Week 142 – Weekly Horror Short Story Reviews: Cardin, Carson, Rawlik, and Henderson

Welcome to Week 142 of my horror short fiction review project! While “The Orthometrists of Vhoorl” by Peter Rawlik was wacky and fun and over-the-top–translation: I really liked it–my favorite story of the week was “Teeth” by Matt Cardin, which is full of dark implications and a great example of existential horror.

To Rouse Leviathan, by Matt Cardin (Hippocampus Press, 2019)

“Teeth” by Matt Cardin

Jason (our narrator) is a philosophy graduate student who is brought to the brink of madness—and perhaps beyond—by his friend Marco, who is an extremely gifted young man who has perhaps learned more about the nature of reality than is healthy. Marco has compiled a notebook of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche quotations but then progresses from there to a hand-drawn mandala that opens the viewer’s mind to a vast abyss filled with an infinity of gnashing teeth that will destroy reality by grinding it down and passing it into a gullet of annihilation. The revelation underlying all of this is that reality itself is evil as we would understand it. There are implications that Marco has been compelled by some outside force, or brought to these realizations, and also some hints that the Cthulhu Mythos may be real, and connected to this abyss as well, though that could just be a lens through which Marco perceives things. Marco ends up killing a professor (savagely), and is placed in an asylum. Jason’s life is functionally over as well, since he comes to dread his own existence, knowing what awaits him (and everyone and everything else). Long and very evocative—this is a wonderful example of Lovecraftian cosmic horror in a postmodern age.

The Madness of Dr. Caligari, edited by Joseph S. Pulver, Sr. (Fedogan & Bremer, 2016)

“The Projection Booth” by Nathan Carson

A former theater projectionist tells the story of how he ended up in an insane asylum, where he has lived for the past twenty-seven years. As a young man, he did a lot of drugs one night at the theater and describes meeting an old German doctor (Caligari, most likely) there, before driving the old man back to the asylum, where he crashed his car. There’s a strong implication that he is an unreliable narrator, and probably murdered his girlfriend that night. The man’s current doctor at the asylum is a woman named Caligari. Interesting, but not profound.

A Mythos Grimmly, edited  by Jeremy Hochhalter (Wanderer’s Haven Publications, 2015)

“The Orthometrists of Vhoorl” by Peter Rawlik

A really strong Randolph Carter story (HPL’s iconic protagonist). At the outset of the tale Carter’s consciousness inhabits the body of a deceased alien mystic on another world very far in the past. He lives with two alien races that live in a kind of symbiosis; they have managed to capture a minute fragment of the insane deity Azathoth and are debating what to do about it. Carter attempts to counsel them in caution by sharing a version of the Goldilocks and the three bears story with them, but they draw all the wrong lessons from that story (a nice lesson in alien psychology here). They end up integrating their entire species with the Azathoth fragment, which effectively destroys them both and leads to the creation of the Vorlon species (from Babylon Five!) as well as the creation of the mutually antagonistic Cthulhu(!) and Hastur(!). Fascinating and went in entirely unexpected directions. It’s a little wacky, but if you’re able ton roll with it, it’s a fascinating exploration of some truly alien species.

Degrees of Fear and Others, by C.J. Henderson (Dark Quest, 2011)

“That’s the One!”

Just two pages and unfortunately kind of incoherent. It begins with Alice—of Alice in Wonderland fame—actually being reluctant to drink the size-changing potion and being forced to do so by men who essentially make her continue her journey as a fictional heroine. Then we pick up with a man who doesn’t really want to kill himself, but cops burst into his home. I had thought there was an attempt to break the fourth wall or something similar, but I’m not so sure. I don’t understand what Henderson was trying to convey with this one.

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Buy the book on Amazon

Buy the book on Amazon

Buy the book on Amazon

Halloween Reviews: The Mammoth Book of Halloween Stories, Part 4

Welcome to my final special Halloween-themed post reviewing Stephen Jones’ collection, The Mammoth Book of Halloween Stories, a collection of surprisingly interesting stories all nominally tied to Halloween. As with the previous weeks, several very good stories this week. My favorite story of the week was probably “Lantern Jack” by Christopher Fowler about a very old London pub–how can you go wrong with that kind of setting? I will give an honorable mention to Jane Yolen’s poem “Halloween Treats,” which set the mood perfectly; those of you who have read my blog for a while know that I don’t normally enjoy poetry, but I will make an exception in this case. All in all, a very solid collection with FAR more hits than misses, and well worth your time picking up if you, like me, have a fondness for Halloween.

