A Nest of Nightmares

A NEST OF NIGHTMARES

LISA TUTTLE

With a new introduction by

WILL ERRICKSON

VALANCOURT BOOKS

Dedication: For Megan

A Nest of Nightmares by Lisa Tuttle

Originally published by Sphere in 1986

Copyright © 1986 by Lisa Tuttle

Cover painting copyright © 1986 by Nick Bantock

Introduction copyright © 2019 by Will Errickson

The Acknowledgments page on p. 12 constitutes an extension of the copyright page

“Paperbacks from Hell” logo designed by Timothy O’Donnell. © 2017 Quirk Books. Used under license. All rights reserved.

Published by Valancourt Books, Richmond, Virginia

http://www.valancourtbooks.com

All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without prior written consent of the publisher, constitutes an infringement of the copyright law.

Cover text design by M. S. Corley

INTRODUCTION

The horror fiction genre that we readers hold so dear to our dark hearts did not spring forth from the ether fully formed. Its genesis was as an outgrowth of its literary predecessors, an embryonic gestation that slithered about beneath labels like science fiction, fantasy, gothic, suspense, thriller, mystery. Not even the authors themselves were privy to what lay beneath the works they were producing: ‘I didn’t think my stories were “horror stories” even when they were obviously not “science fiction”,’ Lisa Tuttle remarks about her earliest writing. ‘Pre-­Tolkienesque fantasy boom, pre-Stephen King and mass market horror fiction, science fiction kind of encompassed everything that was not the here-and-now or mundane or realist mainstream fiction.’ A lifelong reader of supernatural tales, by the time Tuttle was twelve years old she had devoured her father’s collection of Poe, Bierce, Saki, and ‘anything with the words “ghost” or “supernatural” in the title.’ This is the fertile earth from which horror writers are born and bred, and one can see its fruit in the stories collected here in A Nest of Nightmares, Tuttle’s 1986 book that has, until now, been unavailable to most readers.

While in the very early Nineties I read some of Tuttle’s output in various horror anthologies, it wasn’t till reading Stephen Jones and Kim Newman’s essential Horror: 100 Best Books in 1994 that I became aware of A Nest of Nightmares, and soon after learned that it had never been published in the United States. I had virtually no way of obtaining the book, and I didn’t for nearly twenty years. When I did find it in a used bookstore in New Jersey, I devoured it at once, and was immensely pleased that each story slaked my horror fiction cravings. Her stories could be mean but not cruel, random but not meaningless, violent but not cheaply so. And the deliciously creepy birds on the cover – what an eye-catcher! (Artist Nick Bantock went on to create the bestselling Griffin and Sabine Saga.)

Tuttle began having her stories published in the very early 1970s, at the beginning of the Paperbacks from Hell era. Published in science fiction and fantasy magazines, it is obvious they had more in common with what would become the horror genre in a few short years. While she may not have thought she was writing horror, early tales like ‘Dollburger’ and ‘A Stranger in the House’ foreshadow the understated, realistic work that would come to be known as horror as the 1970s ended. Tuttle states that ‘although I accepted it, I was not enamoured of the term “horror” for the genre’ – a common enough objection by many a genre writer! ‘My preference was for ambiguity,’ she continues, ‘and when dealing with “impossible” or supernatural elements I always felt that the further you pressed it, the more likely it was to start seeming ridiculous, and stop being genuinely disturbing or scary.’

Fortunately for us, Tuttle made sure she did not press too far with her scenarios, and virtually all of the stories end on a note of chilling realization that horror lurks beneath the domestic façade.