Week 253 – Weekly Horror Short Story Reviews: Jackson, Carter, Bloch, and Cave

Welcome to Week 253 of my horror short fiction review project! Some good stories this week, but my clear favorite was “The Daemon Lover” by Shirley Jackson. I don’t know that there’s anything actually supernatural going on here, and it’s almost certainly not actually a “horror” story, but it sure is sad.

The Black Magic Omnibus, edited by Peter Haining (Taplinger, 1976)

“The Daemon Lover” by Shirley Jackson

This one is apparently based on an old Scottish ballad about a woman who encounters an ex-lover, the Devil, though that doesn’t come up here at all in the story. In fact, there are no apparent supernatural elements in the story, though it’s utterly heartbreaking. A lonely woman is waiting for her fiancé, James Harris, to pick her up at her apartment so they can get married. He never shows up. She grows increasingly desperate for him and can never track him down. It seems he was just playing some kind of extraordinarily cruel game with her. Sad, and very good.

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

“The Snow Pavilion” by Angela Carter

A young cad (a poet, of course) is having an affair with an older, married woman and driving her car when it gets stuck in the snow. On his miserable walk back to her mansion, he comes across another mansion that he thinks is inhabited but, well, it’s not exactly. The place is mostly deserted, though it’s filled with creepy dolls. Then he encounters an old woman who he thinks might have used to be the children’s nurse, though of course the old crone is far more than she appears. Good atmosphere and a very effective premise.

Caped Fear: Superhuman Horror Stories, edited by Steve Proposch, Christopher Sequeira, and Bryce Stevens (IFWG Australia, 2022)

“Stuporman” by Robert Bloch

Apparently one of the Lefty Feep stories (I had to look this up because I was entirely unfamiliar with the character). This story was written in 1943 and it shows. It’s filled with that kind of snappy, all-too-clever rhyming dialogue throughout. That really grates on my nerves, personally. A nebbish reporter is given the ability to make his dreams come true, and, of course, he dreams about becoming a super-hero. Some fun bits in this one, but just not for me.

Whispers, edited by Stuart David Schiff (Jove/HBJ, 1979)

“Ladies in Waiting” by Hugh B. Cave

A couple return to stay in a vacant house that is for sale that they once stayed in after getting snowed in there for the night. The wife has become obsessed with the place, despite its creepiness. The house, or the extremely horrific beings that live there seem to want them there inn the house. I loved that final reveal, I just wish the story itself had been more coherent—these things come in to late in the tale to make this a really compelling story.

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Week 251 – Weekly Horror Short Story Reviews: Shiel, Ford, Doran, and Bloch

Welcome to Week 251 of my horror short fiction review project! Some odd little stories this week, each imperfect in their own ways; my favorite was “The Delicate” by Jeffrey Ford, which I would almost liken to a kind of magical realism tale, which as you probably know by now, I don’t typically care for. This one about a strange kind of vampiric being operating in the cold wastes on the fringes of civilization was my kind of weird though.

The Black Magic Omnibus, edited by Peter Haining (Taplinger, 1976)

“The Primate of the Rose” by M. P. Shiel

Crooks and Smythe begin the story with a tantalizing conversation about secret societies in London and then…nothing much happens. Another disappointment from a collection that seems to include far more misses than hits. I can now see why this collection has fallen into such obscurity.

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

“The Delicate” by Jeffrey Ford

A strange little story about a kind of demonic vampire—“The Delicate,” who also goes by Harding Jarvis—preying upon the inhabitants of a small town perched at the edge of civilization. It’s very magical realism in tone in that it can’t possibly be taking place on our Earth, nor does it really pretend to, and it’s full of magic and terror and wonder presented matter-of-factly. I liked it, and will be the first to admit that I don’t typically like tales like this.

Caped Fear: Superhuman Horror Stories, edited by Steve Proposch, Christopher Sequeira, and Bryce Stevens (IFWG Australia, 2022)

“The Omnivore” by Colleen Doran

A kind of Legion of Super-Heroes setting (far future with a team of young super heroes). The Omnivore can eat anything but he doesn’t eat meat, and why that is becomes clear by the end of the story. Ultimate is a time traveler who uses an element that animates dead bodies. The action takes place at one of those body farm-type places where they do experiments to see how flesh decays under certain conditions, only this one is for the bodies of supervillains’ victims. Omnivore has to start eating the zombies and, well, loves it. Gross story and pretty silly, though I do recall meeting Doran at a comic book convention in Virginia Beach in the late 1980s and she was very sweet and a lovely person.

