Search Results for: nightmare

THE EARTH’S REAL LANDLORDS ARE SURFACING. HERE. NOW…From the darkly fantastic worlds of H P Lovecraft’s world-famous Cthulhu Mythos comes a grimly compelling novel of the Ultimate War, between men – and monsters spawned in Hell!For millennia, men have strutted in puny pride over the fragile surface of the Earth, arrogantly proclaiming themselves masters of creation. But now their feeble investigations have disturbed the planet’s original rulers far beneath the globe’s crust. And mankind’s placid dreams are about to be wrenched into shattering nightmare.’They were here before man evolved. They are older than our oldest legends, predating the very dinosaurs. They call to use in our dreams and make us… do things!’They are THE BURROWERS BENEATH. And they’re surfacing right now. Right here…

Parallel Worlds! Earth, cerated out of universal chaos, and the Dreamlands, spawned of the dreams of men. But where dreams turn to nightmares, Death is the only crossing-point…
Ex-waking worlders David Hero and Eldin the Wanderer are now sellswords in that ephemeral dimension called Deramland. Once a talented artist of the fantastic, now Hero’s art is the wizardry of his swordplay. Once a lecturing professor, now Eldin professes a knowledge of the dark, mysterious Dream Realms second to none. A formidable pair! But face to face with Yibb-Tstll and the Gaunts of Night, the Eidolon Lathi and her brood, and the mad, alien First One who plots to set free dreaming Cthulu from eon-old imprisonment…what can mere men do?
Take up arms with the Heroes of Dreams and laugh in the face of the world’s worst nightmare!

Behind every door waits a living nightmare . . .

Spencer Gill is a man with problems. The fact that he’s dying, slowly, is only one of them. The castle, up on the slopes of a famous Scottish mountain, is another. For one thing, it doesn’t have any doors – at least, not on the outside. And it’s Gill’s nightmare task to find out what it really is.

In fact, this horror-house has many doors. But they’re all on the inside. And sheer bloody terror lives and lurks behind every one of them.

The welcome mat is out for Gill. And for you. So come on in. Just don’t slam the door . . .

An invasion from an alien dimension! That would be horror enough in itself: the thought of monstrous beings stalking the Earth. But how much more nightmarish if the invaders were each and every one . . . VAMPIRES!

Searching the infinite parallel time-streams of the metaphysical Mobius Continuum for his long-lost wife and son, the Necroscope Harry Keogh discovers that Soviet scientists have accidentally opened a portal to mankind’s worst nightmares. The lethal terror of Chernobyl is a mere bad dream in comparison.

THE SOURCE of all Dark Legends can now be reached by any who dare pass through the Gate. And by some who do not dare – but who have no choice . . .

When vampires stalk among us . . .

Robbed of his supernatural powers, Harry Keogh is back from Starside, the vampire sourceworld. A mere man again – denied access to the metaphysical Möbius Continuum, no longer able to communicate with the dead – now he must rebuild his life in a world made safe only through his efforts. But safe for how long?

E-Branch, Britain’s mindspy organisation, wants Harry back with his invaluable talents intact. Likewise the Great Majority, his countless dead friends across the world, who know that he’s needed as never before. For the old thread has risen anew!

Crumbling in their graves, the teeming dead fear for Harry. If the ex-Necroscope can’t find and destroy the last of the Ferenczys, that nightmare vampire dynasty, they know that the vampire will find him. He must regain his powers – or risk becoming a vampire himself, undead for ever . . .

First, you feel uncomfortably hot. But it’s no use turning up the air conditioning or reaching for a long, cool drink. Whatever you do, the temperature inside you keeps rising. And rising. Soon you’re in agony beyond your wildest nightmares as your whole body is engulfed in searing, unbearable heat. You go mad briefly with the pain. Then, with luck, you black out. If your luck holds, you’re dead soon after. Very dead. But your involuntary cremation continues. Your blood boils in your veins for a few seconds – before it bursts them. As your tortured corpse dries out from the horror-heat inside it, your skin blisters, pops, bursts – and then flares into scorching flame fueled by your own melding body-fat. Clouds of choking, greasy smoke join the searing blaze consuming what’s left of you. You have become your own funeral pyre…

Ed Carter, a New York reporter on his way to his home town in Omaha for a short vacation, saw the missile in the last moments in its journey back to earth. A sweller on the brink, like all of us, he had no doubt about what it was; Oh God, he thought, this is it. The blast of the impact flung him some distance, and when he regained consciousness, his first reaction was one of surprised to find himself still alive, and not, it seemed, even badly hurt. Presumably the missile had been directed at the big Air Force base nearby, and should have destroyed everything and everyone within a radius of miles. Could it have failed to explode?

