I Want A Ghoul

For a ghost to vanish is only natural--well, Ok, supernatural--but, to judge by the contents of the bulk of today's fiction, the ghost seems to have done a permanent job of it. True, we live in an era in which the merely natural horrors are hard to top. A werewolf would be a positive pleasure to encounter after a narrow escape from a street gang's bicycle chains, for instance, and finding one's midnight bedroom shared with a moaning, bloodflecked phantom might be a relief from the nightly phantasmagoria of TV news. When you get right down to it, terror is relative and the average citizen, after undergoing an average 20th Century day, would find the majority of old-fashioned thrillers quite restful by comparison. All that these sagas of yore need is a bit of updating, to meet the modern reader's environment halfway. What we propose, therefore, is judicious editing to make some of the masterworks of the past more credible. With only the slightest bit of finagling with names, dates and situations, there's hardly a one that cannot be deftly uprooted from the past and transplanted smack into modern times with no loss of panic-making impact. And today's readers could thrill again to such neoclassics as:

Frankenstein

By Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

The mindless mob, torches blazing and sputtering in the inky night, surged forward and hurled itself against the towering portals of the ancient building. The iron hasps groaned, then splintered free of the wood, and the mob burst like a human flood tide into the dim vaulted corridors, seeking its quarry.

"There!" cried one hoarse male voice. "There's the monster!"

Roaring its blood lust, the mob thundered forward toward the gaunt figure at the end of the corridor that even now moved toward it, arms extended rigidly forward at shoulder height, legs moving stiffly. Then, as the crowd paused, scant feet away, its quarry spoke:

"Now, students, please...as dean of this college, I feel it my duty to remind you undergraduates of a few of the regulations regarding destruction of school property and the ten-o'clock curfew."

The Lady or The Tiger?

By Frank R. Stockton

He could open whichever door he chose. If he chose the one, there would emerge a ravenous tiger, the deadliest that could be provided, which instantly would pounce upon him and rip him to shreds, in retribution for his crime. But if the accused chose the other door, there would emerge a lady commensurate with his age and social status, the choicest that the ruling monarch could procure from his most beauteous subjects. His barbaric princess had indicated, by the merest motion of her slender hand, that he should choose the right-hand door. He knew, of course, that she could not bear to see him torn to bits before her very eyes. But he also knew that she would as soon see him dead as in the arms of another. The dilemma seemed insuperable. There was nothing to do but trust to his princess' love. So doing, he reached for the knob of the right-hand door--But first, a word from our sponsor....

The Unnamable

By H. P. Lovecraft

Although I found unaccountable the unbelievable events leading up to the untimely death of my unwary companion at an unguarded moment, I was unrestrained in my uneasy determination to plumb the unholy and unfathomable depths of the unbearably unpleasant spot where my friend had unquestionably come to his unnatural end. Trembling with unrelenting horror, I stepped through the unsavory miasma that clung with unruly tendrils to the unavoidably unsettling tomb. From the unseen interior of the uncouthly unclean burial chamber came the chuckling voice of my friend's unknown assailant. Though unwilling to meet the same fate myself, I knew it must be I who would unveil the monstrous secret hidden from the eyes of man for unutterable ages.

And then--I saw it! It lay there, pulsating with unspeakable unction, its flanks rippling with unthinkable menace, its size unimaginable, its odor untenable.... It attacked without warning, its speed unadulteratedly uncivilized--and I suddenly found myself in an unanticipated position: standing on that craggy shore in my unmentionables.

Next day, of course, I unequivocally unveiled the unwholesome situation before the UN.

The Hound Of The Baskervilles

By Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Something made me turn half about in my seat on the bucking cart, to catch a glimpse of our mutual pursuer. I wish I had not turned. I found myself staring into eyes that shone like luminous moons, blazing a hellish and pestilential light, over a slavering mouth in which the curving fangs glinted like ivory daggers. I turned to my companion, but forbore to speak, to interrupt the frozen concentration that locked that hawk-nosed profile into carved immobility. Light was a brief rectangular glow, somewhere before us on that Stygian track. I made myself look toward the light as it grew and denied myself the exquisite torment of once again darting a glance backward toward where the gigantic hound loped in tireless pursuit, ever growing closer to its prey. Even as I clutched the reins in a spasm of terror, the beast began an unearthly howling that stood the very hairs of my head almost on end, then bared its long razor-sharp teeth and sprang directly at our throats.

Suddenly, we were bathed in bright California sunlight and a uniformed attendant grabbed each of our arms. "I don't know how you two long-hairs got aboard this ride, but don't let me ever catch either of you in Disneyland again!"

