The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror, volume 18

“I won’t carry a watch,” said Annette, “but I’ve an excellent sense of time. And I’ve lost it. How long was I unconscious?”

“Ages,” said Vanessa. “We thought you’d died.”

“A few seconds,” said Richard.

“See,” said Annette. “No sense of time at all.”

Richard looked at the nearest window. It was black glass, like the clock – a mirror in which he looked shockingly worn-out. Even when the overhead lights flickered, which they did more and more, he couldn’t see out. He didn’t know if they were rushing through England, Scotland or some other dark country. He felt the rattle-rhythm of the train – that, he knew, came from rolling over slight joins between lengths of rail, every ten or twenty feet. The Scotch Streak was still on tracks.

“Have we passed Edinburgh?” said Annette.

Edinburgh! That was a way out, a way off the Ghost Train!

From the station, he could phone Edwin, have the Club use its pull to cancel the rest of the journey, get everyone else out safely. Danny’s death was justification for calling off the whole jaunt, shutting down the line. The couriers could be sent across Scotland in a taxi. It would take longer, but they’d be surer to arrive intact. If anyone wanted to start World War III, they’d have to wait until after lunch.

Then, he could think of something else to do with his life.

What life?

“I have a picture of the station in my mind,” said Annette, concentrating. “Passengers get off, coal is taken on. They try and do it quietly, so as not to wake the sleepers, but you can’t pour tons of anything quietly. I can’t tell if I’m seeing ahead or remembering. My Talent seems to be on the blink at the moment. ‘Normal transmission will be resumed as soon as possible’. There’s a black wall . . .”

“We’ve already stopped once,” said Vanessa, in a small, scared voice. “In Scotland.”

This was news. Richard couldn’t imagine not noticing.

“Quite right, miss,” said Arnold the Conductor, coming back from where the First Class Carriages should be. “I’ve clipped the ticket of the Edinburgh-to-Portnacreirann passenger. Just the one. Not what it used to be. Ah, someone’s made a bit of a mess here. Don’t worry. We’ll get it cleaned up in a jiffy. Madame, might I bring you more water? This jug seems to be empty.”

Richard, suddenly cool inside, saw Arnold was either mad or with the other side. Not the other side as in the Soviets (though that was possible) but the other side as in beyond the veil, the Great Old Whatevers. Maybe he’d been normal when he first boarded the Scotch Streak, who knows how many nights ago – now he was one of Them, aligned with Annette’s “It”. The conductor wore an old-fashioned uniform, a crimson cutaway jacket and high-waisted flyless matador trousers. His tie-pin was the crest of the long-gone London, Scotland and Isles Railway Company. His cap was oversize, a child’s idea of railwayman’s headgear.

He resisted an impulse to take Arnold by his antique lapels, smash him through a partition, throw a proper teddy boy scare into him, get the razor against his jugular, demand straight answers.

“Thank you,” he told the conductor. “A refill would be appreciated.”

Arnold took the jug and walked off. Annette, greatly upset, was about to speak, but Richard made a gesture and she bit her lip instead. She was up to speed. It wasn’t just the train and the spooks. It was the people aboard, some of them at least.

“What is it?” said Vanessa, picking up on the wordless communication between grown-ups. “A secret? Tell me at once. You’re not to have secrets. I say so.”

Annette laughed indulgently, at the girl’s directness. The corners of her eyes crinkled in a way she hated and tried to avoid, but which Richard saw was utterly adorable. She was far more beautiful as herself than the make-up mask she showed the world.

“No secrets from you, little thing,” she said, pinching Vanessa’s nose.

The little girl looked affronted by the impudence and stuck her fork into Annette’s throat.

“Don’t call me ‘little thing’,” she said, in a grown man’s voice. “You French cow!”

II

Richard scythed a white china dinner-plate edge-first into the little girl’s face. The plate broke, gashing Vanessa’s eyebrow – it would leave a scar. Blood fountained out of the child-shaped thing.

She gave out a deep, roaring howl and held her face, kicking the underside of the table, twisting and writhing as if on fire.

Richard looked across the table at Annette.

She held her hand to her throat, fork stuck out between her fingers, blood dribbling down her arm. Her eyes were wide.

“Didn’t see . . . that coming,” she said, and slumped.

The light went out in her eyes.

Vanessa’s hooked little fingers scrabbled at Richard’s face, and he fell out of his seat. The child hopped onto his chest, pummelling, scratching and kicking. He slithered backwards, working his shoulders and feet, trying to throw the miniature dervish off him. Her blood poured into his face.

He caught hold of one of her braids and pulled.

A little girl yell came out of her, a Mummy-he’s-hurting-meee scream. Was that the real Vanessa? Something else was in there with her, whoever she was, whatever it was.

The girl was possessed.

It had been hiding, deep in the blanks of her mind, but had peeped out once or twice. Richard hadn’t paid enough attention.

And now another of the group was gone.

Annette Amboise. He’d only known her a few days, but they’d become close. It was as if they knew they would be close, had seen a future now cruelly revoked, had been rushing past this long night, speeding to get to a next leg of their journey, which they would take together.

All that was left of that was this monster.

As Vanessa shrieked, Richard hurled her off. He got to his feet, unsteady. He looked to Annette, hoping she was unconscious but knowing better. Slack-mouthed, like a fish, she toppled sideways, towards the window, slapping cheek-to-cheek with her equally dead reflection.

Arnold was back – not from the direction he had left. He carried a full jug.

“The lady won’t be needing this now,” he said.

The conductor ignored the frothing child-thing, who was crawling down the aisle, back seemingly triple-jointed, tongue extending six pink-and-blue inches, braids stood on end as if pulled by wires. It was like a giant gecko wearing a little girl suit, loose in some places and too tight in others. As its limbs moved, the suit almost tore.

One eye was blotted shut with blood. The other fixed on Richard.

The girl hissed.

Then the Gecko became bipedal. The spine curved upwards, straining like a drawn bow. Forelegs lifted and became floppy arms, hands limp like paddles. The belly came unstuck from the aisle carpet. Snake-hips kinking, it hopped upright. It stood with feet apart and shoulders down, as if balancing an invisible tail.

“Vanessa,” said Richard, “can you hear me? It’s Richard.”

Hot, obscene anger burst from whatever it was. He flinched. Annette might have been able to reach the girl inside, help her. That was her Talent. His left him open to emotional attack.

He stood his ground.

The label around the Gecko’s neck was soggy with blood, words washed away, black shapes emerging.

He reached out and tore the label away. It left an angry weal around Vanessa’s neck.

“Mine,” she said, in her own voice. “Give it me back, you bastarrrd,” in the thing’s masculine, somehow Scots voice. “Mine,” both voices together, blasting from her chest and mouth.

He rubbed his thumb over the bloody card. Scrapes came away. The label was actually an envelope, with a celluloid inner sleeve sealing strips of paper. He clawed with a nail, and saw number strings.

The couriers were decoys, after all.

“Give me those,” said the Gecko.

Richard knew what he held. Not numbers, but a numerical key. Put in a slot, they could bring about Armageddon.

“Is that what you want?” he asked, talking to the thing.

The smile became cunning, wide. The unblotted eye winked.

“Give me back my numbers,” it said, mimicking the girl’s voice.

He could tell now when it was trying to fool him. Could tell how much she was Vanessa and how much the Gecko.

“Conductor,” she said. “That man’s got my ticket. Make him give it back to me.”

“Sir,” said Arnold. “This is a serious matter. May I see that ticket?”

Richard clutched the celluloid in his fist. He wouldn’t let Arnold take the Go-Codes. He was with the Gecko.

Vanessa’s eye closed and she crumpled. He had a stab of concern for the girl. If she fell badly, hit her head . . .

Arnold’s gaze had a new firmness.

“Sir,” he said, holding up his ticket-clippers. “The ticket.”

By jumping from the girl to the conductor, the Gecko had got closer to him. But it wore a shape he was less concerned about damaging.

He stuck the Go-Codes into his top pocket, and launched a right cross at Arnold, connecting solidly with his chin, staggering him back a few steps. He’d perfectly hit the knock-out button, but the thing in Arnold didn’t pay attention. It lashed out, clipper-jaws open, aiming for an ear or a lip, intent on squeezing out a chunk of face.

Richard ducked and the clippers closed on his sleeve, slicing through scarlet velvet, meeting in the fold. He hit Arnold a few more times, hearing school boxing instructors tell him he shouldn’t get angry. In his bouts, he always lost on points or was disqualified, even if he pummelled his opponent insensible. What he did in a fight wasn’t elegant or sporting, or remotely allowable under the Queen-sberry rules. He had learned something in the blanked portion of his childhood.

From a crouch, he launched an uppercut, smashing Arnold’s face, feeling cartilage go in the conductor’s nose. The clippers hung from Richard’s underarm. They opened and fell to the juddering floor, leaving neat holes in his sleeve.

Not above booting a man while he was down, he put all his frustration into a hefty kick, reinforced toe sinking into Arnold’s side, forcing out a Gecko-groan. The conductor emptied.

Then an arm was around Richard’s neck. He was dragged to the floor.

Annette’s elbow nut-crackered around his throat and her dead face flopped next to his, one eye rolling.

He felt a wave of disgust, not at physical contact with a corpse, but at the abuse of Annette’s body. He couldn’t fight her as he had Arnold, or even as he had Vanessa (he’d broken a plate on a child’s face!) because of what had hung between them until moments ago.

The thing working Annette took the fork out of her throat and held it to Richard’s eye.

“The codes,” it said, voice rattling through her ruptured windpipe. “Now.”

He pressed his hand over his top pocket. He blinked furiously as the fork got close. One jab, and there would be metal in his brain.

This trip was nearly over.

III

The Gecko inside Annette held Richard in a death-grip, fork-tines hugely out of focus against his eye. Beyond the blur, he saw Arnold watching with his habitual air of quizzical deference. Anything between the passengers was their own business.

Someone shouldered Arnold aside and levelled two double-barrelled shotguns at Richard and Annette.

It was Harry Cutley. Hard-Luck Harry to the Rescue!

“Ah-hah,” declared Harry, a melodrama husband finding his wife in a clinch with her lover, “ah-bleedin’-hah! I knew Dickie-Boy was a wrong ’un from the first. Hold him steady, Annie and I’ll save you!”

It wasn’t easy to aim two shotguns at the same time, what with the swaying of the train. Harry couldn’t keep them level.

“Annette’s not home,” Richard said. “Look at her eyes.”

Harry ignored him.

He must have broken into the baggage car and requisitioned Mrs Sweet’s guns. His pockets were lumpy with cartridges. He had a lifetime of resentments to work off, in addition to being under the influence of the Scotch Streak. Harry still couldn’t hold the guns properly, but was close enough to Richard that aiming wouldn’t make much difference.

At least, the fork went away.

The Gecko relaxed a little, holding Richard up as a shield and a target.

Harry saw Vanessa, half her face bruised and bloody.

“I see you can’t be trusted on your own,” he said to Richard. “There’s a reason I’m Most Valued Member, Clever Dick. I observe at a glance, take in all the clues, puzzle out what has happened, make a snap decision, and act on it, promptly and severely.”

He managed with an effort to get one gun half-cocked, but his left-hand gun twisted up and thumped his face. He flinched as if someone else had attacked him, and pointed the gun he had a better grip on.

Richard shrugged off Annette’s dead fingers and stood.

The gun-barrel raised with him.

“Look at Annette, Harry,” he said. “It got her. It got Danny. It had Vanessa. It’s tried to have me. It is trying to get you. You can hear it, can’t you? It’s talking to you now.”

Richard stood aside, to let Harry see Annette.

The Gecko couldn’t get the corpse to stand properly. Her bloodied neck was a congealed ruin. Her bloodless face was slack, empty – only her eye mobile, twitching with alien intellect.

“Annie,” said Harry, shocked, grieving.

“You see,” said Richard, stepping forward. “We’ve got to fight it.”

Both guns swung. The barrels jabbed against Richard’s chest.

“Stay where you are, young feller-me-lad,” said Harry, fury sparking again. “I know you’re behind this. You may have Ed Winthrop fooled, but not Harry Cutley, oh no. Too clever by half, that’s your bloody trouble. Went to a public school, didn’t you?”

“Several,” Richard admitted.

“Yes, I can tell. They’re all like you, bright boys with no depth, no backbone. Had it too easy, all your lives. Silver spoons up your bums from Day One. Never had to work, never had to think. Reckon you can put one over on us all. Smarm out the posh accent and walk away from it.”

Harry was off on his own. With the guns steady, he got all the cocks back.

Annette had pulled herself upright, assisted by Arnold. She puppet-walked towards them.

“Look behind you,” whispered Richard, like a kid at a pantomime.

Harry showed a toothy grin. “Won’t fool me with that one, boy.”

Annette’s hands were out, thumbs barbed, nearing Harry’s neck. When she gripped, his hands would clench – and four barrels-worth of whatever Mrs Sweet liked to load would discharge through Richard’s torso.

“Just this once, do me a favour, Harry, and listen,” said Richard.

The barrels jammed deeper. Richard shut up – he couldn’t do anything about his educated accent, which set off Harry’s class hatred.

Annette’s hands landed, not around Harry’s neck, but on his shoulders. He shivered, in instinctive pleasure. He was enjoying himself. He had everyone where he wanted them. He angled his head and rubbed his cheek, like a cat’s, on Annette’s dead hand.

The Gecko used Annette’s face to make a smile and kissed Harry’s ear.

It was a miracle the guns didn’t go off.

“See, just this once, bright boy, you lose.”

The light in Annette’s eyes went out and she was a corpse-weight against Harry’s back. Harry was bothered, his eyes flickering.

“Don’t do that,” he said.

While Harry was distracted, Richard took hold of the barrels and tried to shift them. No dice. Harry shook his head as if trying to see off a buzzing wasp.

Annette fell away, collapsing on the floor.

Harry stepped backwards, his upper body jerking as if the wasps were now pestering in force. The guns slipped away from Richard’s chest. He took the opportunity to get out of the way. Harry tripped over Annette’s legs and went arse over teakettle.

One of the guns finally went off, blasting a plate-sized hole in the ceiling.

Night air rushed through. Up there somewhere were stars.

Harry, without even knowing what he was doing, resisted the Gecko. So it couldn’t take anyone – only unformed minds, long-time Streak freaks, or the newly-dead. It could whisper, influence, mislead, work on weaknesses, but couldn’t just move in and take over.

Richard sensed the thing’s formless anger.

Then Vanessa, standing quietly a dozen feet away, was tagged and was “it” again. She ran, hopping past Annette, leap-frogging Harry, and soared at Richard, in defiance of gravity, a living missile.

Vanessa’s head collided with Richard’s stomach, and he was knocked over.

She snatched the celluloid from his pocket, and – with a girlish whoop of nasty triumph – was out of the carriage.

He heard her laugh dwindle as she got further away.

Harry stood, brushing a blood-smear on his jacket. He’d dropped one of the guns, but had the other under his arm. He flapped his wrung-out hand, still jarred from the discharge. The thumb, broken or dislocated, kinked stiffly.

Another person lumbered into the dining carriage, bulky in shawls, thick-ankled. Richard thought for a moment it was Mrs Sweet come to complain about the ill-treatment of her precious guns, but it was the old dear last seen at Euston. “Elsa Nickles, Missus, Psychic Medium.”

Mrs Nickles eased past Arnold, who didn’t tell her she was out of her class. She looked at the bloody ruins, the dead woman, the mad people.

“I knew no good would come of this,” she said. “Them spirits is angered, furious. You can’t be doin’ anythin’ wiv ’em when they’re stirred up. Might just as well poke an umbrella into a nest of snakes. Or stick your dickybird in a mincer.”

Mentally, Richard told Harry not to shoot the woman.

He could tell the Most Valued Member was thinking of it. Firing guns was addictive. The first time, you were afraid, worried about the noise, the danger, the mess. Then, you wanted to do it again. You wanted to do it better.

Didn’t matter if it your finger was on the trigger of a .22 bird-blaster or the launch button of an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, the principle was the same. Didn’t even matter what you were aiming at. Pull . . . point and press! Ka-pow!

“Listen to her, Harry,” he said.

Harry didn’t know what Richard meant. Why should he pay attention to some unscientific loon? In Harry Cutley’s parapsychology, cranks like Elsa Nickles were the enemy, dragging the field into disreputability, filler for the Sunday papers.

“Listen to her accent,” Richard insisted.

“Oi don’t know what ’e means,” said Mrs Nickles, indignant.

Class solidarity in Harry. If Richard’s manner got his back up, Elsie’s plain talk – even when spouting nonsense – should soothe him. Of course, she was from London and he was a Northerner. He might hate her just for being Southern, in which case Richard would give up and let the world hang itself.

Harry put the gun down and held up his wonky thumb.

“Cor, that’s shockin’,” said Mrs Nickles. “Let me ’ave a butcher’s. Raised seven kids an’ never seen one of ’em do that to thesselves.”

Harry let the woman examine his hand. She thought for a moment, then took a firm grip on the twisted digit and tugged it into place. Harry yelped, swore, but then flexed his thumb and blurted gratitude.

“That’s better,” said Mrs Nickles.

The pain had cleared Harry’s mind, Richard hoped.

“We’ve met the thing behind the haunting,” he told the Most Valued Member. “It was hiding in the little girl. It tried to possess you, but you fought it off. Do you remember?”

Harry nodded, grimly.

“Continue with the report, Jeperson,” he said.

“It’s some sort of discarnate entity . . .”

“A wicked spirit,” said Mrs Nickles. “A frightful fiend.”

“Not a ghost. Not the remnant of a human personality. Something bigger, nastier, more primal. But clever. It plucks things from inside you. It understands who we are, how we can be got at. It’s simple, though. It does violence. That’s its business. Feeds off pain, I think. Call it ‘the Gecko’. When it’s in people, they move in a lizardy way. Maybe it nestles in that reptile part of the brain, pulls nerve-strings from there. Or maybe it knows we don’t like creepy-crawlies and puts on a horror show.”

“ ‘The Gecko’,” said Harry, trying out the name. “I’ll make a note of that. You found it, Jeperson. You’re entitled to name it.”

“Thank you.”

“Now we know what we’re up against, we should be better able to cage it. I’ll write up the findings and, after a decent interval, we can come back with a larger, more specialist group. We can get your Gecko off the Ghost Train into a spirit box. In captivity, it can be properly studied.”

Richard knew a spirit box wasn’t necessarily of wood or metal. If ‘sealed’ properly, a little girl could be a spirit box.

Looking at Annette, who’d rolled under a table, Richard said, “If it’s all the same, Harry, I’d rather kill it than catch it.”

“We can still learn, Jeperson. How to deal with the next Gecko.”

“Let’s cope with this one first.”

Richard’s attention was called by the train’s rattle. Something had changed.

A whistle-blast sounded. Had there been another ellipsis in time?

“Are we there yet?” asked Harry. “Portnacreirann?”

“Oh no, sir,” said Arnold, who still didn’t acknowledge anything unusual. “We’re slowing to cross Inverdeith Bridge.”

Richard felt the pace of the rattle.

“We’re not slowing,” he said. “We’re speeding up.”

IV

“It was on a night like this, in 1931,” said Mrs Nickles, “Inverdeith Bridge fell . . .”

Richard understood why the Gecko had killed Annette. She’d have seen what was coming next.

“We’re in no position to make a report and act later,” he told Harry. “The Gecko’s going to kill us now. It has what it wants.”

Harry and Mrs Nickles both looked puzzled.

Richard had a familiar sensation, of knowing more than others, of the power that came with intuition. It was warm, seductive, pleasant – he had the urge to flirt with revelation, to hint that he was privy to mysteries beyond normal comprehension, to crow over his elders. No, that was a temptation – had it been left there to dangle by the Gecko, or some other “wicked spirit”? Or was it nestled in the reptile remnant of his own brain, a character trait he should keep in check?

“The Go-Codes,” he said. “It has the number-strings.”

Mrs Nickles nodded, as if she understood – Richard knew she was faking, just to stay in the game. Harry was white, genuinely understanding.

“It was lunacy to send the damned things by train,” said Harry. “Ed advised against it, but the Club was overruled. By the Americans. Bloody Yanks.”

“Bloody us too, though,” said Richard. “This might have happened eventually, but it happened tonight because we were aboard. We pushed the Gecko. Which is what it wants. Us extraordinary people. We notice things, but things notice us too. We give it more fuel. If regular folks are lumps of coal, we’re gallons of jet fuel. Annette, Danny, you, me.”

“Not me,” said Harry.

Richard shrugged, “Maybe not.”

“But her?”

Harry looked at Elsa Nickles.

Richard did too, for the first time really. Psychic Medium. A Talent. But she had something else. Knowledge.

“Why are you on the Streak, Mrs Nickles?” he asked.

“I told you. To ’elp the good spirits and chase off the wicked.”

“Fair enough. But there are many haunted places. Ruins you don’t have to buy a ticket for. Why the Scotch Streak?”

She didn’t want to explain. Harry helped her sit down in a booth. Arnold was eager to fetch her something.

