Book Review: The Grimscribe’s Puppets, edited by Joseph S. Pulver, Jr., part 7: Bird, Thomas, Langan, and Files

I’m continuing my look at all things Thomas Ligotti-related by turning now to the wonderful tribute anthology The Grimscribe’s Puppets, compiled by the late, great Joe Pulver. If you haven’t already read this one, you’re missing out. Here are my thoughts on the final four stories in this anthology.

“Gailestis” by Allyson Bird

Gerda and Kay are unhappy, dysfunctional orphan twins living in a world that seems to be slowly being taken over by a red weed of unknown origins. (It strikes me as a verrrrry slow sort of environmental apocalypse, perhaps.) Kay works as a gardener for an eccentric, wealthy doctor; Gerda agrees to work as a semi-nude artist’s model for the doctor so her brother can keep his job. Kay dies though, perhaps killed by some sort of parasite that is crawling beneath his skin. There are some interesting and evocative bits here, I just wish it all made more sense.

“The Prosthesis” by Jeffrey Thomas

Thomas works at a plant that manufactures all manner of medical prostheses, everything from a hand or eye to complete limbs, torsos, and even replacement infants. He is stealing these prostheses, one at a time. We eventually learn that Thomas had a stillborn twin brother, Mason. One day Thomas shows up at work with an injury on his wrist identical to what it looks like when a prosthetic hand is joined to a wrist. By the end of the story, we have Mason, seemingly alive and well, reading a newspaper story about Thomas having been killed by a security guard while attempting to steal a foot. Mason looks down and realizes that his own foot is missing. The tone and setting of a decayed urban wasteland are wonderfully Liggotian. This was perhaps the strongest story by Jeffrey Thomas that I’ve read—a really strong entry in the collection.

“Into the Darkness, Fearlessly” by John Langan

A fascinating character study. We open with the death of a relatively obscure horror author, Linus Price, in a tale told by Price’s friend and editor, Wrighton Smythe. Price was a mean-spirited alcoholic with a bitter ex-wife—a green card-seeking Polish beauty named Dominika—who had become unhealthily obsessed with a new writer, Suzanne Kowalczyk, who became the darling of the horror community before she went mad and murdered Price, who had been stalking her, before disappearing. Whew. That sounds like a bit of a soap opera, but I’m quickly summarizing the main characters. Smythe receives Price’s final book manuscript hand-delivered to his home by an unknown party (my money’s on Kowalczyk), which provides some interesting new tales interspersed with a very personal accounting of Price’s descent in madness, obsession, and hatred for Kowalczyk, who seems to have rapidly achieved the notoriety he always craved. There’s also a hallucinatory funeral, seemingly attended only by Smythe and Dominka, in which that pair have sex while pressed up against Price’s coffin after drinking copious amounts of wine that may have been laced with a narcotic. The final section of the novelette describes what happens after Smythe wakes up from a drunken stupor, but I suspect that section is intended as fiction, rather than as straight narrative, since it uses the same font as Price’s manuscript passages, leading to the question of who wrote this last piece? Did any of this actually happen? I am uncertain, but it’s all wonderfully done.

“Oubliette” by Gemma Files

What an amazing story. Perhaps my favorite in the collection, and that’s saying something because this was an unusually strong and imaginative collection of stories. Thordis Hendricks is a wealthy young woman who is placed in a live-in care program after two failed suicide attempts. She lives in an apartment under a doctor’s care (Dr. Corbray), plus she has a care worker (Yelena Rostov) who checks in on her daily; Thordis also records her dreams and other thoughts in a journal, which Yelena regularly reviews. A couple wrinkles quickly present themselves: Thordis is in Shumate House, a therapy center/program developed in the late 1970s to help rehabilitate some of the Jonestown survivors. Over the years, Shumate House also housed the sole survivor of another (fictional) cult, a kind of Heaven’s Gate suicide cult, a young woman who eventually killed herself in the apartment because of her regrets about not joining her comrades on their cosmic voyage. I think you can begin to see where this is going. Thordis is now living in the same apartment that the cult survivor did; everyone who has lived in this apartment  since then has ended up killing him/herself. Things aren’t looking so great for Thordis. This is almost a kind of ghost story, though I suspect it’s closer to a kind of spectral colonization of consciousness tale, if you catch my drift. I don’t want to spoil any more of this because it’s an amazingly effective tale—truly chilling, once you begin to see what’s going on here—that is mostly told through journal entries, emails, transcripts of therapy sessions, and the like. Really well done.

