Waiting For the End of the World, by R.B. Russell

 

978178365958

PS Publishing, 2020

279 pp

hardcover

"It did for those with the eyes to see..."

If your only connection with R.B. Russell is the truly great work he does along with his partner Rosalie Parker in publishing books at  Tartarus Press, you should also be aware that he is also an author and a pretty damn good one.   The last book I read by R.B. Russell was his short-story collection Ghosts, and when I finished that book one of my first thoughts was that I need to read more by this man.  Off to the online realm I went for more, and I picked up two Russell books, Death Makes Strangers of Us All and this one, Waiting for the End of the World.  After reading this book, I enjoyed it so much that this morning I bought his The Stones are Singing.  I mean, I knew after Ghosts that he could do great short stories, but maintaining cohesion and  tension well enough to last the length of  a  novel is another thing altogether.  Some writers just aren't able to bring it, but that's certainly not the case here.  

I will not go too much at all into detail about what happens here, and that is because this is the sort of book where you don't realize until toward the very end that you've been given signs along the way as to what's actually going on.  Even so, I didn't actually understand that until this morning when going through all of the pages I'd tabbed; suddenly all of my synapses were on fire as I made connection after connection.  At that point it became not just a good read, but an eye-opening, crazy good read.  

It all begins as our narrator Elliot Barton is sitting in a train in October of 2006, reflecting on things, including his partner Lana, the joy of sharing life with her at their house on Sapphire Street and his job. On that first page life seems great, and then comes the first clue that there may be some trouble in this paradise.  As he says,

"Above all, I can't believe that what I did so long ago has yet to catch up with me. What I have not told Lana is I live each day as though it is my last of freedom. When the post arrives, the telephone rings, or if there is a knock at the door, I am expecting the worst, even after ... I do the calculation ... eighteen years."

 In what he describes as an "unusually fatalistic mood," he thinks about the "few words" of a  phone message he'd heard after work  and how because of it "the first stone has been loosened from the foundations of our house on Sapphire Street."   Once home, and after a night of strange dreams, the next day Lana's off to her job and Elliot plays the remainder of the message, erasing it afterwards.  It seems that a friend from his school days, Vince Reynolds, wants to talk to him about something that happened in their past.  He continues to avoid Vince on the phone, but eventually speaks to him and learns that Vince is thinking of going to the police to confess and that he would like to get together to talk.  Vince has found religion and wishes to "atone" for his "sin," to "face any punishment;" strangely though, his version of events of that day are quite different than Elliot's.   Elliot, who now has had to tell Lana what it was all about, believes it's the beginning of the end of everything; he doesn't want Vince to do anything and travels to St. Michael's  retreat where Vince and his fellow members of the Children of the Cross are now living, along with none other than a man whom the Children of the Cross believe is Jesus Christ, who has come again "to shepherd his flock."  Elliot's aim: not to have Vince reconsider his plan, but to have him "change his mind and disappear from my life once again."   What Elliot doesn't realize is that his visit to St. Michael's will change everything in ways he could not possibly expect. 

While it may sound like the plot of a crime novel, Waiting for the End of the World is anything but.  Shortly after the beginning of the present timeline, the story begins to move back and forth through  time (and knowing what I know now I'm absolutely fighting with myself to not say anything more about that).  At each move there are added elements of context, suspense and tension that kept me turning pages, yet, as I said in my initial thoughts at goodreads, while reading I kept wondering to myself what all of this was leading to.  Let me just say that there came an OMG moment toward the end where I not only realized what was happening, but also when I realized that everything that had come before has suddenly taken on momentous significance. 

Among other fascinating topics, within Waiting for the End of the World  the reader will encounter themes of religious belief through history, cults and what it is about the need for a Messiah that drives people to  gather around a particular individual to take them through an apocalypse,  the importance of dreams and the idea that one particular event can unknowingly and unwittingly change the course of things.  It's an amazing book, and the writing is utterly fantastic, drawing you in slowly until there comes that above-mentioned moment when everything just explodes.  On top of everything else, I've also made note of all of the book titles that the author included in this one, and I was so pleased to see Machen's Hill of Dreams listed among them; I'm sure that its inclusion as well as that of Rolfe's Hadrian the Seventh (and others) were not simply random choices.   

Very nicely done, and my advice for readers who at some point feel like you're wondering where this story  is headed is to just be patient and enjoy the ride,  but to be sure to pay attention along the way. In this book, things have a habit of turning up again when least expected.   This one I can certainly and very highly recommend.  Like all of my favorite books,  I can honestly and without reservation say that I've never read anything quite like it. 