“Gin and tonic, luv,” she said.

The conductor busied himself. Richard hoped the Gecko hadn’t left something in Arnold, to spy on them.

The whole carriage shook, from the speed. Crockery, cutlery, roses, anything not held down, bounced, slid, shifted. Air streamed through the hole in the roof, blasting tablecloths into screwed-up shrouds.

Arnold returned, dignified as a silent movie comedian before a pratfall, drink balanced on a tray balanced on his hand. Mrs Nickles drained the G and T.

“Hits the spot,” she said.

“Why . . . this . . . train?” Richard asked.

“Because they’re ’ere, still. Both of ’em. They’re not what you call ‘the Gecko’, but they made it grow. What they did, what they didn’t do, what they felt. That, and all the passengers who drownded. And all who come after, who were took by the train, bled their spirits into it. That’s your blessed Gecko, all them spirits mixed up together and shook. It weren’t born in ’ell. It were made. On the night when the bridge fell. Somethin’ in the loch woke up, latched onto ’em.”

“Them? Who do you mean?”

“Nick and Don,” she said, a tear dribbling. “Me ’usband and . . . well, not me ’usband.”

“Nick . . . Nickles?”

“Nickles is what you call me pseudernym, ducks. It’s Elsa Bowler, really. I was married to Nick Bowler.”

“The Headless Fireman,” said Harry, snapping his fingers.

Mrs Nickles grimaced as about to collapse in sobs. The reminder of her husband’s suicide was hardly tactful.

“Don would be the driver, Donald McRidley?” he prompted.

Arnold almost crossed himself at that disgraced name. The conductor fit into this story somewhere. He looked at Mrs Nickles as if he were a human being with real feelings, rather than an emotionless, efficient messenger of the railway Gods.

“Donald,” spat Mrs Nickles. “Yes, blast ’is ’ide. The Shaggin’ Scot, they used to call him. The girls in the canteen. We were all on the railways, on the LSIR. I was there when they named the Scotch Streak, serving drinks. I was Assistant Manager of the Staff Canteen in ’31. Up the end of the line, in Portnacreirann. Don and Nick weren’t usually on shift together, but someone was off sick. They were both speedin’ towards me that night. I think it came out, while they were togevver in the cabin. About me. The bridge was comin’ down, no matter what. But somethin’ was goin’ on in between Don and Nick. Afterwards, Don scarpered and Nick . . . well, Nick did what he did, poor lamb. So we’ll never know. Don was a right basket. Don’t know how I got in with him, though I was a stupid tart in them days and no mistake. Don weren’t the only bloke who wasn’t me ’usband. Even after all the mess. If you want to call anyone the Gecko’s Mum, it’s me.”

“The driver and the fireman were arguing? Over you?”

Mrs Nickles nodded. Her false teeth jounced, distorting her mouth. Richard’s fillings shook. Harry’s face rippled. It was as if the Streak were breaking the sound barrier.

The train was going too fast!

“What about the uncoupling?”

“That! No human hand did that. It was your Gecko, come out of the loch and the fires in the ’earts of Don and Nick, reachin’ out, like a baby after a first suck of milk. It killed all them passengers, let the carriages loose to go down with the bridge. That was a big meal for it, best it’s ever had, gave it strength to live through its first hours. I’ve lost three kiddies, in hospital. That happened in them days. All the bloody time. One was Don’s, I reckon. That little mite’s in the Gecko too. It sucked in all the bad feelin’, all the spirits, and it’s still suckin’.”

Richard understood.

But he saw where Mrs Nickles was lying. “No human hand.” Maybe the Gecko was partly poltergeist. Using the shake, rattle and rock of the train to nudge inanimate objects. The piano-lid snapping at Danny was classic polter-pestering. But for the big things, the fork-stabbings and grabbing the Go-Codes, it needed human hands, a host, a body or bodies.

“It was both of them,” he said. “It took them both. It made them do it, made them uncouple the train.”

He saw it, vividly. Two men, in vintage LSIR uniform, crawling past the coal-tender, leaving the cabin unmanned, gripping like lizards, inhumanly tenacious. Four hands on the coupling, tugging the stiff lever which ought not be thrown while the train was in motion, disabling the inhibitor devices that should prevent this very act. Hands bleeding and nails torn, the hosts’ pain receptors shut off by the new-made, already cunning, already murderous Gecko.

The coupling unlatched. A gap growing. Between engine and carriages. The awful noise of the bridge giving way. The train screaming as it plunged. Carriages coming apart among clanging girders and rails. Bursts of instantly-extinguished flame. Sparks falling to black waters. Breaking waves on the loch shores.

An outpouring of shock and agony. Gecko food.

“Jeperson,” said Harry, snapping his fingers in front of his nose.

“I know what it did,” he told the Most Valued Member. “What it wants to do. How it plans to do it. Another Inverdeith disaster, all of our deaths, and it can get off the train. Free of the iron of the Scotch Streak, it’ll be strong enough to possess living, grown-up bodies. It can piggyback, get to the base, play pass the parcel between hosts, handing the Go-Codes on to itself. It can sit at a modified typewriter keyboard and use the numbers. It’s a hophead, needing bigger and bigger fixes. The deaths of dozens don’t cut it any more, so it needs to shoot up World War Three!”

Harry swore.

“We’ve got to stop the little girl,” said Richard. “Pass me that shotgun.”

V

At the connecting door, ready to barge after the Gecko, Richard caught himself.

“Fooled me once, shame on you, fooled me twice, shame on me.”

He turned and walked deliberately to the other end of the dining carriage, past Harry, Mrs Nickles and Arnold.

“That’s the wrong way, Jeperson.”

“Is it?”

“I came from that way. Back there is, ah, Second and Third Class. And the baggage car.”

Harry held up the other shotgun, left-handed.

“Things change. Haven’t you noticed?”

Harry wasn’t stupid or inexperienced. “Dislocation phenomena? Escher space?”

“Topsy-turvy,” Richard said.

“How do you know the configuration won’t switch back? The Gecko could keep us off balance, charging back and forth, always the wrong way? At Wroxley Parsonage in ’52, there was a corridor like that, a man-trap. The MVM before me lost two of his group in it.”

Jeperson was given pause.

He looked up through the hole in the ceiling, at telephone wires, clouds, the sky. He could tell which way the train was travelling but lost that certainty if he stepped too far away from the hole. The windows were no help. They might have been painted over or gooed on. A rifle-stock blow rattled but did not break the glass.

“There’s a spirit ’ere ’oo wants to speak,” said Mrs Nickles.

Harry was impatient. “There are too many spirits here.”

“This is a new one, mate. I’m getting’ . . . ah . . . fingers?”

“Magic Fingers?” said Harry, suddenly taking the woman seriously. “Danny Myles? What’s happened to him?”

“Lost, Harry,” said Richard. This was news to the Most Valued Member.

“Damn.”

“’E says, don’t think, feel . . . Does that make sense?”

To Richard, it did. He shut his eyes and in the dark inside his head sensed Danny, or something left behind by Danny. He stopped trying to work out which way the train was speeding, just let his body become aware of the movement, the rattle, the shifting. He had little thrills, like tugging hooks or pointing arrows.

“Spin me round,” he said.

“Like the party game?” asked Mrs Nickles.

He nodded. Big hands took him and spun him. He went up on the points of his shoes, remembering two weeks of ballet training, and revolved like a human top.

He came to a stop without falling.

He knew which way to charge and did so, opening his eyes on the way. He didn’t even know which end of the carriage he was exiting from. He opened the communication door and plunged on, as if Mrs Sweet’s gun were a divining rod.

The others followed.

VI

Richard knew Danny was tied here, along with many others. Magic Fingers was fresh enough to have some independence, but soon he’d be sucked in and become another head of a collective pain-eating hydra. The Scotch Streak was home to a Bad Thing. Haunting a house, or a lonely road or public toilet or whatever, seldom meant more than floating sheets or clammy invisible touches. The worst haunters, the Bad Things, were monsters with ambition. They wanted to be free of the anchors that kept them earth-bound, not to ascend to a higher sphere or rest in peace or go into the light . . . but to wreak harm. Plague-and-Great-Fire-of-London harm. Japanese Radioactive Dinosaur Movie harm. End of all Things harm.

He was in a carriage he hadn’t seen before but didn’t doubt he was on the track of the Gecko.

There were no windows, not even black glass. Hunting trophies on shields – antlers and heads of antlered animals – stuck out of panelled walls, protruding as if bone were growing like wood, making the aisle as difficult to penetrate as a thick thorn forest. There were rhino-horns and elephant tusks, even what looked like a sabre-tooth tiger-head with still-angry eyes. Low-slung leather armchairs were spaced at intervals, between foot-high side-tables where dust-filled brandy snifter glasses were abandoned next to ashtrays with fat cigar grooves. Potent, manly musk stung Richard’s nostrils.

“What’s this?” he asked Arnold, appalled.

“The Club Car, sir. Reserved for friends of the Director, Lord Kilpartinger. It’s not usually part of the rolling stock.”

In one chair slumped a whiskered skeleton wearing a bullet-bandoleer, Sam Browne belt and puttees. It gripped a rifle-barrel with both hands, a loose toe-bone stuck in the trigger-guard, gun-mouth jammed between blasted-wide skull-jaws, the cranium exploded away.

“Any idea who that was?” Richard.

“He’s in Catriona’s pamphlet,” put in Harry. “ ‘Basher’ Moran, 1935. Some aged, leftover Victorian Colonel. Big-game hunter and gambling fiend. Stalked anything and everything, put holes in it and dragged hide, head or horns home to stick on the wall. Mixed up in extensive crookery, according to Catriona, wriggled out of a hanging more than once. He’s here because he won his final bet. One of his jolly old pals wagered he couldn’t find anything in the world he hadn’t shot before. He proved his friend wrong, there and then.”

An upturned pith helmet several feet away contained bone and dum-dum fragments.

“Case closed.”

“Too true. They made a film about Moran and the train, Terror by Night.”

Richard advanced carefully, between trophies, tapping too-persistent horns out of the way with the gun-barrel.

“Could do with a machete,” he commented. “Careful of barbs.”

The train took a series of snake-curve turns, swinging alarmingly from side to side. A narwhal horn dimpled Richard’s velvet shoulder.

Richard heard Harry ouch as he speared himself on an antler-point.

“Just a scratch,” he reported. “Doesn’t hurt as much as my bloody hand.”

“Shouldn’t ought to be allowed,” said Mrs Nickles. “Shootin’ poor animals as never did no-one no harm.”

“I rather agree with you,” said Richard. “Hunting should be saved for man-killers.”

Gingerly, they got through the club car without further casualties.

The next carriage was the dining car, again. Harry wanted to give up, but Richard pressed on.

“Table-settings here are the other way round,” he said. “It’s not the same.”

“There ain’t no bleedin’ great ’ole in the roof neither,” observed Mrs Nickles.

“That too.”

“We shall be pleased to serve a light breakfast after Inverdeith,” announced Arnold. “For those who wish to arrive at Portnacreirann refreshed and invigorated.”

“Kippers later,” said Richard. “After the world-saving.”

Beyond this dining car was First Class. Richard led them past the sleeping compartments. Annette’s door hung open: her night-gown was laid out on the counterpane, like a cast-off silk snakeskin. That was a thump to the heart.

The decoy couriers snored away. No need to bother them.

Another expedition was coming down the corridor towards them. Were they so turned around in time they were running into themselves? Or had evil duplicate ghost-finders emerged from the wrong-way-round dimension where knives and forks were right-to-left? No, there was a mirror at the end of the corridor. Score one for eliminating the impossible.

“Where’s the connecting door?” Richard asked the Conductor.

“There’s no need for one, sir,” said Arnold. “Beyond is only the coal tender, and the locomotive. Passengers may not pass beyond this point.”

The Gecko had managed, though.

One of the doors flapped, swinging open, banging back. Cold air streamed in, like water through a salmon’s gills.

Richard pushed the door and leaned out of the carriage, keeping a firm grip on the frame.

Below, a gravel verge sped by. To the East, the scarlet rim of dawn outlined a black horizon. Up ahead, 3473-S rolled over the rails, pistons pumping, everything oiled and watered and fired.

An iron girder came up, horribly fast. Richard ducked back in.

“We’re on the bridge,” he said.

Before anyone could object, if they were going to, he threw himself out of the door.

VII

Clinging to the side of the carriage, it occurred to Richard that someone else might have volunteered to crawl – essentially one-handed, since shotguns don’t have useful shoulder-slinging straps like field-rifles – along the side of a speeding steam train.

Harry had seniority and responsibility, but his injured hand disqualified him. Mrs Nickles was too hefty, overage and a woman besides. And the conductor was not entirely of their party. The Gecko had fit into him much too snugly. There was more mystery to

Arnold – a streak of sneakiness, of evasion, of tragedy. Richard had noticed a spark in his mild eyes as Mrs Nickles was talking about the good old days of the LSIR, about the Shagging Scot and the Headless Fireman and the In-for-Death Run of ’31.

So, the train-crawling was down to him.

Once he’d swung out on the door, he eased himself around so he was hanging outside the train, blasted by the air-rush, deafened by the roar. About eight feet of carriage was left before the coupling. That was a mystery – a compartment not accessible to the passengers. No, it wasn’t a mystery – it was a toilet and washroom for the driver and the fireman, reachable by a wide, safe running-board along the side of the coal tender, with guard-rails and hand-holds he would just now have greatly appreciated on this carriage.

Above him, however, were loops of red chain – the communication cord. Richard grabbed a loop and held tight. The whistle shrilled over the din of the train. Cold chain bit into his palm. He should have put gloves on.

He dangled one-handed, trusting the chain to take his weight, back against the carriage, and saw glints on the dark waters of Loch Gaer several hundred feet below. Down there were the angry spirits of Jock McGaer’s “graysome” dinners, the drowned Inverdeith Witches and the cut-loose passengers of ’31 – they must all be wrapped up in the Gecko too. Not to mention the “stoon o’ fire spat out frae hell” of 1601. This had all started with that.

The flimsy-seeming bridge, he reminded himself, was the sturdy structure put up to replace the one that fell down. Girders flashed past, faster and faster. He used the stock of the gun to push himself along, and the barrel caught on a girder. The gun was wrenched out of his hand, twisted into a U-shape, and dropped into the loch. Mrs Sweet had made a special point of telling Arnold to look after her artillery. A stiff complaint would be made to British Rail in the next day or two, providing there was a next day or two.

With both hands free, it was easier to travel from loop to loop. He’d think about how to deal with the Gecko without a weapon when he got to it. A sound rap on the nose didn’t seem likely to do the trick.

The door clanged shut behind him. Harry and Mrs Nickles hung out of the open window, fixed expressions of encouragement plastered on anxious faces.

He fought the harsh wind, cruel gravity, hot spits of steam and cinder, and his own clumsiness. Something shaped like a little girl had done this earlier, he knew. The Gecko could probably stick to the side of the train, like a real lizard.

Eight feet. A hard eight feet. The skirts of his frock coat lashed his thighs. He had no feeling in his hands, but blood dripped from weals across his palms. He reached out for the next loop, the last, and his fist closed on nothing, then locked. He had to force his hand open and look up, hooking nerveless, perhaps boneless fingers over the loop. He saw his grip, but couldn’t feel it. He didn’t want to let go of the hold he was sure of. But if he didn’t, he was stuck. He reached out his leg, which didn’t quite stretch enough to hook over the guard-rail. His boot-sole scraped tarnished brass. His cuff was sodden with his own blood. With a prayer to higher powers, he let go the sure hold, put all his weight on the unsure one, and swung towards the platform.

He made it and found his feet on a veranda-like platform at the end of the carriage. He shook with fear and weakness and relief. Feeling came back, unwelcome, to his bloodied hand.

Between the carriage and the locomotive was the big, heavy coupling. Black iron thickened with soot and grease.

On the coupling squatted the Gecko. Only the braids and oily pyjamas even suggested this was still Vanessa. It was goblin filth on a poison toadstool, a gremlin dismantling an aero-engine in flight, the imp in Fuseli’s Nightmare hovering over a sleeping maiden.

With stubby-fingered, black hands, it picked at the coupling.

The Gecko looked up, eyes round, nostrils like slits. It hissed at Richard.

Blasts of steam came, surrounding them both with scalding fog. The whistle shrieked again.

In the coal tender, nearly empty this close to the destination, rolled two bodies, the driver and the engineer. They were sooty, with red torn-out throats. No one was at the open throttle.

Richard shook hot water off his face, which began to sting. He’d be red as a cooked lobster.

He grabbed the Gecko by the shoulders. He held folds of Vanessa’s pyjama top and pulled.

It gnawed his wrists.

Things hadn’t all gone the monster’s way. In 1931, it had unhooked the coupling at this point on the bridge. Now, it was using one little girl’s hands rather than two experienced men’s. The Gecko could give its hosts strengths, ignore their injuries, distort their faces . . . but it couldn’t increase a hand-span, or make tiny fingers work big catches.

The Gecko tried to take Richard and he shrugged it off.

They were more than halfway across the bridge.

“No room here,” he told it. “No room anywhere for you. Why not quit?”

Vanessa slumped in his grip, hands relaxing on the coupling. Richard picked her up, pressed her face to his chest.

“Can’t breathe,” she said, in her own voice.

This was too easy.

In the coal tender, two bodies sat up and began to crawl towards Richard and Vanessa. The Gecko had found experienced railway-men’s hands. This was where having a shotgun would have been useful – he doubted he could shoot Vanessa, even if he had smashed a plate in her face, but he’d have no compunction about blasting a couple of already dead fellows.

The Gecko had no trouble working both corpses at the same time, which meant there was probably still some of it in the child. It had been hatched in the driver’s cabin of 3473, and was at its strongest here.

The fireman threw a lump of coal, which broke against the carriage behind Richard’s head. The driver clambered off the tender, down to the coupling platform. There was a lever there, its restraints undone.

The bridge might not come down, but at this speed and gradient the uncoupled carriages would concertina, come off the rails, break through the girders, fall into the loch.

There was a lot of dawnlight in the sky now.

Holding Vanessa close, he felt something in the hankie pocket of her pyjamas. He shifted her weight to his left shoulder, freeing his right hand to pluck out the Go-Codes.

He held the celluloid up in the rush of air, then let it go, snatched away, up and over the lake, sailing towards Inverdeith. One of the most closely-guarded military secrets in the world was tossed into the wind.

“You should have committed the Go-Codes to memory,” he told the monster.

The Gecko’s corpse puppets opened throats and yelled, like the whistle. Then, the whistle itself sounded. The Gecko wasn’t only in the driver and the fireman. It clothed itself in the iron of the locomotive, the brass-trim and scabby purple paint. Its fury burned in the furnace. Its frustration built up a seam-splitting head of steam. Its hunger ate up the rails.

Richard thought he’d saved the world, but not himself.

“What’s keeping you here?” he asked.

Dead hands reached the uncoupling lever. Richard slid his cutthroat razor out of his sleeve and flicked it open. He drew the edge swiftly, six or seven times, across greasy, blackened meat, cutting muscle-strings.

The corpse’s hands hung useless, fingers flopping against the lever like sausages. The corpse was suddenly untenanted, and crumpled, falling over the coupling, arms dangling.

The Scotch Streak was safely across Inverdeith Bridge.

VIII

The fireman lay dead, empty of the Gecko.

It was just in the train now. The Scotch Streak’s lamps glowed a wicked red.

World War III was off, unless the Gecko could somehow let the Soviets know NATO’s trousers were down. But everyone on the train could still be killed.

At this speed, slamming into the buffers at Portnacreirann would mean a horrific pile-up. Or the Scotch Streak might plough through the station, and steam down Portnacreirann High Street and over a cliff. Like Colonel Moran, the Gecko was intent on spiteful suicide. It could carry them all with it, in fire and broken metal.

Richard knew Diogenes Club procedure. Solve the problem, no matter the cost. His father had told him from the first this was a life of service, of sacrifice. Every Member, every Talent, gave up something. Danny and Annette weren’t the first to lose their lives.

It might be a fair trade.

“Are we nearly there?” Vanessa asked, laying her head on his shoulder. “I’m very sleepy.”

He felt the weight of the child in his arms. He had to carry the fight through. For her. He only had a half-life, snatched from a void. He should have been dead many times over. There was a reason he’d survived his childhood. Maybe it was Vanessa. She had to be saved, not sacrificed.

“There’s one thing left to do,” he told her. “Have you ever wanted to drive a choo-choo train?”

She laughed at him. “Only babies say ‘choo-choo’!”

“Chuff-chuff, then.”

Vanessa’s giggle gave him the boost he needed, though he was still terrified. While facing demon-possessed zombies and nuclear holocaust, he’d misplaced his fear. Now, he was in charge of a runaway train, funk seeped back into his stomach. He found he was trembling.

He set the girl down safely and stepped over the dead driver, climbed the ladder to the coal tender, passed the dead fireman and got to the cabin. The furnace door clanked open. Levers and wheels swayed or rolled with the train’s movement.

It occurred to him that he didn’t know how to stop a train.