“The Scariest Thing in the World” by Michael Marshall Smith

This is the story of two artists who have known each other for decades: one has achieved enormous success, and the other…has not, and resents his more successful colleague. The less successful artist is hosting a major new art installation show and his friend has shown up for this one-time performance/viewing. The intent here is that the 300 attendees will be led down into a dark, silent basement and left there with their imaginations roaming for thirty minutes before they will be released. The idea behind this is that their imaginations will frighten them more than anything an artist could create. The complication is that during a drunken discussion many years previously, the more successful artist came up with the idea, told his friend, and then laughed it off believing the idea was silly or would never have the effect desired (I suspect he was correct)—so even this taints the host’s night. But then the successful artist accompanies the crowd into the basement, lights some flammable materials on fire, then calmly walks out, ensuring that the door to the basement is firmly shut. While this would be terrifying, it’s unclear what his motivation to commit mass murder might be.

“The Nature of the Beast” by Sharon Gosling

Cassie Wish is a detective sergeant in England’s rural Northumberland county facing a series of missing people and animals cases. The police scour the area and find a disheveled man who is keeping a young girl captive. As it turns out the young girl is actually a kind of predatory mutant who can dislocate her jaw and extrude additional shark-like rows of teeth; she is also absolutely savage and possesses an insatiable hunger. Cassie notices the girl’s unusual characteristics, but conceals this from her colleagues because she is also being abused at home by her drunk husband and the girl is a perfect instrument of revenge. No explanation or even hint for why the girl even exists, but still enjoyable.

“The Beautiful Feast of the Valley” by Stephen Gallagher

A university librarian is helping his colleague in the computer science department compile and scan in everything that the Greek philosopher is known to have said. The idea is that they will then be able to create a kind of artificial intelligence that can respond as Plutarch would have.  Things get complicated when it becomes clear that the librarian is also scanning in all the notes of a deceased Plutarch scholar, Magdalena, with whom the librarian was secretly in love. The AI starts spitting out a short story about an ancient Egyptian slave who died while in captivity, was sort of mummified and then rose from the dead, along with all the other Egyptian mummies as part of a kind of zombie-like uprising (this story is reproduced as a kind of story-within-a-story). But Magdalena never actually finished her version of the story; it seems that the AI has finished it for her, suggesting that perhaps the AI is mimicking Magdalena more than Plutarch. That summary probably sounds a little more convoluted than the actual tale; in any case, this was a good one.

“In the Year of Omens” by Helen Marshall

Not really a Halloween tale—I don’t think the holiday appears here, even in passing—but good nevertheless. Leah is a fourteen year old girl in a town where people, animals, and plants have small mutations that appear on their bodies that grow over time and eventually kill them after transforming them into odd monstrosities and hybrid-beings. (The effects are perhaps less outlandish then I’m letting on here: no fly-human hybrids or things like that, more like scales, or feathers, or shiny patches.) There is almost a sense of welcoming or contentment from those who experience their bodies transforming into something else. Everyone around Leah experiences this except for her; she craves it, even though several of her friends die from it, even while she craves the attention of her best friend’s older brother. Wistful and longing tone and atmosphere. Well done, though I don’t fully understand what was going on here.

“The Millennial’s Guide to Death” by Scott Bradfield

Silly. Not entirely sure what the point was, other than some heavy-handed social commentary to say that some millennials have trouble making ends meet, but it didn’t contain any commentary on causes or solutions, so not terribly effective. Here, Death is a millennial loser who is underpaid by his boss, Mother Nature, and is forced to live in his sister’s basement and drive an old car. Mother Nature quits her job abruptly, and then Death stops taking dying people to their final destinations, but no one really seems to notice and life goes on pretty much the same as before. Okay….

“White Mare” by Thana Niveau

Fourteen-year-old Heather and her father are trying to rebuild their relationship after the mysterious disappearance of Heather’s mother. They end up traveling to a small town in Britain when Heather’s great-aunt dies and leaves them her home, along with a horse named Callisto that Heather quickly falls in love with. There’s a brief run-in with some local surly teenagers, then a group of townsfolk show up on Halloween, force their way inside, then they kill the horse and leave its severed head as a threat. The local constabulary won’t take any action, chalking it all up to a local custom (?!), but Heather gets revenge by, seemingly, transforming into a were-horse. I enjoyed the story but now that I type out this summary I can see that the plot doesn’t even remotely make sense. Still, I enjoyed it at the time.

