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Eerie, Weird & Wicked
Tales of horror and suspense focus on an island of no return, the strange inhabitants of a bottomless hole, a frozen corpse that may be wakened, and other frightfully extraordinary phenomena
- GenresHorror
151 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1977
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
April 17, 2023
Eerie, Weird & Wicked, edited by Helen Hoke, is a collection of stories whose themes range from the supernatural to the strange, the unexpected, and the bizarre. It is a book I remember reading as a child. My original copy was unfortunately lost decades ago, when my family moved from one city to another. Very recently, for the sake of one of the stories ("The Strange Island of Dr Nork", by the crime and fantasy author Robert Bloch), I ordered another copy of Eerie, Weird & Wicked from AbeBooks.
Those who may want to read Eerie, Weird & Wicked will probably be out of luck, since the book, published in 1977, is now rare. The copy I obtained from AbeBooks was the very last one they had available. It was once the publisher's own copy (which is why it has "file copy" stamped on the inside flap). This copy of the book would presumably never have been sold commercially to the public by its original publisher, being withheld by them for a long time before ultimately finding its way to a secondhand bookshop.
Re-reading Eerie, Weird & Wicked, I found that the extent to which I remembered its stories varied. In some cases, I had no recollection of them at all. These were usually stories that I found unremarkable on re-reading. Eerie, Weird & Wicked contains several of these, but also some very good stories.
Harold Rolseth's "Hey You Down There!" is a clever and entertaining short story. Its plot deals with a married couple who, trying to deepen a well, make the unexpected discovery of a strange race of beings living far below ground. The story makes an effective point about the dangers of meddling with the unknown. The woman communicates with the underground beings through an exchange of notes, but the man, motivated by greed and anger, and unaware of what his wife has learned, recklessly descends into their subterranean world, and comes to a predictably bad end.
Bloch's "The Strange Island of Dr Nork" is another quite good story included in Eerie, Weird & Wicked, though likely to be more entertaining if one realises that it is a parody of H. G. Wells's novel The Island of Dr Moreau. The "Dr Nork" of the story's title is a mad scientist who performs experiments on people to turn them into beings resembling the heroes and villains of comic books.
The best story in Eerie, Weird & Wicked, and the one that I remembered most clearly from my original reading of the anthology, is "No Ships Pass", by Lady Eleanor Smith. Its main events take place on an island far more terrible than the island of Dr Nork. A man shipwrecked at sea swims to an island where he meets four people. They tell him that they have been alive on the island for periods of time ranging from decades to centuries, and that escape is impossible.
At first, he does not believe them, but eventually he discovers that what he has been told appears to be true. Some strange force is at work on the island, defeating all attempts at escape, and keeping its inhabitants alive long past their normal lifespan. So far as they know, they will be trapped on the island for all eternity. They have all attempted suicide, at various times, to try to escape their horrifying fate, yet they always survive.
A woman who has long been trapped on the island tells the new arrival that the only solution to the agony of an eternal and unvarying existence there is simply to stop thinking about the situation (an ironically thought-provoking solution). "I like to eat when I am hungry, sleep when I am tired, swim when the sun is hot. All that is good, because it is just enough. I used to think-I never think now," she says.
These are the best lines in the story, and in the book as a whole. I am not surprised that I had a reasonably good recollection of them, even after not having looked at Eerie, Weird & Wicked for several decades.
Those who may want to read Eerie, Weird & Wicked will probably be out of luck, since the book, published in 1977, is now rare. The copy I obtained from AbeBooks was the very last one they had available. It was once the publisher's own copy (which is why it has "file copy" stamped on the inside flap). This copy of the book would presumably never have been sold commercially to the public by its original publisher, being withheld by them for a long time before ultimately finding its way to a secondhand bookshop.
Re-reading Eerie, Weird & Wicked, I found that the extent to which I remembered its stories varied. In some cases, I had no recollection of them at all. These were usually stories that I found unremarkable on re-reading. Eerie, Weird & Wicked contains several of these, but also some very good stories.
Harold Rolseth's "Hey You Down There!" is a clever and entertaining short story. Its plot deals with a married couple who, trying to deepen a well, make the unexpected discovery of a strange race of beings living far below ground. The story makes an effective point about the dangers of meddling with the unknown. The woman communicates with the underground beings through an exchange of notes, but the man, motivated by greed and anger, and unaware of what his wife has learned, recklessly descends into their subterranean world, and comes to a predictably bad end.
Bloch's "The Strange Island of Dr Nork" is another quite good story included in Eerie, Weird & Wicked, though likely to be more entertaining if one realises that it is a parody of H. G. Wells's novel The Island of Dr Moreau. The "Dr Nork" of the story's title is a mad scientist who performs experiments on people to turn them into beings resembling the heroes and villains of comic books.
The best story in Eerie, Weird & Wicked, and the one that I remembered most clearly from my original reading of the anthology, is "No Ships Pass", by Lady Eleanor Smith. Its main events take place on an island far more terrible than the island of Dr Nork. A man shipwrecked at sea swims to an island where he meets four people. They tell him that they have been alive on the island for periods of time ranging from decades to centuries, and that escape is impossible.
At first, he does not believe them, but eventually he discovers that what he has been told appears to be true. Some strange force is at work on the island, defeating all attempts at escape, and keeping its inhabitants alive long past their normal lifespan. So far as they know, they will be trapped on the island for all eternity. They have all attempted suicide, at various times, to try to escape their horrifying fate, yet they always survive.
A woman who has long been trapped on the island tells the new arrival that the only solution to the agony of an eternal and unvarying existence there is simply to stop thinking about the situation (an ironically thought-provoking solution). "I like to eat when I am hungry, sleep when I am tired, swim when the sun is hot. All that is good, because it is just enough. I used to think-I never think now," she says.
These are the best lines in the story, and in the book as a whole. I am not surprised that I had a reasonably good recollection of them, even after not having looked at Eerie, Weird & Wicked for several decades.
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