Ghosts, by R.B. Russell

 

9781783807475

Swan River Press, 2021

189 pp

paperback

The other night I grabbed this book on my way up to bed, promising myself to read only three stories before turning off the light and calling it a day.  I should have limited myself to two -- when I finished the third one, "In Hiding,"  my first thought was "did I just read what I thought I read?" so I had to go through it again. By that point I was wide awake, so it was "just one more," and before I knew it I'd gone through all six stories.  Who needs sleep anyway?

The spotlight in this collection shines on its players.  As Mark Valentine in his excellent introduction notes, Russell's people are "often rather gauche, hesitant interlopers in a contemporary world that does not quite work for them."  They are also "already ill at ease with themselves, with others, with the world before any hint of the inexplicable comes on the scene."   This idea makes itself manifest from the very beginning, but I'll go straight to my favorite story first,  the above-mentioned "In Hiding."  Here a disgraced MP, The Right Honourable David Barrett, decides to get away from it all and takes refuge in the small Greek fishing village of Arkos.  It's only day two when he is recognized, by Taylor,  a fellow countryman, who owns and has been living on a small island named Elga,  just off the coast.  He too had left England "under a cloud," and invites Barrett to visit the following day.  Barrett is met early next morning by Simon, who also lives on Elga and who takes Barrett there by boat; it's what happens next that throws everything off kilter, and not just solely for  the reader.   I believe this is one of the finest short stories I've ever read; it was also nominated in 2010 for a World Fantasy Award.  As I said earlier, don't be surprised if you read it and want to right away read it again. 

   Moving back to table-of-contents order, the collection opens with "Putting the Pieces in Place."  When he was about fourteen, out taking a walk in the summer sun,  Neil Porter hears "yearning, longing music" floating in the air, and looking for its source, comes across a party of people "like in Le Grand Meaulnes" just in time to hear the music stop. As he watches, he sees a young woman in a "white flowing dress" pick up her violin and began playing again. It was a moment in time he'll always remember, and since then he has become obsessed, hoping to recreate that moment somehow by collecting her music, her instruments, and even her house, but there's one thing of Emily Butler he doesn't yet have.  He does, however, know a way to get it.   Mark Valentine notes about this story that it is a "subtle meditation on our tendency to enshrine the past instead of engaging with the present."  In  many ways, this story also sets the tone for the rest of what follows.   Moving on, "There's Nothing I Wouldn't Do" follows a young PhD student in Odessa where she had decided to study the work of a famous architect there.  International travels on her own are nothing new for this woman, and she has taken her time learning about and working in her chosen profession before moving on for the doctorate.    After leaving Ukraine and returning home for Christmas, she reveals to a friend that she was somewhat nervous about going back; her story as given  begins  when she meets another student studying English who falls in love with her.  She, however, toys with him, leading to a very one-sided  affair that will, when all is said and done, have major (and completely unexpected)  consequences.   Trust me when I say that this story is a serious jaw-dropper.  

Moving on to story number four, "Eleanor" is the name of a character in a book created by David Planer twenty years earlier; since then she's gone through a few iterations ever since via television, graphic novels and computer games in the hands of people who had "explored sides of her personality" the author had "not even dreamed of."   The original Eleanor was never meant to be a science fiction character, but now at the sci-fi convention where David is speaking,  it's not so out of place to see someone dressed as Eleanor.  David, however, believes that this is his Eleanor, a belief that persists despite his assistant's assurances otherwise.   A truly gorgeous and most poignant story, it captures, as Valentine notes, the mind's "pride in its one creation," that the creator clings to until the end.   I realize that this trope in some form has been done many times, but certainly not as it is written here.   On the more depressingly sad side of things is "Disposessed," in which a young woman's rather empty life has been a series of things going very wrong, punctuated each time by the idea that "It had happened again."  But one  more thing finally materializes when she becomes trapped in an untenable situation, and that's all I will say, except that the ending of this one is a shocker.  

