Horror: The 100 Best Books (2 page)

***

It is not that the old stories are necessarily the
best
stories; rather that the old stories are the
only
stories. There are no new tales, only new ways to tell. Such, at least, is the conviction of many who have studied narrative. I'd count myself amongst their clan. For the writer this presents certain challenges, not the least of which is the shaping of a fresh and original interpretation of a structure which may have been cast and re-cast several hundred times down the centuries. The problem is particularly acute when working in a
genre
that boasts a very clear line of tradition, as does horror. Write a vampire story and you may be certain it will be compared with countless others in the family, and if you've failed to bring anything new to the lineage you'll be judged accordingly. In that challenge, of course, lies the greatest spur to invention, and high times can follow, as the writer drives his imagination to new extremes of form and content, honing his vision so that whatever else may be said of the resulting work it can at least be called uniquely
his
. But there's a greater pleasure yet. In travelling the road of a particular story -- along which every town will have streets and squares in common, yet none looks quite like the other -- the writer may see, with a backward glance, the way the essentials of the tale have been reinterpreted over the years, subtly changing to reflect the interior lives of those who've gone before. The road becomes an index to the blossoming and decay of belief-systems; a book, if you will, of books, in which the subject is both the history of story and the story of history. Perhaps, if he's far-sighted, the writer, looking back along the road he's travelling, may even glimpse its beginnings (or at least the rocky place from which it emerged), and be enriched by recognition of why the tale he's reinterpreting was first created.

The story of the ambitious man, brought down through an excess of pride, or curiosity, or half a dozen other sweetly human qualities, is one part of the story I'm celebrating here. The other part concerns intercourse with hellish divinities. It tells of a shaman who touches an inner darkness -- a forbidden place that promises dangerous knowledge -- and is snatched off by the very forces he's hoped to control. Put together, these elements form the Faust myth. Baldly put, Faust's (or Faustus's) story is that of a brilliant, ambitious academic who sells his soul to the Devil in exchange for insights and experiences he believes he can gain no other way, and later -- as the time for payment approaches -- regrets the terms of the deal, and attempts to escape damnation. I first encountered this story in Marlowe's variation, and though I later read other versions -- Goethe's, most significantly -- it is that first meeting that claims greatest hold on my affections. I was as ravished by the splendours of the play as Marlowe's Doctor is by magic, which he believes will show him the secrets of the stars, and of men's souls. I had the same hopes of art; still do, in fact. But while a book is readily bought, a play or a painting easily viewed, Faustus -- to gain
his
magic -- must sign in blood, and give his soul over to Lucifer for all eternity. Not so hard. This is a man who has studied until study can reward him no longer. A man to whom science has become a cul-de-sac, philosophy a dead library, and who wants to drag the walls and the words down and see the world for himself. It's little wonder that Mephistopheles' warnings cannot deter this hungry adventurer from the trip. To evoke the pleasure of what follows, Marlowe uses his prodigious poetic gifts (which were silenced too quickly: he died at twenty-nine, stabbed in the eye in a brawl that may have been staged to conceal an assassination). Here Faustus looks on the beauty of Helen of Troy, raised from the past for his delectation:

"Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships, And burnt the topless towers of Ilium? Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss."

It's the word-music that ensured Marlowe's immortality, not the kisses. (There's a lesson there, damn it.) Later in the play that same genius conjures Faustus' terror as damnation approaches:

"You stars that reign'd at my nativity Whose influence hath allotted death and hell, Now draw up Faustus like a foggy mist Into the entrails of yon labouring cloud."

He is not drawn up, needless to say. "Ugly
hell
" gapes, and the Devil claims his due, leaving Faustus' servants and ex-students to pick up the pieces, literally. Whereas Goethe saves his adventurer with love and metaphysics, Marlowe has his Doctor beg for forgiveness --

"See, see, where Christ's blood streams in the firmament! One drop would save my soul . . ."

