries," in which a man is pursued by sea-faring spirits) to mainstream horror (Stephen Laws' very Stephen King-ish "Junk," about a demon at work in a junkyard) to suspense-cum-horror (Peter Valentine Timlett's creepy gem of spider-fear, "Little Miss Muffet") to monster tales (Guy N. Smith's "Crustacean Revenge," about an attack of giant crabs). There's no splatter-punk on display here. And that's no loss, with the fresher, softer horror effectively scary (a standout: Felice Picano's elegant madman-tale, "Spices of the World"); and, to wrap things up, there's "In the West Wing," a neatly spooky tale by Masterton's 11-year-old son Roland. Like a Big Mac - big and juicy and, with its cause, deserving to sell billions and billions. Hats off to Masterton and all involved. (Kirkus Reviews)