Carter sees the remains of part of the missile in an adjacent field and hobbles over to it. A minute or two later several Air Force officers arrive. They examine the remains, and find the burned-up body of a pilot. In other worlds, the missile was not Russia’s first shot in the Third World War, but a failure to launch a man into space. But Carter knows that the Distant Early Warning line will have reported the missile; that the senior Air Force officers, in accordance with plan, will have taken to the air – in the country’s interest, their lives must, of course, be preserved if possible; that by now the retaliatory American bombers will have passed the point of no recall; and that the Third World War has begun. Not so, Colonel Ben Goldwater tells him: “I called the bombers back.”

Goldwater, the man who had been left in command, has saved the world – for at least a little longer. So he becomes a world hero? Not a bit of it. On the contrary: a nightmare looms ahead both for him and for Ed Carter, and the reader watches it all with growing fury…

Howson was a runt. Twisted, ugly, crippled. The kind of guy people just didn’t want to know.

But when he took a deep breath, braced himself and projected his thoughts thousands of miles into space, they were all over him. Howson’s telepathic powers were like nothing they’d ever known before . . . and he became the greatest curative telepathist in the world.

But when they put him to work chasing people’s nightmares deep down inside their minds, could they be expected to cope with what the runt found in there? More importantly, could Howson?


First published in 1964.

The space programme has finally lost its novelty, and a jaded public hardly notices another moon launch. Skilful PR men preserve the illusion that the missions have become routine.

But astronaut Richard Martin can tell a different story. Of panic in deep space, of crewmen pushed beyond breaking point, of official indifference towards his own shattered life.

Martin is effectively put under wraps – until the pilot of a moon capsule, loaded with nuclear weaponry goes beserk and a nightmare develops, threatening to engulf the world – a nightmare that only Martin could end.

It was a sultry summer day in 1981, and the 3 billion or so inhabitants of the world went about their daily routine unaware that, possibly, the fate of the human race lay in the shaking hands of one George Mercer, an insignificant and slightly neurotic employee of the New York City Department of Welfare.

For George had been informed, by an accredited emissary of the Galactic Overlords, that he had 12 hours in which to prove the people of the Earth worthy of admission into the Galactic Federation. George, and George alone, would represent all of mankind. If he failed the entire planet would be destroyed.

Was this all a nightmare of delusions dredged up by his tortured subconscious? Or a very real nightmare that would end in the Day of the Burning . . .

Arthur Cleveland Finch was an eminently practical man. Naturally he didn’t believe that the carnelian cube was a “dream-stone” with supernatural powers. But, of course, if he were going to wish himself into another world, he would choose one where everything was perfectly rational.

Finch got his wish – with a bang! And he soon discovered that one man’s rationality can easily be another man’s nightmare. He awoke a poet in a strange place where status meant everything and a man could be tried for umpteen kinds of crimes for reciting a poem in public.

So, being optimistic as well as practical, Finch tried again – and again. And the worlds kept getting wilder, more improbable, and funnier – but more dangerous, too. The question was, could Finch find Utopia¿ before losing his skin?

ZAKYM: World of the night-rulers and the day people. A world teetering on the edge of nightmare.

The Cyclan orders were clear – ‘Find Dumarest. Find him before war erupts on ZAKYM.’ But Zakym could hold the key to Dumarest’s search for his lost home planet – and for that he would risk everything.




(First published 1977)

The Cyclan was the greatest concentration of intelligence in a thousand worlds – and yet Earl Dumarest continued to elude it. For too long.

Bochner was the greatest hunter of a hundred worlds – a man more than wise to the wiles of beasts and men. And now he was on the trail of the most dangerous and most challenging quarry of his career: Earl Dumarest.

While Dumarest searched for lost Terra, the Cyclan and Bochner searched for him. Of all the nightmare worlds of the universe, the hunt this time was to lead to the Quillian Sector.
The Quillian Sector: the place where space goes mad…



(First published 1978)

QUARANTINED PLANET

“On Dephene, the native life -form is peculiar and unique. All protoplasmic life is equal to and one with the mimics.” On screen, the shape changed, altered into the shape of a man.

Then it changed. It shrank, dropped, lifted a snouted head in the semblance of a dog. It grew, spread wings and became a large bird which hopped and pecked. The wings vanished and a tall and lovely woman smiled from where the bird had halted. A dozen changes, a score until the mind reeled.

“These Mimics represent a threat to every world in the entire galaxy. Their power of mimicry would enable them to adopt the outward form of rulers and high officials. A man could never be certain that his companion was what he seemed to be.”

When Kennedy went to Delphene the speculation became pure nightmare, for both he and his crew were being duplicated over and over – and so was the worlds-conqueror he sought to block.

There were three of them – Adzel who measured four and a half metres and resembled a dragon, Chee Lan who was furry, catlike and female, and David Falkayn, a dare-devil rakehell from space.

When they learned of a rogue planet two hundred and four light-years from Sol, they were interested because the planet, a nightmare of ice and darkness, was rich in minerals. And the planet was about to melt – to move closer to a sun and release the vast wealth entombed in its depths.