"Bloody Baudelaire," which closes this collection,  is novella length and I swear, there came a point at which I couldn't help but think of The Picture of Dorian Gray while reading it.  Lucian Miller and his girlfriend Elizabeth come to Cliffe House as a getaway before they both go on to University, invited to stay by Lucian's school friend Adrian. Lucian loves the atmosphere of the house, its "decay and grandeur."   The house actually belongs to Miranda, Adrian's sister, and her partner Gerald, a painter with a beyond-pretentious attitude who has an annoying habit of quoting "bloody Baudelaire," which ticks off Miranda to no end.  As this very long and rather boozy night goes on, Lucian becomes involved in a bizarre card game with Gerald; an argument ensues between his hosts, and the next day Elizabeth leaves before Lucian wakes up and Gerald has disappeared altogether, leaving Lucian and Miranda alone.  What happens next borders on the dark stuff of nightmares, and I won't go there.  A brilliant story, one of my favorites in this book.

The description of this book in part says that the stories in Ghosts make for a "disquieting journey through twilight regions of love, loss, memory and ghosts."  This collection of strange tales  is my introduction to the shorter fiction of Ray Russell, and I have to say that I am absolutely in awe of the talent this man displays here, not just in the writing (which is excellent)  but also in the depths he reaches in his characters, allowing their often-troubled souls to surface.  As the blurb notes,  "you are likely to come away with the feeling that there has been a subtle and unsettling shift in your understanding of the way things are," a promise made and kept.  

very highly recommended.  Many thanks to Brian at Swan River Press as well. 

hb#8, and the last of the designated Halloween reads, The Case Against Satan, by Ray Russell

9780143107279

Penguin Classics, 2015

140 pp

paperback

I've been perusing reader reviews of this novel, and for the most part, I'm finding a lot of posts that downplay this book because it's "outdated" and some that say that readers might better be served by reading something more along the lines of Blatty's The Exorcist or Tremblay's A Head Full of Ghosts.  

Well, everyone to his or her own of course, but at the very beginning of this book we are specifically told  that  "a priest of the Roman Catholic Church was put on trial one harrowing weekend in the second half of the twentieth century."  Why and how he's "put on trial" is the focal point of this novel,  and yet somehow, the draw for a lot of readers seems to be only the expectations of the exorcism that takes place here.  And that's a shame, really, since there is a lot going on here otherwise. 

In a nutshell, without going into too much detail and spoiling things for future readers, the novel begins with an outgoing priest, Father Halloran, confiding in his replacement, Father Gregory Sargent, about some of the people in the parish, mentioning a particular family he's worried about. This is the Garth family, young sixteen year-old Susan and her father.  According to Halloran, Susan is motherless, is "very disturbed," and she has "fits."  He's counseled her father to take Susan to see a psychiatrist, and as Gregory finds out in his own discussion with Mr. Garth about her problem behaviors,  dad has refused to do so.  Susan, it seems, has been wanting to see a shrink, but Garth continues to insist that she's "not crazy."  It's obvious that Susan is starting to trust Gregory but things take a strange turn when she is questioned privately by Gregory's superior, Bishop Crimmings, and reacts in an unexpected way.  

Forward-thinking Gregory believes that Susan's behavior may be based on "an unpleasant childhood experience connected in her mind with the church, or something she has done that makes her feel unclean, unworthy...," in short, a psychological explanation; Crimmings, on the other hand, makes no bones about the fact that the girl is possessed, "literally and actually."  And thus ensues a struggle between science-based reason and superstition-based faith, as Crimmings insists that Gregory perform an exorcism, while Gregory questions why he should "Drive out a medieval Devil" he has "trouble believing in." The Bishop believes he must do it, because it is the "only thing" that can save him -- it seems that Gregory's faith is to be tried, since by admitting he doesn't believe in the Devil, he could be seen as a heretic, because 

"If God existed, logically his Adversary existed." 

As I said earlier, there's way more in this novel than just the exorcism itself -- I found several things of interest here, among them the similarities between sexual and religious ecstasy, the nature of trauma, and hysteria spread by and grounded in ignorance.  There's also a wonderful scene here where Gregory is dreaming and finds himself in the last scene of Macbeth, and Beaudelaire's lovely story "The Generous Gambler" even finds its way to relevance here, since one of the main questions brought up here is the existence of the devil.  Beaudelaire's comment in his tale, if you haven't read it, is yes, but perhaps not quite in the way we imagine.  And of course, the decision as to whether Susan is possessed is left purposefully ambiguous, so that readers are able to make up their own minds as to what's actually going on here.

The last chapter of the book just put me off completely, but despite its ending, I thought this book was very well done.  And my suggestion would be to look past the expectations of a head-spinning, pea-soup launching exorcism, since there's much more here than meets the eye, and in my opinion, continues to have relevance. If you're looking for something with grossout power, this isn't the book you want. However,   I would certainly recommend it to readers who are looking to discover exactly what sort of evil exists in the course of ordinary human lives.