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Week 189 – Weekly Horror Short Story Reviews: deFord, Merritt, Langan, and Maberry

Welcome to Week 189 of my horror short fiction review project! A couple clear winners this week. First, the classic “The People of the Pit” by A. Merritt, which I had long heard about, but never read until now. I can see why people keep talking about it. Second, John Langan’s “Helioforge,” which is a great one if you like the King in Yellow, Joe Pulver, and John Langan (I like all three, so this was the perfect trifecta for me). Even if you don’t, this was a nice creepy little alternate realities blurring together and intersecting story, so should still be broadly appealing.

Alfred Hitchcock’s Monster Museum, edited by Robert Arthur (Random House, 1965)

[previously reviewed] “The Man Who Sold Rope to the Gnoles” by Margaret St. Clair [as by Idris Seabright]

“Henry Martindale, Great Dane” by Miriam Allen deFord

One night, screenwriter Henry Martindale wakes up as a Great Dane that can speak and reason (shades of Kafka). There’s some speculation about what had caused the transformation but no clear answer. Henry’s wife Lida helps him hide his appearance—obviously it helps a lot that he writes at home—and eventually the pair rent a cabin in a remote area. Lida is a real trooper here as she sticks by Henry’s side. Oddly fascinating story, though the concept is pretty horrific the more you think about it.

The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories, edited by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer (Tor, 2012)

“The People of the Pit” by A. Merritt

Gold prospectors in the Yukon encounter a man who ventured down into a nigh-bottomless pit and was captured by the monstrous lug-like beings that dwell in a vast underground city at the bottom of the pit worshipping Lovecraftian deities. The prisoner has escaped by slowly crawling up the stairs that line the pit, though it nearly destroyed his body, and is now being recalled by the creatures using some sort of mesmeric mind control. Even more details about the creatures and their culture could have only improved the story, but very good though. I can see why this one has withstood the test of time and is discussed frequently.

Under Twin Suns: Alternate Histories of the Yellow Sign, edited by James Chambers (Hippocampus Press, 2021)

“Helioforge” by John Langan

I suppose that this story will be more meaningful to you if you are familiar with the late Joe Pulver’s fascination with the King in Yellow and something of Joe’s life (I didn’t know him unfortunately, but I almost feel like I did because I listened to him for years on the Lovecraft eZine podcast and have read a lot of his work). Even if you don’t know Pulver’s work, it’s a fun one. John Langan was good friends with Joe, and so it’s probably no surprise that the protagonist of “Helioforge” is a man called simply Joe, who probably bears a lot of resemblance to Mr. Pulver. One night, while hanging out in a bar in Albany, Joe meets a man named Thom, who seems to be a train engineer with a weird accent and stories about things that don’t quite make sense—things and people and places that probably don’t actually exist in our world. But Thom offers Joe a ride on a very special train, and takes Joe to the train yard via a route that can’t possibly work, but somehow does. This train takes Joe on a ride into an alternate America, with a radically different history than our own, and this voyage reawakens Joe’s own knowledge (or memories?) of this strange land its history, which is intertwined with that of the King in Yellow. A wonderful memorial tribute to Joe Pulver and a really intriguing idea. Loved it, and would like to see more of this world.

