Week 68 – Weekly Horror Short Story Reviews: Campbell, Pelan, Rainey, Chambers, and Schwader

Welcome to Week 68 of my horror short fiction review project! Some good stories this week. While this week’s selection includes a story by one of my newly discovered favorite horror short fiction writers, Ann K. Schwader, my favorite this week was “Contact” by John Pelan and Stephen Mark Rainey–the blend of science fiction and the Cthulhu Mythos really did it for me.

Alone with the Horrors, by Ramsey Campbell (Tor, 2004)

“The Chimney”

This is the story of a deeply dysfunctional family: we have a twelve-year old boy who is deeply fearful and anxiety-ridden, and coddled by his mother as a result; the over-indulgent mother; and the contemptuous and emotionally-distant father. The boy is scared of everything, even perfectly innocuous elements in his own home, including the chimney in his bedroom. Campbell captures these childhood fears very well—I remember being afraid of the darkness in my bedroom closet, the shape of a chair in the night, etc. I suspect these passages will resonate with most of us. In this case, the boy should have probably overcome these fears by the age of twelve but, to be fair, there probably is something going on with the eponymous chimney in his bedroom. Specifically, he’s terrified of Santa Claus, who he perceives as a monstrous figure, coming down that chimney and entering his bedroom while he sleeps. The story wraps up with a look at the boy’s life after he’s grown up and what happens to his parents. There are some really intriguing elements here, I just wish the ending hadn’t been quite as muddled. A little clarity would have helped crystallize the horror.

Black Wings of Cthulhu 4, edited by S.T. Joshi (Titan Books, 2016)

“Contact” by John Pelan and Stephen Mark Rainey

Really good story that mixes science fiction and the Cthulhu Mythos, two tastes that go great together. In the near future most of the solar system has been settled, at least with industrial outposts. A large mining crew has been sent to Pluto in cryosleep to mine one of the solar system’s rarest metals. On arrival, the crew encounter a satisfyingly alien race of beings on Pluto (almost certainly the Mi-Go) and vast being that the aliens either worship or are constructing as a tool of existential destruction. Perhaps both. I love the horror and the existential threat to all of humanity these creatures pose. Really nicely done.

The Yellow Sign and Other Stories, by Robert W. Chambers (Chaosium, 2004)

“The Carpet of Belshazzar”

While I like this story, there’s a disconnect here between the opening of the story and the bulk of its plot. We begin with the visit of a world-renowned psychic to a men’s club who shows off his psychic prowess a bit by making some cryptic prophecies, then move into the heart of the story: A love triangle (quadrangle?) that includes a couple who are drawn to each other and were apparently lovers in a previous life. This is definitely a setting in which reincarnation is not only possible but can impact one’s current life. Not bad. I also like that there is a random man named “Hildreth” in the club, an apparent callback to the character in “The Repairer of Reputations.”

The Book of Cthulhu, edited by Ross E. Lockhart (Night Shade Books, 2011)

“Lost Stars” by Ann K. Schwader

Our narrator is Sara, a woman who is isolated and mostly alone. Her friend Diane is an obsessive feminist who has joined one women’s spirituality/empowerment group after another. She convinces Sara to join her latest group, but all is not as it seems: this group is led by a woman who is/was a desiccated Egyptian priestess and mummy who drains the life force from her followers as a means of restoring her own vitality. This one was very well done, perhaps unexpectedly so, and nicely ties in Egyptian elements with the Lovecraftian. Also lots of nice body horror in this one. Schwader’s writing skills are on clear display here.

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Week 67 – Weekly Horror Short Story Reviews: Campbell, Tem, Chambers, and McNaughton

Welcome to Week 67 of my horror short fiction review project! Some really good stories this week. While I really liked Brian McNaughton’s “The Doom that Came to Innsmouth,” my favorite was Ramsey Campbell’s “Baby.” When Ramsey’s on point, he’s amazing. Check them all out.