“Pumpkin Kids” by Robert Shearman

A very long story (perhaps a novelette?) that is not especially worth it. The narrator is a boy living in an alternate world in which is was almost a “Pumpkin Kid” (a child born on October 31) but his delivery took too long so he was born a few hours after midnight on November 1. Because of this, his parents hate him (his mother abuses him and his father eventually commits suicide because of this) and all of society holds him in contempt. In addition to the auspicious birthdate, Pumpkin Kids seem to be human-pumpkin hybrids that eventually get sacrificed by the community, who all seem to be religious zealots of some strange sort. His mother eventually kidnaps an unattended Pumpkin Kid (a definite taboo) and the narrator transforms into a Pumpkin Kid, exacting a measure of revenge against his church. Surreal and just plain weird, and not in a particularly appealing sort of way. I had very much hoped that this story would pan out, but I must report that it did not.

“Lantern Jack” by Christopher Fowler

The history of a very old London pub that has gone through many changes in ambiance, décor, and clientele over the decades. One constant element is that there are lots of unusual deaths and misfortunes among the pub’s patrons. There is a nice creepy little twist at the end that I won’t spoil.

“Halloween Treats” by Jane Yolen

A nice, charming little poem that would be great for children. Apparently Yolen writes one of these every year and hands them out to trick-or-treaters at her home, which sounds like a great tradition.

Week 141 – Weekly Horror Short Story Reviews: Cardin, Miskowski, Price, and Henderson

Welcome to Week 141 of my horror short fiction review project! My favorite story of the week was “Judas of the Infinite” by Matt Cardin, which was one of the two darkest stories I have ever read. I mean that, and if you follow this blog, you know that I read some extremely dark stuff, so be forewarned. This is an amazing story. To call it merely “thought-provoking” would do it a disservice. Read it. I would be remiss if I didn’t at least award an honorable mention to C.J. Henderson’s “Incident on Highway 19,” which in an ordinary week would have been my favorite of the week.

To Rouse Leviathan, by Matt Cardin (Hippocampus Press, 2019)

“Judas of the Infinite” by Matt Cardin

This may be the single darkest story I have ever read. That’s a bold claim, given my typical choice of reading materials, but let me explain. A homeless man (former monk) has lost his faith and is having a rough time of it on a sidewalk. God (the God) comes to him and watches as other people avoid him because he’s obviously nuts by this point, and ranting about communicating with God (he actually is, but they don’t know that). He explains to God why he lost his faith many years ago: he believed that he encountered an an abyss that was older and more powerful than God, and outside the good vs. evil lens through which he viewed reality. God suggested that this was just an act of the devil to make the man lose his faith, and entered the man’s mind to see for himself what the man was describing. This is where the true horror begins. God is surprised(!) to find that the man was correct: that he did actually learn of the existence of the abyss, and is pulled into it and destroyed. As God is being destroyed by this force, it consumes not just God but all of creation as well. Now that’s cosmic horror on a level that’s hard to fathom. Wow.

The Madness of Dr. Caligari, edited by Joseph S. Pulver, Sr. (Fedogan & Bremer, 2016)

“Somnambule” by S. P. Miskowski

A story within a story: A teenage girl working part-time for a woman who runs a home daycare business recounts a story her boss told her. A former client ended up killing her abusive husband and young son. The woman seems to have been under the influence of a hypnotist, Madame Vivian, with her actions triggered by the scent of a particular perfume. The girl has been gifted a bottle of that perfume by her employer. There is an ever-so-slightly sinister implication at the very end of the story alluding to the possibility that the perfume may be driving her toward killing her best friend. Not a bad story at all.

A Mythos Grimmly, edited  by Jeremy Hochhalter (Wanderer’s Haven Publications, 2015)

“The Batrachian Prince” by Robert M. Price

A graduate student in biology at good ol’ Miskatonic University travels to HPL’s iconic town of Innsmouth to investigate the “Innsmouth look” and confirms the interbreeding between Deep Ones and humans. As it turns out, humans can become mutated and change into Deep Ones, and then Deep Ones gradually become shoggoths. Over time, there are essentially no human women hybrids left, which will ultimately doom the Deep Ones to extinction. The grad student is a Deep One-human hybrid, and starts becoming more monstrous, and somehow his girlfriend becomes infected with it as well, though he inexplicably reverts back to his original human form. I’m not exactly sure what the point of any of this was—seems to retread old ground without adding much new.

Degrees of Fear and Others, by C.J. Henderson (Dark Quest, 2011)

“Incident on Highway 19”

Really great story. This is the diary of a man assigned to drive a truck around a remote area and pick up roadkill. Tough job but he doesn’t mind as it gets him away from a boss he hates. One day he finds the strange corpse of a birdlike animal he can’t readily identify. He takes it home for further study and it spontaneously combusts. He then becomes obsessed with the creature and its origins. It seems that one of his predecessors years ago encountered a whole flock of these things, and the area has some folklore about a herd of spectral lemming-like things that appear once a year. The main’s mental health declines, and he spirals into the depths of madness, violence, and cannibalism. He comes to believes that these things are biological servitor “machines” of Yog-Sothoth, and emerge into our reality for a brief window once per year. Really interesting stuff.