“Can I sound the whistle?” asked Vanessa. She had followed, monkeying over the coal tender, unfazed by dead folk. She found the whistle-pull, easily.

Richard absent-mindedly said she could and looked about for switches with useful labels like PULL TO SLOW DOWN or EMERGENCY BRAKES. He heard the Gecko’s chuckle in the roll of coal in the furnace. It knew exactly the pickle he was in.

Vanessa blew the whistle, three long bursts, three short bursts, three long bursts. What every schoolchild knew in Morse code. SOS. Save Our Souls. Help! Mayday. M’aidez! Richard wasn’t sure she even understood it was a distress signal, it was likely only Morse she knew.

The sun was almost up. The sky was the colour of blood.

Ahead, the rails curved across open space, towards Portnacreirann Station.

“I can see the sea,” shouted Vanessa, from her perch.

Richard muttered that they might be making rather too close acquaintance with the sea – rather, Loch Linnhe – in a minute or two.

“Here comes someone,” said Vanessa.

More trouble, no doubt! He looked back and couldn’t see anything.

He was reluctant to leave the cabin, though he admitted he was useless at the throttle, but surrendered to an impulse. He was sensitive: he should trust his feelings while he had them. He made his way back past the tender.

The door to the staff toilet was open and Arnold stood with a fire-axe. He had smashed through the mirror. Mrs Nickles was behind him. And Harry Cutley. Richard kicked himself for not thinking of that, but hadn’t known there was a door beyond the mirrored partition.

Arnold raised the axe and Richard knew the Gecko had its hook in him, had been reeling him in like trout. Mrs Nickles shouted something. They hadn’t come in response to the SOS.

Now, in addition to the runaway train, he had an axe-wielding madman to deal with.

Richard dashed back to the cabin. Arnold leaped across the coupling, treading on his dead colleague, and followed.

The conductor was the full Gecko now. Richard had a razor against an axe.

He pulled the first lever that came to hand. Instinct paid off. A burst of steam pushed Arnold back, knocking him to his knees. Richard kicked at the axe-head and wrenched the weapon out of the conductor’s hands. He took hold of the man’s throat and held up his fist, enjoying the look of inhuman panic – the Gecko in terror! – in Arnold’s eyes, then clipped him smartly, bang on the button. This time, fortune was with him. The Gecko’s light went out. Arnold slumped in Richard’s grip, blood creeping from his nose.

Mrs Nickles had followed Arnold. She clung to the hand-rail.

“It’s Donald,” she shouted. “Donald McRidley. I didn’t recognise the blighter without ’is ’air. ’E were a ruddy woman about his blessed beautiful ’air when ’e were the Shaggin’ Scot, an’ now e’s a bald-bonced old git.”

Arnold’s – Donald’s! – eyes fluttered open.

So, he wasn’t a navvy. Or not any more. He was back on his train. Unable to get away, Richard supposed. No wonder.

“Driver,” he shouted. “Bring in the Streak!”

“Passengers aren’t allowed in this part of the train, sir,” he mumbled. “It’s against regulations. The company can’t be held responsible for accidents.”

Richard saw the red glint, the Gecko creeping back. He slapped McRidley, hard. The eyes were clear for a moment.

“Time to stop the train,” he told the man. “Do your duty, at last. Redeem your name.”

“Do it for Else, ducks,” said Mrs Nickles, cooing in McRidley’s ear. “Do it for poor Nick. For the LSI-bloody-R.”

McRidley broke free of the pair of them.

As if sleepwalking in a hurry, mind somewhere else, he pulled levers, rolled wheels, tapped gauges.

The station was dead ahead, sunlight flashing on its glass roof.

Wheels screamed on rails. Vanessa tooted the whistle, happily.

Harry was with them now, arm in a makeshift sling, hair awry. Every boy wanted to be in the cabin of a steam train.

They all had to hang onto something as McRidley braced himself.

Sparks showered the platform, startling an early-morning porter. The buffers loomed.

They did not crash. But there was a heavy jolt.

IX

Donald McRidley, Arnold the Conductor, was dead. When the train stopped, so did he – like grandfather and the clock in the song.

3473-S was decoupled now and shunted into a siding. The Gecko was still nestled in there, but its conduit to the train, to the passengers, was cut. Richard thought it might have been the communication cord, which had to be unhooked – but the monster had also been tied to the lifeline of the once-disgraced, now-redeemed driver.

“’E were a ’handsome devil,” commented Mrs Nickles, putting her teeth back in. “Loved ’is train more than any girl, though.”

Harry was on the telephone to Edwin Winthrop. He said the entity was in captivity, but Richard knew the Gecko was dying. As the fire went out in 3473’s belly, the monster gasped its last. A bad beast, Danny had called it. The iron shell would just be a trophy. They should hang the cow-catcher in the Diogenes Club.

The decoy couriers were gone, off to the NATO base. Mrs Sweet was marching down to the baggage car, where a surprise awaited. The terrifying vicar looked even more ghastly in the light of day. Richard had brushed past the man several times, mind open for any ill-omen, to convince himself the Gecko wasn’t sneaking off in this vessel to work its evil anew.

Police and ambulances were on their way. Edwin would have words in ears, to account for Danny, Annette and the crewmen, not to mention general damage. Richard found Annette rolled under a table, and carried her to her compartment, where he laid her out on her bed, over her night-gown, eyes closed.

A straight-backed American civilian, with teeth like Burt Lancaster and a chin-dent like Kirk Douglas, scouted along the platform.

“Buddy, have you seen a parcel?” he said. “For Coates?”

Richard tried to answer, but no words came.

The American looked further, walking past Vanessa.

Portnacreirann

The train finally came, as Richard finished telling the story.

They had been up all night. Cold Saturday dawn had broken.

Now, they sat in a carriage, not a compartment. Fred settled in, but Richard was restless.

“I used to love trains,” he said. “Even after my Ghost Train ride. It was a nice way to travel. You had time and ease, to read or talk or look out the window. Now, it’s all strikes and delays. This might as well be a motor-coach. She hates trains, you know. Mrs Thatcher. To her, anyone who travels on public transport is a failure, beneath contempt. She’s going to bleed the railways. It’ll be horrid. Like so much else.”

Fred still had questions.

“So, guv, who is Vanessa?”

Richard shrugged. “Vanessa is Vanessa, Fred. Like me, she’s no real memory of who she was, if she was anyone. In my case, there was a war, a decade of chaos. It was easy to get misplaced, left out of the records. With her . . . well, it shouldn’t have been possible. Someone dropped her off at Euston with a label round her neck. A woman, she thought, but not her mother. Surely, she couldn’t be a stray, she must belong to someone?”

“What about that Coates bloke? The Yank at Portnacreirann.”

“That wasn’t ‘Lieutenant Commander Alexander Coates, RN’, That was a Colonel Christopher Conner, SAC ‘Coates’ wasn’t an alias or a code – just a name on a label. Winthrop made enquiries. The only ‘Alexander Coates’ even remotely in the Navy was a 14-year-old sea-scout. We looked into the system of couriering the Go-Codes. The Americans had only given us the cover story even when they’d wanted help, so we threw a bit of a sulk. They eventually admitted – and this is how strange defence policy is – that they had, as they said, ‘contracted out’. Hired a private firm to make delivery, not telling them what was being carried. The firm turned out to be a phone in an empty room with six weeks’ rent in arrears. Maybe some semi-crook was hauling kids out of orphanages and bundling them up to Scotland under official cover, then selling them on or disposing of them. We’ll never know and, in the end, it was beside the point.”

“You adopted Vanessa?”

“No. No one adopted her, unless you count the Diogenes Club.”

“Does she have a surname?”

“Not really. Where it’s absolutely necessary, it’s ‘Kaye’. Catriona took an interest, as she did in me. Without her, we’d be complete freaks.”

Fred kept quiet on that one.

“What about the Gecko? Harry Cutley?”

“The Gecko died, if it could be said to have lived. When 3473-S turned into cold scrap iron, it was gone. Puff. Harry poked around with his instruments before giving up. For a year or two, another old steamer pulled the Scotch Streak. Then it went diesel. Harry dropped out in 1967. Went to Nepal. And I became the Most Valued Member. There’s a ceremony. Very arcane. Like the Masons. You know most of what’s happened since.”

Fred thought it through.

He did know most of the stories, but not all. Despite ten years’ involvement with the Diogenes Club, with Richard and Vanessa, there were mysteries. They could both still surprise him. Once, in a close, tense, unexpected moment, before Fred met Zarana, he and Vanessa had kissed, deeply and urgently. She said, “You do know I’m a man,” and, for dizzying seconds, he had believed her. Then she giggled, they were back in danger, and anything further between them cut off.

After a decade, he still didn’t know if Richard and Vanessa had ever been a couple. Everyone else assumed, but he didn’t. Now, knowing about the Ghost Train, he saw how complex their entanglement was: a kinship of siblings, raised under the aegis of a unique institution, but also guardianship, as Richard brought Vanessa into the circle the way his adoptive father had brought him. The only thing he really knew now that had been mystifying before was how Vanessa had got her eyebrow scar. Richard had given it to her.

Lately, Vanessa had been absent a great deal. So had Fred, of course – with Zarana, or at the Yard. But Vanessa had been on missions, cases, sealed-knot and under-the-rose business. A change was coming in the Club – when Richard took a seat on the Cabal, as seemed inevitable, Vanessa was in line to become Most Valued Member? There was a woman Prime Minister, so no reason why a woman couldn’t hold that title. If she wanted it – which, Fred realised, he didn’t know she did.

For three months, there’d been no word. While Richard and Fred were tracking cornflakes cultists, she was somewhere else, unavailable. Fred could tell Richard was concerned, though confident in the woman. She’d survived a lot since throwing off the Gecko. Now, this summons.

. . . to Portnacreirann.

“It’s not over, is it?” said Fred. “It can’t be coincidence that it’s the same place.”

Richard gave a non-committal pfui.

“We’re at Inverdeith,” he said. “And that’s a Portnacreirann train on the other side of the platform.”

They were off one train before it had completely stopped and on another already moving out.

And then Inverdeith Bridge. Sun glinted on the surface of Loch Gaer.

“This is where the Gecko was born,” said Richard. “Between Nick Bowler and Donald McRidley and 3473-S. And that ‘stoon o’ fire spat out frae hell’, if I’m any judge – which I am. The stoon was an egg, waiting for the right circumstances to hatch. All the other bloody business around the loch was influenced by the unborn thing. Maybe it was an alien, not a demon. The stoon was what we’d now call a meteorite, after all. From outer space. Witch-drownings and human haggis kept the embryo on a drip-feed for centuries, but it awaited a vehicle – literally. The shell-shards might still be down there. Maybe it was a clutch of eggs.”

Fred looked at untroubled waters. This local train proceeded slowly over the bridge. He saw rust on the girders where paint had flaked away, missing rivets, spray-can INDEPENDENT SCOTLAND graffiti, scratched swear-words.

“In-for-Death,” he said.

“Think calm thoughts, Frederick. And we’ll be safe.”

This was where it had happened. With that thought, Fred had a chill. He didn’t only mean this was where the Gecko was born and defeated, but this was where Richard and Vanessa had started. When Richard got on the Ghost Train, he’d been a kid himself. When he got off . . .

Past the bridge, with Portnacreirann in sight and passengers taking luggage down from overhead racks, Fred’s insides went tight. They had been delayed. What if they were too late? What was so urgent anyway? He had learned to be ready for anything. But what kind of anything was there at Portnacreirann?

“Did you bring your elephant gun, guv?”

Richard snorted at that.

They got off the train, carrying their bags.

They walked along the platform and into the station. It was busier than Culler’s Halt, but emptied quickly.

A centrepiece of the station was an old steam engine, restored and polished, with a plaque and a little fence around it.

Richard froze. It was 3473-S, the locomotive that had pulled the Scotch Streak, the Ghost Train, the favoured physical form of the Gecko. Now, it was just a relic. No danger at all. A youth in naval dress uniform admired it. He turned and saw them.

“Mr Jeperson, Mr Regent,” he said. “Glad you made it in time. Cutting it close, but we’ll get you to the base by breaking petty road safety laws. Come on.”

The officer trotted out of the station. Fred and Richard followed, without further thought for 3473-S.

A jeep and driver waited on the forecourt. The officer helped them up. Fred had a pang at being treated as if he were elderly when he was only just used to thinking of himself as “early middle aged”. It happened more and more lately.

“I’m Jim,” said the boy in uniform. “Al’s cousin. We’re a navy family. Put down for ships at birth like some brats are for schools. In the sea-scouts as soon as we’re teething. I hope your lady knows what she’s getting into.”

Fred and Richard looked at each other, not saying anything.

“We all think she’s rather super, you know. For her age.”

“We admire her qualities, too,” said Richard.

Fred had a brief fantasy of tossing Jim out of the jeep to watch him bounce on the road.

They travelled at speed down a winding lane. Three cyclists with beards and cagoules pedalling the other way wound up tangled in the verge, shaking fists as Jim blithely shouted out “sorry” at them. “Naval emergency,” he explained, though they couldn’t hear.

Whatever trouble Vanessa was in, Fred was ready to fight.

The jeep roared through a checkpoint. The ratings on duty barely lifted the barrier in time. Jim waved a pass at them, redundantly.

They were on the base.

It had been a fishing village once, Fred saw – the rows of stone cottages were old and distinctive. Prefab services buildings fit in around the original community. The submarine-launched “independent deterrent” was a Royal Navy show now. NATO – i.e. the Yanks – preferred intercontinental ballistic missiles they could lob at the Soviets from their own backyards in Kansas, or bombs dropped from the planes that could be scrambled from the protestor-fringed base at Greenham Common. There would still be Go-Codes, though.

The base was on alert. Sailors with guns rushed about. There were rumours of trouble in the South Atlantic. Naval budget cuts had withdrawn forces from the region so suddenly that a South American country, say Argentina, could easily get the wrong idea. It might be time to send a gun-boat to remind potential invaders that the Falklands remained British. If there were any gun-boats left.

The jeep did a tight turn to a halt, scattering gravel in front of a small building. Once the village church, it was now the base chapel.

“Just in time,” said Jim, jumping down.

He opened the big door tactfully, so as not to disturb a service inside, and signalled for Fred and Richard to yomp in after him.

Fred remembered Richard leading him into a deconsecrated church at dead of midnight to stop a then-cabinet minister intent on slitting the throat of a virgin choirboy in a ritual supposed to revive the British moulded plastics industry. The Minister was resigned through ill-health and packed off to the House of Lords to do no further harm. The choirboy was now in the pop charts dressed as a pirate, singing as if his throat really had been cut. This wasn’t like that, but a ritual was in progress.

No one in the congregation gave the newcomers a glance. Jim led Fred and Richard to places in a pew on the bride’s side of the church. They found themselves sitting next to Catriona Kaye, and her nurse. All the others from her day – Edwin, Sir Giles – were gone. Barbara Corri was here too, in a cloud of ylang-ylang with her hair done like Lady Diana Spencer’s. Even Inspector Price of the Yard, sporting a smart new mac. Fred looked around, knowing the other shoe would drop. Yes, Zarana, in some incredible dress, was at the front, clicking away with a spy camera lifted from Fred’s stash of surveillance equipment.

“We got telegrams,” whispered Professor Corri, fingers around Richard’s arm.

Vanessa stood at the altar, red hair pinned up under the veil, in a white dress with a train. Beside her stood a navy officer Fred had never seen before. He couldn’t focus on the groom’s face for the glare of his uniform. He even had the dress-sword on his belt and plumed helmet under his arm.

“How did this happen?” Fred asked, to no one in particular.

“A loose end, long neglected,” whispered Catriona. “Not that it explains anything . . .”

She dabbed a hankie to the corner of her eye.

Fred looked at Richard. The man was crying and Fred had absolutely no idea what he was feeling.

Fred looked at the altar, at the naval chaplain.

“. . . Do you, Alexander Selkirk Coates take this woman, Vanessa, ah, No Surname Given, to be your lawfully wedded wife . . .”

Fred looked up at the vaulted ceiling, gob-smacked.

STEPHEN JONES & KIM NEWMAN

Necrology: 2006

AS ALWAYS, we acknowledge the passing of writers, artists, performers and technicians who, during their lifetimes, made significant contributions to the horror, science fiction and fantasy genres (or left their mark on popular culture and music in other, often fascinating, ways) . . .

AUTHORS/ARTISTS/COMPOSERS

American TV scriptwriter Arthur Browne, Jr died on January 3rd, aged 82. Although best known for his Western credits, he also wrote episodes of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, The Incredible Hulk and Planet of the Apes, along with the Elvis Presley movie Clambake.

Playboy cartoonist Eldon Dedini, whose work was set in a world of nymphs and satyrs since the early 1960s, died of oesophageal cancer on January 12th, aged 84. He also worked for Esquire, The New Yorker, Universal Studios and Disney (where his credits include Mickey and the Beanstalk).

Prolific British children’s book author Jan Mark (Janet Marjorie Brisland) died on January 15th, aged 62. A two-time winner of the Carnegie Medal, her short supernatural stories are collected in Nothing to Be Afraid Of and In Black and White, while her SF titles include The Ennead, its sequel Divide and Rule, Aquarius, They Do Things Differently There, The Sighting and Riding Tycho. In 1993 she edited The Oxford Book of Chldren’s Stories.

British illustrator John Stewart died of liver failure in London’s St. Thomas Hospital on January 18th. He was in his late fifties and had been ill for some time. During the 1970s and ’80s he contributed to such small press magazines as Whispers and Fantasy Tales, producing a number of portfolios for the former (including one for the special Stephen King issue, inspired by The Gunslinger) and illustrating Clive Barker’s story “The Forbidden” for the latter (later included in the anthology The Best Horror from Fantasy Tales). Stewart also illustrated the 1978 Whispers Press edition of Robert Bloch’s Cthulhu Mythos novel Strange Eons, Michael Shea’s 1987 collection Polyphemus for Arkham House, and contributed artwork to many European paperback books, including the 1982 Dutch anthology Shangri-La. More recently, Jerad Walters published an extensive retrospective of Stewart’s art in the hardcover magazine Chimera, from Centipede Press. During the late 1980s to the mid-’90s, he was in a detox programme for drug and alcohol abuse, and it was during this period that a fire in his apartment reportedly destroyed much of his book collection and original artwork.

English-born animator and director Norm McCabe died the same day, aged 94. He began working at Warner Bros, in the mid-1930s, where his credits include a number of Porky Pig and Daffy Duck cartoons. He later contributed to such TV series and specials as The Superman/Aquaman Hour, The Batman/Superman Hour, The Plastic Man Comedy/Adventure Show, The Grinch Grinches the Cat in the Hat, Daffy Duck’s Movie: Fantastic Island, The Duxorcist, The Night of the Living Duck and Daffy Duck’s Quackbusters. McCa-be’s other credits include Fritz the Cat and Transformers: The Movie.

33-year-old American comic book artist Seth Fisher died on January 30th after falling seven stories from a roof in his adopted homeland of Japan. His credits include DC Comics’ Green Lantern: Willworld, the Eisner Award-nominated Flash: Time Flies, Batman: Snow, and Marvel’s Fantastic Four/Iron Man: Big in Japan.

British crime writer, actor and broadcaster Ernest Dudley (Vivian Ernest Coltman Allen), who created sinister BBC Radio detective “Dr. Morelle” in 1942, died on February 1st, aged 97. The character, inspired by Erich von Stroheim, who Dudley had met in Paris in the 1930s, was originally played by Cecil Parker. The 1949 Hammer film The Case of the Missing Heiress featured Valentine Dyall as Morelle, and Dudley himself portrayed the role in a 1951 film adaptation.

Veteran animator and illustrator Myron Waldman died of congestive heart failure on February 4th, aged 97. He was the last surviving animator from the Max Fleischer Studios, which he joined in 1930. There he helped develop such characters as Betty Boop (who started out as a dog), Popeye, Superman, Raggedy Ann, Baby Huey, Herman, Little Lulu and Casper the Friendly Ghost. In 1934 he began producing a number of “Color Classics” cartoons in response to Disney’s series of “Silly Symphonies”. He left the company in 1957 and moved to television (Milton the Monster and Batfink), before later touring on the lecture circuit.

The body of 76-year-old American TV writer and director Alan Shalleck, who collaborated with co-creator Margaret Rey to bring the Curious George series to the Disney Channel as more than 100 five-minute shorts, was found in Florida on February 7th. Two men were charged with his murder. Shalleck and Rey (who died in 1996) also collaborated on more that two dozen further books about the mischievous monkey after the death of artist H. A. Rey in 1977.

91-year-old Japanese composer Akira Ifukube, best known for his iconic Godzilla theme, died of multiple organ failure in Tokyo on February 8th. He later scored many other films in Toho’s “Godzilla” series, along with such titles as Rodan!, The Mysterians, Battle in Outer Space, Atragon, Dagora the Space Monster, Frankenstein Conquers the World, War of the Gargantuas, Majin (and its sequels), King Kong Escapes and Latitude Zero. He came out of retirement in 1995 to score Godzilla vs. Destroyer, and his theme continued to be heard on the last series entry, Godzilla: Final Wars (2004). Ifukube also came up with Godzilla’s trademark roar by running a resin-coated glove over the strings of a double bass.