Whispers, edited by Stuart David Schiff (Jove/HBJ, 1979)

“The Closer of the Way” by Robert Bloch

Very meta. This is a story about the author Robert Bloch, who has been admitted to a psychiatric ward. His psychiatrist thinks he is secretly deeply disturbed, and uses Bloch’s fiction as a rationale for that analysis. As it turns out, the shrink is correct and Bloch beheads him before escaping.

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Week 246 – Weekly Horror Short Story Reviews: Irwin, Tuttle, Bloch, and Kiernan

Welcome to Week 246 of my horror short fiction review project! All the stories this week were good, though my favorite was “Replacements” by Lisa Tuttle because it’s just such a weird little thing about an utterly inexplicable change that happens in society and life just kind of goes on….

The Black Magic Omnibus, edited by Peter Haining (Taplinger, 1976)

“Monsieur Seeks a Wife” by Margaret Irwin

In 1723 a young French nobleman travels to Riennes to choose a wife from among the three daughters of his father’s friend. One of these daughters, it soon becomes apparent, is a terrifying, shapeshifting witch. He eventually fees rather than choosing any of the daughters, then later finds that all three were sent to a convent, with the witchy one eventually burned at the stake. Nice mood and tension.

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

“Replacements” by Lisa Tuttle

Strange ugly creatures the size of cats start appearing around town, and are adopted by various women who soon become obsessed with the creatures, including the narrator’s wife. As it turns out, these creatures must be fed with the women’s blood. The couple divorces but otherwise life seems to just go on with these creatures now a part of society. Interesting.

A Taste for Blood, edited by Martin H. Greenberg (Barnes & Noble Books, 1992)

“The Yougoslaves” by Robert Bloch

A man (spoiler: he’s actually a vampire) has his wallet stolen by a band of child gypsies when he’s visiting Paris. That turns out to have been an unfortunate choice on their part, as the wallet contains the key to his crypt, so he’s highly motivated to seek them out and secure the key. Good.

The Children of Cthulhu, edited by John Pelan and Benjamin Adams (Del Rey/Ballantine, 2002)

“Nor the Demons Down Under the Sea” by Caitlín R. Kiernan

Set in 1957. Anna and Julia are lovers taking a trip together, though they don’t seem to make each other very happy. Anna suggests they tour a haunted house where murders took place and there they encounter…something living in the house. Understated, but not in a good way. This one simply seemed far too passive and insufficiently dynamic for my liking. Kiernan is capable of far more interesting stories than this.

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Week 230 – Weekly Horror Short Story Reviews: Gaiman, McKean, Russ, Bloch, and Smith

Welcome to Week 230 of my horror short fiction review project! Some decent little tales this week, but my favorite was probably “The Little Dirty Girl” by Joanna Russ, about a woman who meets a strange little (dirty) girl who may be more than she seems.

Hellbound Hearts, edited by Paul Kane and Marie O’Regan (Pocket Books, 2009)

“Wordsworth” by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean

A story told via comics and the script for the story. Here, a man solves a very different kind of puzzle, a crossword puzzle, that is given to him by a demon. The puzzle-solver is transformed, damned, etc., all the usual stuff you would expect. I didn’t love the art, which is printed in very indistinct and muddy black-and-white; I will confess that without the story script, included at the back of the collection as an extra, I would have been mostly lost on what was going on in this story. Just ok.

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

“The Little Dirty Girl” by Joanna Russ

The narrator is a lonely woman who meets a young girl in the neighborhood, the eponymous little dirty girl. The two bond over time, though the narrator comes to believe that the LDG is actually a kind of ghost, or perhaps a ghostly version of herself as a girl. Fascinating and charming.

Weird Vampire Tales, edited by Robert Weinberg, Stefan R. Dziemianowicz, and Martin H. Greenberg, (Gramercy Books, 1992)

“The Cloak” by Robert Bloch

A man buys a cloak for a Halloween costume party and it seems to not only give him vampiric impulses, but others who see him wearing the cloak perceive him as a sinister, vampiric figure. The costume turns out to not exactly be a popular choice at the party. An interesting concept that was well written and contains great atmosphere.

