The Mammoth Book of Terror

SYDNEY JAMES BOUNDS BEGAN his career by contributing “spicy” stories to the monthly magazines produced by Utopia Press in the 1940s. He was soon writing hardboiled gangster novels for John Spencer under such house names as “Brett Diamond” and “Ricky Madison”, and he contributed short stories to their line of SF magazines which included Futuristic Science Stories, Tales of Tomorrow and Worlds of Fantasy.

He became a regular contributor to such magazines as New Worlds Science Fiction, Science Fantasy, Authentic Science Fiction, Nebula Science Fiction, Other Worlds Science Stories and Fantastic Universe. However, as the science fiction magazine markets started to dry up during the 1960s, the author began to notice the growth of paperbacks. Although he continued to be published in such periodicals as London Mystery Magazine, Vision of Tomorrow, Fantasy Tales, Fantasy Booklet, Fantasy Annual and Fantasy Quarterly, he quickly became a prolific and reliable contributor to such anthology series as New Writings in SF, The Fontana Booh of Great Ghost Stories, TheFontana Booh of Great Horror Stories, the Armada Monster Book, the Armada Ghost Book and Fantasy Adventures.

Bounds has also pursued parallel careers as a successful children’s writer and a Western novelist for Robert Hale, and in 2003 Cosmos Books issued the first-ever collections of the author’s work as two paperback volumes, The Best of Sydney J. Bounds: Strange Portrait and Other Stories and The Wayward Ship and Other Stories, both edited by Philip Harbottle.

One of the author’s best-known stories, “The Circus” was adapted by George A. Romero for a 1986 episode of the syndicated television series Tales of the Darkside.

“One of the tricks a writer has for producing a new story is to reverse a standard situation,” explains Bounds. “Back in the 1970s, werewolves and vampires were considered evil and words like horror and terror were applied to them. So why not devise a story based on the wonder of the differences in nature? Here it is . . .”

BECAUSE HE HAD BEEN drinking, Arnold Bragg considered it a stroke of good fortune that the accident happened a long way from any main road and the chance of a patrolling police car. He had no exactidea of his locationjustthatitwas somewhere in the West Country.

He was on his way back from Cornwall where he’d been covering a story, an expose of a witches’ coven, for the Sunday Herald. He drove an MG sports car and, as always with a few drinks inside him, drove too fast. With time to spare, he’d left the A30 at a whim. It was a summer evening, slowly cooling after the heat of the day. The countryside was what he called “pretty”, with lanes twisting between hedgerows. He took a corner at speed and rammed the trunk of a tree that jutted into the road around the bend.

Shaken but unhurt, he climbed from his car and swore at a leaking radiator. Then he got back in and drove on, looking for a garage. He found one, a couple of miles further along, next to a pub with a scattering of cottages; there were not enough of them to justify calling them a village.

A mechanic glanced at the bonnet and sniffed his breath. “At, I can fix it. Couple of hours, maybe.”

Arnold Bragg nodded. “I’ll be next door when you’ve finished.”

It was the kind of pub that exists only in out-of-the-way places, and then rarely: a house of local stone with a front room converted as a bar. The door stood open and he walked in past a stack of beer crates. The walls were thick and it was cool inside. On a polished counter rested two casks, one of cider and one of beer. A grey-haired woman sat knitting behind the counter, and two oldish men sat on a wooden bench by the window

Bragg turned on a charm that rarely failed him. “I’ll try a pint of your local beer.”

The woman laid her knitting aside, picked up a glass mug and held it under the tap; sediment hung in the rich brown liquid.

Bragg tasted it, then drank deeply. “I didn’t know anyone still brewed beer like this.” He glanced around the room.

“Perhaps you gentlemen will join me?”

“At, likely we will, sir. And many thanks.”

Bragg’s gaze moved on to a poster thumb-tacked to the wall. It had obviously been hand-printed, and read:

CIRCUS

Before your very eyes, werewolf into man!

See the vampire rise from his coffin!

Bring the children – invest in a sense of wonder

As Arnold Bragg stared and wondered if beer had finally rotted his brain, sluggish memory stirred. In his job, he always listened to rumours; some he hunted down and obtained a story. There had been this crazy one, crazy but persistent, of a freak circus that never visited towns but stopped only for one night at isolated villages. He’d come across it first in the fens, then on the Yorkshire moors, and again in a Welsh valley.