British crime writer Michael Gilbert died the same day, aged 93. Named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America in 1998, his ghost stories appeared in Argosy and The After Midnight Ghost Book.

Peter [Bradford] Benchley, the grandson of humorist Robert Benchley and best-selling author of Jaws, died of complications from idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis at his New Jersey home on February 11th, aged 65. Jaws, which has sold more than twenty million copies world-wide since its first publication in 1974, was successfully filmed by Steven Spielberg the following year from a script co-written by Benchley (who also had a cameo). It became the first film to gross more than $100 million and spawned a series of sequels and imitators. Benchley’s other novels, The Deep, The Island and Beast were also filmed, but with less success, while his 1994 novel White Shark, about a Nazi-engineered man/shark hybrid, was made into the 1998 TV movie Creature. Although Benchley’s Jaws did much to demonise sharks, the writer became a passionate conservationist and advocate for the species.

British-born film and television executive and author James Hardiman died in San Francisco on February 19th, aged 86. He moved to Hollywood in 1956, where he worked for Walt Disney Productions, CBS-TV, Screen Gems and Columbia Pictures Television. He spent a number of years in Tokyo as a correspondent for Daily Variety, and his supernatural novel The House Where Evil Dwells was filmed in Japan in 1982 starring Edward Albert, Susan George and Doug McClure.

58-year-old African-American SF author Octavia E. (Estelle) Butler died of a stroke on February 24th after striking her head during a fall on the sidewalk outside her Seattle home. She was reportedly on high blood pressure medication at the time. Inspired by the movie Devil Girl from Mars, she began writing at age twelve and her first story, “Crossover”, appeared in the 1971 anthology of the Clarion Science Fiction Writers Workshop. She went on to publish nearly twenty books, including Patternmaster, Kindred, Wild Seed, Parable of the Talents and the 2005 vampire novel Fledgling. Butler received the Nebula Award, two Hugo Awards and the PEN Center West Lifetime Achievement Award. In 1995 she was the first SF writer granted a “genius” award from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, receiving $295,000 over five years.

American artist Ronald Clyne died of a heart attack on February 26th, aged 80. He sold his first illustration to Fantastic Stories at the age of fifteen, and in 1945 he was commissioned to illustrate the dust-jacket for August Derleth’s collection Something Near. This began a long association with Derleth’s Arkham House imprint, and during the 1940s he produced numerous covers for the small press, including The Opener of the Way by Robert Bloch, Night’s Black Agents by Fritz Leiber, Jr, The Clock Strikes Twelve by H. Russell Wakefield (his personal favourite) and The Lurker at the Threshold by H. P. Lovecraft and Derleth. He also contributed illustrations to the pulp magazines, including Weird Tales. Clyne occasionally returned to work for Arkham in the 1950s and ’60s, but was by then a prolific and successful artist employed by all the major New York publishing houses. Between 1951 and 1981 he also created more than 500 distinctive album covers for Folkways Records, which he considered his best work.

American fantasy author Ronald Anthony Cross died from a stroke on March 1st, aged 68. His first story appeared in New Worlds 6 in 1973, and since 1994 he published four volumes in the “Eternal Guardians” series.

Richard [Patrick] Terra, who published non-fiction in Analog, The New York Review of Science Fiction and other publications, died of a pulmonary embolism on March 4th, aged 46.

Dutch-born SF writer Nancy Ann Dibble (Ansen Dibell) died on March 7th, aged 63. Her “King of Katmorie” series ran over five books (1978–85), and as “Nan Dibble” she wrote Beyond Words, Beyond Silence, a 1992 tie-in to the Beauty and the Beast TV series.

Former attorney, antiques dealer and science fiction author David Feintuch [Mason] died of a heart attack on March 16th, aged 61. He had a long history of cardiac troubles and suffered from Type II Diabetes. Mason won the John W. Campbell Award for best new writer in 1996 for his military SF novel Midshipman’s Hope, and continued the Hornblower-like “Seafort Saga” over a further eight books. He also wrote the fantasy novels The Still and The King.

US academic and humorous fantasy author John Morressy died of a massive heart attack on March 20th, aged 75. He made his debut in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction with “Accuracy” in 1971, and his novels include Starbrat, Frostworld and Dream fire, The Juggler, Ironbrand, Graymantle and Kingsbane. In 1986 he created the humorous “Kedrigern” series, which includes A Voice for Princess, The Questing of Kedrigern and Kedrigern and the Dragon Comme II Faut.

SF author Kurt von Trojan died of bone and kidney cancer in Australia on March 22nd, aged 69. Born in Vienna, his books include the novels The Transing Syndrome and The Atrocity Shop and the collection When I Close My Eyes.

Jane Yolen’s husband of more than forty years, poet David W. (William) Stemple, died in his sleep after a long battle with cancer the same day, aged 68.

Polish SF author and critic Stanislaw Lem died of heart failure on March 27th, aged 84. The author of Solaris (filmed twice), his more than seventy books sold over twenty-seven million copies worldwide and were translated into more than forty languages. Lem’s other books include Man from Mars, The Astronauts, Hospital of the Transfiguration, The Star Diaries, The Chain of Chance, Memoirs Found in a Bathtub, The Invincible, The Cyberiad, Scene of the Crime and One Human Minute. He was made an honorary member of the SFWA in 1973, but that status was revoked when Lem published a controversial essay decrying the poor state of science fiction writing. He stopped writing fiction in 1989.

Typographical designer Ruari McLean died the same day, aged 88. During the 1950s and ’60s he supervised the design of such iconic British children’s comics as Eagle, Girl, Swift and Robin.

American author and screenwriter Henry Farrell (Charles Henry Myers), whose fiction was filmed as What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte, How Awful About Allan and What’s the Matter With Helen?, died on March 29th, aged 85.

Australian fan Diane Marchant died of pancreatic cancer on April 5th. In 1972 she created the Aussie Star Trek Welcommitte with Jacqueline Lichtenberg, and is credited with publishing the first sexually explicit “slash” fan fiction two years later.

TV writer and producer Burt Pearl died of lymphoma on April 6th, aged 49. He scripted episodes of The Highwayman, Something is Out There and Touched by an Angel, also executive producing the latter series until 2003.

63-year-old British SF and fantasy author and editor Angus Wells died in an accidental fire at his home on April 11th. While working at Sphere Books in the 1970s he edited a number of “Best of” collections based around individual authors. His own books include the TV tie-in Star Maidens (as by “Ian Evans”) and Swordsmistress of Chaos and A Time of Ghosts both with Robert Holdstock (as “Richard Kirk”), the first two volumes in the “Raven” series to which he contributed a further three solo novels. Wells’ other fantasy novels, published under his own name, include the “Book of the Kingdoms”, “Godwars” and “Exiles” series. He was also a prolific author of Westerns and adventure novels under a variety of house names.

88-year-old Scottish novelist Dame Muriel Spark (Muriel Sarah Camberg), whose novels The Comforters, Memento Mori, The Ballad of Beckham Rye and The Hothouse by the East River all contain elements of the supernatural, died in Florence, Italy, on April 13th. Best known for her 1961 book The Brime of Miss Jean Brodie, The Ghost Stories of Muriel Spark was published in 2003. Her revisionist 1951 biography, Child of Light, won a HWA Bram Stoker Award when expanded in 1987 as Mary Shelley: A Biography.

Scriptwriter, producer and director David Peckinpah, the nephew of film director Sam Peckinpah, died of a heart attack on April 23rd, aged 54. He scripted episodes of Beauty and the Beast and Farscape, produced Silk Stalkings, and produced and directed episodes of Sliders.

Screenwriter, dramatist and novelist Jay Presson Allen (Jacqueline Presson) died of a stroke on May 1st, aged 84. She adapted Mamie for Alfred Hitchcock, scripted the 1973 TV film The Borrowers and also wrote the screenplay for Ira Levin’s Deathtrap.

47-year-old American fantasy author Lisa A. (Anne) Barnett died in her sleep of a brain tumor caused by metastatic breast cancer on May 2nd. She collaborated with her partner, Melissa Scott, on the novels Point of Hopes, Point of Dreams and The Armor of Light, while their novella “The Carmen Miranda Gambit” appeared in Carmen Miranda’s Ghost is Haunting Space Station Three.

Music composer and conductor Andre Brummer died of pneumonia on May 6th, aged 89. His many credits include Roger Corman’s Monster from the Ocean Floor, Love Slaves of the Amazon, Eegah!, The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!?, Rat Pfink and Boo Boo, Sinthia the Devil’s Doll and The Hollywood Strangler Meets the Skid Row Slasher.

British editor and ghost story author Elizabeth M. (Margaret) Walter died on May 8th. Although she refused to divulge her age, she was believed to be around 78 or 79. Her stories are collected in Snowfall and Other Chilling Events, The Sin-Eater and Other Scientific Impossibilities, Davy Jones’s Tale and Other Supernatural Stories, Come and Get Me and Other Uncanny Invitations and The Dead Woman and Other Haunting Experiences. James Turner compiled some of her best tales for the 1979 Arkham House collection In the Mist and Other Uncanny Encounters. Her story “The Spider” was filmed as “A Fear of Spiders” for Rod Serling’s Night Gallery, and she also contributed to the 1972–73 TV series Ghost Story. Between 1961–93 Walter was chief editor of the Collins Crime Club at publisher William Collins.

George Lutz, whose claims in 1975 that his Long Island home was possessed by evil spirits became the basis of The Amityville Horror, died of heart disease the same day, aged 59. When the family moved out of their house after twenty-eight days following numerous bizarre occurrences, Lutz and his then wife Kathy (who died in 2004) collaborated with author Jay Anson on the 1977 best-seller. The story was filmed in 1977 and 2005, and inspired various sequels and spin-offs.

Russian philosopher and author Alexander Zinoviev died of cancer on May 10th, aged 83. His 1976 novel The Yawning Heights is a dystopian satire on the USSR.

American mathematics teacher and author Arthur Porges died after a long illness on May 12th, a couple of months short of his 91st birthday. He began his fiction career in the early 1950s, selling consistently to The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and within a few years he had branched out with sales to Galaxy, Amazing Stories, Startling Stories, Fantastic Universe and other SF digests. By the late 1960s Porges had moved into the mystery genre, with many memorable tales appearing in Alfred Hitchcock’s, Ellery Queen’s and Mike Shayne’s magazines. A collection of horror stories, The Mirror and Other Strange Reflections, was edited by Mike Ashley and published by Ash-Tree Press in 2002.

44-year-old Bay Area fan, folk singer and author Leigh Ann Hussey was killed in a motorcycle accident on May 16th. She had stories in the anthologies Werewolves and Vampires, both edited by Jane Yolen and Martin H. Greenberg, and was a regular contributor to Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine.

Tony Award-winning Broadway producer, director and composer Cy Feuer died on May 17th, aged 95. During the late 1930s he began working at Republic Pictures as a composer and head of the studio’s music department. Over the next two decades he worked on Fighting Devil Dogs, Hawk of the Wilderness, S.O.S. Tidal Wave, Daredevils of the Red Circle, Zorro’s Fighting Legion, Drums of Fu Manchu, Mysterious Doctor Satan, Adventures of Captain Marvel, Dick Tracy vs. Crime Inc., Spy Smasher and The Crimson Ghost. He later produced such hit stage musicals as The Boy Friend, Can-Can and Silk Stockings.

British folk-singer Gytha North died of cancer on May 24th, aged 55. Terry Pratchett borrowed her name for his character Gytha (Nanny) Ogg, the witch in the popular “Discworld” novels.

American comics artist Alex (Alexander) Toth died at his drawing board on May 27th, aged 77. He joined DC Comics in 1947, where he illustrated such characters as Dr Mid-Nite, the Atom and Green Lantern for $30 per page. He went on to work on a number of Dell comics based on popular TV shows (Zorro, Twilight Zone etc.), as well as titles for Archie, Charlton, Marvel and Warren’s horror and war magazines. A year after art directing the animated TV series Space Angels in 1964, Toth joined Hanna-Barbera Studios, where he designed many cartoon series, including Jonny Quest, Battle of the Planets, Challenge of the Superfriends, The Herculoids, Shazzam, Birdman and the Galaxy Trio, The Fantastic Four, Scooby-Doo and Space Ghost. He was also a storyboard artist on the SF film Angry Red Planet and worked as a sequence production designer on Project X.

Television writer Robert Bielak, who was supervising producer for Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, died on May 30th, aged 85. He also scripted episodes of MacGyver and Rung Fu: The Legend Continues.

“Seamus Cullen”, the pseudonymous American-born author of the erotic 1976 novel Astra and Flondrix and other fantasies, including A Noose of Light and Sultan’s Turret, was reported to have died of cancer when mail to his address in Ireland was returned in May marked “Deceased”.

British playwright, novelist and prolific TV scriptwriter Allan Prior died on June 1st, aged 84. In the 1970s he scripted five episodes of BBC-TV’s makes 7.

George Kashdan, who worked as an editor and writer at DC Comics from 1946 until 1968, died of complications from a stroke on June 3rd, aged 78. Among the characters he worked on were Green Arrow, Congo Bill and Johnny Quick. He wrote and often edited such titles as House of Mystery, House of Secrets, Secrets of Haunted House, Tales of the Unexpected, Rip Hunter Time Master, Aquaman, Teen Titans, Metamorpho, Ghosts, Bomba the Jungle Boy, Hawkman, Weird War Tales and Blackhawk (where he turned the World War II heroes into superheroes in the mid-1960s). After leaving DC, Kashdan moved to Dell/Gold Key, where he contributed to Boris Karloff Tales of Mystery, Grimm’s Ghost Stories, Flash Gordon, Star Trek and Twilight Zone.

Former CIA intelligence agent and author Karl T. Pflock, whose 2001 book Roswell: Inconvenient Facts and the Will to Believe debunked the UFO conspiracy theory, died of Lou Gehrig’s disease (ALS) on June 5th, aged 63.

67-year-old American fantasy artist Tim Hildebrandt (Timothy Allen Mark Hildebrant), one-half of the successful Brothers Hildebrandt team, died of complications from diabetes on June 11th. With his identical twin brother Greg he created the original Star Wars poster, a series of J. R. R. Tolkien calendars and numerous book covers, posters and collectibles. Since 1981 the two brothers had worked separately until they were reconciled in the early 1990s. Tim Hildebrandt executive produced and appeared in the 1983 film Return of the Aliens: The Deadly Spawn, which starred his son, Charles George Hildebrandt. With his wife Rita, he wrote the 1983 novel Merlin and the Dragons of Atlantis and the non-fiction Fantasy Cookbook. In 1992 he won a World Fantasy Award for Best Artist.

Austrian-Hungarian-born literary agent and film producer Ingo Preminger, the brother of director Otto, died in Los Angeles on June 7th, aged 95. Preminger represented a number of writers who were blacklisted during the McCarthy era, including Dalton Trumbo and Ring Lardner, Jr, along with such actors as Paul Henreid and Ralph Meeker. His film credits include M*A*S*H and The Salzburg Connection.

83-year-old Hungarian avant-garde composer Gyorgy Ligeti died after a long illness in Vienna, Austria, on June 12th. The creator of a pioneering sound technique called “micropolyphony”, he is best known for his work on the soundtrack for Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Controversial American book publisher Lyle Stuart (Lionel Simon) died on June 24th following a heart attack. He was 83. After working as business manager for Mad magazine, he founded the investigative newspapers Exposé and The Independent. He launched his own publishing imprint, Lyle Stuart Inc., in 1956 with money won in a libel case. When he sold the publishing house in 1990, he founded Barricade Books.

62-year-old Jim Baen (James Patrick Baen), American editor and publisher and founder of the Baen Books imprint, died on June 28th after suffering a massive stroke two weeks earlier. He never regained consciousness. Baen began his career at Ace Books in 1972, and went on to edit the SF magazines Galaxy and If, and the paperback anthology Destinies, before forming Baen Books in 1983. He is credited as an innovator in using free e-texts and book extracts to publicise Baen’s print titles.

American radio and TV broadcaster Roderick MacLeish, who wrote the 1982 fantasy novel Prince Ombra, died on July 1st, aged 80.

Bookseller and author Martin [Arthur] Last died on July 6th, aged 76. With his long-time partner Baird Searles (who died in 1993) he co-founded The Science Fiction Shop in New York City’s West Village from 1973–86. Last also wrote fiction, poetry and reviews, and co-authored the 1979 study A Reader’s Guide to Science Fiction with Searles, Beth Meacham and Michael Franklin. From 1975–76 he edited The Science Fiction Review Monthly.

Tough-guy crime writer Mickey Spillane (Frank Morrison Spil-lane), who created PI Mike Hammer in his first novel, I, the Jury (1947), died of cancer on July 17th after a long illness. He was 88. The author began his career writing for the pulp magazines and the comics, including Batman, Captain America, Sub-mariner and The Human Torch, and he returned to the medium in the 1990s with the SF detective series Mickey Spillane’s Mike Danger. Many of his books and stories have been turned into films or TV series – including Robert Aldrich’s classic Kiss Me Deadly (1955) – and Spillane himself portrayed Hammer in the low budget 1963 movie The Girl Hunters. He received a Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America in 1995.

Best-selling British fantasy writer David [Andrew] Gemmell died at his computer on July 28th. Just over a week earlier, the 57-year-old author had undergone a quadruple heart bypass and appeared to be recovering well. Best known for his heroic fantasy “Drenai” series, which he began in 1984 with Legend (aka Against the Horde) and continued through ten further volumes, his other books include Sword in the Storm, Wolf in Shadow (aka The Jerusalem Man), Ironhand’s Daughter, Knights of Dark Renown, Lion of Mace don and The Lord of the Silver Bow. Random House UK’s SF and fantasy list was renamed “Legend” in the late 1980s in honour of Gemmell’s debut novel, which has never been out of print.

Susan E. Michaud (Susan E. Roberts), who helped run small press imprint Necronomicon Press with her husband, Marc Michaud, died on August 3rd, aged 41.

Nebula-nominated American author Bob (Robert J.) Leman died of congestive heart failure on August 8th, aged 84. During the 1950s and ’60s he produced the fanzine The Vinegar Worm (aka Nematode) and between 1967 and 2002 he published fifteen stories, all but one in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. These later appeared in the 2002 collection Feesters in the Lake & Other Stories, which was included in Horror: Another 100 Best Books. His Nebula nominated story “Window” was adapted as an episode of the 2001 TV series Night Visions.

British SF author Philip E. (Empson) High died of respiratory failure on August 9th, aged 92. He had been admitted to hospital a week earlier following a heart attack. A contributor to such magazines as Authentic Science Fiction, Nebula Science Fiction and Vision of Tomorrow, he wrote fourteen novels between 1964 and 1979, including The Prodigal Son, No Truce with Terra, The Mad Metropolis, Come Hunt an Earthman, Speaking of Dinosaurs and Blindfold the Stars. His short fiction appeared in two collections, The Best of Philip E. High and A Step to the Stars.

79-year-old ghost hunter and author Ed Warren who, with his wife Lorraine, investigated more than 10,000 suspected hauntings, died on August 23rd of complications from a stroke. Having investigated the Amityville house in New York, the couple worked as consultants on Amityville II: The Possession. The TV movies The Demon Murder Case and The Haunted were based on books written by the Warrens.

American scriptwriter/producer Joseph [William] Stefano, who co-created and produced the TV show The Outer Limits (1963–65) with Leslie Stevens, died of a heart attack on August 24th, aged 84. Best remembered as the writer of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho and the 1998 remake, his other credits include Eye of the Cat, The Kindred, the TV movies Psycho IV the Beginning, Revenge, Home for the Holidays and Snowbeast, the 1990 series Swamp Thing and an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. In 1964, Stefano directed the “lost” TV pilot The Ghost of Sierra de Cobre (aka The Haunted).

Pioneering TV animation designer Ed Benedict, who created such iconic cartoon characters as The Flintstones, Quick Draw McGraw, Huckleberry Hound, Yogi Bear and The Jetsons, died on August 28th, aged 94. After working at the Walt Disney studio, with Oswald Lantz at Universal and with Tex Avery at MGM, he became the main character designer for Hanna-Barbera from the late 1950s until his retirement in the mid-1970s.

American songwriter Paul Vance (Paul Van Valkenburgh), whose cult hit “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini” went to #1 for 16-year-old Brian Hyland in August 1960, died of lung cancer on September 6th, aged 68. With Lee Pockriss he also co-wrote “Catch a Falling Star”, which was a #1 hit for Perry Como in 1958. Vance sold the rights to all his songs when he was younger.

Animator Berny Wolf died on September 7th, aged 95. After working on the Betty Boop cartoons at the Fleischer Studios, he moved to the Ub Iwerks Studio and then on to Disney Studios, where he contributed to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Fantasia, Dumbo and many other titles. With Ward Kimball he worked on the design of Pinocchio’s Jiminy Cricket, and came up with the design for the costumes of the characters who still walk around Disney theme parks. Later, he worked in Tex Avery’s unit at MGM, for Film Roman Studios, and at Hanna-Barbera, where he was involved with Scooby-Doo and the Reluctant Werewolf, Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School and such TV series as The Jetsons, Jonny Quest and The Flintstones.