Sunless Solstice: Strange Christmas Tales for the Longest Nights (eds.) Lucy Evans and Tanya Kirk

   

 9780712354103

British Library, 2021

288 pp

paperback

"Night, and especially Christmas night, is the best time to listen to a ghost story.  Throw on the logs! Draw the curtains! Move your chairs nearer the fire and hearken!"  

For me it's more a case of brewing some cardamom chai tea (with milk, of course), grabbing my favorite blanket, curling up in a cozy chair and opening a book, but I'd say the Victorians (in this case Frederick Manley) had it right:  who wouldn't love to sit in the darkness with only a roaring fire for light and listen to a ghostly tale or two?   

While there are only three stories from Victorian times in this anthology, they are three really good ones.  Frederick Manley's  "The Ghost at the Crossroads: An Irish Christmas Night Story" (1893)  kicks off this anthology, finding a Christmas party in full swing at the "snug home" of the Sweenys in Derry Goland as the winds are howling outside.  Just as it's time for the dancing to begin, with "the fun ... at its height," the revelry is interrupted by "the banshee's cry."  It's not really a banshee, of course, but a young man with a story about a strange card game with a "thing in black."  Definitely the  perfect opener for what's to come, and the weirdness doesn't end there.  Continuing on with the Victorians,  there's Lettice Galbraith's "The Blue Room" (1897) which I've read elsewhere but still love,  and last but not least, a story by American writer Elia Wilkinson Peattie,  "On the Northern Ice" from 1898.   Ralph Hagadorn is on his way to stand as groomsman to his best friend, getting a late start due to a delay caused by business.  Skating across the Sault Ste. Marie region in the dead of night where "in those latitudes men see curious things when the hoar frost is on the earth," he suddenly realizes that not only is he not alone, but that the mysterious "white skater" is leading him away from his intended path.  More than hints of the strange in this story, and we're not just talking about ghosts. 

Of the next two stories, written in the 1920s,  E. Temple Thurston's "Ganthony's Wife" (1926) is completely new to me, while I'd previously read WJ Wintle's  "The Black Cat" from its original source, Ghost Gleams: Tales of the Uncanny (1921), republished by Sundial Press in 2019.     Thurston's story, while beginning with the lament that "The custom of telling stories round the fire on Christmas is dying out," focuses on a ghost story told sitting "round a blazing wood fire" at a house party.  The teller of the tale swears it's true, and that it's definitely not for children.  Trust me, it isn't.  

The 1930s are represented here with Hugh Walpole's 1933 story from The Strand, "Mr. Huffam" which quite honestly I didn't care for and Margery Lawrence's "The Man Who Came Back" from 1935, which I very much enjoyed.   I'm a true fangirl of any story with a séance at its heart; add in a medium's warning, a reluctant spirit guide and some "decidedly non-festive revelations," and well, you have a topnotch story here.  I love Lawrence's work; in her lifetime she was, as the editors reveal, a "committed spiritualist" and member of The Ghost Club;  sadly she's somewhat underappreciated today, which is a true shame. 

from abebooks 

Bypassing the 1940s,  "The Third Shadow" by H. Russell Wakefield was  first published in Weird Tales in November 1950.  To digress a moment, to my great delight because I'm a huge fan of the goat-footed god, the cover of that edition (above) features a Pan-like figure  playing his pipe and cavorting in a forest, cloven hooves and all, with what looks to be a mountain range in the background.  That would make sense as "The Third Shadow" is a tale centered around amateur mountain climbers.  Told to an anonymous narrator by Sir Andrew Poursuivant as they sail to New York on the Queen Elizabeth, it is the story of a man named Brown, "a master in all departments, finished cragsman and just as expert on snow and ice."  It seems that Brown, in one of his reckless streaks, proposed to and married a woman named Hecate, who "made his life hell,"  and who was "a good deal heavier" than her husband.  Two years after their marriage, Brown took Hecate to the Mer de Glâce glacier for a morning of training, during which her rope broke, sending her falling into a crevasse.  Although he swears he'll never climb again,  Sir Andrew reluctantly talks Brown into a trip up the Dent du Géant,  "a needle, some thirteen thousand feet high."  It is a climb Sir Andrew says he will never make again because of what happened that June day.   Following Wakefield is Daphne Du Maurier's "The Apple Tree" (1952) which I've read more than a few times, and then there's a bizarre and rather creepy story by Muriel Spark called "The Leaf-Sweeper" (1956) about a young man who wants to abolish Christmas and whose anti-Yule rantings land him in a mental asylum.   But wait. There's more -- but I will say nothing about what happens next.  Great story, actually, and a personal favorite. 