The Tell-Tale Heart

By Edgar Allan Poe

The police questioned me at length, but I had prepared my tale with care, so that no matter how they might conjecture, and suspect, and wonder, they could find no shred of proof that the incidents of the evening as I expressed them were anything other than the truth. I was just congratulating myself as I ushered them toward the door of the old man's room when I heard a sound that set my teeth harshly on edge and my hackles to rise. Something of what I felt must have shown on my face, for the police turned and fastened their gazes upon me, suspicion dawning with renewed strength upon their gross features.

"The hour is late, gentlemen!" I cried, trying with my voice to drown out the steady, secretsound that seemed to emanate from the very air around about us. "You have far to travel, and so you had best be on your way!" And even at the height of my wailing insistence, the sound made its presence known to me. It swelled, it grew, it filled the room, it made the very floor boardst remble beneath my feet, and suddenly I found myself shrieking out my guilt, confessing my crime beyond all recantation, and finally flinging myself into the corner to groan and mewl as I thrust a finger toward the wooden planks and cried aloud:

"There! There you will find him! Can you not hear? He is there, there! The fact of his presence thuds and pounds its hideous truth. Listen! Do you not know what that sound is? It is the beating of his accursed heart!" And as they wrenched up the boards to expose my crime to the world, I muttered wearily, "I knew I should have removed the damned mercury-battery-powered pacemaker with the five-year guarantee!"

Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde

By Robert Louis Stevenson

I fled from the scene of my excesses, at once glorying and trembling, my lust for evil gratified and stimulated. I compounded the draught and drank it. I saw my life as a whole: I followed it up from the days of childhood--through the self-denying toils of my professional life, to arrive again and again, with the same sense of unreality, at the damned horrors of the evening. I could have screamed aloud; I sought with tears and prayers to smother the crowd of hideous images and sounds with which my memory swarmed against me; and still, between the petitions, the ugly face of my iniquity stared into my soul.

I locked the door by which I had come and gone, and ground the key under my heel! Pausing for one giddy moment to stare at my image in the massive mirror canted against the wall, I with relief found no trace of that other self upon my features. I smoothed my coat and proceeded upstairs to join the gathering.

I knew not what had passed during my absence--who had spoken nor of what. I made my way with affected carelessness to the table on which the light repast awaited those in attendance and betook myself of a scone and a cup of lukewarm and exceeding weak tea. Barely had I the opportunity to swallow a mouthful of either when I heard the voice of the moderator calling my name. In some mental confusion, I made my way through the press of bodies to the podium. I was apparently to address the assemblage--but on what subject I could not recall.

Then, even as my fearful mind sought the reason I was there at all--was to speak at all--at that very moment I began to be aware of a change in the temper of my thoughts: a greater boldness, a contempt of danger, a dissolution of the bonds of all social and moral obligation. I looked down at my hands. These were not the hands of the man I had been. They were too plump, too soft, too well manicured. On my lips and tongue was no buttery flavor of light scone, no mild bitterness of tea--rather, I found my mouth filled with the tang of garlic, of olives, of ouzo. ... The poisonous influx of the change seeped from my very pores, sopping into the fabric of my clothing, turning my waistcoat and cutaway into a snugly fitted double-breasted suit--I felt my hairline receding slightly, my cheeks drooping with light plumpness, my forehead emerging into unwonted prominence.

Forever had the person of weak-willed Jekyll fled from me. I was now, immutably so, changed forever into that other personage whose further advent I had thought to forfend. And even as the great gasp of horror sounded from the throats of the guests at seeing the terrible transformation that had befallen me, I began to speak to them:

"Effete corps of impudent snobs...!"

The Phantom Ship

By Captain Frederick Marryat

Philip Vanderdecken pretended not to hear the muttered jibe of the man at the wheel and strode forward to the rail of the bridge. His strong, even white teeth bit down hard on the stem of the hand-carved pipe, as his eyes tried to penetrate the cruel gray mist that drifted in towering walls to either side of their passage, rent asunder by the slowly advancing prow.

While Philip greatly feared a mutiny, his fear was not for his own person but for the subsequent cessation of the voyage. He supposed his demeanor did seem that of a madman, with that peculiar single-minded drive of his so like a (continued on page 258)I want a Ghoul(continued from page 110) madman's solitary mania on a never-ending theme.... But the Flying Dutchman, his father's ship, lay out there somewhere in the cloaking gray mist. It had to be found. Philip Vanderdecken knew not how he knew, but he sensed, ever since his father's ship had been reported missing, that he, Philip, should be the one to locate it, to help guide it homeward, to--

Something flickered in the fog! There, ahead of them, directly ahead, motionless despite the strange surging tide that bore them onward through this chill, windless clime, was the silhouette of a ship!