The Children of Cthulhu, edited by John Pelan and Benjamin Adams (Del Rey/Ballantine, 2002)

“Visitation” by James Robert Smith

James is a strange young man who lives alone after his parents died. They somehow managed to send Edgar Allan Poe (yes, that Poe) to live with James, and that works out fine at first, with Poe mostly just quietly reading every book in the house. But eventually Poe decides that he wants to see the effects of true horror on someone, and James is picked for that, which…isn’t pleasant for him. Then Poe tells James that someone else is coming to stay with him, someone (i.e. Lovecraft) who will truly horrify him. It’s a decidedly odd one, but I found it interesting.

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Week 210 – Weekly Horror Short Story Reviews: Bloch, Bixby, Worrell, and King

Welcome to Week 210 of my horror short fiction review project! Some good ones this week. While I really liked Robert Bloch’s “That Hell-Bound Train” about a Faustian bargain that doesn’t go well…for the Devil, my favorite was the classic “It’s a Good Life” by Jerome Bixby. You have almost certainly read this one multiple times and even seen an adaptation of it on TV, it’s a great story that continues to hold up on re-readings. If you haven’t yet read this one–somehow, inexplicably–you should read it immediately.

Alfred Hitchcock’s Witch’s Brew (Random House, 1983)

“That Hell-Bound Train” by Robert Bloch

Martin is a lazy, alcoholic hobo who makes a deal with the devil that nets him a pocket watch that can stop time (once). Martin’s plan is to use this at his moment of greatest happiness. Over the course of his life, Martin fails to use the device, and moment after moment of happiness passes him by. Eventually, the devil comes to collect his soul at Martin’s death, with the conceit that Martin will be ushered onto the devil’s party train that will take them (and other souls like Martin) to Hell. Once aboard the pleasure train, before the devil can take back the pocket watch, Martin stops time, thereby thwarting the devil and ensuring that they will never reach Hell. This is a good one.

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

“It’s a Good Life” by Jerome Bixby

You’ve read this one previously, and have likely seen a visual depiction of it in Twilight Zone. It’s a wonderful story, even on re-reading it after reading it a million times previously. Anthony is a monstrous, semi-human three-year-old boy who can both alter reality at will and read minds. He has either transported the small town where he was born into a grey dimension where only this town exists or destroyed the rest of the world; it’s unclear. Needless to say, the few remaining inhabitants of the town (including his family) are in mortal terror of Anthony every minute of the day, but he’s almost impossible to kill, so they’re stuck worrying about what awfulness he is going to perpetrate next. Such a good story—this is kind of the peak weird tale for me.

Weird Vampire Tales, edited by Robert Weinberg, Stefan R. Dziemianowicz, and Martin H. Greenberg, (Gramercy Books, 1992)

“The Canal” by Everil Worrell

Two vampires—a lovely young woman and her father—are trapped in a half-sunken barge in a canal. They cannot cross running water, which seems to be their major limitation. I found the writing to be too convoluted and obfuscatory. This one was a one-note kind of story, so not a great one in my estimation.

Just After Sunset, by Stephen King (Scribner, 2008)

“Graduation Afternoon”

Janice is an oddly mature, middle-class seventeen-year-old high school senior dating a very wealthy boy who goes by Buddy. While Janice is at Buddy’s graduation party (and contemplating their inevitable parting of the ways that will take place within the coming weeks), Janice witnesses New York City, off in the distance, being destroyed by a nuclear weapon. Nothing more than that. It’s almost more of a vignette and character study than an actual fully-realized story. Like “The Gingerbread Girl,” which had a similar structure of deep character study of the protagonist followed by a titanic event that throws out the character study entirely and mostly means it’s invalidated and pointless. Class politics and boyfriend-from-the-other-side-of-the-tracks issues just don’t matter any more after The Bomb goes off.

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Week 208 – Weekly Horror Short Story Reviews: Henderson, Bloch, Quinn, and King

Welcome to Week 208 of my horror short fiction review project! Today marks the end of my fourth year(!) of my weekly reviews of horror short short fiction. Rest assured that there’s plenty more to come, and I’ll be publishing a year in review post soon. Today we have the start of a new collection, Weird Vampire Tales, one of the many anthologies I have that reprints old pulp stories. This is also the last week of Young Mutants. Next week that one will be replaced by Alfred Hitchcock’s Witch’s Brew, another YA horror anthology I first read in my youth. Some really good stories this week, though my favorite was Robert Bloch’s “The Hungry House,” which is an absolute savage story about a young couple who move into a haunted house. This is not one of those genteel British haunted houses with cold spots and quiet knockings down the hall and glimpsed spectral figures seen out of the corner of the eye.