Robert Aickman's "The Visiting Star" first published in 1966 (in Powers of Darkness: Macabre Stories) tops my list of favorites here.  It  is not the weirdest story I've ever read by this author (whose often-cryptic work I absolutely love) but strange it is all the same, employing here, as he often does, bits of the mythological, the psychological and just plain weirdness to tell the story of Arabella Rokeby, an actress who is set to make a return to the stage in a play she'd starred in years earlier in London, now being produced in an "unused and forgotten" theatre in some out of the way town.  When "the great actress" arrives accompanied by her strange companion named Myrrha, Colvin (an expert on lead and plumbago mining),  expecting an aging woman, is somewhat surprised by her youthful looks, but that's not the only strangeness to be found in this most excellent tale, a truly great choice by the editors for inclusion.  

The closing story in Sunless Solstice is from 1974 by James Turner, from his collection of stories called Staircase to the Sea : Fourteen Ghost Stories. I've looked for this book everywhere and sadly, I can't find a copy anywhere. In  "A Fall of Snow" Nicky, a boy from Cornwall, is staying at his uncle's farm in East Anglia  over the Christmas holidays while his parents are in New York; the arrival of snow both awes and terrifies him.  Why this is so I will not say, but a toboggan ride with his cousin heralds the unexpected and the strange.  

 As is the case with the other books in the British Library Tales of the Weird series, it's a true delight reading the work of past masters of the strange.  The editors of Sunless Solstice  have certainly done their research in putting together this book, leaving their readers with enough scary chills and weirdness to take them through the Christmas holidays, but as always, you don't need to limit yourself to the season to find joy in the reading.    Very nicely done, and of course, definitely recommended.    

HB#1: nothing says Halloween like a haunted house: *The Uninvited, by Dorothy Macardle

0892440686
Queens House, 1977
reprint of  Doubleday 1942 ed.
342 pp

hardcover

Just a brief note about this book.  My edition was published in 1977 and is a reprint of the original 1942 edition.   It was a bit pricey, although as it turns out, worth every damn cent, but the good news is that anyone looking for a reasonably-priced edition will find it in the new (September) edition put out by  Tramp Press. If you're an Amazon shopper, then you're in luck -- it's also available there.

On a weekend in Devon, writer Roderick (Roddy) Fitzgerald and his sister Pamela, are driving around looking for house to buy. Both of them want to get out of London and feel that they need a  "complete break with town, a life with air, space and growth in it." This is, as it turns out, their fifth weekend of looking.  They actuallly find the perfect spot, but the house itself turned out to be a "drab barrack" not even facing the sea.  Turning the car back toward London, and feeling like their "hopes had been preposterous," Pamela sees a lane she'd like to explore, convinced that there "must be a grand view from the top." It is then that they set eyes on Cliff End, fall in love with it, and ultimately buy it from Commander Brooke, whose granddaughter Stella actually owns the house. After the offer is made, Brooke reveals something that he feels obliged to mention without going into much detail:   it seems that some six years earlier, Cliff End had been occupied for some months, but the people who'd lived there had "experienced disturbances" and had left. Roddy shrugs it off -- and the two siblings begin to fix the house to begin their idyllic country life.

Not long afterward, the two learn about the  "local legend" attached to Cliff End, regarding the death of its former mistress, Mary Meredith. Mary was the daughter of  Commander Brooke, and was married to artist Llewellyn Meredith.  It seems that one very windy and stormy night, Llewellyn's model Carmel took off running toward the edge of a cliff, Mary following behind.  Carmel got pushed into a tree, while Mary went off the cliff.  It wasn't too much later that Carmel died from a resulting case of pneumonia. Left motherless was three year-old Stella, who was then taken to live with her grandfather.

Happy now that they are "at home," it doesn't take long before they start noticing a few strange occurrences, which only intensify as time goes on.  When their first houseguests arrive, things get even stranger; the horror becomes gradually worse to the point where the Fitzgeralds realize that the smart thing would be to leave Cliff End. Ultimately, though, they realize that everything they're experiencing seems to center directly on Stella.  Neither of them really want to leave, so Pamela tries to come up with a number of theories as to what's happening to them in order to find some sort of solution to be able to face down the menace that is currently in control of their lives.