Alone with the Horrors, by Ramsey Campbell (Tor, 2004)

“Baby”

When Ramsey Campbell is on, he’s a really great wordsmith, and this is one of his better ones. A drunk named Dutton kills his downstairs neighbor, an old woman, because she has sneered at him and otherwise been antagonistic. She’s even odder than Dutton—who is chronically unemployed and spends most of his time in alleys getting drunk with other winos—because she’s always seen in public pushing a baby stroller around. After Dutton bashes her head in, he looks in the baby carriage to find it filled with vegetables, four odd snowglobe-type things that show odd images, and a depression where something else was. He also realizes that the woman was very visibly pregnant, which is odd because she was old. Some of his drunken cronies note that there had always been speculation that the woman had been a witch who gave away all of her wealth in exchange for…something. They also wonder where, if she was a witch, her familiar was. Dutton becomes increasingly paranoid, and discovers the answer to that last question. Very good stuff.

Black Wings of Cthulhu 4, edited by S.T. Joshi (Titan Books, 2016)

“Trophy” by Melanie Tem

An interesting story that was entirely off-topic for the collection, having nothing whatsoever to do with Lovecraft or the Cthulhu Mythos. This is the story of a quadriplegic hideously injured in a skiing accident who titillates himself by watching snuff porn. If that wasn’t sufficiently bizarre, he also believes that he has been impregnated by aliens and is about to give birth. I can’t quite make up my mind if he’s right or not. It’s a bizarre one, but there’s something about it that I liked—but once again, Joshi, why did you include it in the anthology?

The Yellow Sign and Other Stories, by Robert W. Chambers (Chaosium, 2004)

The Tracer of Lost Persons (excerpt: ch. 17-20)

This is not a stand-alone short story but rather a fully-coherent, self-contained, four-chapter excerpt from Chambers’ novel The Tracer of Lost Persons. A wealthy man named Jack Burke hires Mr. Keen, the eponymous tracer of lost persons, who apparently runs something like a private detective agency, to track down two men who stole the body of Samaris, a beautiful dancing girl from ancient Egypt. Burke discovered Samaris’ body in a dig in Egypt and was shocked to find her not just perfectly preserved via unknown means but incredibly beautiful; he immediately fell in love with her, of course, though two ne’er-do-wells spirited her away. Samaris is apparently not actually dead, but rather hypnotized and placed in suspended animation in such a way that her body’s functions are held in stasis and she has never aged. In addition to his other talents, Keen is also a gifted Egyptologist (extremely convenient) and translates a recovered papyrus that provides Samaris’ backstory. Samaris is revived, the two men captured, and we must hope that Samaris also falls in love with Burke because he’s certainly smitten with her. I also appreciate that initially Burke didn’t know that Samaris could be revived and was planning to murder the two thieves, and Keen seemed okay with that. A cool story, especially with the translation of the recovered papyrus—the reader is taken through the translation process in an interesting way—though it suffers from the convenient wrap-up of many pulp era tales. I’m kind of curious about the other cases that Keen handles in the full novel, though they apparently don’t include any weird elements or they would have also been included in this Chambers collection.

The Book of Cthulhu, edited by Ross E. Lockhart (Night Shade Books, 2011)

“The Doom that Came to Innsmouth” by Brian McNaughton

Remember the Deep One hybrid bus driver Joe Sargent from Lovecraft’s story “The Shadow Over Innsmouth”? By the end of that tale, Sargent and his fellow Deep One hybrids were presumably killed or captured by the U.S. government when the FBI and the U.S. Navy raided Innsmouth and ended the depredations of those foul beings. Here, the conceit is that a few managed to escape, though they became scattered over the country after Kennedy released them from their internment camps in the early 1960s. One of them was Joe Sargent’s nephew, the narrator of this story, who was raised by his mother in the Old Religion. He is lured back to Innsmouth by promises of a big reparations payment if his identity and heritage can be established. As it turns out those who show up for processing are experimented on and killed, rather than made rich, but that’s ok because the narrator is a ritualistic serial killer. A great depiction of Deep One hybrid culture after the Innsmouth raid. Good stuff.

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Week 66 – Weekly Horror Short Story Reviews: Campbell, Thomas, Chambers, and Jacobs

Welcome to Week 66 of my horror short fiction review project! Several really god stories this week, but my favorite was “The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife” by John Hornor Jacobs. It’s a brief tale, but Jacobs’ writing was truly superior–hope to him more from him in the future.

