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  Thanks to Fritz Foy for asking for a BIG monster anthology, and thank you to Kristin Temple for shepherding it into reality.

  And to Stefan Dziemianowicz for saving my bacon as usual, by advising me on my Introduction.

  INTRODUCTION

  by Ellen Datlow

  What is a “monster”? What is monstrosity? The definition depends upon who is doing the defining.

  The etymology of the word “monster” is complicated.

  “Monēre” is the root of “monstrum” and means to warn and instruct. Saint Augustine proposed the following interpretation, considering monsters part of the natural design of the world, deliberately created by God for His own reasons: spreading “abroad a multitude of those marvels which are called monsters, portents, prodigies, phenomena … They say that they are called ‘monsters,’ because they demonstrate or signify something; ‘portents’ because they portend something; and so forth … ought to demonstrate, portend, predict that God will bring to pass what He has foretold regarding the bodies of men, no difficulty preventing Him, no law of nature prescribing to Him His limit.”

  In Old English, the monster Grendel was an “aglæca,” a word related to “aglæc”: “calamity, terror, distress, oppression.” A few centuries later, the Middle English word “monstre”—used as a noun and derived from Anglo-French, and the Latin “monstrum”—came into use, referring to an aberrant occurrence, usually biological, that was taken as a sign that something was wrong within the natural order. So abnormal animals or humans were regarded as signs or omens of impending evil. Then, in the 1550s, the definition began to include a “person of inhuman cruelty or wickedness, person regarded with horror because of moral deformity.” At the same time, the term began to be used as an adjective to describe something of vast size.

  The usage has evolved over time and the concept has become less subtle and more extreme, so that today most people consider a monster something inhuman, ugly and repulsive and intent on the destruction of everything around it. Or a human who commits atrocities. The word also usually connotes something wrong or evil; a monster is generally morally objectionable, in addition to being physically or psychologically hideous, and/or a freak of nature, and sometimes the term is applied figuratively to a person with an overwhelming appetite (sexual in addition to culinary) or a person who does horrible things.

  Since humans began telling stories, monsters have figured in them. There’s a rich tradition of monsters in literature. In Greek myth there are many monsters, a good number of them created by the gods as punishment for perceived slights. For example, Medusa was raped by Poseidon in the goddess Athena’s temple. Athena then punished her for desecrating her sacred space by cursing Medusa with a head full of snakes and a gaze that turns men to stone. The Minotaur was born of human and bull from a situation fostered by Poseidon to punish King Minos for backing out of a sacrifice. Minos’ wife Pasiphaë was cursed to feel lust for a bull and mated with it. From that union came the Minotaur. Lamia was the daughter of Poseidon, and her exquisite beauty drew the attention of Zeus. Lamia eventually became Zeus’ mistress, much to the displeasure of his wife, Hera. The jealous wife cursed Lamia, and the curse is what led to the queen becoming known as a child-eating demon. Etc. etc. etc. So should we be surprised that we might feel sympathy for some monsters when they so often seem created solely to punish women for male transgressions against them?

  Less morally objectionable with regard to their origins are Arabian fire demons known as Afrits and Ghuls (which became Ghouls, when Westernized); Japanese Fox-maidens; the Mesopotamian Ekimmu, which are said to suck life force, energy, or sometimes, misery; the Inkanyamba, a huge carnivorous eel-like animal in the legends of the Zulu and Xhosa people of South Africa; and huge Ogres that are a staple in African folktales. Bad fairies, evil witches, crafty wolves, and nasty trolls that terrorize and/or eat humans in fairy and folktales from Europe fit in perfectly with this crowd of international monsters.

  There are many different kinds of monsters represented within these pages—including vampires, werewolves, shape-shifters, changelings, human monsters who are unaware of the pain they cause, and the other kind all too well aware, yet indifferent to it.

  Sometimes the monstrous requires a shift in perspective. Who is the worse monster in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein? The creature abandoned to his own devices by his creator or the prideful Victor Frankenstein? What if you have an ethical choice to make in order to survive? If a child is murderous and isn’t aware of what she is doing, is she monstrous? Outside circumstances or pressure can create monstrous behavior. Does that behavior make the perpetrator a monster?

  Even our most insightful critics are divided in their appraisals of monsters and the monstrous. Noël Carroll, in his study The Philosophy of Horror, or Paradoxes of the Heart, writes of an “entity-based” scheme of horror, in which beings that defy neat cultural categories of what is “known”—in other words, the monstrous—arouse a sense of threat, or feelings of disgust. Conversely, as David J. Skal writes in his chapter on monsters in the popular culture of the 1960s in The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror, “Monsters … provided an element of reassurance. They were transcendent resurrection figures, beings who couldn’t die.” The monsters of television and film were appreciated as cultural touchstones because we all shared in our experience of them together: at the movie theater or drive-in; on television; and in magazines like Famous Monsters of Filmland, whose readers, mostly teenagers, may even have identified with them.