Young Mutants, edited by Isaac Asimov, Martin H. Greenberg, and Charles Waugh (HarperCollins, 1984)

“Come On, Wagon!” by Zenna Henderson

The narrator’s nephew Thaddeus is a bit slow and weird, but the narrator notices that when no one else is looking, Thaddeus can command inanimate objects to obey his will and they do, even moving on their own. He slowly grows out of this ability as he matures. That’s unfortunate, because when a relative is badly injured in a farming accident and the only way to save him would be for Thaddeus to command the offending tractor to move off the man, Thaddeus can no longer do it—he has outgrown his ability altogether.

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

“The Hungry House” by Robert Bloch

Excellent story. Very atmospheric and creepy. A married couple moves into a rented house that turns out to be very haunted (beware those nice-looking places that haven’t been rented in a long while—there’s a reason). They quickly realize that ghosts appear in any reflective surface they bring into the house. These ghosts are capable of affecting the physical world and, well, they don’t like people living in their house very much. Needless to say, this doesn’t end well for the married couple, who end up dying in the house themselves and, of course, their ghosts join those already inhabiting the house. Really powerful stuff. This story demonstrates Bloch’s mastery of the short horror tale.

Weird Vampire Tales, edited by Robert Weinberg, Stefan R. Dziemianowicz, and Martin H. Greenberg, (Gramercy Books, 1992)

“The Man Who Cast No Shadow” by Seabury Quinn

An occult detective story of the delightful Jules de Grandin and his companion Dr. Trowbridge in 1920s New Jersey. A Transylvanian count who is, predicticably, a vampire, has come to their prosaic town and only de Grandin and Trowbridge can stop him from draining the local virgins. This is a fairly routine depiction of a vampire (no reflection, hairy palms, vulnerable to garlic, must drain blood lest he age). No real danger or menace here, but still fun, especially if you like de Grandin stories (I do, I just think they need to be read in small doses).

Just After Sunset, by Stephen King (Scribner, 2008)

“Stationary Bike”

I didn’t love this one. I think it began as a kind of metaphorical thought experiment that just went too far past the point of amusement/interest. Richard Sifkitz is a widowed commercial artist who is warned that his cholesterol is too high (oddly, his doctor doesn’t suggest any medication, just tells him to exercise more or he’s going to die). He then proceeds to buy an exercise bike, paint a road vista on his basement wall, and start peddling furiously, becoming obsessed with exercise (much like Emily in “The Gingerbread Girl” earlier in this collection). Richard imagines that his body’s responses to exercise and cholesterol are controlled by a four-man road crew, and then continues imagining the lives of these four construction workers. Things take a dark turn when one of these imaginary men kills himself then the other comes after him—again, metaphorically—and persuade him to tone down the exercise. If that sounds a bit silly, well…it is. This one just didn’t work for me.

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Week 172 – Weekly Horror Short Story Reviews: Lansdale, Lumley, Bloch, and Hodgson

Welcome to Week 172 of my horror short fiction review project! Some excellent stories this week, but my favorite has to be Joe Lansdale’s “God of the Razor,” which I have long heard about but had not yet managed to read. Really good stuff, especially if you, like me, enjoy Jack the Ripper-related fiction.

Tales of Jack the Ripper, edited by Ross E. Lockhart (Word Horde, 2013)

“God of the Razor” by Joe R. Lansdale

Very good. Richards is an antique hunter who has been given permission to enter a dilapidated, uninhabited house in search of furniture to purchase on dark night. He finds the basement to be flooded (to a depth of seven or eight feet) and inhabited by voracious rats. He also finds a madman there, who confronts Richards on the stairs down into the basement. The madman tells him a long story about his friend Donny, who was a serial killer who decapitated his victims as sacrifices to the God of the Razor, a demonic entity who communicates with the wielders of a particular straight razor and drives them to kill, then threw the heads down into the water of the basement where the rats devoured them. Donny was not the first such killer, nor even was Jack the Ripper, but both are in a long line of such killers. Of course, the madman has taken up the role after Donny’s death; you see, the razor is enchanted so that if its cut doesn’t kill, the victim will become the next killer. Richards and the man have a titanic battle on the stairs and in the flooded basement, though I won’t spoil the ending. Very good stuff. Some very nice context for the Ripper killings, and wonderful imagery surrounding the eponymous God.