Alone with the Horrors, by Ramsey Campbell (Tor, 2004)

“In the Bag”

I liked this one. The narrator is Clarke, hot-tempered headmaster of a boy’s school in which his own son Peter is also enrolled. The story opens with Peter having had a plastic bag placed over his head by an unknown assailant(s), though Peter managed to escape before he could be suffocated. No culprits come forward and Clarke begins punishing the student body en masse until the bully reveals himself. It eventually becomes clear that when Clarke was a boy he was involved in the accidental death of a classmate, who suffocated after he was playing with a plastic bag as a mock astronaut’s helmet; Clarke has some culpability here, as he tied the bag’s knot, failed to help the boy as he suffocated, and never told anyone he had been involved. Clarke seems to have been troubled by guilt his whole life, hearing the phantom sounds of a plastic bag crinkling nearby for many years. The ending of the story is a nice little shocker; I don’t want to spoil it, but it really caps off the tale very nicely. There were some definitely story parallels with Campbell’s “The Guy.”

Black Wings of Cthulhu 4, edited by S.T. Joshi (Titan Books, 2016)

“We Are Made of Stars” by Jonathan Thomas

I ended up disliking this one. It turned out to be both boring and expressed in a weird staccato prose style that just didn’t work for me. It’s set in modern-day Providence, Rhode Island—a wonderful city I’d like to spend more time in—but even that wasn’t enough to grab me. There are a couple things going on here. First is the immediate plot involving a man named Ira, some unusual graffiti appearing in the city, and an exploration of urban decay and gentrification. The second is a more interesting revelation of humans as stars who become “right,” a potentially interesting take on the Lovecraftian idea that the Great Old Ones will return when the stars are right. I wanted to like this one a great deal more than I did, but the humans as stars angle came across to me as an incoherent mess.

The Yellow Sign and Other Stories, by Robert W. Chambers (Chaosium, 2004)

In Search of the Unknown

–The Pythagoreans (ch 22-25)

The final linked story (of six) that is collected in the novel In Search of the Unknown. We continue with the young man encountered on the train as our narrator, once again describing some weird experiences he had. It begins with a very promising locked-room style mystery: his aunt died while in possession of a multitude of cats and one of the world’s largest diamonds. She has apparently died of natural causes but the diamond, which she wore in a velvet bag of catnip around her neck, is missing. During the course of the investigation he encounters a secret society, the Pythagoreans, who are interested in Eastern mysticism and who have apparently managed to develop a number of psychic abilities (telepathy, astral projection, etc.) Oh and the narrator’s aunt seems to have come to possess one of her cats. Included some really interesting elements, but was narratively the least coherent of all the stories and it very much broke the mold of the rest of the stories. Would have been a much stronger story as a stand-alone, it just didn’t fit into the rest of the novel coherently.

The Book of Cthulhu, edited by Ross E. Lockhart (Night Shade Books, 2011)

“The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife” by John Hornor Jacobs

I can’t comment meaningfully on this story without giving it all away because it’s so brief, so what follows will be spoiler-filled. Short version: great story, very poignant, read it. A waitress at a seaside restaurant, whose husband has apparently “gone down to the sea,” is being courted by a wealthy young male tourist. He eventually wins her over and they become romantic. This is all extremely well-done, and Jacobs is a master wordsmith. As it turns out the husband and his brethren are not drowned sailors, but have become Deep Ones, and they use the young man as a blood sacrifice to summon Cthulhu. Really good story, and it’s all in the telling because the premise itself is a simple one.

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Week 65 – Weekly Horror Short Story Reviews: Campbell, Schwader, Chambers, and Priest

Welcome to Week 65 of my horror short fiction review project! I’m really happy with the selection this week because it led me to a great writer I had not previously encountered: Ann K. Schwader. My favorite story of the week was Schwader’s “Night of the Piper,” which brings in some interesting and enjoyable Native American folklore and setting elements. I am definitely going to be looking for more from her.

Alone with the Horrors, by Ramsey Campbell (Tor, 2004)

“Heading Home”

This one was a bit of a gimmicky second-person perspective story (I guess all short story writers eventually do one of those). A mad scientist has been brought low by his cuckolding wife and her lover, the village butcher. They think that they’ve managed to kill the scientist and dumped his body in the cellar but he’s not quite dead and is ready for vengeance. The exact nature of his injuries is left a bit too unclear, as is his plan for revenge. Without additional clarity it’s just a mediocre story.

