Here, Simmons targets a televangelist whose studio is invaded by a damned soul straight from Dante’s Inferno. ‘Vanni Fucci is Alive and Well and Living in Hell’: throughout the 80s mocking evangelical Christians was a favorite pastime for many writers. And when Louis discovers what these creatures are capable of doing, his sanity is endangered………this story’s offbeat premise and creepy overtones make it one of the better entries in the anthology.

‘Metastasis’: after Louis Steig suffers a head injury, he is able to see extradimensional creatures that no one else can see. He has three contributions to 'The Skin Trade': The Magic Negro – a stock character in much of King’s fiction – is here represented by Mama Delorme, a Conjur Woman who operates out of her apartment in the ghetto (!).ĭan Simmons was a prominent practitioner of the genre of ‘quiet’ horror during the 80s. This story is less a horror tale than an effort by King to demonstrate that, even though he was white, and raised in an environment almost exclusively occupied by white people, he recognized the inherent Nobility and Dignity of Black People and Their Struggle against Bigotry and Racism. ‘Dedication’ is about Martha Rosewall, a black woman who works as a maid in a high-class hotel she finds herself in a strange kinship with the drunk, but talented, white novelist whose rooms she cleans. So there’s a ghost sitting on the toilet seat……….how scary is that ? ‘Sneakers’, about a ghost who haunts a stall in the men’s room of a building housing a recording studio, is one of those King stories built around an idea that might have sounded good in theory, but turned out to be underwhelming in the execution. ‘The Reploids’ reads like a sci-fi episode from the old Twilight Zone TV show. Steven King’s name on the cover of a horror book was a major marketing plus throughout the 1980s, so it’s no surprise that his entries were showcased in ‘The Skin Trade’. ‘The Skin Trade’ first was published in hardcover in 1988 as Night Visions 5 this Berkley Books paperback (330 pp) was published in March 1990.

Cold Terror by R. Chetwynd-Hayes