The Gods of H.P. Lovecraft, edited by Aaron J. French (JournalStone, 2015)

“Dream a Little Dream of Me” by Jonathan Maberry

Sam Hunter is a werewolf private investigator hired, ostensibly, to retrieve and keep safe a mystic artifact, which is supposedly being sought by a neo-Nazi group because the artifact will purportedly allow them to enter Lovecraft’s Dreamlands for some unknown but presumably nefarious purpose. Except it’s all a sham, and a trap—Sam doesn’t seem to be the brightest bulb since that’s clear from the outset. Instead, he is duped into becoming a sacrifice by a bunch of nightgaunts, who have also hired an ogre to help them subdue Sam. Sam then whips out a gun, shoots the ogre in the eye and a bunch of the nightgaunts, and then tears the rest apart. The end. That climactic battle happens in a couple sentences off-screen. The nightgaunts aren’t anything special, apparently, just some faceless creeps that definitely aren’t bulletproof. Nothing really magical or interesting here, and nothing except the names “nightgaunts” and “Dreamlands” to connect with anything that HPL wrote.

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Week 153 – Weekly Horror Short Story Reviews: Lumley, Langan, Gonzalez, and Henderson

Welcome to Week 153 of my horror short fiction review project! This week we have a new collection that we’re going to start working our way through: Stephen Jones’ The Mammoth Book of Nightmare Stories; I can already tell this one is going to be a good one. This is also our last week with the Cthulhu Mythos/fairy tales mash-up collection A Mythos Grimmly. Next week that one will be replaced with the collection Cthulhu’s Reign, which contains stories that are all set after Cthulhu and the Great Old Ones have arisen and destroyed human civilization. I will award a rare tie for my favorite story of the week because I simply can’t decide: “The Viaduct” by Brian Lumley is a VERY tense thrillride that had my palms sweating and “To See, to Be Seen” by John Langan is a wonderful and thought-provoking existential horror tale inspired by The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari–I would dearly love to see Langan revisit some of the ideas he presents here.

The Mammoth Book of Nightmare Stories, edited by Stephen Jones (Skyhorse, 2019)

“The Viaduct” by Brian Lumley

Probably more of a thriller than a strict horror story—though there are plenty of horrific elements here—but this was a great one that literally had my palms sweating as I read it. Two young boys horsing around taunted a local man with some mental handicaps and drive him into what they think is an impotent rage. They have a cruel laugh at his expense, the way boys sometimes do, then they wander off, thinking the episode is done. On the way home they decide to finally swing across a ravine by swinging on the bars that line the underside of a viaduct. Simple enough, they’ve done it a million times on the playground, the only difference is that the stakes are a bit higher now: the water is about 150 feet below the viaduct. The boys get scared halfway across, and the tougher boy semi-panics. Then the man they had previously taunted comes upon them, poking at them with a long stick. I won’t spoil exactly what happens next, as it really is hair-raising, suspenseful, thrilling, and awfully gory. Very good stuff.

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

“To See, to Be Seen” by John Langan

Fascinating occult horror. Set during the great recession, this is the story of a couple guys who work for a company that moves furniture out of foreclosed houses. Sometimes they find some pretty interesting things that have been left behind; in one case, the actual cabinet used in the film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. One of the men, Charpentier, seems to be mildly psychic: he can get a sense of the emotional resonances left behind in the houses. The other, Diaz, turns out to be involved in an occult society, the Friends of Borges, who seem to be interested in learning more occult lore, though their goals beyond that are unclear. One night after work, Diaz brings Charpentier to another empty home, where his group has purchased and placed the cabinet, which has a long history of its own since the film was made; it seems to have been turned into a psychic amplifier. Charpentier is paid to step inside the cabinet and describe what he senses. I won’t spoil what he sees, because it’s wonderful, but will simply say that he has a disturbing vision and pays a significant price. Really good stuff here. Very evocative and thought-provoking. I can well appreciate Langan’s disturbing imagination.