Cliff End, from the movie

The Uninvited is a wonderful story, but reading carefully, it's not difficult at all to see that there's  more going on in this book than just ghosts and a haunting.

 While I'm not going to go into any detail at all in the way of what I think is going on here besides all of the supernatural events, I will say that I saw different undercurrents at work here, including repression and marginalization, a reluctance to dig up past history even when it's the only hope for the future, and most importantly perhaps, motherhood under the microscope.

I have this deep and abiding love of good haunted house stories, and I have to say that I was very, very happy with The Uninvited on many levels. On the other hand, the novel was slow to start, but it wasn't too long before I was completely absorbed.  I also figured out the surprises in this story long before they were revealed; then again, that may be due to my many eons of reading crime fiction and learning to put two and two together as the clues unfold.   Bottom line: it's a fine, creepy novel that is fun to read on its surface with much deeper strains running underneath all of the ghostly activity.

And now to the film. I had great fun watching this movie.   The first thing I noticed is that the beginning of the movie belies what's coming later on with its sort happy-go-lucky kind of opening.  Here, Rick (known as Roddy in the novel) and Pam arrive at the house with little dog in tow. There's this kind of silly fun sort of scene where the dog chases a squirrel into an open window at the house, followed by Rick and Pam where they take a tour of the place and decide that it's perfect.   We see Pam and her brother in a sort of carefree, happy mode that not too much later dissolves as the first of the strange happenings gets their attention. It's an awesome movie, and the acting, especially that of Gail Russell who plays Stella, is quite good.  I also loved how the director played with shadows here, which in some instances reminded me of classic noir film scenes. Side by side, though, the book for me was much better -- much darker than the movie, for sure.    Contentwise, the book goes much deeper into the whole mystery behind the hauntings, whereas  it gets sort of a muddled reveal toward the end in the film retelling.  And the seance scene in the novel is beyond brilliant as compared to the one in the movie.

Once again, both book and movie are yesses, and true fans of the supernatural should miss neither. Highly recommended, although both may seem tame to modern readers.  Not to me, though -- I was sucked into both and stayed suspended there until the end.

The Master of the Macabre, by Russell Thorndike

9781939140470
Valancourt  Books, 2013
(originally published 1947)
213 pp

paperback

It's impossible to pigeonhole this book into a particular category, so I'm not even going to try, square pegs and round holes and all that.  There's a lot going on in this little book -- it's a different take on the usual haunted house story, it's a ghost story, it's pulpy, and there are a number of spots where it's also funny.  While it's not particularly frightening (or at least it wasn't to me), The Master of the Macabre is still a little gem of a book and makes for fine pre-Halloween (or any time for that matter) reading.

Set in 1940s England, author Tayler Kent has been under a bit of stress over a four-week period,  perhaps due to the "mental strain" of working on finishing a "complicated biography" he's been working on, but he doesn't think so. He's been having strange dreams of shadowy figures with vivid eyes -- a pleading woman and a "commanding and servile" man, "compelling" him to "obey them."  Rather than seek medical help, he decides to take a trip to his cottage on Romney Marsh, where he hopes to find some much needed peace and quiet.  He makes a brief stop at his club, where he is handed a package left for him by his friend Carnaby.  Kent is to deliver the package to the Old Palace of Wrotham, the residence of "The Master of the Macabre." There is no other name given, and Kent shrugs it off as a joke, wondering what Carnaby's up to this time. As he's heading out, the weather is terrible and turns into a terrible snowstorm; on the road, where can barely see and loses control of both brakes and steering, he skids and is enveloped by a "gigantic snow-slide."  While trying to escape being buried in the snow, he injures his leg. Despite the pain, he makes his way to a "fine old place."  It seems that Kent is expected  -- and preparations have already been made for his stay there.  The elderly gentleman who greets him is Hoadley, general factotum to the home's owner, Charles Hogarth, who is also known as (you guessed it) "The Master of the Macabre."  Things start taking a strange turn the very first night of Kent's stay, and while he's laid up, Hogarth shows him a collection of strange relics that he's collected over the years, each with some sort of bizarre story attached to it, and shares his belief that  "every so-called inanimate object in this world...has a being" of its own, which also extends to the house and the objects found within. This theme recurs throughout the book, and is especially highlighted when Hogarth realizes that someone else has laid a claim for one of his valued possessions.   Hogarth is a collector of "the material of odd happenings," --  both his own and others --  and has spent time setting them down into manuscripts "for the few."  These stories, the mystery of the house itself, and the secret behind Kent's sleepless nights slowly unfold as the book progresses.

