The Complete Masters of Darkness

by Dennis Etchison (Editor)

A collection of forty-five tales of horror selected by their authors includes stories by Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, Clive Barker, Dean R. Koontz, Whitley Streiber, L. Sprague de Camp, Rod Serling, and others. Reprint.

Genres: Horror, Anthologies, Short Stories, Fantasy

766 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

aka Jack Martin.

Dennis William Etchison was an American writer and editor of fantasy and horror fiction. He is a multi-award winner, having won the British Fantasy Award three times for fiction, and the World Fantasy Award for anthologies he edited.

Reviews

[Bill Borre]

"Zombique" by Joseph Payne Brennan - A man is given a voodoo doll as a gift and invokes it to burn down the garage of a man who has cheated him. When he reads in the newspaper the following day that the garage did burn down he just puts it down to a strange coincidence but his wife is disturbed. She begins to feel unwell and becomes bedridden. On his way home to her he runs afoul of a police officer who issues him a citation. This infuriates him so much that when he arrives home he uses the doll to wish death upon the officer. The following day he learns that his wife has perished in a fire and the cop he cursed might have saved her died had he not suffered a fatal heart attack steps from the front door.

"Twilight of the Dawn" by Dean R. Koontz - An atheist loses his wife in an auto accident and his son to bone cancer. He changes his mind about the existence of an afterlife after an unnatural experience of cherry blossoms standing beneath the tree.

"But at My Back I Always Hear" by David Morrell - A professor is terrorized by a female student who is obsessed with him. After she kills herself and the phone calls continue, his terror increases.

"Perverts" by Whitley Strieber - A diner waitress brings a hobo to a sex and snuff theater where she has sex with him, castrates him and sets him on fire before an audience.

"The Patter of Tiny Feet" by Nigel Kneale - Two men investigate a man's claim that his residence is haunted by a ghost child after the suicide of his childless wife.

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't remember most of the stories very well, but Ramsey Campbell's "The Words That Count" and George R.R. Martin's "The Monkey Treatment" have stayed with me for a long time. Those two stories alone are worth tracking down a copy of this collection.

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not every story is 5 stars, but as a whole, this collection is fantastic. One I have read in part and whole, again and again.