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

“The Dunwich Ball” by J.F. Gonzalez

A conflation of the classic Cinderella story—essentially told in a straightforward and barebones manner, with even the protagonist named “Cinderella”—with the remnants of the Whateley family from Lovecraft’s “The Dunwich Horror.” Not bad at all, but it’s just too on-the-nose of a retelling; I wanted there to be much more of a remixed telling of this classic story. We’ve got Cinderella, her evil stepmother and stepsisters, and her occultist great-grandfather as her fairy godmother who transforms her into a hot Goth chick via magic ritual. Fine, but nothing special here.

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

“So Free We Seem”

I was vaguely aware that Henderson has written a number of stories continuing the adventures of New Orleans Detective Legrasse from HPL’s “The Call of Cthulhu.” Intriguing idea, and one that very much appeals to me since that’s one of my favorite Lovecraft tales. Here, Legrasse is retired, but called back in because of a puzzling discovery. A hermit living on the outskirts of the bayou is found barricaded inside his home, surrounded by a vast array of rat traps. The man apparently allowed himself to die of thirst in the corner of a room rather than depart. Legrasse finds the man’s diary, which details nightly visits by a tentacled horror that invades his home after a strange storm. (Well, the tentacles enter the man’s home, he never sees what the tentacles are attached to.) As it turns out, the tentacled beast has arranged the rat traps in a kind of poorly-explained mystical trap. They wisely decide to just burn the whole place down. Even Legrasse notes at the end of the story that there are just too many unknowns about the case. You know it’s bad when a story’s protagonist remarks that he has no idea what’s going on and never will. I very much wanted to like this one.

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Week 84 – Weekly Horror Short Story Reviews: Campbell, Langan, Lupoff, Lovecraft, and de Castro

Welcome to Week 84 of my horror short fiction review project! Two really great stories to highlight in particular this week: “Outside the House, Watching for the Crows” by John Langan and “Documents in the Case of Elizabeth Akeley” by Richard A. Lupoff. In an ordinary week, either one of these would have been the clear winner, but this week they’re pitted against each other and Langan comes out on top. Read them both though!

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

“Seeing the World”

A married couple visits their insufferable neighbors, the Hodges, who have just returned from a trip to Italy and inflict a slideshow of their vacation photos on them. They are subjected to a barrage of increasingly bizarre photographic images, and then there is one of those inexplicable endings. The premise had a lot of promise, but this was just nonsensical. Disappointing.

The Mammoth Book of Cthulhu, edited by Paula Guran (Running Press, 2016)

“Outside the House, Watching for the Crows” by John Langan

Wow. This was a truly great story, perfectly told, that blew me away. The story’s framing device is a letter written by a father to his (adult?) son who had casually asked what the strangest thing that had ever happened to the father. He recounts a story from his high school years during the 1980s. The narrator recounts what happened after he started dating a girl who hung out with a different crowd: he was more of a jock/middle-of-the-road type and she was an artsy, alternative kind of girl. Through his eyes we see those budding, tentative first steps in romance, and first kisses, and teenage dates. He also gets exposed to new musical tastes from these new friends; as part of this, a boy named Judd gives him a bootleg cassette tape of a group called The Subterraneans. It takes a while to get into the group, but he eventually becomes obsessed with their music, thinking about their songs even when he’s not listening non-stop to the tape, and then he starts seeing things. Strange vistas of a dark city at night, a black ocean, frightening images of tall men in crow masks that begin to sense his presence. The music does more than just offer a vision of another world, it seems to thin the barrier between our world and that of the city. Then Judd tells him that the Subterraneans are doing a local show, which the two attend. There’s a perfect ending to this tale, which ends on a note of mystery and unanswered questions. Sometimes weird things happen and we will simply never know why or how. By the way, the story also perfectly captures the feel of high school in the 1980s—I’m dating myself but I’m probably just a few years younger than Langan and his protagonist—in a way that few other authors could. That’s a magical time of life, never to be recaptured. Highly recommended story, probably worth the price of admission on its own.