Black Wings of Cthulhu 4, edited by S.T. Joshi (Titan Books, 2016)

“Night of the Piper” by Ann K. Schwader

I actually really enjoyed this one, despite the fact that I initially felt as though I was entering the story in media res because the protagonist, Cassie Barrett, owner of a cattle ranch in rural Wyoming, felt like a well-developed character with an elaborate backstory that I wasn’t familiar with. To be clear, at no point was I lost, it was simply clear that Cassie, her foreman, Frank Yellowtail, and Frank’s niece had all previously encountered Weird Stuff prior to the start of this story. (After reading the story I discovered that this was the fifth or so Cassie Barrett story, none of which I have read.) The story revolves around a non-profit group nominally helping the homeless and addicts that uses images and folklore about the Native American piper deity Kokopelli (you have undoubtedly seen the iconic image of this being, as I have, even if you don’t know the figure’s name). As it turns out Nyarlathotep is involved here, with the implication that Kokopelli is one of his many sinister avatars. I enjoyed the story a great deal, my only complaint is that I wish that the menace of Nyarlathotep’s scheme were clearer—it’s scary any time he’s involved in something, but I would have appreciated a few more hints about what he was up to. In any case, I’m looking forward to reading more of Schwader’s work.

The Yellow Sign and Other Stories, by Robert W. Chambers (Chaosium, 2004)

In Search of the Unknown

–The Thermosaurus (ch 18-21)

The fifth of six linked stories collected in the novel In Search of the Unknown. This, along with the next, breaks the pattern of the first four stories by focusing on the actions of a young man our usual narrator and his romantic interest from the last story they encounter while on a train ride from Florida to New York, returning from their previous adventure. He was hired by a professor on the Gulf Coast to help recover the carcass of a gigantic dinosaur-like crocodile creature. As it turns out the creature wasn’t quite dead, though the young man eventually kills it, though he never does manage to recover the carcass for his employer. I liked this story the least because it switches narrators and while plays with the same themes and elements as the rest, it loses something by being just a tale recounted during a long train ride. Why not just have our usual zoologist narrator have this adventure?

The Book of Cthulhu, edited by Ross E. Lockhart (Night Shade Books, 2011)

“Bad Sushi” by Cherie Priest

I went into the story not a particularly big fan of priest and, well, my opinion remains unchanged. A laughable premise: An old man who once was a soldier in World War II for the Japanese is now a sushi chef. As he made his escape from the Americans, he was grabbed by an octopus-like tentacled monster and nearly killed by it; the monster and its unnerving scent (how, it was underwater the whole time?) left an indelible impression upon him. His restaurant switches seafood suppliers, and the new seafood has the same smell as that monster from the depths. Despite that, the food becomes wildly popular with his customers, who become brainwashed and Deep One-like over time. The ancient sushi chef grabs his knives and takes it upon himself to stop the seafood suppliers from taking over the world or some other dastardly plot. I’m assuming this one must have been meant as a comedy?

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Review: T.E.D. Klein’s The Ceremonies

The Ceremonies

This is Klein’s one and only novel and is essentially an expansion of his novelette “The Events at Poroth Farm,” reviewed last week. That terse description doesn’t quite do this novel justice because it takes a long short story and transforms it into a 500+ page novel, adding not just backstory but entire new plots, sub-plots, and detail throughout.

Elements that are greatly expanded:

• Background on how Jeremy and the Poroths met, including a first visit that Jeremy made to their farm almost two months prior to his stay on the farm.
• The “Old One,” an extremely old man from the Poroths’ community—like, a supernaturally long-lived man—who sets everything in motion.
• The addition of a major female character, Carol Conklin, a virginal young woman who had been a novice in a Catholic religious order before deciding that she didn’t want to be a nun, and who is now trying to live on her own in New York as she struggles on a part-time librarian’s salary.

Interestingly enough, while we see a lot more of Jeremy’s interactions with all the other characters, rather than just reading some of his journal entries, I don’t think he becomes much better known to the reader, and he’s certainly not more likable. On the contrary, in his interactions with the residents of Gilead, he comes off as a bit of a smug oaf, and his failed efforts to hook up with one of his hot female students aren’t exactly endearing.

