Japanese ghost story, and “The Chrysanthemum
Robe” (1995) are noteworthy.
“The Damned Thing”Ambrose Bierce
(1891)
One of the shortcomings of much modern horror
fiction is a tendency to describe the supernatural
too precisely. Readers of splatterpunk fiction in
particular demanded and authors provided de-
scriptions of their monsters down to the last tenta-
cle, and authors are sure to mention each
individual drop of blood shed during their depre-
dations. Early horror fiction kept the details at
arm’s length and suggested rather than described
most of the physical horrors. Ambrose BIERCE,
who wrote several early classics of the genre, pro-
vides an excellent example of how effective this
technique can be with this short, understated, and
very memorable tale.
The story opens at the inquest of one Hugh
Morgan, who died under mysterious circumstances
and whose body, torn and battered, lies on a table
nearby. The proceedings get underway with the ar-
rival of William Harker, a journalist, who was with
Morgan at the time of his death and whose testi-
mony is, obviously, of vital importance. He recounts
their plan to go quail hunting, during which they
both observed a peculiar movement in a field of
oats, as though a large body were passing through
it, even though nothing was visible to either man.
Morgan became particularly agitated and fired his
shotgun at the disturbance, after which he was at-
tacked and killed by an unseen force. Technically
speaking, the creature was not invisible because it
was impossible to see through it, but it was—as we
discover later—of a color that is beyond the spec-
trum detectible by human eyesight.
The coroner refuses to credit Harker’s testi-
mony, and the verdict is that Morgan was killed by
a wild animal. However, the coroner has also read
Morgan’s diary and knows that he was troubled by
the repeated depredations of a creature he be-
lieved to be invisible. The story concludes there,
and whereas another writer might have gone on to
explain the creature’s origin and nature, and even
its eventual demise, Bierce was content to leave
the reader wondering.
Daniels, Les(1943– )
The late 1970s saw the first indications of the ris-
ing popularity of vampire fiction, which has by now
become almost a genre in itself. Anne RICEintro-
duced Lestat, Chelsea Quinn YARBRObegan the
chronicles of St. Germain, and Les Daniels, the
least-known but certainly not the least talented of
the three, brought us Don Sebastian de Del-
lanueva. Don Sebastian makes his first appearance
in The Black Castle(1978), set during the Inquisi-
tion in Spain in 1496. Although he is undead and
survives by drinking blood, the horrors taking
place around him—performed by ordinary mortal
men—are so appalling that even he is repelled by
them. He is the vampire horrified by man, and that
theme is carried on through Daniels’s subsequent
novels, all of which are sequels set in different time
periods.
The Silver Skull(1979) takes place a century
later. Seeking arcane knowledge, Don Sebastian
travels to the New World, where he is caught up in
the conflict between the Spanish conquistadores
and the native tribes. Once again he is revolted by
the excesses of cruelty and violence taking place
around him. He returns to Europe for the third
volume, Citizen Vampire (1981), set during the
French Revolution. Predictably, the vampire has
no more sympathy for the revolutionaries and their
guillotine than he has for the self-centered and op-
pressive nobility whom they have overthrown. Ye l -
low Fog (1988), originally a novella, moves to
middle 19th-century England, in the years just be-
fore Jack the Ripper stalked Whitechapel. Don Se-
bastian must drink blood in order to survive, but
he has learned to avoid killing his victims, not so
much from compassion as to avoid the attention
that would follow. Daniels evokes an eerie atmo-
sphere quite effectively in what has so far proven
to be the best novel in the series. The most recent
entry is No Blood Spilled(1991), a comparatively
weak story in which the vampire protagonist seeks
arcane knowledge once again, this time in British
colonial India.
At least one further volume in the series is
planned but has not yet appeared. Daniels has pro-
duced only a handful of short stories over the last
decade, but “The Good Parts” (1989) and “Under
My Skin” (2002) are both quite effective. He isDaniels, Les 77