And Falkayn, Chee Lan and Adzel were prepared to risk the horrors of an erupting, melting world if they could only salvage the riches that would shortly boil from the planet’s core…

The Ledom had made a world without war, without fear – a world in which each individual was free to love, to create, to explore . . .

The Ledom, a gentle and kindly new race, made their twentieth-century guest, Charlie Johns, welcome to their paradise.

Charlie thought he was in heaven. But then he found out just where – and when – he was . . . an Eden turned into a nightmare!

Waking Nightmare!

He awoke, stretched and scratched the top of his head with his right hand. It hurt, must have a pimple there or something. Only a few seconds later his forehead tingled, and he brushed at it with his left hand.

It came away smothered in blood.

What the hell! Got to get a towel or handkerchief or something. He reached forward with his right hand to throw back the bedclothes and froze.

It was not his hand.

It was not even human blood.

The hand was brown, thin and scaly. A membrane stretched from the palm upwards to the top knuckles of the fingers, holding them together.

Long curved nails grew from the tops of the fingers and one of them was bloody.

This stunning collection showcases 11 of Haldeman’s best stories. They range through time and space from planets beyond our wildest dreams to a nightmare future Earth all too close to home.

Lindsay and the Red City Blues: A story of revenge – with a heart-stopping twist in the tail.

Blood Brothers: A ‘Thieves World’ story.

You Can Never Go Back: A self-contained story from the original version of ‘The Forever War’, never before published in book form.

And ten more sharp and startling visions of tomorrow.

General Benjamin Shore was heading for the stars – under forged orders and in defiance of Presidential commands. He was leaving Earth in an untested ship with a crew chosen by necessity. And with nothing but faith to guide him. His only hope was to find habitable worlds in the uncharted regions of space ahead.

Thus began Man’s first mission to the unexplored universe. Shore knew that before him lay danger, probable disillusion – maybe even death. But nothing had prepared him for the nightmare he would face on the planet of the Grey-furs for the menace of the Golden People who had driven all other races from Galactic Centre or for what awaited him if he returned to the world he called home.

Amongst the gorse and the heathers of his native highlands, Skelter the mountain hare enjoyed an idyllic life: browsing and gambolling; taking in the superb scenery and making female friends, including the beautiful Rushie. Then one day Skelter’s life of ease came to an abrupt end. Netted and captured, he and several other hares are transported hundreds of miles, to the strange lands of the south, destined for the cruel sport of hare coursing. Amidst a hell of shouting men and howling greyhounds, Skelter witnesses a nightmare, before making a miraculous escape.


Alone, stranded in a landscape he does not understand, Skelter must learn to survive, despite the hostility and distrust of the local hares and other natural hazards.


By far the most horrifying peril that faces Skelter is the florge: a vast, flying monster which is terrorising the countryside, killing indiscriminately.


Raised in isolation by a man, thousands of miles from his native habitat, Bubba is a killer more terrifying than any natural creature: for he believes himself human. Can one small mountain hare survive against such a monster?

Sherwood Forest, home of Oberon, Titania, Puck, Cobweb, Peaseblossom and the rest of the mob, has been whittled away by urban development. It’s time to move on, the fairies decide. Sid, their captive, a kindly if gruff young car mechanic, teaches Titania to drive, and on Midsummer’s Eve the party sets off in a battered and smelly old bus. They’re bound for the New Forest, where they hope to be able to regenerate their magic.
The fairies’ journey is full of excitement. At a village fair, they show the morris dancers how to cut previously undreamt-of capers. Titania falls in love with a human baby and steals her from her pram, starting a nationwide search for the missing infant. The fairies then link up with a group of New Age travellers on their way to Stonehenge, who befriend them almost without question.
Finally, a fight to the death between Titania and the terrifying and sadistic Morgan-le-Fey must take place before everyone can settle down into some form of harmony and peace.

An ancient Power awakes.

A modern evil mushrooms into apocalypse.

Cocooned in a nightmare world, the village of Melfort waits, as The Power feeds on the death and destruction, fuelling its gross appetite.

And the dead rise up.

The valley was isolated in time and space, a land of barbarous science and human sacrifice.

Coatlice the Dreadful stalked the night, her twin serpent heads dealing death to taboo-breakers.

Citallatonac the First Priest sacrificed anyone believed to be possessed by the gods.

Chimal rebelled: he wanted to escape the atavistic confines of his lost civilisation, to venture into the unknown world beyond the valley, a world of hope, and nightmare, too.

A priceless da Vinci painting, supposedly destroyed during World War II, miraculously appeared in Mexico. The Agency sent art expert Tony Hawkin to find out what the hell was going on down there.

But what started as a holiday jaunt, soon became a deadly mad escapade that was as hilarious as it was deadly. In a nightmare comedy of errors, professional agents from Israel, Italy, and Germany, closed in on poor, bumbling Hawkin.

it was a death trap for the timid art investigator and only an illogical amateur could home to survive the murderously inept MEXICAN CONNECTION.