-- but here his pleas go unanswered. The play thus moves through a strikingly diverse series of modes, from the early scenes of debate, to invocation, and temptation; then through masque, high poetry and low comedy as Faustus' years of experience pass; finally into melancholy and despair. Behind it all Marlowe's subversive vision is at work. This is the man reputed to have claimed that "whoso liketh not tobacco and boys is a fool", and who would die as he lived, in a passion. That heat -- that sense of momentum -- turns his version of the Faust story into a headlong plunge, as exhilarating as it is tragic. Goethe's treatment may be more philosophically complex, and arguably contains characters more sensitively drawn; it is
certainly
the more humane of the two interpretations. But Marlowe's variation values theatricality and poetic dazzle over moral texture, and the kid I was when I first read it liked the choice. He still does. Maybe in my dotage I'll be more profoundly moved by Goethe's brilliantly argued case for the redeemability of the human spirit (indeed, I may need its reassurances), but I'm still too close to Marlowe in age and temper to relinquish my first love. What delights me, finally, is to have a choice of versions. I've even added a few variations to the canon of Faust tales myself.
The Damnation Game
, "The Hellhound Heart" and "The Last Illusion" are all conscious strivings to make sense of the story for a late-20th-century readership. Hell, I point out in
The Damnation Game
, is reimagined by each generation. So are the pacts, and the pact-makers. But the story will survive any and all reworkings, however radical, because its roots are so strong. That far-sighted backward glance I spoke of earlier -- the one that leads back to the rocky place -- shows us in the Faust tale one of the most important roads in all fantastic fiction. At its centre is a notion essential to the horror genre and its relations: that of a trip taken into forbidden territory at the risk of insanity and death. With the gods in retreat, and the idea of purgatorial judgments less acceptable to the modern mind than new adventures after death as dust and spirit, all imaginative accounts of that journey become essential reading. In their diversity lies testament to the richness of our literature's heritage. In their experiencing, a sense of how the human perspective changes. And in their wisdom -- who knows? -- a guide to how we, adventurers in the forbidden magic of our
genre
, may behave when the last Act is upon us. -- CLIVE BARKER

Scotland. Macbeth, Thane of Glamis, a loyal subject of King Duncan, meets three Witches on a blasted heath. They prophesy that he will become Thane of Cawdor and then king, and that his comrade Banquo will sire a line of kings. Macbeth is immediately made Thane of Cawdor by Duncan, and is inspired -- partly by the witches, partly by his wife, partly by his own ambition -- to plot the murder of Duncan. He becomes king, but tries to prove the witches false by murdering Banquo and thus ensuring his own family will succeed him. Visiting the witches again, he receives further prophecies that suggest he is invincible -- he cannot be killed by a man born of woman, and he will not be unthroned unless Birnam Wood marches upon Dunsinane castle. However, while his wife is driven mad by guilt, Macbeth sees each of the further prophecies come true -- Banquo's sons escape him to become the ancestors of James I of England (recently crowned when the play was being written), his enemies use the cut-down trees of Birnam as shields when they advance on the castle, and he faces in battle Macduff, who was born by Caesarian.

***

A really serious crime, in the long run, leads to temporal retribution and possible damnation. I have tried to use such a theme many times personally, and though I am no Shakespearean scholar, I believe that one must realize how grave the Macbeths' crimes were. In Shakespeare's day, regicide was regarded as the worst crime of all, as the king or queen was God's consort on Earth. Duncan was also a good ruler who

"Hath borne his faculties so meek, Hath been so clear in his great office That his virtues Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued against The
deep damnation
of his taking-off."

Macbeth was assured by the witches that he need fear nothing unless Birnam Wood came to Dunsinane and he was opposed by a man not born of woman. The witches were equivocators and this point is explained by the drunken porter at the castle gate: "Lechery, it provokes and unprovokes; it provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance. Therefore much drink may be said to be an equivocator with Lechery: it makes him, and it mars him . . ." By the witches' own forecast, Banquo was ordained the father of a line of kings and this prediction is repeated after his murder, so Macbeth sees his original crime as fruitless, and he and Lady Macbeth are driven mad by guilt. His wife commits suicide and he accepts the news briefly. "She should have died hereafter. There would have been time for such a word . . ." Only at the very end, when the witches' falsehood is finally revealed, does Macbeth come to terms with reality and realise the truth.