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Halloween Reviews: The Mammoth Book of Halloween Stories, Part 3

Welcome to my third of four special Halloween-themed posts reviewing Stephen Jones’ collection, The Mammoth Book of Halloween Stories, a collection of surprisingly interesting stories all nominally tied to Halloween. Look for the next installment a week from today. As with the previous weeks, lots of very good stories this week. There were in fact so many great stories this week, that I have two favorite stories this week instead of just one (please don’t ask me to choose between them): “Bleed” by Richard Christian Matheson and “The Ultimate Halloween Party App” by Lisa Morton. Very, very distinctly different stories, but both are excellent.

“Bleed” by Richard Christian Matheson

This was a very short (two page in length) story that is absolutely horrific when you finally figure out what has happened in the story (not to worry, I won’t ruin that surprise for you here). This one is told from the perspective of a sick child (with a dead father) who is sick in bed on Halloween night and watching the other children go trick or treating in the neighborhood. What a punch-in-the-gut impact! Very, very good story.

“The Ultimate Halloween Party App” by Lisa Morton

This one caught me by surprise. The premise and diction seemed simplistic rather than simple and I didn’t expect much—or maybe some sort of thinly-veiled polemical—but I was wrong. This story has a gut punch like none other so far in the collection. It seems to be set in a near future with technology just a bit in advance of what we have today: the main addition seems to be brain implants that can do the things that smartphones can today, and an interface with the optic nerves so it can superimpose information on your viewpoint, like a head’s up display that a soldier or combat pilot might have today. And society seems to be torn apart by rival politically-motivated militias and terrorist organizations. Into this comes a first date on Halloween fore a nice couple who seem sweet and into each other. They attend an acquaintance’s upscale Halloween party and download his new app, which superimposes Halloween themed monsters (everything from old Universal Pictures monsters to torture porn slashers, depending on the theme you pick) in your local environment. So, for example, the app, via your implant, might show you Dracula walking over to you, or Freddy or Jason standing behind you—scary, but it’s all in good fun, right? Until they realize they can’t turn it off. And due to a particularly nasty piece of malware embedded in the app, it affects the central nervous system even if the implant is removed. Imagine going through the rest of your life seeing blood, mutilated corpses, and monsters stalking you everywhere you go. It leads to tens of thousands of suicides by people who will do anything to make it stop. Now that’s a pretty downbeat ending.

“The Folding Man” by Joe R. Lansdale

This story has a timeless quality to it and benefits tremendously from Joe Lansdale’s easy writing style. A group of teenage boys driving on a back country road moon what they think is a car full of nuns. It is not. These are some sort of demons who drive the boys off the road and unpack a kind of hunter-killer golem that pursues the boys on foot. This turns into a really nice little suspenseful chase sequence. Very good stuff with Lansdale’s usual good turns of phrase, and a good effort to hint at what’s going on here and connect it to a larger piece of folklore. I wish more authors would take Lansdale’s hint on this and at least try to offer a little context for the supernatural horror they inflict on their characters.

“I Wait for You” by Eygló Karlsdóttir

A man is visited by his mother’s ghost in his childhood home every year. He shares some memories with her and confesses a dark secret. Very, very dark, as it turns out. Wonderful point of view from the spirit’s perspective. Excellent story I don’t want to dilute by describing the tale’s twist.

“Dust Upon a Paper Eye” by Cate Gardner

Henrietta (“Hen”) is a marginally employed worker who has been hired by an ill-tempered theater owner to clean and dust a troupe of hyper-realistic, life-size dolls that will be used in a special Halloween performance. She befriends a homeless man named Dominic who is transformed into one of the dolls (yes, they’re all transformed humans). During the performance, the dolls are animated and—I think—end up killing the audience. I really love the premise, which is super creepy, I just wanted a bit more clarity at the end of the story.

“Not Our Brother” by Robert Silverberg

Halperin, a wealthy American mask collector, visits a remote Mexican town that hosts an annual festival with various masks being used by the participants. Part of the reason for the festival, which clearly has its roots in pre-contact folklore and the appeasement of shapeshifting monstrous creatures that sometimes travel among them and drain the life essence from the unwary. Needless to say, Halperin runs afoul of such a creature. Goes on a bit long but it’s a nice story with great folkloric context and atmosphere/setting details.

 

Week 140 – Weekly Horror Short Story Reviews: Cardin, Gavin, Kaufman, and Henderson

Welcome to Week 140 of my horror short fiction review project! There was a clear favorite this week: “Breathing Black Angels” by Richard Gavin, which I found wonderfully evocative and thought-provoking.. I couldn’t stop thinking about this one and wish that Gavin would return to this setting–there is much more to be done with it!