The Hastur Cycle, Second Edition, edited by Robert M. Price (Chaosium, 1997)

“The Whisperer in Darkness” by H.P. Lovecraft: Previously reviewed HERE.

“Documents in the Case of Elizabeth Akeley” by Richard A. Lupoff

Set in San Diego and rural Vermont in 1979, this is a direct sequel to Lovecraft’s “The Whisperer in Darkness,” focusing on the descendants of Lovecraft’s characters. Of note: the story is told via a series of transcripts of the recordings of the characters; while this might seem like it would create too much distance between the reader and the action, I found it to be an effective technique, though I have always been fond of epistolary tales. Elizabeth Akeley is a young cult leader in San Diego, having inherited the leadership of her church from her father, who was named as Henry Akeley’s son in the original story. Elizabeth is dating Marc Feinman, and her church’s sexton is actually a federal agent who is keeping the cult under surveillance (hence the surveillance transcripts and interviews). A young man living in rural Vermont named Ezra Noyes (you will recall that surname from the original as well) plays an important role in the story; he runs a UFO group that has been monitoring recent sightings of a Mothman-like figure in the area. This group returns to the Vermont home where the original story took place in a quest for immortality and forbidden knowledge, conveying the alienness of the Mi-Go and their allies very nicely. Great story. Absolutely nothing to do with Carcosa, the King in Yellow, or even Hastur, but it’s a very nice story.

The Crawling Chaos and Others: The Annotated Revisions and Collaborations of H.P. Lovecraft, Vol. 1, edited by S.T. Joshi (Arcane Wisdom, 2012)

“The Electric Executioner” by H.P. Lovecraft and Adolphe de Castro

A mining company official travels by train down to Mexico to help locate a missing company executive, a man named Feldon, who has absconded with some important documents. On a darkened train car in the middle of the night, the narrator finds himself in the company of an obvious lunatic, who threatens him and tells him that (1) he has invented a metallic hood that can be used to execute people and (2) he has selected the narrator as his first human test subject. The narrator plays for time, knowing that they will eventually pull into the next station, and ends up drafting a lengthy last will and testament. He also verbally works the madman into a frenzy, who accidentally executes himself with his own invention. The narrator swoons, and when he comes to, the madman’s body and the invention are nowhere to be found. As it turns out, the madman inventor was the astral projection of the missing man, Feldon, whose body is found, along with the missing documents. A fun pulp story, though not one that Lovecraft would have written by himself.

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Week 75 – Weekly Horror Short Story Reviews: Campbell, Hannett, Chambers, and Langan

Welcome to Week 75 of my horror short fiction review project! This week is the beginning of our exploration of a new collection: Paula Guran’s The Mammoth Book of Cthulhu; I wasn’t sure what to expect from the collection, given that I’ve never seen Guran’s name associated with anything Lovecraftian, nor had I heard of many of the authors included in the collection. There was a very clear winner of the coveted “best story of the week” award: “The Shallows” by John Langan. What a great tale!

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

“The Ferries”

The title of the story is inexplicable to me, unless it’s intended as a homophone for “fairies,” which might actually be pretty clever, given the story’s content. In any case, here we have a publishing firm editor visiting his aged uncle, a former sailor who is now retired and in ill health. The uncle is deeply afraid and tells his nephew a story about a phantom ship that he and his fellow sailors once encountered before it disappeared. The editor departs after his uncle disappears, and finds a tattered old ship in a bottle, which he takes home with him on his return to London. He starts hearing phantom noises and starts to go mad as he’s tormented by minor strange occurrences before smashing the bottle, which seems to stop the weirdness. There is a brief epilogue—which seems very tacked on—in which we learn that the editor paid a terrible price for smashing the bottle and ending the haunting or whatever was going on. The ending was just too abrupt and the payoff too little in this story.