"Though Birnam Wood be come to Dunsinane And though opposed being by no woman born Yet will I try the last. Before my body I throw my warlike shield. Lay on, Macduff, And damned be he who first cries 'huld, enough'."

According to Aristotle, the word "tragedy" means "arousing pity and terror". The play succeeds in both respects. To my mind,
Macbeth
's plot makes the play one of the best thrillers in our language and to this is added some of the finest poetry ever written. A truly magnificent feast. -- JOHN BLACKBURN

The White Divel, or, The Tragedy of Paulo Giordano Urfini, Duke of Brachiano, with The Life and Death of Vittoria Corombona the famous Venetian Curtizan
is a Jacobean Revenge Tragedy complete with poisonings, multiple murders, a scheming villain, a tragic villain, ghosts, intrigues, a crime-busting Pope, and a vengeance-crazed pirate. Webster (1580-1634) was also the author of
The Duchess of Malfi
(1614), an even more gruesome tragedy, and
The Devil's Law-Case
(1620), a twisted comedy. A gloomy misanthrope who complains in his preface about the rabble's lack of enthusiasm for the play, Webster was characterized famously by T. S. Eliot as seeing "the skull beneath the skin"

***

I have always found your actual werewolves, vampires and devils rather boring.
The White Devil
is to me true horror because all these creatures are present in it, and ghosts too, but as human beings. It is also full of graveyard humour which is hysterically funny, much of it centering on Flamineo, who is my favourite villain -- witty, neurasthenic and utterly selfish. There are only two "good" characters: Vittoria's brother Marcello, who is too stupid to be otherwise, and the boy Giovanni. All the others go in for quasi-virtuous acts that damn them. At the start of the play Corinna curses her children with a big display of outrage, and the curse works (this is the main undercover supernatural theme). Isabella, with an equal display of virtue, pretends to hate her husband and gets murdered for it -- with justice because she talks witchcraft. The talk is always a giveaway. It nickers by, savage and vivid, subliminally dubbing Isabella a witch, Corinna a witch, invoking arcane herb lore, linking Brachiano with the devil and calling Flamineo wolf, wolf, wolf, until it rises to the spell Corinna chants over her dead son, in which she all but names Flamineo the werewolf he is. Under the influence of Vittoria, the Pope reveals himself fascinated with vice and the Duke of Florence ends up (literally) black. Brachiano, basically a coarse-grained man bored with his wife, commits murder and then dabbles in Satanism by employing a conjuror. His death --
On pain of death, let no man name death to me, It is a word infinitely terrible
-- surrounded by imaginary horrors --
Look you, six grey rats that have lost their tails Crawl up the pillow
-- is a real spine-chiller. By a bold stroke, Vittoria herself, the vampire woman at the centre, is decidely understated. Her character emerges mostly from the disgusted reactions of the rest, even her brother Flamineo, who behave as if they are trying to detach a leech. But the talk is again a giveaway. As her lover dies, all she can say is
I am lost for ever
! Everything else she says is equally self-centred. And vampire she is. Right at the end when she has run out of victims and is about to be killed, she says she is pale
from want of blood
. And the boy Giovanni? He becomes Duke of Padua at the end and orders the murderers tortured with sanctimonious relish. As Flamineo remarks, his talons will grow out in time, and here we see them sprouting. -- DIANA WYNNE JONES

Caleb Williams, an honest young man, takes a position as secretary to Ferdinando Falkland, the landowner upon whose property the Williams family resides. Although treated kindly by Mr. Falkland, Caleb is warned to stay away from a certain room in which the master keeps a mysterious trunk. Unable to contain his curiosity, Caleb investigates and learns that Falkland is a murderer. However, their respective social positions ensure that Falkland goes uncharged and Caleb is ruined. Caleb loses his job and becomes an outcast, persecuted by his former master, and is thrown in with thieves and murderers. His ordeal takes him from the melodramatic Gothic horrors of Falkland's gloomy old house with its terrible secret to the all-too-real hell of the underside of 18th-Century England. Godwin, a reformer best known for his
Enquiry Concerning Political Justice
(1793), here prefigures Dickens by straddling the genres of gruesome thriller and social expose. His daughter was Mary Shelley, author of
Frankenstein
.