To Rouse Leviathan, by Matt Cardin (Hippocampus Press, 2019)

“If It Had Eyes” by Matt Cardin

This one feels like a much “smaller” story than the others I have read in this collection because it doesn’t seem to deal with the same deep cosmological issues as the others but it’s still interesting. An artist lives in a fog-shrouded seaside town and has been trying to capture the dense fog in his paintings. One night he succeeds: the fog seems to permeate his pigments, with the paint almost becoming one with the fog, creating an effect of invisibility on a canvas he has left outside in the fog. The artist then covers his body with the paint, even his eyeballs; this makes him not just invisible in the fog, but also able to communicate with the fog—perhaps becoming one with it himself—and gain some understanding of the fog’s alien consciousness. Interesting.

The Madness of Dr. Caligari, edited by Joseph S. Pulver, Sr. (Fedogan & Bremer, 2016)

“Breathing Black Angels” by Richard Gavin

Wonderful. Just plain wonderful. An evocative sketch of a future dystopian society that hunts down those it deems its ideological opponents, including four young women who are sent to an asylum, presumably for “reeducation.” They are freed and then trained—and perhaps have psychic or supernatural abilities awoken within them—by Dr. Caligari, who is eventually revealed to be a woman who has assumed that name. These women use darkness, shadows, and concealment against a terrifying regime that uses light as a tool to purge the Earth of darkness. Really powerful stuff. I can’t recommend this one highly enough.

A Mythos Grimmly, edited  by Jeremy Hochhalter (Wanderer’s Haven Publications, 2015)

“Donkeyskin” by Brian Kaufman

A tale told in layers. Two travelers at an inn share a story during a terrible storm. The story told is a fairy tale of a princess who flees her incestuous father with a magical donkey skin that makes her appear hideous when she wears it. A wandering prince discovers her secret and they marry. Then the traveler telling the tale reveals that this fairy tale is based on a true story: his brother was the “prince” of the tale—actually a wealthy businessman—who found the “princess”—actually a girl afflicted by a terrible case of scabies. She also infected his brother—now a hopeless drunk—with an awful sexually-transmitted disease that rotted off his manhood. Honestly, I’m unsure of what the point of this was. There were a lot of directions this story could have gone in, but was that really the best one?

Degrees of Fear and Others, by C.J. Henderson (Dark Quest, 2011)

“Misery and Pity”

Two old friends who haven’t seen each other in a long while meet at a dim sum restaurant. One is an old man who apparently faked his own death years previously and went off to be trained as a vampire hunter in the West. The other man has since been possessed by a demon in the interim, by the last of its kind. They fight. I needed much more context and background on the vampire/demon hunter guy for this story to be really effective. I did a little poking around online to see if this character is ever picked up again in another story but couldn’t find any evidence of that. Interesting as far as it went though.

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Halloween Reviews: The Mammoth Book of Halloween Stories, Part 2

Welcome to my second of four special Halloween-themed posts reviewing Stephen Jones’ collection, The Mammoth Book of Halloween Stories, a collection of surprisingly interesting stories all nominally tied to Halloween. Look for the next installment a week from today. As with last week, lots of very good stories this week; my favorite was probably “The October Widow” by Angela Slatter, which does a great job of tying the meaning of Halloween back to its traditional roots (and the notion of sacrifice).

“Bone Fire” by Storm Constantine

A quasi-medieval Irish/quasi-fantasy setting. Two fourteen-year-old girls on the cusp of womanhood are attending their community’s traditional Halloween dance. They also make a wish/prayer to the goddess Hekkate for one of her sons as a date/lover. They do indeed get their wish, and he enchants one of the girls, exacting a terrible price on her. A very melancholic but very good coming of age story.

“Queen of the Hunt” by Adrian Cole

A nice contemporary murder mystery set in Britain. A man out walking at night is torn apart by wild dogs. As it turns out, the wife of the lead detective assigned to the case knows the dead man’s wife, though that connection turns out to be far deeper than is initially clear. As with the previous story in the collection, the ancient dark goddess Hecate is involved. A nicely menacing and spooky tale that wrestles with relationships between husbands and wives in long-term marriages. Good stuff.

“The October Widow” by Angela Slatter

A very nice tale about a woman who renews herself and her community every year with the sacrifice of a young, virile man every Halloween. Things get complicated this year when she is tracked down by the father of one of her previous sacrifices. Really nice story that ties in Halloween with the folklore about needing to renew the land every year with a sacrifice to ensure health and a good harvest.