The Mammoth Book of Cthulhu, edited by Paula Guran (Running Press, 2016)

Introduction by Paula Guran

A bad introduction that does nothing but highlight Guran’s ignorance of H.P. Lovecraft. In attempting to provide a potted biography, Guran recounts a number of tired and thoroughly debunked tropes about Lovecraft (he was a recluse, he only came out at night). Come on, we’ve known these things are untrue for decades. Doesn’t bode well for someone who has chosen to edit a collection of Cthulhu Mythos tales. My hope is that this introduction is not anyone’s actual introduction to Lovecraft and his work. Disappointing.

“In Syllables of Elder Seas” by Lisa L. Hannett

This is not an auspicious start to the collection. A boy called simply “Aitch” (“H”) is imprisoned in a large glass bottle in a lighthouse by his two “Aunties” (I sincerely hope this is not intended to be some sort of bizarre caricature of Lovecraft himself, because that would be beyond offensive). The boy is forced to draw pictures of his dreams, which contains strange vistas and images reminiscent of some of Lovecraft’s stories. He escapes from them and goes to a sea captain for help, but he merely throws the boy into the sea and he is then embraced by some sort of tentacled monstrosity. I got a distinctly City of Lost Children vibe here (but while I liked that film, I don’t think it works nearly as well on the written page). Decidedly odd.

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

“The Ladies of the Lake”

Percy Smith, (crypto)zoologist at the Bronx Zoo, is once more called upon by his boss, Professor Farrago to undertake an expedition that turns out to have a cryptozoological component. He and a male companion must escort a party of wealthy and obnoxious society women to Alaska so that they can gaze upon a series of lakes that have been named after each of the women. They encounter a deep lake that is inhabited by fish the size of train cars. As with all of these cryptozoological stories, there is a battle of the sexes element—Chambers was definitely appealing to male anxieties about the women’s rights movement in all of these stories—as well as an attempt to meld mild elements of weirdness with humor. Perhaps predictably, one of the fish ends up devouring an entire rowboat full of the old harridans.

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

“The Shallows” by John Langan

A truly inspired story filled with great imagery. A man named Ransom and his pet “crab” live alone in a house after civilization has collapsed after it was overrun with Lovecraftian monstrosities. There are many, many things to like here, not the least of which is the very idea of an entire ecosystem being replaced by monstrosities (similar to David Gerrold’s Chtorr series or what we must presume follows Stephen King’s “The Mist”). The present is also juxtaposed with stories of Ransom’s pre-apocalyptic life with his wife (now dead) and son (left with a handful of other survivors) with the present, which consists of Ransom maintaining an increasingly mutating garden as he watches other human survivors be torn asunder or devoured by alien entities. Really good story.

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Week 29 – Weekly Horror Short Story Reviews: Lovecraft, Faulkner, Barker, and Langan

Welcome to Week 29 of my horror short fiction review project! Two very good stories vying for the top slot this week: Lovecraft’s “The Thing on the Doorstep” and Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily.” They are radically different stories, which makes them extremely difficult to compare in a meaningful way, but each is truly horrific. Let’s just call this one a tie, shall we?

The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories, by H.P. Lovecraft, edited by S.T. Joshi (Penguin, 2001)

“The Thing on the Doorstep”

Great story with a really nice horrific ending. I’m going to have to include spoilers in order to do the story justice in this review.

What a great and tantalizing opening: Our narrator—Daniel Upton—confesses that he has just killed his best friend, Edward Derby, but believes that his account of the events leading up to that killing will show that he is not a murderer. Now that’s a doozy. The pair had a long history since childhood and bonded over a shared interest in the occult. Derby had a special knock he would use when he showed up (remember that detail for later). Derby fell in love with a strange young woman named Asenath Waite, a classmate at good ol’ Miskatonic University. Asenath was also from an old Innsmouth family (remember that place?).