French screenwriter and director Gérard Brach died of cancer on September 9th, aged 79. Best known for his many collaborations with director Roman Polanski (including Repulsion, Cul-de-sac, Dance of the Vampires, What? and The Tenant), he also scripted Bye Bye Monkey, Quest for Fire, The Name of the Rose and Renegade.

American horror author and editor Charles L. (Lewis) Grant died of a heart attack in front of the television on September 15th, aged 64. He had been suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and emphysema from some years, and had returned from a care facility ten days earlier to his home in New Jersey to celebrate his birthday (and that of his wife of almost twenty-five years, editor and novelist Kathryn Ptacek) on September 12th. A prolific short story writer and novelist, Grant’s career spanned more than thirty-five years. During that time he cultivated his unique style of “quiet horror” in many novels and collections, including The Curse, The Hour of the Oxrun Dead, The Sound of Midnight, The Grave, The Bloodwind, The Soft Whisper of the Dead, The Nestling, The Tea Party, The Orchard, The Pet, For Fear of the Night, In a Dark Dream, Dialing the Wind, Stunts, Something Stirs, Jackals, The Black Carousel, Tales from the Nightside, A Glow of Candles and Nightmare Seasons. More recent titles include the first two X Files novelisations, Goblin and Whirlwind, the “Millennium Quartet” inspired by the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and the “Black Oak” series about a security team of paranormal investigators. Grant also published a variety of books under the pseudonyms “Felicia Andrews”, “Deborah Lewis”, “Geoffrey Marsh”, “Lionel Fenn”, “Steven Charles” and “Simon Lake”. As an editor he was responsible for two dozen anthologies, including the influential Shadows series (twelve volumes) along with Nightmares, Midnight, After Midnight, Greystone Bay, Doom City, The Dodd Mead Gallery of Horror, Night Visions: Dead Image and Gothic Ghosts (with Wendy Webb). He won three World Fantasy Awards and two Nebulas for his fiction. A recipient of the of the British Fantasy Society’s Special Award, the International Horror Guild Living Legend Award and the Horror Writers Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award, he was also named a Grand Master at the 2002 World Horror Convention.

British TV scriptwriter Peter [George Derek] Ling, best-known as the co-creator of the soap opera Crossroads, died of a heart attack on September 14th, aged 80. He wrote for Eagle comic at an early age, and his other TV credits include the children’s puppet series Whirligig and episodes of The Avengers, Sexton Blake and Doctor Who (“The Mind Robber”).

American socialite Patricia Kennedy Lawford, the sister of John and Robert Kennedy and the widow of actor Peter Lawford, died of complications from pneumonia on September 17th, aged 82. She was believed to be the last person alive to know the truth behind the mysterious suicide of Marilyn Monroe in 1962.

Author and fan Darrell C. (Coleman) Richardson (aka “D. Coleman Rich”) died after a long illness on September 19th, aged 88. He wrote more than forty books, several about the pulps that include J. Allen St. John: An Illustrated Bibliography, “King of the Pulps”: The Life and Writings of H. Bedford-Jones (with Victor A. Berch and Peter Ruber) and Those Macabre Pulps. Richardson was a co-founder of the FAX small press imprint in the 1970s and was a winner of the Big Heart Award and the Lamont Award.

British sculptor Allister Bowtell died of cancer on September 20th, aged 66. As well as creating the original Cybermen for Doctor Who, he also designed Rod Hull’s “Emu” and created props for Monty Python’s Flying Circus, The Goodies, Jonathan Miller’s Alice and Sir Henry at Rawlinson’s End.

Sir Malcolm [Henry] Arnold died of a chest infection on September 23rd, aged 84. Best known as the first British composer to win an Academy Award, for his score for The Bridge Over the River Kwai, his other credits include several of the St Trinian’s movies, Hammer’s Stolen Face and Four Sided Triangle, The Sound Barrier, 1984 (1956) and Suddenly Last Summer. When the classical music establishment ignored his symphonies, he suffered a number of violent episodes and was sanctioned in a mental asylum.

American science fiction and fantasy writer and poet John M. (Milo) “Mike” Ford (aka “Michael J. Dodge”/“Milo Dennison”) died on September 25th, aged 49. He was diabetic and had undergone a kidney transplant in 2000. The winner of two World Fantasy Awards for his 1983 novel The Dragon Waiting and his narrative poem “Winter Solstice, Camelot Station”, Ford’s other books include Web of Angels, The Princes of the Air, The Scholars of Night and the Star Trek novels The Final Reflection and How Much for Just the Planet?. He was also an award-winning writer of role-playing games. Reportedly, the headline in the St. Paul Pioneer newspaper for his memorial event read: “Crafters of Sci-Fi Attend Obscure Writer’s Eulogy”.

French writer, editor and translator Michel Demuth died of liver failure on September 30th, aged 67. He translated the French editions of Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and Frank Herbert’s Dune, and was the editor of Galaxie (the French edition of Galaxy).

American biographer and book collector Virgil S. (Starbuck) Utter, Jr died of congestive heart failure on October 3rd, aged 81. His published biographies of C. L. Moore and Henry Kuttner, Raymond King Cummings, Grant Allen and George Allen England, often in collaboration with Phil Stephensen-Payne and others.

Multiple Award-winning American SF author and fanzine writer [Arthur] Wilson “Bob” Tucker, credited with coining the term “space opera”, died after a short illness on October 6th, aged 91. His most famous fanzine was Le Zombie (1938–2001), and he was Fan Guest of Honor at the 1948 and 1967 World Science Fiction Conventions. The author of sixty short stories (in Super Science Stories, The Best of Wilson Tucker etc.) and novels (The City in the Sea, The Long Loud Silence, The Time Masters, The Year of the Quiet Sun etc.), Tucker’s many honours include three Hugo Awards (two retro), the First Fandom Hall of Fame Award, E. E. Smith Memorial Award and SFWA Author Emeritus. He was a 2003 inductee in the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.

British film critic Philip Strick, a regular contributor to the BFI’s Sight & Sound magazine, died on October 7th, aged 67. He also taught Britain’s first adult SF evening class, edited the humorous SF anthology Antigrav and was the author of the 1976 study Science Fiction Movies.

Emmy Award-winning scriptwriter, producer and director Jerry Belson, co-creator of TV’s The Odd Couple (1970–75) with Garry Marshall, died of prostate cancer on October 10th, aged 68. His film credits include Student Bodies, Jekyll and Hyde . . . Together Again (which he also directed), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (un-credited) and Always.

Belgium writer Jacques Sternberg died of lung cancer on October 11th, aged 83. He is credited with publishing the first French SF Fanzine, Le Petit Silence illustre, edited many anthologies and wrote several hundred short stories, many of them fantastic. Sternberg also scripted Alain Resnais’ 1968 film Je t’aime, je t’aime.

British children’s author and illustrator Ursula Moray Williams died on October 17th, aged 95. Her more than seventy books include The Adventures of the Little Wooden Horse and Gobbolino the Witch’s Cat. Her uncle was Sir Stanley Unwin, founder of the publishing imprint Allen & Unwin.

Animator and cartoonist Don R. Christensen (aka “Don Arr”) died on October 18th, aged 90. He was a sketch artist at Disney from 1937 to 1941, working on such films as Pinocchio and Dumbo. After a brief stint with Bob Clampett’s animation unit at Warner Bros, where he scripted several Looney Tunes shorts, Christensen moved to Dell/Gold Key, where he contributed to such comic books as Magnus Robot Fighter and Scooby Doo.

British playwright and YA author John Symonds died on October 21st, aged 92. He was also Aleister Crowley’s literary executor.

British playwright and author Paul [Victor] Ableman, whose SF novel The Twilight of the Vilp was published in 1969, died on October 25th, aged 79. He also scripted episodes of TV’s Tales of the Unexpected.

British author and screenwriter [Thomas] Nigel Kneale, best remembered for his pioneering Quatermass trilogy for BBC-TV, died after a long illness and a series of strokes on October 29th, aged 84. When The Quatermass Experiment was first broadcast in 1953, it emptied the streets and pubs for the six weeks it ran. Hammer produced the film version in 1955 (aka The Creeping Unknown) and the studio went on to film the two sequels as well, Quatermass 2 (aka Enemy from Space) and Quatermass and the Pit (aka Five Million Years to Earth). A fourth and final episode, Quatermass (aka The Quatermass Conclusion), was shown in 1979. There was a radio version, The Quatermass Memoirs, broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in 1996, and the original show was remade as a live broadcast by the BBC in 2005. The live broadcast of Kneale’s adaptation on Nineteen Eighty Four (starring Peter Cushing and Donald Pleasence) in 1954 prompted questions in the British parliament. His other TV work includes such dramas as The Creature (filmed by Hammer as The Abominable Snowman), Wuthering Heights (1962), The Road, The Year of the Sex Olympics, The Chopper, The Stone Tape, The Woman in Black and the series Beasts (1976) and Kinvig (1981), although he turned down a request to contribute to The X Files in the 1990s. He also wrote the scripts for First Men in the Moon, Hammer’s The Witches (aka The Devil’s Own) and the original draft of Halloween III: Season of the Witch. Kneale’s best short stories are collected in Tomato Cain and Other Stories (1949).

Leonard Schrader, the Oscar-nominated screenwriter of Kiss of the Spider Woman, died of heart failure on November 2nd, aged 62.

American pulp author and rare book dealer Nelson S. (Slade) Bond died of complications from heart problems on November 4th, just short of his 98th birthday. After making his SF debut in Astounding in 1937 with “Down the Dimensions”, his work appeared in Weird Tales, Unknown, Fantastic Adventures, Planet Stories and such mainstream magazines as Esquire, Blue Book and Argosy. His books include the 1949 novel, Exiles of Time, and the short story collections Mr Mergenthwirker’s Lobblies and Other Fantastic Tales, The Thirty-first of February, The Remarkable Exploits of Lancelot Biggs Spaceman, Nightmares and Daydreams, The Far Side of Nowhere and Other Worlds Than Ours (the last three titles from Arkham House). A scriptwriter for radio and TV, he wrote the 1957 teleplay The Night America Trembled, about Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds radio broadcast. He was honoured by the SFWA in 1998 as Author Emeritus.

British SF fan and book dealer Ron Bennett, whose fanzine newsletter Skyrack ran from 1959–71, died of leukaemia on November 5th, aged 73.

American composer Basil Poledouris died of cancer on November 8th, aged 61. His many film scores include Tintorera, Conan the Barbarian, Conan the Destroyer, Red Dawn, Flesh+Blood, Robo-Cop, Cherry 2000, Spellbinder, The Hunt for Red October, Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man, RoboCop 3, Serial Mom, The Jungle Book (1994), Starship Troopers and The Touch. Poledouris also contributed music to the 1980s TV series Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Twilight Zone, Misfits of Science and the mini-series Amerika, as well as the 3-D computer game Conan (2004).

American SF cover artist Stanley Meltzoff died on November 9th, aged 89. In the 1950s he painted a number of influential covers for Signet/NAL paperbacks for books by Isaac Asimov, Alfred Bester, Edmond Hamilton, Robert A. Heinlein and A. E. van Vogt, amongst others. He also did the covers for Science Fiction Terror Tales edited by Groff Conklin and the Gold Medal paperback of Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend. Meltzoff illustrated the May 1955 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

Jack (John Stewart) Williamson (aka “Will Stewart”), the oldest surviving author from Weird Tales and the early pulp magazines, died at his home in New Mexico on November 10th, aged 98. Widely regarded as “the Father of American Science Fiction”, he began his career with “The Metal Man” in Amazing Stories in 1928 (three years before the term “science fiction” was actually coined). In a career that spanned an incredible nine decades, he contributed to most of the major magazines, including Science Wonder Stories and Astounding, and his novels include The Girl from Mars (with Miles J. Breuer, 1929) published by Hugo Gernsback, The Legion of Space, Darker Than You Think, The Humanoids and its sequel The Humanoid Touch, Seetee Shock and Seetee Ship, the “Undersea Quest” and “Starchild” trilogies (both with Frederik Pohl), Manseed, Firechild and The Stonehenge Gate (2005). In the 1990s, Haffner Press began collecting all Williamson’s short fiction in handsome limited editions, and Seventy-Five: The Diamond Anniversary of a Science Fiction Pioneer was published in 2004. The annual Jack Williamson Lectureship Series began at Eastern New Mexico University in 1977, and The Jack Williamson Science Fiction Library at the university contains some 30,000 books and magazines. A winner of both the Hugo and Nebula Awards for his fiction, he was also a recipient of the SFWA Grand Master Award, the World Fantasy Life Achievement Award, and the World Horror Convention Grand Master Award. His 1984 Hugo Award-winning autobiography, Wonder Child: My Life in Science Fiction, was updated in 2005.

Ken Ishikawa, who co-created the 1970s giant robot anime Getter Robo, died on November 15th, aged 58.

British literary agent Maggie (Margaret) [Irene] Noach died on November 17th, aged 57. She was admitted to hospital complaining of back pains. Diagnosed with a broken vertebra, she developed breathing problems during an operation on her spine that led to massive heart failure. After beginning her career at A. P. Watt, Noach established her own literary agency in 1982 and represented such SF authors as Brian Aldiss, Geoff Ryman, Stephen Baxter, Garry Kilworth, Michael Scott Rohan and Colin Greenland. With her second husband, Alan Williams (the son of actor and playwright Emlyn), she complied The Dictionary of Disgusting Facts (1986).

American-born writer Guy Mariner Tucker, author of the 1996 study, Age of the Gods: The History of Japanese Fantasy Film, died of heart failure in Tokyo the same day. He contributed many articles on Japanese fantasy films to such magazines as G-Fan, Cult Movies and Kaiju-Fan.

American television writer Chris Hayward, who co-created The Munsters and also worked on Rocky and Bullwinkle, died on November 20th, aged 81.

Russian-born Broadway lyricist and screenwriter Betty Comden (Basya Cohen), whose credits include the Mary Martin stage version of Peter Pan, On the Town, Singin’ in the Rain and The Band Wagon with songwriter Adolph Green (who died in 2002), died of heart failure on November 23rd, following a long illness. She was aged around 90. Comden’s lyrics were also heard in What a Way to Go!, Blue Sunshine, The Addams Family, Dr Giggles and TV’s Star Trek Deep Space Nine.

Jerry G. (Gwin) Bails, regarded as “the father of American comic book fandom”, died of a heart attack the same day, aged 73. He began publishing his influential fanzine, Alter Ego, in 1961 and his books include Collector’s Guide: The First Heroic Age, Who’s Who in American Comic Books, Fifty Who Made DC Great, Golden Age of Comic Fandom and Alter Ego: The Best of the Legendary Fanzine.

Prolific British author Sydney J. (James) Bounds died of cancer on November 24th, aged 86. He joined the Science Fiction Association in 1937, where he met writers Arthur C. Clarke, William F. Temple and John Christopher (Sam Youd). Bounds founded the SF fan group, the Cosmos Club, during World War II, and his early fiction appeared in the club’s fanzine, Cosmic Cuts. His first professional sale never appeared, but by the late 1940s he was contributing “spicy” stories to the monthly magazines published by Utopia Press. His early novels include Dimension of Horror, The Moon Raiders, The World Wrecker and The Robot Brains. Writing under a wide number of pseudonyms, he became a regular contributor to such SF magazines as Tales of Tomorrow, Worlds of Fantasy, New Worlds Science Fiction, Other Worlds Science Stories and Fantastic Universe, amongst other titles. When the magazine markets began to dry up, Bounds became a reliable contributor to such anthology series as New Writings in SF, The Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories, The Fontana Book of Great Horror Stories, The Armada Monster Book and The Armada Ghost Book. His story “The Circus” was adapted by George A. Romero for a 1986 episode of the TV series Tales of the Darkside. Other anthologies to feature his stories include Tales of Terror from Outer Space, Gaslight Tales of Terror, Frighteners, Keep Out the Night, The Mammoth Book of Vampires, The Mammoth Book of New Terror, Great Ghost Stories, Tales to Freeze the Blood and Philip Harbottle’s Fantasy Adventure series. In 2002, Harbottle edited the first-ever collections of Bounds’ work, The Best of Sydney]. Bounds: Strange Portrait and Other Stories and The Best of Sydney]. Bounds: The Wayward Ship and Other Stories, for Cosmos Books.

90-year-old actress and author Phyllis Fraser (Helen Brown Nichols/Phyllis Cerf Wagner) died of complications from a fall the same day. The cousin of Ginger Rogers, she appeared in a handful of 1930s films, including Thirteen Women and The Black Room (with Boris Karloff). She married publisher and co-founder of Random House, Bennett Cerf, in 1940. With Herbert A. Wise she co-edited the seminal anthology Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural in 1944 for her husband’s The Modern Library imprint. Following Cerf’s death in 1971, she married New York City Mayor Robert Wagner four years later. In the late 1950s she started collaborating with her friend Theodore Geisel (“Dr. Seuss”) on a number of children’s books, including Green Eggs and Ham and The Cat in the Hat Comes Back.

American academic Leon E. (Eugene) Stover, who collaborated with Harry Harrison on the 1968 anthology Apeman, Spaceman and the 1972 novel Stonehenge, died of complications from diabetes on November 25th, aged 77. Stover also wrote non-fiction studies about Harrison, H. G. Wells and Robert A. Heinlein.

American comic book illustrator Dave [Emmett] Cockrum, best-known for his work with Len Wein on Marvel’s X-Men title during the mid-1970s, died after a long battle with diabetes on November 26th, aged 63. Many of the X-Men characters Cockrum co-created and designed, including Storm, Mystique, Nightcrawler and Colossus, went on to appear in the popular film franchise. His other credits include drawing the Legion of Super-Heroes for DC Comics before he moved to Marvel. He reportedly died wearing Superman pyjamas and was cremated in a Green Lantern shirt.

Film music composer and conductor Shirley Walker died of a brain aneurysm on November 29th, aged 61. Her many credits include The Dungeonmaster, Ghoulies, Memoirs of an Invisible Man, Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, The Haunting of Seacliff Inn, The Adventures of Zoom in Outer Space, Escape from L.A., It Came from Outer Space 2, Asteroid, The Love Bug (1997), all three Final Destination films and the remakes of Willard (2003) and Black Christmas (2006). She also scored many animated TV series, including Batman (1992–95).

51-year-old American author [John] Pierce Askegren was found dead at his home from a massive heart attack the same day. He wrote the “Inconstant Moons” trilogy (Human Resource, Fall Girl and Exit Strategy) along with comic books and TV and gaming tie-ins.

42-year-old British writer Craig Hinton, whose credits include five Doctor Who spin-off novels, was found dead at his London home on December 3rd.

Romance writer Patricia [Anne] Matthews died of respiratory failure and congestive heart failure on December 7th, aged 79. Her 1991 novel The Unquiet was an occult romantic thriller, and as “Laura Wylie” she wrote the 1970s horror novel The Night Visitor. She was also the author of a number of Gothic romances, often in collaboration with her husband Clayton Hartley Matthews, under the pen name “Patty Brisco”.

American comics artist Martin Nodell, who co-created and illustrated the original 1940s Green Lantern under the name “Matt Dellon”, died on December 9th, aged 91. Nodell reportedly got the idea for Green Lantern’s magic ring while waiting for a New York subway and seeing a train operator waving his green light. The character soon got his own comic book, which ran until 1947. He was revived in 1959 and has appeared in various incarnations since. Nodell eventually left the comics industry in the early 1950s and moved on to a career in advertising, where he was part of the original team who created the Pillsbury Doughboy.

TV scriptwriter Robert Schaefer died of emphysema on December 14th, aged 80. He wrote for numerous shows, including Science Fiction Theater and Highway to Heaven, and scripted the 1958 feature The Lone Ranger and the Lost City of Gold.

American comics artist Hardin “Jack” Burnley, who was the first person other than their creators to draw Superman, Batman and Robin during the Golden Age of comics, died of complications from a broken hip on December 19th, aged 95. Burnley drew the cover for New York’s World Fair in 1940, featuring the heroic trio, and he continued at DC, assisted by his sister Betty as letterer and brother Ray as background inker, where he co-created Starman (with Gardner Fox) for Adventure Comics and All-Star Comics. He retired in 1976.

American SF author Jayge Carr (Margery Ruth Krueger), whose books include Leviathan’s Deep, died on December 20th, aged 66. A contributor to Omni, Analog, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and Amazing, she also wrote the “Rabelais” series of novels: Navigator’s Sindrome, The Treasure in the Heart of the Maze and Rabelaisian Reprise.

86-year-old British children’s author [Ann] Philippa Pearce, whose Carnegie medal-winning time-slip novel Tom’s Midnight Garden was published in 1958, died of a stroke on December 21st while visiting an exhibition of her work at the Seven Stories children’s book museum in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Her other books include What the Neighbours Did and Other Stories and Who’s Afraid? and Other Strange Stories, and she edited Dread and Delight: A Century of Children’s Ghost Stories.