"Helmsman--hard aport!" Philip shouted, whirling toward the man at the wheel. Above, invisible in the gathering gray plumes of heavy cloud, the lookout was shouting a warning as their ponderously moving vessel bore down on a direct collision course with the inexplicably becalmed ship ahead of them. A crazily dancing blood-red firefly was the port light, snatched by a crewman now running forward to signal anyone aboard the other vessel. And then the bowsprit splintered with a sound like an agonized shriek and Philip felt himself flung brutally against the rail as the ship yawed horribly...and then icy salt water closed over his hurtling body.

When, with bursting lungs, he had fought his way up through the cold blackness of the water, he could hear, but not see, the commotion of the men upon his injured vessel, far off in the all-encompassing mist. Something loomed nearby, something solid was struck by his flailing arm...and his fingers closed over an iron rail. The next moment, he had somehow drawn himself from the clutch of the open sea and stood gasping on a strangely silent deck. This was not his father's ship...this was a ship with no mast, no sails...and--he realized with a thrill of terror--the reason he had been able to draw himself aboard so easily was that the ship was slowly, remorselessly sinking into the sea. Icy waters already washed across the metal decks. Frantic, Philip rushed about, seeking a lifeboat, seeking another person. But he was alone on the foundering vessel, there, somewhere off the southeastern coast of the North American continent. There was something painted on the bulkhead before him. Philip Vanderdecken peered at the inscription and then the moon drifted silently outward from behind a cloud and Philip Vanderdecken could read the words--Nerve Gas.

Dracula

By Bram Stoker

Jonathon Harker's Journal--

An untoward event has occurred. The door of my room has been locked, bolted from the outside. When I discovered it this morning, I at first thought there had been some error and waited patiently for the servants to come to my door with the announcement of breakfast. About midday, when no one had yet turned up, I grew worried. Then, I heard footsteps in the stone passageway outside and hurriedly moved to my door to attract the attention of whoever was passing. But something--some instinct. I know not what--restrained my hand just before it would have rapped upon the heavy oaken portal. There was a cadence--how can I describe it?--not right about those steps in the passageway. Even as I stood listening to them, to my nostrils came the musky animal odor that one associates normally with the deepest woods where sunlight seldom penetrates. And softly mingled with the strangely shuffling steps came the sound of a low growl--a sound that surely never emanated from the throat of any human. I remained where I was, not so much as daring to lower my hand from where it hovered near the wood of the door, until the sound of the footsteps faded down the passageway. I am terribly, mortally, frightened.

Later--

The sun is setting over the black crags outside my window. Half a dozen times, now, I have gone to the brink of that cold dark abyss that lies just beyond the casement and have had to withhold myself by sheer dint of will from casting myself out into space, toward the tenderer mercies of the rocks below. I do not know precisely what it is that I fear will happen when the last rays of the sun have gone, but fear it I do. I know I cannot bear to face once more the count, should he reappear, as is his wont, shortly after sunset. I am still not over the terrible shock I received the other morning when he came up behind me as I shaved and I could not detect his approach in the glass of my shaving mirror--nor can I forget the way his eyes lingered, fairly dwelt, upon the slight trickle of blood down my throat, caused by my uncontrollable start at finding him so close, and so inexplicably near at hand. I have a plan. I pray I have the strength to carry it to fulfillment. I will continue later--if I can....

Moments Later--

I have done what I can. I have placed one of my slippers at the foot of the open casement and by careful aim have managed to drop from that same casement my white silken scarf, so that it caught upon a rough projection of the stone some feet below the window over the sheer drop to the valley below the precipitous castle wall. It is my hope that when the count appears and finds the slipper, he will look from the window and espy the scarf. Then, thinking that I have taken that dread plunge to which I am so fearfully drawn in reality, he will rush from the room and--if luck is with me--not bother to refasten the door behind him! Then, when I am certain he has gone, I shall creep stealthily from this cramped closet in which I am presently secreted and somehow make my way down to the gates of the castle, and thence to freedom. I can hear the count coming, even now. I can hear his hand upon the bolt of the door--there, he has pulled it back! Now, all I can do is remain here, huddled fearfully in the suffocating confines of this closet, and hope with all my heart that my plan works. I dare not so much as even breathe now, as I hear his soft footsteps treading across the ancient stone of the roughhewn floor. He must go to the window. He must! It is my only salvation! If only--oh, if only--this electricportable typewriter on which I am constructing my journal did not rattle so loudly as I write!