Haggopian and Other Stories, by Brian Lumley (Solaris, 2009)

“Dylath-Leen”

Grant Enderby is a Dreamer (from HPL’s Dreamlands), a man who is sometimes able to cross over into the fantastical world of the Dreamlands in his slumber. He has been living in the coastal city of Dylath-Leen, and has been growing increasingly suspicious of the men of Leng (we find out where they come from in a throwaway line toward the end of the novelette), who travel to Dylath-Leen in black galleys, trading rubies for slaves. They are quasi-humans, with turbans covering their horns, and clearly up to no good. He inadvertently returns to the waking world after a night of passion with his girlfriend before he can do anything about the situation. He next manages to return to the Dreamlands after three decades have passed there (twelve years for Grant); the men of Leng have taken over and enslaved most of the remaining inhabitants. He learns from his old girlfriend’s father (she is married and has moved to Ulthar) that the men of Leng brought a huge ruby into the city and used it to hypnotize everyone. He escapes the city (shades of “The Shadow Over Innsmouth”), but once again awakens before he can meaningfully act against them. Grant eventually gets back to the Dreamlands—more decades have past—and ends up in Ulthar. He seeks out the wise sorcerer Atal (another character who should be familiar to HPL’s readers) and is given two magical rituals to exact his revenge against the men of Leng: one to create a magical wall around Dylath-Leen, and the second to free the Yugothian demon/otherworldly entity inhabiting the ruby, which should then unleash its fury on the men of Leng. He completes these tasks handily, but by the end of the story, is terrified that he will next awaken trapped inside Dylath-Leen with the entity. A nice touch. I’ve never been overly enamored of HPL’s The Dreamlands, but I do enjoy a good sword-and-sorcery romp, and this certainly fits that bill.

The Mammoth Book of Body Horror, edited by Paul Kane and Marie O’Regan (Robinson, 2012)

[previously reviewed] “The Body Politic” by Clive Barker

“The Chaney Legacy” by Robert Bloch

Dale is a film historian who rents a cabin that was once the secret residence of Lon Chaney Sr., “Man of a Thousand Faces,” and the location where he developed the makeup and appearance for all of his iconic roles. Dale even discovers the makeup box that Chaney used to create these guises. Just one small complication: the makeup from the box starts transforming Dale’s appearance when he tries it out, which means that Dale starts taking on the actual personas of some of Chaney’s old characters—and keep in mind that most of them were monstrous. I was worried that this one would have a saccharin ending in which Dale reconciles with his girlfriend Debbie and they live happily ever after. I need not have worried about that. Good, though I didn’t love it.

The Casebook of Carnacki the Ghost Finder, by William Hope Hodgson (Wordsworth, 2006)

“The Thing Invisible”

The first Carnacki the Ghost Finder occult detective story. Carnacki wasn’t the first occult detective in literature, but he’s certainly one of the most famous ones. A private home’s chapel is said to be haunted, and a ghost seems to have used a famous dagger displayed in the chapel to stab the butler. Carnacki engages in some genuinely good detective work—he never begins his cases by assuming supernatural intervention—and then decides to spend the night sleeping in the cold, pitch black, silent chapel. Wonderful atmosphere. Spoiler for the story’s resolution: As it turns out, the home’s owner, Sir Alfred Jarnock, has grown a bit senile, and set the dagger trap (known only to himself and his ancestors) a bit early one day, which the butler then accidentally triggered. Really good stuff. A satisfying resolution (I appreciate that in this case, the answer was not a supernatural one) and really excellent atmosphere—Carnacki’s tension and fear were palpable during his nocturnal stay in the chapel.

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Week 17 – Weekly Horror Short Story Reviews: Lovecraft, Bloch, King, and Cisco

Welcome to Week 17 of my horror short fiction review experiment. Some very solid stories this week. The clear front-runners are Lovecraft’s “The Haunter of the Dark” and King’s “Drunken Fireworks.” The King story is never going to achieve the iconic position of “Haunter,” but it’s a genuinely fun story that highlights King’s strengths of characterization and dialogue.

The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories, by H.P. Lovecraft, edited by S.T. Joshi (Penguin, 1999)

“The Haunter of the Dark”

“Haunter” was Lovecraft’s last work of fiction, and he wrote is over the course of just four days. This was Lovecraft’s sequel to young Robert Bloch’s short story “The Shambler from the Stars.” I have not yet read that story, but as far as I can tell, no prior knowledge of “Shambler” is needed to fully understand or enjoy “Haunter.” Bloch later wrote a sequel to “Haunter” in 1950, “The Shadow from the Steeple.” It’s a good one, though not one of my absolute favorites.