American SF fan Dick (Richard Harris) Eney died of a stroke on December 22nd, aged 74. He published the Fancychpedia II in 1959 and was Fan Guest of Honor at the 1984 World Science Fiction Convention.

PERFORMERS/PERSONALITIES

49-year-old Bryan Harvey, the former singer and guitarist with folk/ rock duo House of Freaks, was found dead with his family in the basement of his burning home in Richmond, Virginia, on New Year’s Day. Along with his wife and two young daughters, he had been bound with tape and had his throat cut before the house was set ablaze. With drummer Johnny Hott, Harvey released five acclaimed albums between 1987 and 1995, including Tantilla (1989), Cakewalk (1991) and Invisible Jewel (1994).

Stuntman and actor Jerry Summers died the same day, aged 74. The movies he worked on include Surf Party, Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine, The Phynx, Diamonds Are Forever, 99 & 44/100% Dead, Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen, D.A.R.Y.L., The Monster Squad and Alien Nation.

Danish-born actress Osa Massen died in Santa Monica on January 2nd, aged 91. She went to Hollywood in the late 1930s, where she appeared in such films as Cry of the Werewolf, Night Unto Night and Rocketship X-M. She was also in a 1955 episode of TV’s Science Fiction Theatre. After retiring from acting, she served on the foreign film selection committee for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences.

Puerto Rican-born actor and television producer Raul Davila, who played a voodoo priest in The Believers (1987), died of a heart attack in New Jersey the same day, aged 74.

British character actor John Woodnutt died on January 3rd, aged 81. His film credits include The Scarlet Blade, All Neat in Black Stockings, Lifeforce and Dragonhead: A New Beginning. On TV Woodnutt appeared in Children of the Stones, as “Merlin” in Knightmare (1987–90) and in episodes of Suspense, The Saint, Sherlock Holmes, The Avengers, Adam Adamant Lives!, Out of the Unknown, The Tomorrow People, Doctor Who and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

Phyllis [Lucille] Gates, the former wife of Rock Hudson (who died of AIDS in 1985), died of complications from lung cancer on January 4th, aged 80. She met Hudson in 1954 while working as a secretary for his agent. They married a year later but divorced in 1958. She later discovered that the romance had been arranged to dispel rumours that the actor was gay. Gates became an interior designer and never saw Hudson again.

Soul singer Lou Rawls died of lung and brain cancer on January 5th, aged 72. During a forty-year career, Rawls released more than sixty albums and won three Grammy Awards. His biggest hit was “You’ll Never Find (Another Love Like Mine)” in 1976. During the 1960s he branched into acting, appearing in such films as Angel Angel Down We Go (aka Cult of the Damned), Morella, Blues Brothers 2000 and episodes of Fantasy Island, The Fall Guy, Early Edition and Baywatch Nights (as regular “Lou Raymond”). As a voice artist he also contributed to Garfield and The Rugrats Movie.

Stage and screen actress Anne Meacham died on January 12th, aged 80. After earning an Obie Award for creating the role of “Catherine Holly” in the 1958 Off Broadway production of Tennessee Williams’ Suddenly Last Summer, she appeared in such films as Lilith, Dear Dead Delilah, Seizure and Seeds of Evil (aka The Gardener).

Two-time Academy Award-winning Hollywood star Shelley Winters (Shirley Schrift) died of heart failure on January 14th, aged 85. She had been in poor health since suffering a massive heart attack the previous October. After working as a chorus girl on Broadway, Winters moved to Los Angeles in the early 1940s where she shared an apartment with a then unknown Marilyn Monroe. Initially cast for her curvaceous 37–26–36 figure, she later reinvented herself as a capable character actress with more than 130 films to her credit, including A Thousand and One Nights, A Double Life (she also appeared in the TV remake), The Night of the Hunter, Wild in the Streets, The Mad Room, Roger Corman’s Bloody Mama, What’s the Matter with Helen?, Whoever Slew Auntie Roof (aka Who Slew Auntie Roof), Revenge, The Poseidon Adventure (1972), The Devil’s Daughter (1972), Cleopatra Jones, The Tenant, Pete’s Dragon, Tentacles, The Initiation of Sarah, The Visitor, Witchfire, Déjà Vu, Alice in Wonderland (1985), The Purple People Eater and Rudolph and Frosty’s Christmas in July. The actress also played “Ma Barker” on the 1960s Batman TV show. She was married and divorced three times, including to actors Vittorio Gassman and Anthony Franciosa, and in two biographies (1981 and 1989) claimed romances with Burt Lancaster, Erroll Flynn, Clark Gable, William Holden, Marlon Brando and Elvis Presley.

American leading man Anthony (Tony) Franciosa (Anthony Papaleo) died of a massive stroke on January 19th, less than a week after the death of his former wife (1957–60), actress Shelley Winters. He was 77. The actor, who went to Hollywood in the mid-1950s, had a reputation for being “difficult” on movie sets. His credits include Antonio Margheriti’s Web of the Spider, Earth II, Curse of the Black Widow, Dario Argento’s Tenebrae (aka Unsane), Daughter of Death, Ghost Writer, La Morte e di Moda and a TV remake of The Night of the Hunter (1991). In 1957 he served ten days in the Los Angeles County jail for punching a press photographer, and two years later went to prison for thirty days for possession of marijuana. Universal fired him from the 1968–71 TV series The Name of the Game, accusing of him of “erratic behaviour”. He also co-starred in the 1972–73 series Search (as “Nick Bianco”), but his sci-spy show Matt Helm was cancelled after half a season in 1976.

American soul singer “Wicked” Wilson Pickett died of a heart attack on January 20th, aged 64. His 1960s hits include “Mustang Sally” and “The Midnight Hour”. His career enjoyed a renaissance in 1991 with the release of the film The Commitments, about a Dublin band that idolised him, and his last album, the Grammy-nominated It’s Harder Now, was released in 1999.

43-year-old American character actor Chris (Christopher) Penn, the burly younger brother of actor Sean and son of director Leo (who died in 1998), was found dead on January 24th in his Santa Monica apartment. According to the coroner’s office, the main cause of death was an oversized heart and the effects of multiple medication intake. Best remembered for his role as “Nice Guy Eddie Cabot” in Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs, his other credits include Pale Rider, Future Kick and Fist of the North Star.

91-year-old Fayard Nicholas, who performed with his younger brother Harold (who died in 2000) as the tap dancing Nicholas Brothers, died of pneumonia and complications from a stroke the same day. The team made their film debut in 1932 and later headlined at the Cotton Club in Harlem.

Benny Hill’s straight man, comedian and actor Henry McGee, died of complications from Alzheimer’s disease on January 28th, aged 77. Early in his career he appeared in the 1950 SF thriller Seven Days to Noon, and he was also in Hammer’s Fanatic (aka Die! Die! My Darling), Digby the Biggest Dog in the World, Come Play With Me, Revenge of the Pink Panther, Carry On Emmannuelle and TV’s The Avengers.

Scottish-born ballerina and actress Moira Shearer [King] (Lady Kennedy) died on January 31st, aged 80. She had been ill for some time. The flame-haired dancer first rose to prominence as the lead in Michael Powell’s The Red Shoes (1948), and continued the collaboration with Powell in The Tales of Hoffman and Peeping Tom. She was married to author and broadcaster Ludovic Kennedy and hosted the 1972 Eurovision Song Contest in Edinburgh.

Brooklyn-born Al Lewis (Albert or Alexander Meister, sources vary), best remembered as the 378-year-old Grandpa Munster (actually Count Dracula) on the CBS-TV show The Munsters (1964–66), died after a long illness on February 3rd, aged 95 (although some sources claimed 82). In recent years, the cigar-chomping actor had undergone three angioplasty procedures and, in 2003, surgeons were forced to amputate his right leg below the knee and all five toes on his left foot. Lewis appeared in such films as The Devil’s Commandment (aka I Vampiri), They Might Be Giants, Fright House, My Grandpa is a Vampire (aka Moonrise), Night Terror, the 1988 video compilation Grampa’s Monster Movies and the spin-off movies Munster Go Home, The Munster’s Revenge and Here Come the Munsters. He also played Officer Leo Schnauser on the 1961–63 series Car 54, Where Are You?, and his other TV appearances include The Night Strangler and episodes of Lost in Space and Rod Serling’s Night Gallery. In a varied career, Lewis also worked as a circus clown, salesman, waiter, children’s book author, basketball scout, successful restaurateur, poolroom owner, store detective and the Green Party’s political candidate for the governorship of New York state in 1998 (he lost against incumbent Governor George Pataki, but still polled 52,000 votes).

American actress Jean Byron (Imogene Burkhart) died the same day, aged 80. A radio singer before being put under contract by Columbia Pictures, she starred opposite Johnny Weismuller in Voodoo Tiger and Jungle Moon Men. Her other credits include The Magnetic Monster, Invisible Invaders and episodes of Science Fiction Theater and Batman (as the Mayor’s wife). Byron was briefly married to actor Michael Ansara in the 1950s.

Film and TV actor Franklin Cover, whose credits include The Stepford Wives (1975), died of pneumonia on February 5th, aged 77.

American character actor Phil Brown, best remembered for his role as Luke Skywalker’s doomed “Uncle Owen” in Star Wars (1977), died of pneumonia on February 9th, aged 89. Blacklisted during the communist witch-hunts of the 1950s, he moved to London to work in films and on the stage. Brown’s other credits include Universal’s Weird Woman and Jungle Captive, The Luck of the Irish, Superman (1978) and Twilight’s Last Gleaming. He also played a council elder in Battlestar Galactica: The Second Coming, a 1990 short inspired by the 1970s TV series, and appeared in episodes of Colonel March of Scotland Yard (with Boris Karloff), Hammer’s Journey Into the Unknown, Roald Dahl’s Tales of the Unexpected and Tucker’s Witch.

American actor Andreas Katsulas, who played Ambassador G’Kar of Nam in the Babylon 5 TV series and films (1993–2001), died of lung cancer on February 13th, aged 59. He also portrayed the one-armed man in the 1993 big-screen version of The Fugitive and appeared in Seduction: Three Tales from the Inner Sanctum, The Death of the Incredible Hulk and episodes oiMax Headroom, Alien Nation and Star Trek: The Next Generation (in a recurring role as Romulan commander Tomalak).

72-year-old actor Paul Carr died of lung cancer in Los Angeles on February 17th. He played Lt. Lee Kelso in the pilot for Star Trek and was Lt Devlin on TV’s Buck Rogers. Carr also appeared in episodes of One Step Beyond, Men Into Space, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Time Tunnel, The Green Hornet, Land of the Giants, Circle of Fear, The Six Million Dollar Man, Spider-Man, The Incredible Hulk and Highway to Heaven. The actor’s movie credits include Ben, The Severed Arm, The Bat People, Sisters of Death, The Killings at Outpost Zeta and Solar Crisis.

Billy Cowsill, lead singer of the 1960s family group The Cowsills, died of emphysema and osteoporosis on February 18th, aged 58. Reportedly the inspiration for TV’s The Partridge Family (with David Cassidy in the lead), the band’s hits included “We Can Fly”, “Hair” and the theme for the 1969 TV series Love, American Style. The body of Cowsill’s brother Barry was found in late December 2005, four months after he went missing from his New Orleans home in the wake of hurricane Katrina.

Emmy Award-winning American comedian and actor Don Knotts died of pulmonary and respiratory complications on February 24th, aged 81. Best remembered for his role as Deputy Barney Fife in The Andy Griffith Show (1960–68), the bug-eyed Knotts’ other credits include The Incredible Mr. Limpet, The Ghost and Mr. Chicken, The Reluctant Astronaut, I Love a Mystery (1973), Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo, Pleasantville and Disney’s Chicken Little.

Emmy Award-winning American actor and environmental activist Dennis Weaver died of complications from cancer the same day, also aged 81. Best remembered for his roles as limping sidekick Chester Goode in the CBS-TV Western Gunsmoke (1955–63) and later as fish-out-of-water Marshall Sam McCloud in a long-running series of 1970s NBC Mystery Movies (including McCloud Meets Dracula in 1977), his other credits include Touch of Evil, Way . . . Way Out, What’s the Matter With Helen?, Steven Spielberg’s Duel, Don’t Go to Sleep and episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Twilight Zone and The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries (“The Mystery of the Hollywood Phantom”).

American actor Darren McGavin, who starred as investigative reporter Carl Kolchak in the TV movies The Night Stalker (1971) and The Night Strangler (1972), as well as the spin-off series Kolchak: The Night Stalker (1974–75), died on February 25th, aged 83. His many other credits include Mission Mars, The Challenge, Steven Spielberg’s Something Evil, The Six Million Dollar Man pilot, The Martian Chronicles mini-series, Hangar 18, Firebird 2015, The Natural, Dead Heat (with Vincent Price), Captain America and By Dawn’s Early Light. On TV he played private eye Mike Hammer in the 1950s TV series of the same name, and appeared in episodes of Suspense, Tales of Tomorrow, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Alfred Hitchcock Hour, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., The Evil Touch, Fantasy Island, Tales from the Darkside, Roald Dahl’s Tales of the Unexpected, Highway to Heaven and Monsters. He also made two guest appearances on The X Files, a show that acknowledged its debt to the Kolchak series.

Jackson 5 drummer Johnny Jackson, Jr (no relation) was stabbed to death on March 1st. He was 55. A woman was arrested for his murder.

Former British child actor Jack Wild died after a long illness on March 2nd, aged 53. After receiving an Academy Award nomination for his debut as the Artful Dodger in the 1968 musical Oliver!, his career never really took off. He starred in the American TV series H R. Pufnstuff (1969) and the 1970 spin-off movie, but other film roles were sparse. He appeared in The Pied Piper (1971) opposite singer Donovan, and made a belated return to the screen twenty years later in Robin Hood Prince of Thieves. A heavy smoker and alcoholic since the age of twenty-one, he was diagnosed with oral cancer in 2000 and had an operation three years later to remove part of his tongue and vocal cords. Although he lost his voice, following the surgery he appeared on stage in a pantomime miming his role. When Daniel Radcliffe got the role of Harry Potter, Wild wrote an open letter to the teenage actor warning him of the dangers of becoming a child star.

Scottish writer and singer Ivor Cutler died on March 3rd, aged 83. He played Buster Bloodvessel in the Beatles TV movie Magical Mystery Tour.

44-year-old singer and former actress Dana Reeve, the widow of Superman actor Christopher Reeve (who died in 2004), died of lung cancer on March 6th, despite being a non-smoker.

British character actor, comedian, and radio and TV scriptwriter John Junkin died of lung cancer, emphysema and asthma on March 7th, aged 76. He appeared with the Beatles in A Hard Day’s Night, and his other credits include Vengeance (aka The Brain), How I Won the War, Wombling Free, Licensed to Love and Kill (aka The Man from S.E.X.), plus episodes of The Avengers (“Never, Never Say Die” with Christopher Lee) and Catweazle.

Character actor Kort Falkenberg, who was featured as Cadet Farren in the 1950s TV series Tom Corbett, Space Cadet, died on March 13th, aged 88. He also appeared in episodes of Men Into Space, One Step Beyond, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Quantum Leap and The Adventures of Brisco County Jr.

Oscar-winning American character actress Maureen Stapleton died of chronic pulmonary disease on March 14th, aged 80. Her many credits include The Fan, Cocoon and Cocoon: The Return, Made in Heaven and Doin’ Time on Planet Earth. She also appeared as the eponymous character in a 1982 TV adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s The Electric Grandmother.

80-year-old American actor and fencing expert Britt Lomond died after a long illness on March 22nd. Best remembered as the villainous Captain Monastario on the 1957 Walt Disney TV series Zorro and the spin-off feature The Sign of Zorro, he later worked behind the camera on such films as Somewhere in Time. In 2004, his Monastario character was featured on a US postage stamp.

Country music singer and guitarist “Buck” Owens [Alvis Edgar Owens, Jr] died in his sleep of an apparent heart attack on March 25th, aged 76. A pioneer of the “Bakersfield Sound”, he co-hosted (1969–86) TV’s Hee-Haw with Roy Clark. The Beatles covered his song “Act Naturally” in 1965. Owens’ first wife, country singer Bonnie Owens, died on April 24th, also aged 76.

American character actor Julian Burton died on March 27th, aged 73. He appeared in Roger Corman’s Bucket of Blood and The Masque of the Red Death, as well as episodes of TV’s Science Fiction Theatre, Thriller, The Outer Limits and Get Smart.

55-year-old cult 1970s drive-in actress Candice Rialson died of liver disease on March 31st, although her death was not announced for another five months. She appeared in Pets, Candy Stripe Nurses, Logan’s Run, Hollywood Boulevard (as “Candy Hope”), Chatterbox and Winter Kills.

Child actor Gary Gray, who appeared in MGM’s final “Lassie” movie, The Painted Hills, died of cancer on April 4th, aged 69. Gray also appeared in The Next Yoke You Hear as the son of Nancy Davis and James Whitmore.

65-year-old American singer/songwriter Gene Pitney died on April 5th, following a concert in Wales. The writer of such classic pop songs as “Hello, Mary Lou”, “Rubber Ball” and “He’s a Rebel”, Pitney launched his own singing career in 1961. His distinctive falsetto voice could be heard on such hits as “Town Without Pity”, “(The Man Who Shot) Liberty Valance”, “Only Love Can Break a Heart”, “24 Hours from Tulsa”, “I’m Gonna Be Strong” and “Something’s Gotten Hold of My Heart”.

American actress Amanda Duff [Dunne] died of cancer on April 6th, aged 92. Married to screenwriter and film director Philip Dunne (who died in 1992), she appeared in Mr Moto in Danger Island with Peter Lorre and The Devil Commands with Boris Karloff. Duff retired from acting in the early 1940s and became a successful photographer.

American country musician Gordon Terry, who appeared in Ron Ormond’s 1968 movie The Monster and the Stripper (aka The Exotic Ones), died after a long illness on April 9th, aged 74.

Singer June Pointer, the youngest member of the Grammy-winning Pointer Sisters, died of cancer on April 11th, aged 52. With her sisters Ruth and Anita, she sang on such 1970s and ’80s hits as “I’m So Excited”, “Slow Hand” and “Jump (For My Love)”. June Pointer was arrested for cocaine possession two years before her death and was sentenced to a rehabilitation centre.

German actress Christiane Maybach, who played the disembodied head in the 1959 horror film The Head (Die Nackte und der Satan), died of cancer on April 12th, aged 74. She also appeared in The Thousand Eyes of Dr Mabuse, A Study in Terror (as “Polly Nichols”), Satan’s Brew and Just a Gigolo.

Indian producer, singer and mega-star Rajkumer (Muthuraj Singanalluru Puttaswamayya) died the same day, aged 76. A champion of Kannada language films, he made more than 200 mostly historical and mythological movies and was worshipped by millions. Five people died in demonstrations following his death. In July 2000 Rajkumer and four relatives were kidnapped by the Tamil bandit, Veerappan. He was eventually released 108 days later, after a secret deal was negotiated with the authorities.

American character actor Henderson Forsythe, who portrayed Dr David Stewart on the daytime soap opera As the World Turns for more than thirty years, died on April 17th, aged 88. He also appeared in the films Dead of Night (aka Deathdream), The Cabinet ofDr Ramirez and Species II.

Italian actress Alida Valli (Baroness Alida Maria Laura Altenbur-ger von Marckenstein Freunberg), whose career spanned more than sixty years, died in Rome on April 22nd, aged 84. Born in Pula, Italy (in what is now Croatia), she began her film career at the age of nine and made her Hollywood debut in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Paradine Case (1947). Her other credits include Eyes Without a Face (aka The Horror Chamber ofDr Faustus), Antichristo, Tender Dracula (with Peter Cushing), Mario Bava’s Lisa and the Devil (aka House of Exorcism), and Dario Argento’s Suspiria and Inferno.

British film and TV actress Jennifer Jayne (Jennifer Jones) died on April 23rd, aged 73. She appeared in The Trollenberg Terror (aka The Crawling Eye), Hammer’s Hysteria, Dr Terror’s House of Horrors, They Came from Beyond Space and The Medusa Touch, as well as episodes of TV’s Invisible Man and Adam Adamant Lives! Under the pseudonym “Jay Fairbank” she reportedly scripted the anthology movie Tales That Witness Madness and the offbeat musical Son of Dracula (1974). Her last screen appearance was as a barmaid in The Doctor and the Devils.

Elma G. “Pem” Farnsworth, reputedly the first person to appear on television, died in Utah on April 27th, aged 98. Often called “The Mother of Television”, she was the wife of Philo T. Farnsworth and part of the technical team when he demonstrated his invention in San Francisco on September 7th, 1927.

Actress Alberta Nelson died of cancer on April 29th, aged 68. She was cast as the leather-clad blonde biker girlfriend of Eric Von Zipper (Harvey Lembeck) in a number of AIP’s “Beach Party” movies in the 1960s, including How to Stuff a Wild Bikini, Dr Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine and The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini. Nelson also appeared in an episode of Thriller before retiring from the screen in the early 1970s.