  Stephen King, in his now-classic study Danse Macabre, may have put his finger on how we define the monstrous, and the hold of monsters on our psyche, but not with regard to the usual channels horror provides us. He considers the sideshow attractions of Tod Browning’s film Freaks; the polymorphous villains of Dick Tracy cartoons; and even the supposed “abnormality” of the overweight, or the left-handed. Why do such examples pique our interest, he asks, indirectly, before answering, directly: “We love and need the concept of monstrosity because it is a reaffirmation of the order we all crave as human beings … and let me further suggest that it is not the physical or mental aberration in itself which horrifies us, but rather the lack of order which these aberrations seem to imply.”

  What’s most interesting to me as a reader is the range of monstrousness that exists within ourselves and that we impose on the creatures unlike us that we name monsters. Monsters are our mirrors: in them, we see who we hope we are not, in order to understand who we are.

  YOU HAVE WHAT I NEED

  by Ian Rogers

  Tamsin was stitching up an adulterer’s arm when the woman came in with the bi
te wound.

  Just another night in Chicago Hopeless, she thought.

  That was what the emergency room staff called North Chicago General. Not because things there were particularly hopeless—the death rate at North Gen was no higher than that of any other hospital serving a major metropolitan area. It was just the gallows humor common among doctors and nurses who worked in a high-speed, high-stress environment. Being able to laugh at the unpleasant things they saw on a daily basis was as much a survival technique for themselves as the medical care they administered to their patients.

  The adulterer’s name was George Morse. He had come to the ER with a long gash on his arm and started talking a blue streak. That’s what some people did when they were scared and in pain. Usually Tamsin didn’t mind—sometimes their patter worked as a distraction that enabled her to complete her work—but in Morse’s case, she wished the man was a mute.

  “It was my wife,” Morse said. “She cut me when she found out about Bettina. Grabbed the biggest knife out of the block.” He chuckled to himself. “I bought her those knives for our fourteenth anniversary. She was waving it around and I was trying to get it away from her before she could cut me, and well … she cut me.” He chuckled again. “She wouldn’t take me to the hospital, so I had to call a cab. Probably could’ve driven myself, but I didn’t want to bleed all over the upholstery in my car. It’s not leather or anything fancy like that, but I…”

  Tamsin let the words wash over her as she worked the needle through the skin of Morse’s arm. She remembered something one of the attending physicians had said during her residency: Tune out the drama, focus on the trauma.

  After she was done and Morse had been sent on his way, Tamsin went over to the triage desk, where a nurse named Joan Cuno was working on a crossword puzzle. “Slow night,” Joan said, stifling a yawn.

  “Famous last words,” Tamsin said.

  They both turned and looked at the automatic doors leading into the ER. They remained closed.

  Joan shrugged. “I guess not.”

  “Night’s not over yet,” Tamsin said.

  Joan’s mouth stretched wide in another yawn. “Don’t remind me.”

  “I was going to grab a coffee. You want one?”

  “How about a caffeine IV drip?”

  Tamsin laughed. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  As she turned away from the desk, the automatic doors shushed open and a woman stepped into the ER. She was holding her left arm out in front of her, her right hand clamped tightly around the wrist. Blood seeped out between her fingers and dripped onto the floor.

  Tamsin turned to Joan. “Now look what you did.”

  * * *

  The woman’s name was Rosalie and she said she’d been bitten by a vampire.

  “A vampire?” Tamsin said. She swapped a look with Joan, who glanced up from typing the woman’s information into the computer. “Are you sure?”

  The woman, Rosalie, frowned. “Well … no. But how often does a guy jump out of an alley and bite you? Usually they go for your purse or knock you down so they can…” Her cheeks flushed a bright red. “Well … you know.”

  “Can I take a look at your arm?” Tamsin said. She was already reaching into her pocket for a fresh pair of latex gloves.

  Rosalie hesitated, then held her arm out toward Tamsin. Tamsin held the woman’s arm gently in both hands and leaned in close to examine the wound.

  It was definitely a bite, and definitely human. The only other bite wounds they got in here on a regular basis were from dogs, and the marks they left were markedly different.

  “It was good that you came to the hospital,” Tamsin said.

  Rosalie gave her a funny look. “Of course I came to the hospital. Why wouldn’t I?”

  Tamsin stared at the woman, unsure how to reply. She didn’t want to tell her that most people who thought they’d been bitten by a vampire wouldn’t have come within a hundred yards of a hospital.

  “Why don’t you come with me and we’ll get this looked at properly.” Tamsin turned to Joan, who was watching all this with wide, avid eyes. “Joan, could you tell Dennis that the drain in the break room is still clogged? I meant to tell him earlier, but I forgot.”