“Before the Parade Passes By” by Marie O’Regan

Hannah is a widow who has moved to a new town with her eight-year-old daughter Tilly. This town has a Halloween parade every year that the children participate in, culminating in a visit to the local haunted house. Each of the children is given a cloak and a jack-o’-lantern carved into a turnip (apparently the original Irish jack-o’-lanterns were carved into turnips). Each year, as it turns out, a child is sacrificed to ensure that the veil between the living and the dead is kept secure. I’d have liked to see the folklore explored just a bit more to explain exactly what’s going on here, but this was a good one.

“Her Face” by Ramsey Campbell

Jack is a young teenage boy who lives with his mother across the street from a small grocery/convenience store that is run by mean Mrs. Dillard and her daughter June. Jack finds himself creeped out by some Halloween masks in the shop’s window, especially one that looks like Mrs. Dillard’s face and seems to be watching him. Is someone wearing it periodically and spying on him? Mrs. Dillard gets sick and dies in the hospital and Jack is hired part-time to help June in the shop. Over time it seems that June is possessed or otherwise controlled by her dead, domineering mother’s spirit. Really nice atmosphere in this one in a nice little mundane setting. I always find the horror in ordinary, mundane life to be especially compelling, and the mask theme is a great touch.

“A Man Totally Alone” by Robert Hood

I found this one interesting, but odd, and the Halloween theme that is pivotal to most of the stories in this collection is very much tacked on—it could be easily excised without changing the story at all. Set in a remote, small town in Australia, this is the story of a cop who is called in when the long-dead corpse of a Viking(!) is discovered in a nearby mine. The corpse bears a cursed medallion that seems to evoke a feeling of intense, soul-crushing loneliness in those who touch it. I’m not entirely sure what the point of it all was; really needed some explanation to help make sense of it all.

 

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Week 139 – Weekly Horror Short Story Reviews: Cardin, Lee, Fielding, and Henderson

Welcome to Week 139 of my horror short fiction review project! Some good tales this week. While I really liked C.J. Henderson’s “Hope,” my favorite story of the week was probably Matt Cardin’s thought-provoking “The Basement Theater.” Some terrific reflections on the nature of reality and our existence in that one.

To Rouse Leviathan, by Matt Cardin (Hippocampus Press, 2019)

“The Basement Theater” by Matt Cardin

A former theater spotlight operator wanders down into the basement of his former place of employment, almost in a dream state, and sees the troupe of actors and his old director rehearsing for a strange performance. One of the actors pretends to stab him with a mock dagger. The director describes the existence of a hidden playwright who actually owns the theater and writes the plays, allowing the director to make only a few small changes in his plays. The man claims he does not work for the director any longer, but he refutes this, saying that everyone works for him. The man knows that one day he will return to the theater to complete his performance, and knows that this “final performance” will result in his death. He returns to his family and normal life with this knowledge. It seems he has learned the truth about the nature of reality: that we are all merely puppets or actors bound to enact the parts that have been written for us by a hidden playwright. Fairly short but very interesting.

The Madness of Dr. Caligari, edited by Joseph S. Pulver, Sr. (Fedogan & Bremer, 2016)

“Eyes Looking” by Janice Lee

I found this one puzzling. A man is forcibly committed to an asylum and ends up writing about all of the regrets he has had in life. That’s pretty much the whole story. This is the first story in the collection I haven’t been impressed with, and that’s making a strong statement. They can’t all be winners, I guess.

A Mythos Grimmly, edited  by Jeremy Hochhalter (Wanderer’s Haven Publications, 2015)

“Boots of Curious Leather” by David J. Fielding

Odd, though evocative and interesting. The problem is that the story simply stops—at a weird point in the narrative—rather than resolving anything. Baird is a solider (maybe in the eighteenth or nineteenth century) who is part of an army that has just repulsed the army of the King in Yellow Tatters, but who has become separated from his unit and is wandering lost in an eerie forest. Great stuff. He encounters an enigmatic traveler in the forest (a civilian?) named Gelbe. They reach an uneasy accommodation and end up camping near a dark tower that Gelbe says contains the horrible creatures worshipping malign deities that he says he’s hunting. He also wears boots made from these creatures’ skin, but the significance of those boots is unclear, despite the story’s title. The duo approach the tower and a shoggoth-like monstrous creature bursts out of the tower. Gelbe and Baird charge the creature. Then the story simply stops. Ugh. A real missed opportunity here—I suspect this would have worked much better(with an actual narrative resolution) as a novella.

Degrees of Fear and Others, by C.J. Henderson (Dark Quest, 2011)

“Hope”

Very short. I have to spoil this one because otherwise there would be nothing to say about a three-page story. A man has been condemned to Hell. After a long period of tortures, he has just about given up all hope and fallen into despair when a small demon whispers some words of encouragement to him and tells him that is he perseveres long enough, he can still be redeemed and be freed from Hell. His confidence is restored and he is able to carry on. Then we see that this demon’s name is Hope and he is Satan’s favorite. This was a very effective story. Very, very dark.