Over the next several years, Derby began exhibiting strange behaviors: sometimes acting not at all like himself, or wandering off to strange places and not knowing how he had gotten there, and other times acting perfectly normal. Derby also confided in Upton that he thought that Asenath’s supposedly dead father, Ephraim Waite, was inhabiting her body. I think you can see the implications for Derby’s odd behavior as well. Derby also became increasingly erratic, ranting about how he could feel Ephraim sometimes clawing at his mind, and was researching a spell or ritual to keep him from inhabiting his body. Derby was eventually taken to a sanitarium.

One night Upton is awoken by the sound of Derby’s signature knock, and finds a shrouded, dwarflike figure on the porch with a letter from Derby. The letter explains that Derby killed Asenath and buried her body in their cellar. Because the body wasn’t cremated, Asenath/Ephraim was able to take control over Derby’s body in the sanitarium, and he has now been forced him the putrefying corpse buried in the cellar. He dug himself out and that is now what is hunched over on Upton’s front porch. The letter begs Upton to kill his body in the sanitarium to end the threat of Ephraim forever. And so we’ve come full circle to the opening line of the story.

Very grim, but very good. Sure, it’s all a little convoluted, but think about the implications of a man marrying a woman who is actually her sorcerous father’s spirit inhabiting her body, then slowly being forced out of his own body. Yikes. Spirit possession has always been one of the things that gets me, so I really enjoyed this one.

The Dark Descent, edited by David G. Hartwell (Tor, 1987)

“A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner

Somehow I have never before managed to read any of Faulkner’s work, not even in an English class. I enjoyed this one immensely and can see Faulkner’s skill and power as a writer here in clear evidence. Because I don’t know any of his other work, I can only take this story on its own merits.

It’s a Southern gothic, set in a small town with a long history. The story revolves around Miss Emily Grierson, the last member of an antebellum aristocratic family now fallen on hard times and who lives in genteel poverty in her home with a single servant. Many years before her father died and her fiancé disappeared. She is, needless to say, a tragic figure, intensely isolated, whose only remaining asset is her stubborn pride. Her neighbors are the classic gossipy and curious types we don’t and (don’t) love. Emily eventually dies, and then townsfolk enter her home to satisfy their curiosity. I will spoil the ending because otherwise there won’t appear to be much to the story. Emily’s fiancé did not in fact desert her, she poisoned him for reasons unknown, and his mummified corpse has been preserved in a locked bedroom in her home. Also, it’s clear that she slept with the body. Good stuff indeed.

Books of Blood, Volumes One to Three, by Clive Barker (Berkley, 1998)

“Son of Celluloid”

A great premise that includes some great elements, but it just never gels in a satisfying way, and, if you think about it too much, it’s silly rather than horrific. Let me elaborate with some specifics. An escaped convict dying of stomach cancer dies inside an old theater and his body is not discovered. His death fuels and becomes intertwined the many decades of emotions that have been experienced in the theater (this part is shaky). Two things happen as a result. First, a few film actor constructs (like John Wayne) come to life and become homicidal and some weird otherspaces open up in the theater that make people think they are inside a film (a classic Western, for example). Not a bad concept, but I don’t quite understand exactly how/why this happened. And second, the dead man’s cancer exits his body, achieves sentience, and can take over other people’s bodies. This is the part that I can’t decide if it’s cool or silly. I mean, the idea of an evil, sentient, mind-and-body-controlling cancer is kind of fun, but it’s also utterly absurd. In any case, despite some good elements, the story didn’t quite work for me.

Black Wings of Cthulhu 2, edited by S.T. Joshi (Titan Books, 2012)

“Bloom” by John Langan

All the elements are present for a good story here—a married couple who find an abandoned cooler containing a strange…thing on the side of the road, a former astronomer who has had some strange brain trauma and who says some weird stuff that may not be as nonsensical as it seems—but the story just didn’t gel for me. This is one of those horror stories in which the author is playing it too coy about what is actually going on. I’m not saying I always require everything to be 100% laid out, but I need more than we get here to have a sense of coherency to the narrative. This was a slippery one that I am hard-pressed to describe in greater detail, mainly because I’m not sure what happened.

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