for Street(1994), the story of a serial killer whose
apprehension is accomplished only after some mild
psychic events, and The Off Season(1995), his best
novel, set in a town that labors under a curse.
Time runs differently from person to person, and
reality proves to be a malleable commodity. Cady’s
last horror novel was The Haunting of Hood Canal
(2001) and is more conventional than his other
work. The spirit of a murdered child molester rises
to influence the minds of passersby.
Although primarily known for his novels,
Cady’s infrequent but impressive short stories began
to appear during the late 1980s and early 1990s, in-
cluding such excellent tales as “By Reason of Dark-
ness” (1988), the Bram Stoker Award–winning
“The Night We Buried Road Dog” (1993), and
“Daddy Dearest” (1998). Most of his short fiction
was collected in The Sons of Noah and Other Stories
(1992), which won the World Fantasy Award, The
Night We Buried Road Dog(2002), and Ghosts of Yes-
terday(2003). Although he produced a relatively
small body of work during his lifetime, he was very
highly regarded both by readers and critics, and his
out-of-print books are highly sought after.
“Cafe Endless: Spring Rain”Nancy Holder
(1994)
Since the early 1990s vampire fiction has become
almost a separate genre, with good vampires, bad
vampires, and vampires torn between right and
wrong. It sometimes seems that writers have ex-
plored every possible combination of situations and
settings and that every new title is simply a varia-
tion of an old plot, but every so often a talented
writer thinks of some new twist to an old story or a
different way to look at the relationship between
the vampire and his or her victim. The latter is the
case with this atmospheric story by a writer who
produced a considerable body of first-rate short
horror fiction during the 1990s and who seems
likely to be recognized as a major talent in the fu-
ture, particularly if she continues to produce sto-
ries of this quality.
The setting is modern Japan. Satoshi is a
Japanese businessman serving as a sort of private
tour guide for an influential American woman who
is apparently vacationing in Japan in conjunction
with a business trip. Satoshi feels mildly attracted
toward Buchner, the American, and is very toler-
ant of her occasional breaches of good manners.
There is another tension as well, which only begins
to emerge when they reach a particular part of
Tokyo, the vicinity of a modern building. Satoshi
conceals his impatience, but he is now anxious to
fulfill his duties to his guest as quickly as possible
so that he can enter the building, where he senses
the presence of a woman to whom he is supernatu-
rally drawn.
The woman is a vampire, of course, and they
eventually meet for a fairly overt sexual encounter
culminating in the drawing of blood. But their re-
lationship is far more complex than that. The vam-
pire is as much a prisoner of her victim as he is
subject to her will, and their elaborate dance of sex
becomes ultimately an act of mutual self-destruc-
tion. The story won the Bram Stoker Award pre-
sented by the Horror Writers’ Association and is
still Holder’s best known story.“The Cairn on the Headland”Robert E.
Howard(1932)
Although he is best-known for the CONANseries
and other swashbuckling fantasy tales, Robert E.
HOWARDwrote in a number of different genres, in-
cluding a respectable body of horror fiction, of
which “The Cairn on the Headland” is one of the
best examples. The story opens with two men exam-
ining a 12th century cairn in Ireland, anomalously
constructed by the ancient Irish despite the fact that
this form of burial was a Viking tradition that they
did not ordinarily follow. According to legend, all
holly plants in the area were uprooted and de-
stroyed, although the reason for that action has
been lost. The spot has been shunned for so many
generations that no one alive remembers the histori-
cal background, but the narrator is still wary of the
site, although his companion remains skeptical.
The second man, Ortali, plans to open the
cairn secretly, under cover of darkness, to plunder
whatever treasures it might hide, while the narra-
tor, O’Brien, has continued and ever more serious
misgivings. He is approached by a mysterious
woman who gives him an ancient cross to protect
him, an artifact he recognizes as a long-lost relic“The Cairn on the Headland” 43