  Joan nodded and picked up a Motorola radio. After Tamsin had taken Rosalie by her uninjured arm and led her off down a hallway, Joan keyed the mike on the radio and spoke in a low, breathless voice:

  “Dennis? This is Joan. We’ve got a bite.”

  * * *

  Tamsin hated this part. Maybe she’s not infected, she told herself. Maybe it really was a crazy street person that bit her.

  But they didn’t deal in “maybe”s at Chicago Hopeless. Anyone who had been bitten by a supernatural creature—or thought they had been bitten by one—was taken down this hallway. Sometimes they had to be dragged kicking and screaming. Tamsin took small comfort in knowing she never had to do that part. That’s what Dennis Nunez was for.

  The hospital’s head of security was already waiting for them when Tamsin and Rosalie reached the door at the end of the hallway. Dennis was tall and broad-shouldered in his tan uniform, his shaved head gleaming under the fluorescent lights. Tamsin felt better the moment she saw him. There was another guard with him, a young man named Anthony Tam, whose mouth was usually quirked in a flirty grin. He wasn’t grinning now.

  Rosalie looked warily at the two men. “What is this? What’s going on?”

  Dennis hooked his thumbs into the top of his garrison belt and tried to strike a casual posture.

  “Ma’am, we understand you were involved in an incident this evening. You said you were bitten by a supernatural?”

  “Yes,” Rosalie said carefully. “Or … I don’t know. I think so.”

  “Can you tell us what happened?”

  “Well,” Rosalie said, “I was walking home from work when a man came out of an alley and grabbed me.”

  “That must have been terrifying,” Dennis said. “It’s pretty late to be walking home. Where do you work?”

  “I’m a barista at Cosmic Coffee, over on Pine Street.”

  Dennis nodded. “I know the place.”

  Tamsin liked watching Dennis work. She admired the way he spoke to the patients, the calm, even tone of his voice that managed to sound both interested and sympathetic. It was as much about putting them at ease as it was to gather information. Dennis used to work for the Chicago Police Department, and in moments like this Tamsin could see how he must have been in the interrogation room, playing the role of Good Cop to cajole a suspect into telling him things they didn’t want him to know.

  “I don’t usually walk home alone,” Rosalie said. “Normally I get a ride with Cheryl—she’s one of the other baristas—but she’s been out all week with the stomach flu.”

  Dennis crossed his arms. “The man who attacked you, do you remember anything about him? What he looked like? What he was wearing?”

  Rosalie shook her head. “It was really dark. All I remember is him grabbing my arm and pulling me into the alley. I thought he was trying to take my purse, but I was holding it in my other hand. It wasn’t until I was able to pull away from him that I realized he had bitten me.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “I ran.” Rosalie looked at the three people standing around her. “What would you have done?”

  “You did the right thing,” Dennis assured her. “Now, what made you think this man was a vampire?”

  Rosalie’s cheeks had filled with color as she talked about what had happened to her. Now, as Tamsin watched, it drained out like a plug had been pulled.

  “He didn’t say anything,” Rosalie said. “Not a word. He was making a sound. Low, in the back of his throat, almost like a growl. Or maybe that’s just how I remember it. And he bit me! Who would do a thing like that? It’s not normal. I started to think that he wasn’t normal. That maybe he was…”

  “A vampire,” Dennis said.

  Rosalie nodded.

  “It was probab
ly someone with a mental health issue,” Tamsin said. “Or maybe a drug addict. But it almost certainly wasn’t a vampire. You know what they say: you’re more likely to be struck by lightning…”

  “Than to encounter a supernatural,” Rosalie finished. “Yeah, I’ve heard that before, but…” She raised her wounded arm. “… I thought it was best to be sure.”

  “That’s very responsible of you,” Dennis said. He gave the other guard, Anthony, a brief look before turning back to Rosalie. “Now why don’t we get you into the examination room so we can get that bite looked at.”

  Dennis placed his hand lightly against Rosalie’s back and guided her toward the door. Anthony swiped his ID card through the electronic reader to unlock it and held it open.

  Rosalie went inside, taking small steps and looking all around like a frightened child.

  The examination room, as Dennis had called it, was a room with another, smaller room inside it. This inner room was an enclosed chamber composed of four thick glass walls, with a tempered-steel ceiling and floor.

  Rosalie turned to look at the three hospital personnel standing behind her. “What is this?”

  Anthony moved around her and used his ID card to open the door to the inner room.

  “This is the hospital’s paranormal biocontainment chamber,” Dennis explained. He ushered Rosalie inside as he spoke. “It’s where we treat people who have been attacked by creatures from the Black Lands.”

  Tamsin followed them into the chamber, the tension thrumming under her skin like low-voltage electricity. She knew if there was going to be a problem, this is when it would happen. She watched as Rosalie looked around the chamber. There was nothing inside except a stainless-steel toilet bolted to the floor in the corner. It looked less like a hospital room and more like a prison cell—which, in a way, Tamsin supposed it was.