The knowledge that this circus was here, now, sobered him. He set down his glass on the counter, unfinished. When he scented a lead, he could stop drinking. And this one was likely to prove the apex of a career dedicated to discrediting fakes and phoneys of all kinds.

He studied the poster carefully. No name was given to the circus. There was no indication of time or place of performance. Still, it shouldn’t be hard to find.

He strolled outside, passed the garage where the mechanic worked on his car, and sauntered towards the cottages. A few families, young husbands and wives with their offspring, were walking down a lane, and he followed them. Presently he glimpsed, in the distance, the canvas top of a large tent showing above some trees.

He kept to himself, observing the people on the way to the circus; there was no gaiety in them. With solemn faces and measured step they went, people who took their pleasure seriously.

Beyond a screen of trees was a green field with the big top and a huddle of caravans and Land Rovers. People formed a small queue at an open flap of the tent, where a little old man sold tickets. He sported a fringe of white hair, nut-brown skin and the wizened appearance of a chimpanzee.

Bragg dipped a hand into his pocket and brought out some loose change.

“I don’t believe you’ll like our show, sir.” The accent was foreign. “It’s purely for the locals, you understand. Nothing sophisticated for a London gentleman.”

“You’re wrong,” Bragg said, urging money on him. “This is just right for me.” He snatched a ticket and walked into the tent.

Seats rose in tiers, wooden planks set on angle-irons. In the centre was a sawdust ring behind low planking; an aisle at the rear allowed performers to come and go. There was no provision for a high-wire act.

Bragg found an empty seat away from the local people, high enough so that he commanded a clear view, but not so far from the ringside that he would miss any detail.

Not many seats were occupied. He lit a cigarette and watched the crowd. Grave faces, little talk; the children showed none of that excitement normally associated with a visit to the circus. Occasionally eyes turned his way and were hastily averted. A few more families arrived, all with young children.

The old man who sold tickets doubled as ringmaster. He shuffled across the sawdust and made his announcement in hardly more than a whisper. Bragg had to strain to catch the words.

“I, Doctor Nis, welcome you to my circus. Tonight you will see true wonders. The natural world is full of prodigies for those who open their eyes and minds. We begin with the vampire.”

Somewhere, pipe music played; notes rippled up and down a non-Western scale, effecting an eerie chant. Two labourers came down the aisle, carrying a coffin. The coffin was far from new and they placed it on the ground as if afraid it might fall to pieces.

The pipes shrilled.

Bragg found he was holding his breath and forced himself to relax. Tension came again as the lid of the coffin moved. It moved upwards, jerkily, an inch at a time. A thin hand with long fingernails appeared from inside. The lid was pushed higher, creaking in the silence of the tent, and the vampire rose and stepped out.

Its face had the pallor of death, the canine teeth showed long and pointed, and a ragged cloak swirled about its human form.

One of the labourers returned with a young lamb and tossed it to the vampire. Hungrily, teeth sank into the lamb’s throat, bit deep, and the lips sucked and sucked . . .

Bragg stared, fascinated and disgusted. When, finally, the drained carcass was tossed aside, the vampire appeared swollen as a well-filled leech.

The labourers carried the coffin out and the vampire walked behind. Jesus, Bragg thought – this is for kids?

Dr Nis made a small bow.

“You who are present tonight are especially fortunate. Not at every performance is it possible to show a shape-changer. Lycanthropy is not a condition that can be perfectly timed – and now, here is the werewolf.”

He placed a small whistle to his lips and blew into it. No sound came, but a large grey wolf trotted into the sawdust ring, moving as silently as the whistle that called it. Slanting eyes glinted yellowish-green. The animal threw back its head and gave a prolonged and chilling howl.

Hairs prickled on the back of Bragg’s neck and he almost came out of his seat. He blinked his eyes as the wolf-shape wavered. The creature appeared to elongate as it rose high on hind limbs. The fur changed. Bragg moistened suddenly-dry lips as the wolf became more manlike . . . and more . . . till it was a naked man who stood before them.

An attendant draped a blanket about his shoulders and together they walked off. Blood pounded through Bragg’s head; it had to be a fake, obviously, but it was a convincing fake.

“The ancient Egyptians believed in physical immortality,” Dr Nis whispered. “They had a ceremony known as the Opening of the Mouth. This ceremony restored to the body, after death, its ability to see, hear, eat and speak. Here now, a mummy from the land of the Pharaohs.”