 

As Hoadley so eloquently reveals, "this house is very susceptible... to susceptible minds."  It also has "influences," and no one who comes to work there will ever stay there after dark.  Hogarth also reveals that the house is "alive," that it's "just like a human being with moods" that need to be humored; it's a house with a mind that needs to be understood.  The house also has  "powerful and insidious" properties, with some rooms much more alive than others, and are more often than not, places where history repeats itself again and again.   However, this book goes well beyond the standard haunted house story filled with ghosts or other terrors.  Hogarth himself is a strange figure, a sort of detective who ferrets out the strange, and as Mark Valentine notes in his introduction (which should definitely be saved until after you've read the last page), his creator finds himself in "good company" among other authors who have written books with a "major plot and conspiracy, augmented by piquant minor side-adventures," none the least of whom are Arthur Machen and Robert Louis Stevenson.  The introduction itself is enlightening, with a very brief history of the rise of the "investigator of the uncanny" and the occult detective.

While the language may be a little overbearing for a modern reader, I had no problem with it, but then again, I love classic tales and have also spent many an hour with my nose buried in the work of golden-age writers of detective fiction who also tend toward the sort of verbosity found here in places.  Some of the stories are delightfully pulpy, while some are just, well, there's no better word than "macabre" to describe them. There were times I couldn't help but chuckle (the story entitled "Concerning a Mad Sexton, A Drunk Hangman and a Pretty Girl" actually brought out a belly laugh) even as dark deeds were being done. Also, don't let the "investigator of the uncanny" thing  turn you away from this little book -- while it may not provide readers with in-your-face horror that many modern readers crave, it's still a fun little book that needs to be looked at  in its entirety rather than just in story-by-story mode.  It's definitely a book to be appreciated, and I give kudos to Valancourt Books for bringing it into the present.

brain break, redux: Terror Tales of the Seaside, Paul Finch (ed.)

9781906331375
Grey Friar Press, 2013
257 pp

paperback

"It's strange how our perceptions of places, events, even people can be totally different from the reality. You convince yourself that something was one way and when you go back to check, it really wasn't."
                                    -- Joseph Freeman, "A Prayer for the Morning"

Trying to get the last couple of weeks of  disturbing images from my reading choices out of my head, I went rifling through my horror shelves for something lighter before moving back into full dark.   I had quite forgotten that I even owned this book, so it was sort of like Christmas when I found it. That happens a lot in this house: buy, shelve, forget, only to be delighted when I come across something I didn't realize I had.

The quotation with which I opened this post really gives a feel for exactly what's going on in this collection of short stories.  Add that to the seaside locations where these authors set their eerie tales, and that's why this book appeals. The back-cover blurb is also enticing,  letting us know that the places we're getting ready to read about have a colorful past:

"The British Seaside -- golden sands, toffee rock, amusement arcades. But also the ghosts of better days: phantom performers who if they can't get laughs will get screams; derelict fun-parks where maniacs lurk: hideous things washed in on bitter tides..."

Editor Paul Finch also gives his readers a bonus: beyond the stories found in this collection:  he has also seen fit to throw in some interesting, often arcane lore between stories. For example, in the short piece about "The Eerie Events at Castel Mare," he tells of a house built during the Victorian period where strange phenomena have been reported, giving it a reputation for being haunted. I won't say more about Castel Mare, but there are thirteen (!) of these little inserts that sent me searching online for more about each.  As interesting as these are, though, there are also fourteen short stories in this book, some of which gave me an outright case of the willies and all of which made for fun reading alone during a thunderstorm.