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Halloween Reviews: The Mammoth Book of Halloween Stories, Part 1

As most of you know, I have been reading and reviewing horror short fiction for several years now, publishing a new set of reviews every week. You may or may not also know that Halloween is my favorite holiday. Years ago I used to publish Halloween-themed or -inspired blog posts here, but have gotten away from that in recent years. In 2020, we’re reversing that–we all need some extra Halloween cheer this year. In honor of that, I will be reviewing the contents of Stephen Jones’ collection, The Mammoth Book of Halloween Stories, a collection of surprisingly interesting stories all nominally tied to Halloween. This is the first of four posts I’ll be doing on this collection in October. Look for the next installment a week from today. Lots of great stories this week; my favorite was probably “October in the Chair” by Neil Gaiman; it sets the tone for the collection perfectly. Without further ado, here we go!

“Introduction: When Churchyards Yawn” by Stephen Jones

A brief history of Halloween as a holiday. Not bad but doesn’t say much either.

“October in the Chair” by Neil Gaiman

The conceit here is that the months of the year are anthropomorphic beings who are camping out in the woods and telling each other stories. Not bad, though I’d have liked to see that idea get a little more development to really set the stage and provide more context. This was an okay premise, but it could have been a great one with a little more development.  October tells a story about a little boy who runs away from a troubled home life and encounters a ghost boy in a graveyard. They become fast friends and playmates and the living boy wants to stay there in the graveyard with his new friend forever. This one was dedicated to Ray Bradbury and it’s very much in the Bradbury Halloween season vein, which is high praise. I liked this story a lot and thought it set the tone perfectly for the collection.

“Reflections in Black” by Steve Rasnic Tem

The narrator is a bit of a loser who is still pining after a college fling named Paula many years later. Out of the blue, he receives a call from Paula’s mother, who asks him to come to their home right away. While the reader gets all kinds of red flags from the situation, especially after we see just how creepy the mother and her house area, the narrator is clueless and agrees to play a (Victorian?) party game called Prophecy, which involves asking a question and staring into a mirror. This story had lots of nice creepy Halloween imagery, and paints a portrait of a macabre world in which strange people do violent, inexplicable things in the background. Well done.

“The Halloween Monster” by Alison Littlewood

This one was a bit of an odd coming of age story. The narrator is a high school boy with a dead father who had abused the whole family. He comes upon the neighborhood bullies tormenting a cat, which he helps free from their clutches, but not before the cat gets its leg broken. As it turns out the cat was a witch’s familiar. When he next sees the witch, she too has a broken leg; something in him snaps and he throws a rock at her. When he does this, he knows that he is now the eponymous Halloween Monster. I’m not sure what caused this epiphany and perspective change as it wasn’t telegraphed or explained well in the story. I liked the rest of it but that ending was just plain puzzling.

“The Phénakisticope of Decay” by James Ebersole

Five children receive cursed artifacts while trick or treating (sadly, I only ever got candy and the occasional junk toy). These objects are antiquated devices that can produce short series of animated images using mirrors (look them up, they’re actually fascinating pieces of technology from a pre-moving picture era). These devices produce terrifying images of decay and death, and, it seems, are instrumental in destroying the lives and happiness of all the children. Over time, those children who don’t die drift apart and generally meet bad ends. One of the last returns to his hometown after his parents die and he tries to escape his ultimately doom by unraveling what’s been causing all this. I have some quibbles with the story’s ending, but this was a nicely creepy tale for the Halloween season.

“Memories of Día de los Muertos” by Nancy Kilpatrick

This was a short but nice glimpse of some Día de los Muertos folklore and traditions. That’s a holiday I know almost nothing about, but have always been mildly intrigued by it, so was glad to see it included in this collection. This was in some ways a meditation on the meaning of death (and what it means to be dead), and how the dead might think about the living now that they’re dead. Poignant and well-crafted.

“Fragile Masks” by Richard Gavin

Two couples are staying at a bed and breakfast: Paige and Jon are one couple, and Teddy and Alicia are the other. Just one complication: Paige and Teddy were once married, and stayed at the same B&B a year previously. Teddy had helped his (now ex-)wife Paige care for her dying father, who left her a great deal of money in his estate. A nice little ghost story for the most part, as the dead father seems to have come back as an apparition, and he may have been poisoned. The story’s resolution was confused and confusing—I wanted much more from the ending, so not a terribly satisfying story for me.