A withered mummy, wrapped in discoloured linen bandages, its naked face dark-skinned, was carried into the ring. Four jars were placed about it.

“These are Canopicjars, containing the heart and lungs and the viscera of the deceased.”

A voice spoke, a voice that seemed to come from the mummy. It spoke in a language unfamiliar to Bragg.

Dr Nis said smoothly: “I will translate freely. The mummy speaks: True believers only are safe here – those who doubt are advised to open their hearts.”

Bragg wanted to laugh, but sweat dried cold on his flesh and laughter wouldn’t come.

The mummy was carried off.

“We have next,” Dr Nis said with pride, “an experiment of my own. Can a corpse be re-animated? Can the component parts of a man be brought together and endued with life? I shall allow you to judge how successful I have been.”

A travesty of a man shuffled down the aisle and into the ring. It was hideous. The limbs were not identical; they had not come from the same body. The head, waxen and discoloured, lolled at an angle, as if insecurely hinged at the neck. It lumbered unsteadily around the sawdust ring, and it smelt. The man-thing did not speak; it stumbled over uneven feet, rocking from side to side as it tried to recover balance, and lost its head.

A small gasp was jerked from Bragg’s lips as the detached head hit the sawdust and rolled to a stop. The headless cadaver blundered on aimlessly, like a decapitated chicken, until attendants hurried to guide it from the ring.

Bragg felt sick, and his fingers drummed nervously on his knees. Impossible to believe the thing was just a freak; yet he had to believe, or admit the impossible.

Dr Nis looked unhappy. “I must apologize – obviously my experiment is not yet perfected for public viewing. And so we come to our final offering this evening. You all know, if only in a vague way, that before men inhabited this world, the reptiles ruled for millions of years. They were the true Lords of the Earth. Science maintains that they died out before men appeared, but science has been wrong before. There was interbreeding . . .”

The creature that slithered into the ring was about five feet long. It had the general appearance of a man on all fours, but its skin was scaly and iridescent. The hands were clawed, the head narrowed and thrust forward, and a forked tongue hung from the mouth.

An attendant brought a plastic bag and released from it a cloud of flies. The creature reared up, long tongue flickering like forked lightning, catching the flies and swallowing them.

A sick show, Bragg decided; an outrage to perform this sort of thing before children. The catch-phrases of popular journalism ran through his head – “This Show Must Be Banned!”

Pipe music played again, a falling scale. Dr Nis bowed and left the ring. Families rose and filed quietly out, their offspring subdued.

Bragg vaulted into the ring, crossed the sawdust and left by the aisle exit. As he hurried towards the caravans, he saw Dr Nis entering one of them.

The door was just closing when Bragg arrived and leaned on it. Dr Nis turned to peer at him.

“Ah, Mr Bragg, I was half-expecting you. You are, after all, well known in your trade.”

Bragg pushed his way into the caravan and felt like a giant in a doll’s house; everything seemed smaller, neat and tidy in its appointed place.

“Then you’ll know the paper I work for and the sort of thing I write.” He couldn’t be bothered to turn on the charm. “Tell me – tell the Herald’s millions of readers – how do you justify your show? Horror for adults – okay, we’ll go along with that. But the kids?’

Dr Nis made a small deprecating motion with his hands. “Horror, Mr Bragg? I deplore the term. My life is spent trying to keep alive a faith, a faith in the mystery of Nature. Strange things happen. If a man who believes sees a ghost, is he frightened? Yet a man who disbelieves and comes face to face with one may well die of shock. So perhaps my show serves a useful purpose . . . as for children, what better time to develop a sense of wonder?”

“That’s your story – now let’s have the low-down on howyour gimmicks work.”

“Gimmicks?” Dr Nis regarded him calmly. “I assure you I do not deal in trickery. Consider this: who knows you are here? And aren’t you just a little bit frightened?”

Bragg flinched. “Who, me? Of a bunch of freaks?” But his voice was edged with doubt.

Dr Nis said, “I do not want the kind of publicity you have in mind, Mr Bragg. I don’t think it would serve my purpose.” He smiled suddenly, and his smile was not for his visitor.

Arnold Bragg turned. Freaks crowded the door of the caravan: the vampire, the werewolf and the lizard-man. The resurrected man was conspicuously absent.

“I think it would be best if Mr Bragg disappeared,” Dr Nis said quietly. “But don’t damage his head, please.” He looked again at Bragg, his eyes bright and hard.

“You see, Mr Bragg, I believe I have a use for it.”