Top 5 horror stories (that don't have any zombies in them)

Seriously, can we stop with the zombies already?

Don't get me wrong. I love zombies. Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead are my two favorite movies. But -- somewhere between 28 Days Later and Shaun of the Dead -- zombies became the "it" horror movie monster and the stories lost most of the gritty, apocalyptic power that animated the genre.

That's not to say I hate everything new that's zombie related. Shaun of the Dead is brilliant. Zombieland was pretty fun, even if it did reduce my beloved carnivorous undead to a silly gimmick in what's essentially a teen nerd comedy. And, of course, I enjoy A Modern Girl's Guide to Surviving the Apocalypse, an always funny blog written by some friends of mine (look for the TV version soon).

But, exceptions aside, I want it to stop.

The zombie plague has not only infected our cinemas and TV screens, but our bookstore shelves as well. I stopped at Borders earlier today and decided to peruse the horror section. It's been awhile since I've done so, and I was dismayed to discover that virtually every new book that wasn't a Stephen King or Dean Koontz reprint was some variant on a zombie story.

I picked one up -- a zombie-themed short story anthology with absurdly cheap-looking cover art -- and thumbed through it.

Here's the first sentence that my eyes landed upon: "The thing advanced slowly and she screamed loudly."

Really? Two adverbs in one sentence, one of which is completely redundant. I groaned and put the book back on the shelf.

So in the interest of trying to stem the zombie (and terrible writing) tide, my next three blog posts are going to be about the type of horror that I want to see make a resurgence. I'm going to follow this one up with my lists of the top five horror novels you've probably never heard of and the top five horror movies you've probably never seen. You didn't ask for it, but I'm gonna give it to you anyway.

But first, the short stories.

Most of my sensibilities as a writer grew from reading classic horror short stories as a kid, most of which were written between roughly 1940 and the mid 1980s. That's around when the splatterpunks took over and horror fiction became about shoving as much fucked up shit into as small a space as possible.

I have nothing against sex, gore, or fucked up shit, but to me the best horror stories should cut like a scalpel rather than bludgeon like a hammer. As Stephen King once said, if a novel is like long love affair a short story is like a kiss in the dark from a stranger.

So, in reverse chronological order, here's my list of my top five favorite horror short stories, none of which feature zombies:

Stephen King - "You Know They Got A Hell Of A Band"

Where you can find it: Nightmares and Dreamscapes (1992)

I'm cheating a bit here, because the two Stephen King stories that actually spooked me the most are "Children of the Corn" (in Night Shift) and "Gramma" (in Skeleton Crew). But I'm going with this one, because it's the most unlikely.

A variation on King's oft-explored "weird little town" genre (see "Children..." and "Rainy Season"), "You Know They Got A Hell Of A Band" follows a bickering married couple as they make their way through rural Oregon on their way up to Seattle. They take a wrong turn, stumble on a bad patch of road, and then find themselves in a picaresque, Rockwell-esque little town called Rock and Roll Heaven.

They stop at a local diner, where they meet a waitress who passes a note telling them to get out while they still can. The proprietor of the place happens to look just like Janis Joplin. The cook's a dead ringer for Ricky Nelson. Roy Orbison and Buddy Holly pop in for a bite.

And then things get really weird.

This is a strange and potentially silly setup for a horror story, but King plays it straight and puts his thumb right on the demonic and otherworldly quality that defines our rock and roll stars. And, in so doing, he takes us through a version of Hell that you'd probably never considered before.

And I will never be able look at a picture of Buddy Holly again without imagining his eyes filling with blood.

Clive Barker - "In The Hills, The Cities"

Where you can find it: The Books of Blood: Volume One (1984)

Clive Barker gets a lot of the credit (or the blame) for kicking off the splatterpunk genre in the mid 80s. And it's true, his earliest short stories (compiled in the Books of Blood series) were pretty transgressive for their time. But the rawness of his imagination outdid that of any of the imitators that followed.

"In the Hills, the Cities" is another one of those weird little town stories (this town happens to be in Yugoslavia), but it manages to be one of the strangest short stories I've ever read. The less I say about the plot the better, but rest assured the central concept is so strikingly bizarre that dozens if not hundreds of horror writers have been trying to top it ever since.

And the fact that the two main characters are a gay couple -- presented realistically and without caricature -- was far more daring for its time than any of the gore or weird sex that you'll find throughout the rest of the books.

Richard Matheson - "Born of Man and Woman" (originally published 1950)

Where you can find it: here.

"This day when it had light mother called me retch. You retch she said. I saw in her eyes the anger. I wonder what it is a retch."

Richard Matheson went on to write I Am Legend, The Incredible Shrinking Man, Stir of Echoes, and about a million screenplays and Twilight Zone episodes, including "Terror at 20,000 Feet" and "Duel."

But he started his career with the words I quoted above. It's the opening paragraph to his first published short story, a horrid little gem called "Born of Man and Woman." The story is brilliant in its simplicity. It's also about a page and a half long.

Read it and see if you don't get a shiver up your spine.

Theodore Sturgeon - "The Professor's Teddy Bear" (originally published in Weird Tales, 1948)

Where you can find it: good luck

I really wish I could remember more about this one. I used to have it in some cheapo compilation I picked up at Waldenbooks or something way back when I was in high school, and I remember that (second only to "In the Hills, the Cities") it was just about the weirdest thing I had ever read. It was also very spooky and made me look at my teddy bear (yes, I still had a teddy bear in high school, fuck you) with suspicious eyes.

I lost the book years ago, and I've been looking for the story ever since. If anyone has ever run across it, please let me know.

H.P. Lovecraft - "Pickman's Model" (originally published in Weird Tales, 1927)

Where you can find it: probably just about any of the hundreds of Lovecraft compilations out there.

You can't make a list like this without talking about H.P. Lovecraft (although I almost did...I was sorely tempted to go with Daphne Du Maurier's "The Birds" or "Don't Look Now"), and you could just about pick any one of his stories at random.

I considered "At the Mountains of Madness," which is my personal favorite. But it's really more of a novella than a short story. So "Pickman's Model" it is.

"Pickman's Model" tells the story-within-a-story of Richard Upton Pickman, a half-mad artist in Boston whose paintings are so graphic and horrifying that he has been shunned by the art community. He leads the narrator on a tour of his gallery and shows him a particular painting of a strange humanoid creature eating what appears to be a person.

Then there's a weird noise ... and I guess you probably know where this is going.

"Pickman's Model" isn't really one of Lovecraft's more famous cosmic horror stories. It falls more in line with what I'd call the "subterranean horror" of something like "The Rats in the Walls." These were always my favorites. They're grittier, slimier, pulpier, and far less concerned with making you wonder what's out beyond the stars than in making you afraid of what might dwell in the hidden caverns under your feet.

And Lovecraft is helped by his stylistic experimentation here. By framing the story as a casual conversation between the narrator and the unnamed listener (us), he avoids the sometimes impenetrable excess that characterizes so many of his other stories.

Honorable Mentions

"The Book of Irrational Numbers" by Michael Marshall Smith
"Children of the Corn" by Stephen King
"Nadelman's God" by T.E.D. Klein
"The White People" by Arthur Machen
"The Night They Missed the Horror Show" by Joe R. Lansdale