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Week 138 – Weekly Horror Short Story Reviews: Cardin, Nickle, McBride, and Henderson

Welcome to Week 138 of my horror short fiction review project! I loved three out of four of this week’s stories–that’s rare indeed. Choosing a favorite this week is extremely hard, but “The Long Dream” by David Nickle wins it by a hair because of the utterly fascinating implications suggested by this one. But then again, I’m a sucker for interesting stories about psychoanalysts and their patients.

To Rouse Leviathan, by Matt Cardin (Hippocampus Press, 2019)

“Notes of a Mad Copyist” by Matt Cardin

The diary of a medieval monk who spends his day copying the Bible in his monastery’s scriptorium. He begins to gain insights from the abyss, and its rulers, which are beyond good and evil; they expose him to ideas about how the flesh and all creation are full of corruption and other dark truths about the nature of the universe. Of course, to a medieval mindset, these ideas are abhorrent. He begins writing these things down in the pages he is copying, and comes to view his mission as one of spreading these ideas and the corruption they bring to all who may read them. Very good.

The Madness of Dr. Caligari, edited by Joseph S. Pulver, Sr. (Fedogan & Bremer, 2016)

“The Long Dream” by David Nickle

Utterly fascinating. The tale of an Austrian psychoanalyst describing his treatment of a patient named Conrad who, as a teenage boy, came to the narrator for help. Under hypnosis, Conrad reveals a fascinating life story: the son of a witch (who once had a lover named Cesare, who left an indelible impression on young Conrad), he spent many years on the moon, living among the moon imps, among other fantastical events. Conrad violently departs the psychoanalyst’s office, then reemerges twenty years later, having been accused of murder. Intrigued, the narrator travels to Germany where Conrad is being held, and interviews him at length. Conrad believes that his entire life has been a dream and he is actually currently experiencing a balloon accident over the Indian Ocean while visiting his mother, who lives in the Himalayas. Conrad believes that he has been knocked unconscious and may die; he is frantic to awaken. The psychoanalyst declines to testify on Conrad’s behalf, and Conrad is hung. It seems clear that the narrator wishes to test Conrad’s belief and see what happens when he—the dreamer(?)—is killed. Then the story’s denouement: it seems that the narrator is telling this story to some others who, like him, are imprisoned. What we have here is very sketchy, but I suspect that he is imprisoned in a Nazi death camp and the guards are coming. He hopes to be freed from the dream(?) of his life by death. As I said at the outset, utterly fascinating. A very powerful story.

A Mythos Grimmly, edited  by Jeremy Hochhalter (Wanderer’s Haven Publications, 2015)

“The Witch’s Library” by Tracie McBride

Excellent urban rendering of Hansel and Gretel. Their father and cruel stepmother are unemployed drug addicts who pull the children out of school and force them to work in a classic Victorian child-labor textile sweatshop, complete with many opportunities to lose a limb or be horribly burned. Hansel reveals himself to be a diabolical genius who uses his knowledge of chemistry to destroy the factory within a couple hours, then the duo flees home. Their parents then sell them to the bordello that the evil stepmother used to work at. They manage to escape, but end up at a cozy bookstore operated by a…wait for it…evil witch. She feeds Hansel with occult knowledge rather than cookies and candies and forces him to summon a host of eldritch beings and monsters. Gretel manages to kill the old woman and they once again escape, though this time Hansel’s mind is damaged by the Lovecraftian lore he was forced to learn. Very good.

Degrees of Fear and Others, by C.J. Henderson (Dark Quest, 2011)

“Admission of Weakness”

This is apparently the origin story of the occult detective, Anton Zarnak, who was created by Lin Carter. This is my first encounter with Zarnak; Carter seems to have filed the serial numbers off Marvel’s Doctor Strange and decreased his power level a bit, but otherwise as far as I can tell Zarnak is a poor man’s Doctor Strange with a bad attitude. Unsure why Carter made his protagonist so unlikable, but from what I can glean here, Zarnak is enough of a jerk that I don’t have much interest in seeking out more stories about him. He has just arrived in New York City to replace his predecessor, who was also an occult detective, sent here from the Orient, where he has been studying for many years (decades?). He is served by a Hindu manservant, Singh, who also doesn’t like Zarnak any more than I do; Zarnak partners with a police detective named Thorner, who also hates the guy. Ugh. In any case, Zarnak stops some evil sorcerer who has just arrived in town from summoning the ancient Lemurian god Yama. Why does the evil sorcerer want to do this, and what will the effects be? None of that is explored. Some decent uses of magic here, but I really just needed much more context for what was going on, along with a protagonist I didn’t wish would fail because of his arrogance and elitism.

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Buy the book on Amazon

Buy the book on Amazon

Buy the book on Amazon