As an elementary school student in the early 80’s, I remember reading a couple of books from my school library that I think were anthologies of short stories. The books themselves were probably ten or more years old at the time. Several of these stories have stuck with me lo these many years, and I’d like to try to find them again if I can. I seem to remember that the books were related to Alfred Hitchcock in some way, even though the stories themselves were more Twilight-Zone rather than mysteries. Sadly, I can’t even be sure that all the stories were from the same anthology series. So, I draw upon the collective memory of the Teeming Millions to help me find these short stories:
Some ultradense 6" tall organisms who live in the Earth’s mantle use spacesuits and antigravity belts (?) to visit the surface of the Earth. They are so dense that they can push through normal matter like it was fog and they sink into concrete like it was mud. Somebody tries to kick one of them over and pulps his foot in the process. I don’t think that the creatures were malevolent.
A family of vampire/monsters has a child with ‘soft, yellow teeth’ (ie human), and they don’t know what to do with it. The line about the teeth has really stayed with me.
A deep-sea creature is disturbed by an earthquake or bomb test or something and moves up to land. It’s basically a mobile oil slick or Blob-like monster. I think that it kills a few animals out of curiosity.
“It was a great grey-black hood of horror moving over the floor of the sea. It slid through the soft ooze like a monstrous mantle of slime obscenely animated with questing life.”
Disturbed by an earthquake, it finds the beach and is very hungry.
Number two sounds like the Ray Bradbury story ‘Homecoming’. I know it’s been in a number of various collections.
From my high school days working in a library, I do dimly recall there were several anthology volumes of horror/supernatural stories with the Hitchcock name on them, aimed at juvenile readers.
Thanks, DocCathode and GythaOgg - those gave me some solid leads to track down. It sounds like I was remembering the Alfred Hitchcock Presents… or *Alfred Hitchcock’s Monster Museum *books. The latter has Slime and Homecoming and The Microscopic Giants, which sounds like my ultradense astronauts one.
Alfred Hitchcock’s Monster Museum was the book I was thinking of. It turns out that the local library has a copy. I guess I’m posting this because I’m amazed at how
specific my recollections were of short stories I read about thirty years ago.