Here’s the story’s premise (some spoilers follow): A writer named Robert Blake (Lovecraft named him after Bloch obviously) becomes obsessed with a large, vacant church that he can see from his windows across town in Providence, Rhode Island, but none of the locals will even acknowledge the place’s existence. He eventually learns that it has a long, sinister history. A cult called the Church of Starry Wisdom had used the place, ultimately summoning a dreadful…thing that cannot abide any light and has taken up residence there. Blake explores the place, finding an amazing collection of untouched forbidden tomes—what I wouldn’t do to get my hands on those books—along with the skeleton of a reporter who tried to investigate the place decades previously and a strange object that Blake learns is called the “Shining Trapezohedron,” which can summon the being. Blake inadvertently uses the Trapezohedron to summon the thing and departs. Oops. A bad storm briefly knocks out power in the city, and the local immigrant population tries to contain the thing in the church during the period of darkness, but their efforts are insufficient when power is once again knocked out for several hours. The creature finally manages to leave the church, flying out into the city to find Blake, who dies, probably of sheer terror.

It’s possible the creature is an avatar of Nyarlathotep, and one theory has been advanced that the creature began to possess Blake’s mind before being struck by lightning and getting killed or banished as a result. That’s certainly a possibility but I don’t think we have enough information to say definitively. In any case, I enjoyed “Haunter” because it’s a strong premise and ties in nicely with a lot of other Mythos elements, and I liked the sense of place present here; old Providence, with its architecture and population, really comes alive here.

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

“Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper” by Robert Bloch

I’ve always seen this story described as iconic, plus the Jack the Ripper case fascinates me, and who has written more convincingly about homicidal psychopaths than Robert Bloch, so I had high hopes for the story. Sadly, I found it weaker than anticipated. In fact, I’m now a bit surprised that it has been so widely reprinted. I suspect that your view of the story depends almost exclusively on what you think of the ending—it’s one of those final twist endings where everything is reversed in the final couple sentences—but unfortunately I thought the ending was telegraphed pretty early on, I thought (though I won’t spoil it here). The premise has some promise: an Englishman approaches a Chicago psychiatrist in the 1940s to tell him that he has dedicated his life to catching Jack the Ripper, and that he believes that Jack did not die in the nineteenth century, but has found a way to prolong his life indefinitely by making periodic sacrifices of women in occult rituals. He believes that the psychiatrist can help him find Jack, and the psychiatrist agrees to go along with it, bringing the Englishman to an amusing bohemian party and lurking around the seedier parts of town to see if they can spot Jack. The problem is that the plot has a number of holes in it and other aspects that just don’t hold up to scrutiny. Why did the Englishman choose this particular psychiatrist? Why did he agree to help this crank, and not try to get him to seek psychological counseling? How did Jack learn how to become immortal via his blood sacrifices? How exactly did the Englishman expect to find Jack? Not a terrible story by any means, it’s certainly engagingly written, but the plot was a lot weaker than I would have liked.

The Bazaar of Bad Dreams, by Stephen King (Scribner, 2015)

“Drunken Fireworks”

The title is too on-the-nose, but this is a real gem of a story. Contains no horror elements whatsoever, but I really, really enjoyed it. It’s actually very funny and the characterization and dialogue are spot on. The premise is pretty simple: a couple of rural Mainers living in a cabin on the water get into an annual fireworks competition with their wealthier neighbors across the water. Things escalate every year until…you guessed it…they go badly wrong. Lots of fun. The joy is in the execution so I won’t say any more about it.

Black Wings of Cthulhu, edited by S.T. Joshi (Titan Books, 2010)

“Violence, Child of Trust” by Michael Cisco

I’ve heard very good things about Cisco’s work, having heard him described as a very “literary” horror writer and otherwise being praised highly. I’m afraid that this story was a confusing mess, so I’ll have to give his work a second chance with another story and see if he can redeem himself and live up to the hype. I wish I could provide you with at least a coherent summary of the story, but sadly, I cannot. It is told from the perspective of three different men (not sure why we need all their perspectives). They have apparently abducted a number of women and seem to be sacrificing them to a creature; the implication seems to be that the women are used to satisfy the thing’s sexual urges, though maybe it only(?) devours them. I’m not sure.

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