There were definitely a number of places in the novel that I wondered if the added detail was worth it. “The Events at Poroth Farm” was such a tightly-written, dense story that I’m not quite sure that we needed as much added detail as we got here. Part of the issue is that The Ceremonies is not just a novel, but it’s a long novel. A taut, 250-300 page novel might have added some richness and sub-plots to the story framework without slowing it down. And to be sure, the novel is a slow burn. Klein is a great writer with an eye for detail that really makes his characters and settings come alive, so it doesn’t feel like a slog, but you have to be patient. For example, when Carole Conklin first visits Poroth Farm, she gets delayed in traffic, gets lost, has to ask for directions, and reflects on the scenery, but I think the only actual part of that several-page passage that we needed was when Sarr’s mother sees Carole pass by, she realizes that Carole is the redheaded woman referenced in a prophecy. So that’s just a single example of a spot where we get a lot of new details that aren’t strictly needed to advance the plot.

Having said all that, Klein is a masterful, under-rated writer–my only complaint is that he isn’t more prolific.

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Week 64 – Weekly Horror Short Story Reviews: Campbell, Schweitzer, Chambers, and Morris

Welcome to Week 64 of my horror short fiction review project! There was a very clear “best story of the week”: Ramsey Campbell’s “Call First.” Almost anything involving libraries and creepy occultists is going to be fun and when Campbell is on, he’s a really great writer.

Alone with the Horrors, by Ramsey Campbell (Tor, 2004)

“Call First”

This one was very short but I enjoyed it nevertheless. Ned is a library porter (an attendant of some sort; he seems to man the front desk) and he’s a bit of a brutish thug, trying hard to be liked by his fellow porters, but seems to be more than a little slow. Every day an old man who visits the library and seems to have occult interests uses the library’s phone to call his home and say simply “I’m coming home” before hanging up. Ned is intrigued by this and ends up breaking into the old man’s home at lunchtime while the old man is still at the library. Ned discovers that those calls were far more important than he realized because that’s what disarms the man’s magical(?) home security system. I won’t provide any more details than that, but it was definitely a satisfying ending.

Black Wings of Cthulhu 4, edited by S.T. Joshi (Titan Books, 2016)

“A Prism of Darkness” by Darrell Schweitzer

Darrell Schweitzer is normally an extremely reliable author who has contributed some of the best stories in past Black Wings of Cthulhu collections, but he let me down here. His premise has a great deal of potential: Elizabethan occultist and alchemist John Dee is translating the Necronomicon (or maybe it is translating itself….) While that idea has a lot of potential—I’d love to see a full-blown take on a Lovecraftian Elizabethan England—but sadly nothing much happens in the story. Great premise, boring execution.

The Yellow Sign and Other Stories, by Robert W. Chambers (Chaosium, 2004)

In Search of the Unknown

–The Sphyx (ch 13-17)

The fourth of six linked stories collected in the novel In Search of the Unknown. Professor Farrago is back in charge of the zoo and summons the narrator to join him in the Everglades as he hunts for a mysterious group of invisible creatures or humanoids. The narrator does so, bringing along a plucky female stenographer because no men are willing to join him. He also ends up bringing along a cowardly hunting dog and an assortment of odds and ends that the professor has asked for, all of which ratchet up the absurdity of the situation. As it turns out the invisible beings really like apple pie and have the appearance of beautiful naked women (one is briefly made visible by a chemical dye). When last sighted, Professor Farrago was being dragged off deeper into the Everglades with a big smile on his face by the beings…. Pretty silly (these stories seem to have gotten more absurd as they’ve gone on), but still kind of enjoyable.

The Book of Cthulhu, edited by Ross E. Lockhart (Night Shade Books, 2011)

“Jihad over Innsmouth” by Edward Morris

A really silly story that was clearly a reaction to the September 11 attacks. Here’s the set-up: A Muslim assassin has been hired by Nyarlathotep to kill the Reverend Waite, head of the Esoteric Order of Dagon (from Innsmouth). He turns out to be on the same plane as the assassin. Waite attempts to hijack the aircraft with a fellow Deep One hybrid, and they are stopped by the assassin along with a young man who grew up in Arkham, and who is therefore (1) utterly unfazed by any kind of weirdness, having seen it all while growing up and (2) a master of hand-to-hand combat (why?). They kill the hijackers and the assassin is also a pilot, so no big deal, and he’s fulfilled his contract. What the actual f***?

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