British magician Billy McComb, who appeared in Clive Barker’s Lord of Illusions, died on April 30th, aged 84.

American “B” movie actress Betsy Jones-Moreland died of cancer after a long illness on May 1st, aged 76. She is best known for her roles in Roger Corman’s The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent, Last Woman on Earth and Creature from the Haunted Sea. She was also in the “Lizard’s Leg and Owlet’s Wing” episode of TV’s Route 66 which teamed Boris Karloff, Lon Chaney, Jr and Peter Lorre, and her other credits include TV’s My Favorite Martian, The Outer Limits and The Ghost and Mrs Muir.

Test pilot and NASA engineer Bruce A. Peterson died the same day, aged 72. In 1967, he survived a plane crash at the Dryden Flight Research Center thanks to extensive surgery. He became the model for TV’s The Six Million Dollar Man (1973–78), the opening credits of which featured the crash of Peterson’s wingless M2-F2 test aircraft.

Pro-football player turned actor Michael “Bear” Taliferro, who played with the Washington Redskins in the NFL, died of a stroke on May 10th, aged 45. His film credits include Witch Hunt and Armageddon.

Colombian-American singer Soraya died of breast cancer the same day, aged 37. She won a Latin Grammy Award for female album in 2004.

Frankie Thomas, Jr (Frank M. Thomas), who starred on live TV from 1950–55 as Tom Corbett, Space Cadet, died of respiratory failure following a stroke on May 11th, aged 85. A juvenile actor on stage and screen since the 1930s, he appeared in the serial Tim Tyler’s Luck, and played Nancy Drew’s boyfriend Ted Nickerson in the series of films made between 1938–39. He later became a recreational bridge instructor and the author of a string of mystery novels, including Sherlock Holmes Bridge Detective, Sherlock Holmes and the Golden Bird and Sherlock Holmes and the Masquerade Murders. Thomas was set to be a special guest at the 2006 World Science Fiction Convention in Los Angeles and, according to his wishes, he was buried in his Tom Corbett dress uniform on May 16th.

Prolific American character actor Byron Morrow died the same day, aged 94. Often cast as a military officer, police chief and other authority figures, he appeared in The Mysterians, Atlantis the Lost Continent (uncredited), Panic in Year Zero!, King Kong vs. Godzilla, Black Zoo, The Strangler, Cyborg 2087, The Wrecking Crew (uncredited), Disney’s The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes (uncredited), Colossus: The Forbin Project, Johnny Got His Gun, The Resurrection ofZachary Wheeler, The Ghost of Flight 401, Fantasy Island, The Golden Gate Murders, Dark Mansions and episodes of TV’s Men Into Space, The Twilight Zone, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., I Dream of Jeannie, Get Smart, The Invaders, Lost in Space, Bewitched, Star Trek, The Wild Wild West, Night Gallery, Search, Kolchak: The Night Stalker, The Bionic Woman, The Greatest American Hero, Other-world, Highway to Heaven and Beauty and the Beast.

Actor Paul Marco, whose most famous role was Kelton the Cop in Edward D. Wood, Jr’s infamous Plan 9 from Outer Space and Night of the Ghouls, died on May 14th. He was believed to have been around 80. A former child performer alongside Shirley Temple, Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney, Marco also appeared in Wood’s Bride of the Monster and he was played by actor Max Casella in Tim Burton’s biopic Ed Wood. Marco also contributed to such documentaries as Flying Saucers Over Hollywood: The Plan 9 Companion and The Haunted World of Edward D. Wood, Jr, and more recently he recreated his Patrolman Kelton character for the direct-to-DVD movie Kelton’s Dark Corner.

Music arranger and composer Lew Anderson, who was the third person to play silent sidekick Clarabell the Clown on the popular 1950s children’s TV show Howdy Doody, died of prostate cancer the same day, aged 84.

62-year-old Norwegian-born actress Eva Norvind (Eva Johanne Chegodayeva Sakonskaya), who appeared in a number of Mexican films during the 1960s, including Facto de Sangre and Santo versus the Martian Invasion, drowned on May 14th off the coast of Zipolite, Oaxaca, when she was dragged under by a wave and thrown against the rocks. After a controversial statement over birth control ended her film career in Mexico in the late 1960s, she relocated to New York in the 1980s and developed the persona of dominatrix “Ava Taurel” in a number of short films and erotic role-playing documentaries. Her daughter, Naqilea Norvind, is an actress in Mexico.

69-year-old former milkman Freddie Garrity, lead singer with the 1960s Manchester group Freddie & the Dreamers, died in Wales of complications from emphysema on May 19th. The band’s hits include “I’m Telling You Now”, “You Were Made for Me” and “If You Gotta Make a Fool of Somebody”.

Zoë Rae (Zoë Rae Bech), one of the earliest child stars of the silent film era, died on May 20th, aged 95. She made her screen debut at the age of three in 1914, and two years later Carl Laemmle signed her to a five-year contract at Universal for $100.00 per week. Billed as “Little Zoë, the Universal Baby”, she worked with John Ford, Rupert Julian and Lon Chaney (The Kaiser: The Beast of Berlin, 1918). “I was just fascinated by him,” she later recalled. “He was a very pleasant gentleman, in my eyes, and very dedicated.”

64-year-old Jamaican ska and reggae singer Desmond Dekker (Desmond Adolphus Dacres) died of a heart attack on May 25th in Surrey, England. As Desmond Dekker and the Aces he had such hits in the 1960s as “Israelites” and “It Mek”.

American actor Paul Gleason, usually seen in supporting roles as authority figures, died of a rare form of lung cancer on May 27th, aged 67. He had only been diagnosed three weeks earlier. A former professional baseball player and drinking companion of writer Jack Kerouac, Gleason’s many credits include Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze, He Knows You’re Alone, Arthur, Ghost Chase, Maniac Cop 3: Badge of Silence, Abominable, the 1985 Star Wars spin-off Ewoks: The Battle for Endor, and episodes of TV’s The Green Hornet (“Alias the Scarf”, with John Carradine), Beauty and the Beast, Tales from the Crypt (“The Reluctant Vampire”), Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman and Dark Skies.

British actor and film and TV writer David Butler died the same day, aged 78. He appeared in the 1970 horror thriller Crucible of Horror.

British musical entertainer Derek Scott died on May 27th, aged 84. Following World War II, he formed a comedy duo with Tony Hancock, and he later composed the music for Hancock’s 1960s TV series and the film The Punch and Judy Man. Scott also composed many songs for The Muppet Show and was the voice of the piano-playing dog, Rolfe.

American leading man Robert Sterling (William John Hart), best remembered for his role as the ghostly George Kirby in the 1953–56 TV series Topper, died on May 30th, aged 88. He had suffered from shingles for a decade. The son of baseball star William S. Hart (not to be confused with the silent screen actor), Sterling appeared in Mandrake the Magician, Beware Spooks!, and the 1961 film version of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea as Captain Lee Crane, along with episodes of TV’s Lights Out, Suspense, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Twilight Zone and Fantasy Island. He was married to actresses Ann Sothern from 1943–49 and Anne Jeffreys (who he co-starred with in Topper) from 1951 until his death.

Johnny Grande, who played piano for Bill Haley and His Comets on their 1954 hit “Rock Around the Clock”, died on June 2nd, aged 76. He also played on “See You Later, Alligator” and “Rockin’ Through the Rye”.

Grateful Dead and The Tubes keyboard player Vince Welnick apparently committed suicide the same day, aged 55.

75-year-old radio actor James Barrett, who voiced the part of Dan Reid, the young nephew of The Lone Ranger, died on June 4th. He also worked on The Green Hornet and Sergeant Preston of the Yukon.

59-year-old Texas-born singer, songwriter and musician Billy Preston, best known for playing keyboards on the Beatles’ 1970 album Let it Be, died of a heart infection and kidney failure on June 6th. He had been in a coma since November the previous year. Often referred to as “the Fifth Beatle” after he was credited on “Get Back”, Preston was the first musical guest to appear on TV’s Saturday Night Live when the show premiered in 1975.

American character actor Robert Donner, a founding member of Harvey Lembec’s comedy-improv group The Crazy Quilt Comedy Company, died of a heart attack on June 8th, aged 75. After his friend and neighbour, Clint Eastwood, encouraged him to try drama, Donner appeared in more than 100 films and TV shows. Best known for his recurring role as Exidor on Mork and Mindy (1978–82), he also appeared in Agent for H.A.R.M., The Spirit is Willing, The Horror at 37,000 Feet, High Plains Drifter, Damnation Alley, Hysterical, Alan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold, Alien Nation: Dark Horizon and episodes of TV’s Ghost Story, The Six Million Dollar Man, The Incredible Hulk, Voyagers!, Blue Thunder, Starman and Early Edition.

Former model and exploitation actress Audrey Campbell (aka “Audrey Theile”) died after a long illness the same day, aged 76. She suffered from kidney and respiratory problems for many years. Best remembered for her role as Madame Olga in the 1964 sexploitation trilogy White Slaves of Chinatown, Olga’s House of Shame and Olga’s Girls, she also appeared in 50,000 B.C. (Before Clothing) and TV’s original Dark Shadows.

Hollywood leading man Arthur Franz died of heart failure and emphysema on June 17th, aged 86. His film credits include Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man, Flight to Mars, Invaders from Mars (1953), Back from the Dead, The Elame Barrier, Monster on the Campus, The Atomic Submarine, Sisters of Death and Dream No Evil. On TV he starred as Bill Winters in the 1959 series World of the Giants and appeared in episodes of Science Fiction Theatre, Man Into Space, One Step Beyond, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, The Invaders, Land of the Giants and The Six Million Dollar Man.

American character actor Richard Stahl (aka “Dick Stahl”) died on June 18th, aged 74. His numerous credits include The Student Nurses, Billy Jack, Slaughterhouse-Five, Beware the Blob, Terminal Island, Good Against Evil, High Anxiety, Hi Honey – I’m Dead, plus episodes of TV’s Search, Struck by Lightning, Highway to Heaven and Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman.

Claydes “Charles” Smith, co-founder and lead guitarist with the 1970s jazz funk group Kool & the Gang, died after a long illness on June 20th, aged 57. Smith wrote the hits “Joanna” and “Take My Heart”.

Welsh-born character actor and anti-establishment film-maker Kenneth Griffith (Kenneth Griffiths) died on June 25th, aged 84. He made his film debut in the early 1940s, and his credits include Helter Skelter (1947), 1984 (1956), Expresso Bongo, Circus of Horrors, Jane Eyre (1970), Revenge and The House in Nightmare Park (aka Crazy House). On TV he is best remembered for appearing in two episodes of the 1960s cult classic The Prisoner, including the series finale, “Fall Out”.

71-year-old Lennie Weinrib (aka “Len Weinrib”), who supplied the voice of the title character on the 1969 TV series H. R. Pufnstuff (which he also wrote), died in Santiago, Chile, of a stroke on June 28th. As a prolific voice actor, he worked on numerous cartoons featuring the Addams Family, Flintstones, Charlie Chan, Batman and Scooby-Doo (he was the original voice of Scrappy-Doo), as well as Disney’s Bedknobs and Broomsticks. Weinrib also appeared in Roger Corman’s Tales of Terror, The Strongest Man in the World and episodes of TV’s The Twilight Zone, My Favorite Martian, The Munsters and The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

55-year-old American actor Benjamin Hendrickson, who won a Daytime Emmy Award for playing police chief Hal Munson on the soap opera As the World Turns, committed suicide on July 1st by shooting himself in the head. He had apparently been depressed since his mother’s death from cancer in 2003. Hendrickson also appeared in The Demon Murder Case and Manhunter.

80-year-old American actress Kasey Rogers (Josie Imogene Rogers, aka “Laura Elliot”), who played Louise Tate on TV’s Bewitched, died of a stroke on July 6th after a long battle with cancer. She portrayed the murder victim in Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train, and her other film credits include Two Lost Worlds, When Worlds Collide and My Favorite Spy. A regular on Peyton Place (as “Julie Anderson”), she left the show in 1968 and was cast as the wife of advertising executive Larry Tate in Bewitched. After retiring from acting, she became a motor racing promoter.

Syd Barrett (Roger Keith Barrett), founder of the rock group Pink Floyd, died of diabetes-related symptoms on July 7th, aged 60. Barrett was the lead singer and guitarist of the group until 1968, when an LSD-induced mental breakdown led to him living as a recluse for more than thirty years. He wrote such early hits for the group as “Arnold Layne” and “See Emily Play”, while the Floyd’s songs “Wish You Were Here” and “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” celebrated Barrett’s genius.

1940s Hollywood star June Allyson (Ella Geisman) died after a long illness from pulmonary respiratory failure and acute bronchitis on July 8th, aged 88. A former Broadway chorus dancer, late in her career she appeared in such TV movies as Curse of the Black Widow and The Kid with the Broken Halo, as well as episodes of The Sixth Sense, The Incredible Hulk, Misfits of Science and Airwolf The first of her three marriages was to actor-director Dick Powell, which lasted from 1945 until his death in 1963.

Tony and Emmy Award-winning stage and screen actor Barnard Hughes died after a short illness on July 11th, aged 90. His film credits include Sisters, Rage, Oh God!, Disney’s Tron, Maxie, The Lost Boys and such TV movies as Dr. Cook’s Garden, The Borrowers (1973) and The UFO Incident. He also appeared in episodes of Way Out and Tales from the Darkside.

Swiss-German actor Kurt Kreuger (aka “Knud Kreuger”) often cast as Nazi officers in movies, died of a stroke in Los Angeles on July 12th, aged 89. He appeared in such films as Secret Service in Darkest Africa and The Spider (1945), and during the 1950s he was Twentieth Century-Fox’s third most requested male pin-up. He moved to TV in the 1960s, appearing in episodes of The Man from U.N.C.L.E., The Wild Wild West, Get Smart (“House of Max”) and Wonder Woman, before later becoming a hugely successful Beverly Hills realtor.

American burlesque comedian and Oscar-winning supporting actor Red Buttons (Aaron Chwatt) died of vascular disease on July 13th, aged 87. In a career that spanned seven decades, his credits include Five Weeks in a Balloon, Gay Purr-ee, The Poseidon Adventure (1972), Disney’s Pete’s Dragon, C.H.O.M.P.S., When Time Ran Out, 18 Again!, The Ambulance, the TV movies The New Original Wonder Woman and Alice in Wonderland (1985), and episodes of Suspense and Fantasy Island. Buttons was onstage the night in 1942 New York mayor Fiorello La Guardia ordered the police to close down comedian Billy Minsky’s club, the city’s last burlesque show.

American stage and screen actress Carrie Nye (Carolyn Nye McGeoy) died of lung cancer on July 14th, aged 69. The wife of US talk show host Dick Cavett, she appeared in Creepshow, Too Scared to Scream, Hello Again and the TV movie Screaming Skull.

Veteran character actor Jack Warden (John H. Lebzelter) died on July 19th, aged 85. A former teenage boxer (under the name “Johnny Costello”), he appeared in The White Buffalo, Heaven Can Wait (1978, for which he was nominated for an Oscar), Topper (1979), The Great Muppet Caper, Alice in Wonderland (1985) and episodes of TV’s The Twilight Zone, Bewitched and The Invaders.

Veteran character actor Robert Cornthwaite died on July 20th, aged 89. Best remembered for his roles as various doctors in The Thing from Another World, Monkey Business, The War of the Worlds (1953) and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, he also appeared in Kiss Me Deadly (uncredited), The Ghost and Mr. Chicken, Colossus: The Forbin Project, The Devil’s Daughter, The Six Million Dollar Man, Futureworld, Time Trackers, Matinee (uncredited), The Naked Monster and episodes of TV’s Men Into Space, Thriller, The Twilight Zone, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, The Munsters, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Get Smart, Batman (as villain “Alan A. Dale”), Kolchak: The Night Stalker, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Beauty and the Beast and The Pretender.

Oscar-nominated Japanese-American film and TV actor Mako (Makoto Iwamatsu) died of oesophageal cancer on July 21st, aged 72. He appeared in The Island at the Top of the World, Conan the Barbarian, Conan the Destroyer, RoboCop 3, Highlander III the Sorcerer, Bulletproof Monk and episodes of TV’s I Dream of Jeannie, The Green Hornet, The Time Tunnel, Wonder Woman, Supertrain, The Incredible Hulk, A Man Called Shane, Fantasy Island, Voyagers!, The Greatest American Hero, Faerie Tale Theatre, The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne and Charmed. In 1965 Mako co-founded East West Players, the United States’ first Asian-American theatre company.

Former child actress and model J. Madison Wright [Morris] died of a heart attack the same day, aged 21. She had just returned from her honeymoon. Mostly known for her TV work, her first major role was playing True Danziger in the NBC-TV series Earth 2 (1994–95). After an X-ray revealed she had an enlarged heart and she was diagnosed with restrictive cardiomyopathy, Morris had a heart transplant in 2000.

Classical music composer and teacher Dika Newlin, who later became an actress and unlikely punk rock performer, died on July 22nd, aged 82. A singer and keyboard player with the alternative rock band Apocowlypso in the 1980s, she composed the music for the horror film Mark of the Devil 666: The Moralist and appeared in the 1995 movie Creep.

British professional jockey turned film stuntman Mick Dillon died on July 23rd, aged 80. In 1961, Dillon and two other stuntmen took turns wearing the monster suit for Gorgo. He also played one of the deadly plants in The Day of the Triffids (1963) and was inside a Dalek for Dr Who and the Daleks.

52-year-old Michael Sellers, the son of British actor Peter, died of a heart attack on July 24th, twenty-six years to the day after his father died of the same condition at the age of 54. The first child of the actor’s marriage to actress Anne Howe, Michael Sellers was left virtually penniless following his father’s death and he subsequently wrote the biographies PS I Love You (1981) and Sellers On Sellers (with Gary Morecambe, 2000).

Johnny Weissmuller, Jr, the son of the Olympic swimmer famous for his movie portrayal of Tarzan in the 1930s and ’40s, died of cancer on July 27th, aged 65. A former US Navy underwater demolition expert, the six-foot, six-inch actor appeared in a number of TV shows and movies, including George Lucas’ THX 1138 and Ewoks: The Battle for Endor. He co-authored the biography Tarzan: My Father with Bill Reed.

Square-jawed leading British actor and “King of the Voice-Overs” Patrick Allen (John Keith Patrick Allen) died on July 28th, aged 79. Born in the British protectorate of Nyasaland (now Malawi), he grew up in Canada and America before arriving back in the UK in 1953, where he got a small role in Alfred Hitchcock’s Dial M for Murder. He starred as the eponymous adventurer in the 1963 TV series Crane, and his other film credits include 1984 (1956), Hammer’s Never Take Sweets from a Stranger, Captain Clegg (aka Night Creatures) and When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth, The Night of the Generals, Night of the Big Heat (aka Island of the Burning Damned), The Body Stealers (aka Thin Air) and Persecution (aka The Terror of Sheba). His also re-voiced Leon Greene’s character “Rex” in Hammer’s The Devil Rides Out. On TV Allen appeared in episodes of Out of This World, The Avengers, Journey Into Darkness, The Champions, Journey to the Unknown, U.F.O., Thriller and The Return of Sherlock Holmes (as “Colonel Sebastian Moran”). His distinctive gravel-voice was used by the Ministry of Defence on twenty “Protect and Survive” videos, to be shown on TV in the event of a nuclear attack, and these were sampled by Frankie Goes to Hollywood for their #1 single “Two Tribes”. He was married to actress Sarah Lawson since 1960.

57-year-old Kim McLagan (Patsy Kerrigan, aka “Kim Kerrigan”), a swinging ’60s London fashion model and the former wife (1966–75) of The Who drummer Keith Moon (who died of a drug overdose in 1978), was killed in Texas on August 2nd when she apparently jumped a stop sign in her car and was hit by a truck. In 1978 she married Small Faces keyboard player Ian McLagan.

British wrestler turned actor Ken Richmond died on August 3rd, aged 80. From the mid-1950s he was the fourth bare-chested strongman to strike the giant gong for J. Arthur Rank film productions. He also had small roles in Blithe Spirit and Mad About Men.

Arthur Lee (Arthur Taylor Porter), lead singer with the 1960s Los Angeles band Love, died of lymphoblastic leukaemia the same day, aged 61. Such albums as Forever Changes (1967) are said to have influenced Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and others. Lee was jailed in 1995 for five years for firing a handgun in the air outside a neighbour’s house.

British-born character actor John “Basher” Alderson died in California on August 4th, aged 90. His numerous credits include Fritz Lang’s Moonfleet, the Disney comedy The Cat from Outer Space, Riders of the Storm and episodes of TV’s Space Patrol, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Alfred Hitchcock Hour, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Doctor Who, The Time Tunnel, The Wild Wild West, Rod Serling’s Night Gallery and Automan.

Japanese anime voice actor Hirotaka Suzuoki died of lung cancer on August 6th, aged 56.