 I'll list the contents here shortly, but first I want to say that of the fourteen tales,  Ramsey Campbell's "The Entertainment" and Simon Kurt Unsworth's "The Poor Weather Crossings Company" are not only creepy but very, very well written, and they are my favorite stories in this collection by far. Very much out of the box and making both time and money spent on this book well worth it,  these two for me are the best of the bunch.  Campbell's story adds a tinge of undisguised anguish at the end which I wasn't expecting, but this tale as a whole should resonate with anyone who reads it.  The beginning of this story reminded me a bit of Priestly's Benighted, in which a traveler finds himself stuck in a storm that is so bad that drivers are being advised to stay off the roads.  Tom Shone is only half an hour from the motorway but at the edge of the town of Westingsea, when he decides he can't go on and needs to find a place to stay. Everything is full, but he lucks out and finds a sign leading to an old "three-storey house." There the similarity with Priestly ends, but Shone has definitely been "benighted" in the strictest sense of the word. When the door is opened after he rings the bell, an elderly woman asks him a rather bizarre question: "Are you the entertainment?"  What follows is downright weird and scary, and in my opinion, somewhat of  a tipping o' the hat  to Robert Aickman's "The Hospice."    Unsworth's story takes the reader to Morecambe, where an advert is posted for a "once in a lifetime opportunity" to "See the Bay as it Should be Seen!"  Taking the little pull-off strip with the telephone number, a man named Sykes decides it would be "something new to do, after all."  He's done the bay walk before, in a tour headed by "the Queen's guide to the sands," but this time around, the walk takes place at night, and the tour guide seems a bit eccentric.  Here the genius lies in Mr. Unsworth's ability to ever so slowly drop his readers into an ominous, off-kilter and eerie atmosphere from the start, and keeping them there, all the while ratcheting up reader tension by turning that screw just a little tighter until ...

Aside from these two beyond satisfying and delightful neck-hackling terror tales, the rest of the stories are as follows (with the little folklore/arcane knowledge/legends etc in italic):

"Holiday from Hell," by Reggie Oliver another good one that is a mix of horror and ha-ha-ha after I figured out the gimmick here.
The Eerie Events at Castel Mare - Torquay
 "The Causeway," by Stephen Laws - such a disturbing mix here as crime and horror blend together into a weird, eerie tale.
The Kraken Wakes - Guernsey
 "The Magician Kelso Dennett," by Steven Volk.  If you don't ask "how did he do that?" at the end, there's something really wrong with you.
Forces of Evil - Pittenweem, north of the Firth of Forth
"A Prayer for the Morning," by Joseph Freeman, another favorite because of the frightening  implications of the ending. Wow.
The Ghost of Goodwin Sands - Kent
 "The Jealous Sea" by Sam Stone.  Seriously, the writing is good, but variations of this sort of story have  been told many times by different authors.
The Horse and the Hag - Minster-in-Sheppey, Kent

"Bighthelmstone," by R.B. Russell, is way more of a true-life sort of terror than anything supernatural. 

The Devil Dog of Peel - Isle of Man

 "Men With False Faces," by Robert Spalding.  Dear God.  I hate clowns, and this tale is filled to the brim with them, but the story itself is quite good, and well written. 

The Ghouls of Bannane Head - the Ayrshire Coast of Scotland. Sawney Bean ring a bell?

"GG Luvs PA, " by Gary Fry -- you'll never look at words written in sand the same way twice after reading this one. Okay, good, not great. 

This Beautiful, Terrible Place - Beachy Head 

"The Incident at North Shore," by Paul Finch.  There's something about escaped mental patients and defunct amusement parks that I normally can't resist.  I wasn't really in love with the story, but walking around the old fun park with the main character was eerily awesome.   

In the Deep, Dark Winter - Morecambe 

"Shells," by Paul Kane.  Okay -- this one is bizarre but very cool; has a sort of slow-burn horror feel to it right up through the end. It also, strangely enough, brought to mind a certain old sci-fi flick starring Dana Wynter and Kevin McCarthy. Guess which one. 

The Walking Dead - Berwick-upon-Tweed, Northumbria

"The Sands are Magic," by Kate Farrell,  is just utterly tragic and beyond terrifying in a real-world sort of way.

Hellmouth - Brighton 

"Broken Summer" by Christopher Harman rounds out this collection in this story of a man who is either suffering from drug-induced hallucinations or is actually living a nightmare.

Wild Men of the Sea - Suffolk 

I understand that there is an entire series of these "terror tales" -- with this book, there are nine, I think, ranging from the Lake District up to the Scottish Highlands,  even going out into the ocean!  I'm so there, if this book is any indicator.  As I'm fond of saying, with every anthology of short stories, I can expect some that are excellent, some that are good, and some I don't think are so hot, but as a whole, Terror Tales of the Seaside is entertaining, definitely creepy, and one I can recommend. I'm also very happy to find new authors to read!  This one is really for fans who like their horror more in the cerebral zone; probably not something to read if you can't do without guts and gore.  Must buy more!