Hollywood “B” movie actress [Laura] Lois January died of Alzheimer’s disease on August 7th, aged 93. The heroine of countless Westerns, she also appeared in The Black Cat (1934) and The Man Who Reclaimed His Head (both uncredited), Life Returns, Night Life of the Gods, The Wizard ofOz (uncredited as the Emerald City’s singing salon operator) and an episode of TV’s Kolchak: The Night Stalker (“Bad Medicine”).

American TV talk show host Mike Douglas (Michael Delaney Dowd, Jr) died on August 11th, aged 81. In the late 1940s he sang with Kay Kyser’s band, and he was the singing voice of Prince Charming in Walt Disney’s 1950 animated feature Sleeping Beauty.

73-year-old British-born character actor and prolific voice performer Tony Jay, best known as the voice of the scheming Judge Frollo in Disney’s animated The Hunchback of Notre Dame, died in Los Angeles on August 13th following complications from surgery to remove a non-cancerous tumour from his lungs in April. A member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, he moved to America in 1986 and became a naturalised citizen. His many credits include Time Bandits (as the voice of the “Supreme Being”), Warriors of the Wind, Twins, My Stepmother is an Alien, Beasties, Scooby-Doo in Arabian Nights, All Dogs Go to Heaven 2, Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, Treasure Planet, The Jungle Book 2 and numerous others. The Emmy Award-nominated Jay had recurring roles as the villainous Paracelcus in the TV series Beauty and the Beast, Dougie Milford in Twin Peaks and Nigel St. John in Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, and appeared in episodes of Eerie Indiana, Star Trek the Next Generation, The Adventures ofBrisco County Jr and The Burning Zone.

American character actor Bruno Kirby (Bruno Giovanni Quida-ciolu, aka “B. Kirby, Jr”) died of complications from leukaemia on August 14th, aged 57. His credits include Flesh + Blood, Stuart Little, Helter Skelter (2004) and an episode of HBO’s Tales from the Crypt (“The Trap”).

Singer and musician Buck Page, who founded the original Western band Riders of the Purple Sage in 1936, died on August 21st, aged 84.

Bruce Gary, drummer for The Knack (“My Sharona”) died of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma on August 22nd, aged 55.

British character actor Bill Stewart died of complications from motor neurone disease on August 29th, aged 63. He appeared in such films as Morons from Outer Space, 101 Dalmatians (1996) and Fairy Tale: A True Story.

Rockabilly singer and songwriter Jumpin’ Gene Simmons, who had a novelty hit in 1964 with “Haunted House”, died after a long illness the same day, aged 69.

90-year-old Canadian-born Hollywood star Glenn Ford (Gwyllyn Samuel Newton Ford) was found dead at his home on August 30th. He had suffered a series of strokes over the previous decade. Best known for his many Western roles, Ford also appeared in The Visitor (Stridulum), Virus (Fukkatsu no hi), Happy Birthday to Me, Raw Nerve, the TV movies The Brotherhood of the Bell and The Disappearance of Flight 412, and his final film appearance was as Jonathan Kent in Superman (1978). In 1958 Ford was voted the #1 male box-office attraction. Despite being romantically linked to Rita Hayworth for four decades, the first of his four wives was actress/dancer Eleanor Powell.

1948 and 1952 American Olympic decathlon champion Bob Mathias, who later became an actor and Republican Member of Congress, died of cancer on September 2nd, aged 75. He portrayed Prince Theseus in The Minotaur (1961).

Actor, radio singer/announcer and television station owner John Conte died on September 4th, aged 90. From 1955–58 he hosted more than 600 segments of the NBC-TV daytime anthology series Matinee Theater, which included adaptations of Dracula (with John Carradine), Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (with Robert Montgomery) and Frankenstein (with Primo Camera). Conte founded the NBC affiliate KMIR-TV in California’s Palm Springs-Rancho Mirage area in 1968 and ran the station until he sold it in 1999.

Crikey! Australian “Crocodile Hunter” Steve Irwin was killed the same day by a freak stingray strike in the heart during underwater filming for a show called Ocean’s Deadliest at the Great Barrier Reef. He was only the third person in Australian history to die from a stingray attack. The 44-year-old TV personality and conservationist appeared in Dr Dolittle 2 and starred in the 2002 movie The Crocodile Hunter: Collision Course.

Welsh-born actor Bill Meilen, who played Dr Egas Gottreich in Stephen King’s Kingdom Hospital, died of cancer in Canada on September 4th, aged 74. He also appeared in Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed and episodes of TV’s The Ray Bradbury Theater, The Outer Limits, Mysterious Ways, Dead Like Me and Battlestar Galactica.

British actress Hilary [Lavender] Mason, best known for her role as the blind psychic Heather in Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now (1973), died on September 5th, the day after her 89th birthday. She also appeared in the films I Don’t Want to be Born (aka The Devil Within Her), Dolls, Robotjox, Meridian (aka Phantoms), Afraid of the Dark and Haunted. Her TV credits include The Secret Garden (1960), The Phoenix and the Carpet (1976), the 1977 Ripping Yarns episode “The Curse of the Claw”, The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes: The Last Vampyre, and episodes of Out of the Unknown and Tales of the Unexpected.

Broadway actor Robert Earl Jones, the father of actor James, died of heart failure on September 7th, aged 95. Blacklisted for refusing to testify before the House of Un-American Activities Committee in the 1950s, his relatively few film credits include Sleepaway Camp and Maniac Cop 2.

British character actor Frank Middlemass died on September 8th, aged 87. His credits include Hammer’s Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed, Madame Sin, The Island, Dreamchild, Sherlock Holmes and the Leading Lady and episodes of The Avengers, Sherlock Holmes (1968), The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Invisible Man (1984), Highlander and the mini-series The 10th Kingdom. In the mid-1960s, needing somewhere to stay in London, Middlemass asked actor Geoffrey Toone (who died in 2005) if he could borrow a spare room for a couple of weeks. Forty years later, he was still there.

American character actor S. John Launer died the same day, aged 86. He began his film career in Creature with the Atom Brain (1955) and went on to appear in The Werewolf, I Was a Teenage Werewolf and Jailhouse Rock (uncredited, as the judge who sends Elvis to prison), along with episodes of TV’s The Twilight Zone, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, The Wild Wild West and Batman. He retired in the late 1970s.

Herbert Rudley, who co-starred with Basil Rathbone, Lon Cha-ney, Jr, Bela Lugosi, John Carradine, Akim Tamiroff and Tor Johnson in The Black Sleep (1956), died of a heart attack on September 9th, aged 96. He also played Ira Gershwin in Rhapsody in Blue (1945), and his TV credits include episodes of Lights Out, Science Fiction Theater, Suspicion, Men Into Space, Thriller, My Favorite Martian, My Living Doll, The Munsters, I Dream ofjeannie and Project UFO.

20-year-old Daniel Smith, the son of former Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith, died in Nassau, Bahamas, on September 10th. He had been visiting his mother in hospital after she had given birth to a daughter three days earlier. A pathologist later attributed his death to a heart attack caused by drugs.

American-born singer Peter Tevis died of Parkinson’s disease on September 13th, aged 69. Tevis spent most of his early career in Italy, where he was instrumental in creating the distinctive themes for Spaghetti Westerns. After returning to America in the late 1960s, he was credited as music producer on Flesh Gordon (1974).

Hungarian-born champion bodybuilder turned actor Mickey Hargitay (Miklós Hargitay), the father of Emmy Award-winning actress Mariska, died after a long illness on September 14th, aged 80. Inspired by a magazine cover of muscleman Steve Reeves, Hargitay won the “Mr. Universe”, “Mr America” and “Mr Olympia” contests in 1955 and went on to become an ensemble cast member of Mae West’s night-club stage show. He was married to actress Jayne Mansfield from 1958 until three years before her untimely death in a car crash in 1967. The couple appeared together in Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, Promises! Promises! and the Italian films The Loves of Hercules and Primitive Love. Hargitay’s other European movies include Revenge of the Gladiators, Lady Frankenstein, Delirium, The Reincarnation of Isabel and, most famously, as the “Crimson Executioner” in Bloody Pit of Horror. On TV he appeared in an episode of The Wild Wild West, and Arnold Schwarzenegger played Hargitay in the 1982 TV movie The Jayne Mansfield Story.

Senegal-born British actor Johnny Sekka (Lamine Secka) died of lung cancer in California the same day, aged 72. After stowing away on a ship to Europe in the 1950s, he initially worked on the British stage before appearing in such films and TV shows as Incense for the Damned (aka Bloodsuckers), Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen, Babylon 5: The Gathering, The Avengers, The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries (“Voodoo Doll”) and Tales of the Gold Monkey.

Saxophone player Danny Flores (aka “Chuck Rio”), who shouted the word “Tequila!” on the Champs’ 1958 hit song of the same name (which he wrote), died of pneumonia on September 19th, aged 77. A heavy drinker during the early days of the band, he reportedly signed away US royalties to the song (which was featured in such films as Pee-wee’s Big Adventure) for a pittance.

59-year-old actor and voice-over artist Tim (Timothy) [Hayes] Rooney, the son of veteran Mickey Rooney, died on September 21st after a five-year battle with the muscle disease dermatomyositis. His credits include Riot of Sunset Strip, Village of the Giants and episodes of TV’s Bewitched and The Jetsons.

Christopher Crawford, the second child adopted by film star Joan Crawford, died of cancer on September 22nd, aged 62. He apparently supported his adoptive sister Christina’s account of their upbringing in her 1979 memoir Mommy Dearest.

American leading man Edward [Laurence] Albert (Jr), the only son of actor Eddie Albert (who died in 2005) and Mexican actress/dancer Margo, died of lung cancer the same day, aged 55. His credits include The Fool Killer (at the age of eleven), Killer Bees, Death Cruise, When Time Ran Out . . ., Galaxy of Terror, The House Where Evil Dwells, Accidents, The Girl from Mars, Demon Keeper, Sorceress (aka Temptress II), Space Marines, Stageghost, Mimic 2 and Sea of Fear. He voiced Daredevil/Matt Murdock on the 1996 Spider-Man cartoon series and the Silver Surfer on Fantastic Four the same year. His other TV credits include episodes of Orson Welles’ Great Mysteries (“A Terribly Strange Bed”), Tales of the Unexpected, The Hitchhiker, Star Trek Deep Space Nine, Time Trax, Profiler, The Sentinel, Conan, Extreme Ghostbusters, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Invasion America and She Spies. He had recurring roles as Elliot Burch on Beauty and the Beast, Bennett Devlin in the supernatural soap opera Port Charles and Mr. Collins on Power Rangers: Time Force. Albert was married to British-born actress Katherine Woodville. A dedicated environmentalist, like his father, Malibu’s Escondido Canyon was renamed in his honour as the Edward Albert Escondido Trail & Waterfalls.

Influential blues guitarist Etta Baker, who recorded with Taj-Mahal, died on September 23rd, aged 93. She worked in a textile mill for twenty-six years before starting her professional career in the late 1950s.

Prolific Japanese actor Tetsuro Tamba (Shozaburo Tanba), who portrayed Tiger Tanaka in the James Bond movie You Only Live Twice, died of pneumonia on September 24th, aged 84. His more than 300 credits (he reportedly never turned down a role) include The Depths, Kwaidan, Japan Sinks (both 1973 and 2006 versions), The Last Days of Planet Earth, Message from Space, Peking Man (1997), Jigoku, Blind Beast vs. Dwarf, The Happiness of the Kata-kuris, Gozu and the popular anime The Cat Returns. He later became a spiritual cult leader in Japan.

Iva Toguri D’Aquino, who may have been better known as World War II propagandist “Tokyo Rose”, died in Chicago on September 26th, aged 90. An American citizen, D’Aquino had been visiting relatives in Japan when war broke out and she reportedly began broadcasting anti-American propaganda to US troops in the Pacific. She was convicted of treason and jailed for six years in 1949 but, after doubts about guilt, she was pardoned by President Gerald Ford in 1977.

British-born actor, scriptwriter and author Alan Caillou (Alan Lyle-Smythe) died in Arizona on October 1st, aged 92. Following World War II, he worked as a police chief in Ethiopa and a district officer in Somalia before moving to Canada and then the United States. Usually cast a British “major” types in Hollywood, Caillou appeared in the 1959 Journey to the Center the Earth (uncredited), Five Weeks in a Balloon, Sole Survivor, The Hound of the Baskervilles (1972, as Inspector Lestrade), Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex” “And Were Afraid to Ask, The Questor Tapes, Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo, Beyond Evil, The Sword and the Sorcerer and Ice Pirates, along with episodes of TV’s One Step Beyond, Thriller, Tarzan, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. He also had a recurring role as “The Head” in the SF comedy series Quark (1977–78). Among Caillou’s scripting credits are the movies Village of the Giants and Kingdom the Spiders, plus episodes of Thriller, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and The Six Million Dollar Man.

Six-foot, two-inch tall fashion model-turned-actress Tamara Dobson died of complications from pneumonia and multiple sclerosis on October 2nd, aged 59. In the 1970s she portrayed the eponymous kung-fu fighting government agent in Cleopatra Jones and its sequel, Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold. Listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the tallest leading actress in films, her other credits include Chained Heat and the TV movie Amazons. She appeared in an episode of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (“Happy Birthday, Buck”) and played “Samantha” on the 1980–81 season of Jason of Star Command.

Actress and former model Frances Bergen (Frances Westerman), the widow of ventriloquist Edgar Bergen (who died in 1978) and mother of Candice Bergen, died after a long illness the same day, aged 84.

British character actor Tom Bell died after a short illness on October 4th, aged 73. Best known for his recurring role in the Prime Suspect TV movies, in an acting career dating back to 1948 his other credits include Quest for Love (based on a short SF story by John Wyndham), Hammer’s Straight on Till Morning, an adaptation of Angela Carter’s The Magic Toyshop, Prospero’s Books, Angels, Long Time Dead and episodes of TV’s The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles (“Young Indiana Jones and the Phantom Train of Doom”) and Dr Terrible’s House of Horrible (“Voodoo Feet of Death”).

69-year-old Mexican-American singer Freddy Fender died of lung cancer at his home in Texas on October 14th. He had suffered numerous health problems for years due to drug and alcohol abuse. After recording a Spanish-language version of Elvis Presley’s “Don’t Be Cruel” in the 1950s, he later had hits with “Before the Next Teardrop Falls” and “Wasted Days and Wasted Nights” following a three-year prison sentence for possession of marijuana.

Scottish-born leading man Derek [William Douglas] Bond died on October 15th, aged 86. His film credits include Uncle Silas (aka The Inheritance) based on the novel by J. Sheridan Le Fanu, The Hour of 13, Stranger from Venus (aka Immediate Disaster), Svengali (1954) and Visions. He was one of the first reputable actors to appear in sexploitation films in the 1960s. Bond made his TV debut as a robot in a 1938 adaptation of Karel Capek’s R.U.R., and also appeared in episodes of The New Adventures of Charlie Chan, Invisible Man (1959), Thriller (1974) and Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson.

American actor Jack DeLeon died on October 16th. As well as appearing in such films as Linda Lovelace for President and Train Ride to Hollywood, as a TV voice performer he contributed to Halloween is Grinch Night, The Hobbit, Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo and Spider-Man (1981).

Tuba player Tommy Johnson, who played the opening notes of the ominous shark theme in Steven Spielberg’s Jaws, died of complications from cancer and kidney failure the same day, aged 71. Johnson also played on the soundtracks for Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, The Lion King and various Star Trek movies.

Distinctive French character actor Daniel Emilfork [Berenstein] died on October 17th, aged 82. Born in Chile of Ukrainian parents, his film credits include The Hunchback ofNotre-Dame (1956), OSS 117, The Devil’s Nightmare (as the Devil), The Thief of Baghdad (1978) and The City of Lost Children.

Hollywood actress and former model Phyllis Kirk (Phyllis Kirkegaard) who co-starred with Vincent Price in the 1953 3-D movie House of Wax, died of a post-cerebral aneurysm on October 19th, aged 79. On TV she appeared in episodes of Tales of Tomorrow, Suspense (“The Moonstone”), Climax! and The Twilight Zone, and she played Nora Charles in the 1959 TV series The Thin Man, opposite Peter Lawford. She eventually became a publicist for CBS-TV and retired in 1992.

Emmy Award-winning actress Jane [Waddington] Wyatt, who co-starred with Ronald Coleman in Lost Horizon (1937), died on October 20th, aged 95. Her other film credits include Great Expectations (1934) and Amityville: The Evil Escapes. On TV she appeared in episodes of Lights Out, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (“The Monkey’s Paw – A Retelling”), Fantasy Island, Starman and The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. She played Mr. Spock’s mother Amanda in an episode of the original Star Trek series (“Journey to Babel”), and the actress later recreated the role in the 1986 film Star Trek IV The Voyage Home. She was blacklisted for several years for participating in communist-friendly cultural activities.

77-year-old British character actor Peter Barkworth died of broncho-pneumonia following a stroke on October 21st. A mainstay of British television during the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s, he appeared in episodes of Doctor Who (“The Ice Warriors”), The Avengers, Shadows of Fear, Out of the Unknown, The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes, Dead of Night, Tales of the Unexpected and The Return of Sherlock Holmes.

Sandy West, drummer with the all-female band The Runaways, died of lung cancer the same day, aged 47. She was only sixteen years old in 1975 when she founded the group with singer and guitarist Joan Jett. Their hits include “Cherry Bomb” and “Born to Be Bad”.

84-year-old Canadian-born actor Arthur Hill died in a Los Angeles care facility on October 22nd after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease. He made his uncredited film debut in 1949, and went on to appear in Mr Drake’s Duck, The Chairman (aka The Most Dangerous Man in the World), The Andromeda Strain, Futureworld, Revenge of the Stepford Wives, Disney’s Something Wicked This Way Comes (as the Narrator), Prototype, The Murder of Sherlock Holmes, Murder in Space and One Magic Christmas, along with episodes of TV’s Colonel March of Scotland Yard (with Boris Karloff), Dow Hour of Great Mysteries (“The Woman in White”), Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Great Ghost Tales, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, The Invaders and Tales of the Unexpected.

Acknowledged as the world’s smallest actor, two-feet, four-inch tall Nelson de la Rosa died of a heart attack the same day, aged 38. As well as being the good-luck charm for the Boston Redsox during the baseball team’s victorious 2004 World Series run, the Dominican Republic national, who was born with the genetic syndrome microcephalic osteodysplastic primordial dwarfism type II, was the eponymous creature in Ratman (Quella villa in fondo alparco), portrayed a demon in Fuoco incrociato and appeared alongside Marlon Brando in the 1996 version of The Island of Dr. Moreau (a role that reportedly became the inspiration for the “Mini-Me” character in the Austin Powers films). He subsequently became a circus performer.

Freddie Marsden, the drummer for Liverpool band Gerry and the Pacemakers, which he co-founded with his younger brother in the early 1960s, died on October 23rd, aged 66. He played on such hits as “How Do You Do It”, “I Like It”, “You’ll Never Walk Alone” and “I’m the One”.

French actress Tina Aumont (Maria Christina Aumont), the daughter of actors Jean-Pierre Aumont and Maria Montez, died of a pulmonary embolism on October 26th, aged 60. After making her screen debut under the name “Tina Marquand” in the 1966 version of Modesty Blaise, her credits include Fellini’s Satyricon, Necropolis, Torso, Dinosaur from the Deep and Jean Rollin’s Two Orphan Vampires. She married director Christian Marquand in 1963.

66-year-old professional American footballer turned actor Marlin McKeever died of complications from injuries received at his home on October 27th. For thirteen years he played with the Los Angeles Rams, the Minnesota Vikings, the Washington Redskins and the Philadelphia Eagles. McKeever and his twin brother Mike (who died in 1967) played the Siamese Cyclops’ Ajax and Argo in The Three Stooges Meet Hercules (1962). He also appeared in Disney’s The Absent Minded Professor (1961).

Smooth-voiced British actor William Franklyn died of prostate cancer on Halloween, aged 81. His films include Roman Polanski’s Cul-de-sac, plus Hammer’s Quatermass 2, The Snorkel and The Satanic Rites of Dracula (aka Count Dracula and His Vampire Bride). On TV, Franklyn appeared in episodes of The New Adventures of Charlie Chan, The Avengers, The Champions and The New Avengers, and he took over the role of the Book from the late Peter Jones for the 2004 Radio 4 presentation of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

American actress Bettye Ackerman [Jaffe] died of complications from Alzheimer’s disease on November 1st, aged 82. The widow of actor Sam Jaffe (who died in 1984 and was more than thirty years her senior), her film credits include Face of Fire and Prehysteria! 2, plus episodes of TV’s Alfred Hitchcock Presents (“Speciality of the House”), The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, The Sixth Sense, Wonder Woman and Tales of the Unexpected.

40-year-old independent New York film actress Adrienne Shelly (Adrienne Levine) was found hanged in her office the same day. A 19-year-old construction worker was arrested several days later and charged with second-degree murder in connection with her death (apparently the result of an argument over noise). Shelly wrote and directed the 1994 horror film Urban Legend.