Funereal Plots

Horror Cinema reviews

Matthew M. Bartlett

Longlegs

Writer/Director: Oz Perkins

On paper, Longlegs is a fairly standard story: an FBI agent hunts an elusive serial killer who leaves cryptic clues. But this is Oz Perkins, who’s behind the eccentric movies I Am the Pretty Thing that Lives in the House (glacially paced, nearly ruined by idiosyncratic narration) and The Blackcoat’s Daughter (brilliant, if somewhat confusing).

In Longlegs, we meet FBI agent Lee Harker, seemingly timid, possibly psychic, the latter a plot point that the movie mystifyingly seems to drop. Harker is investigating a supposedly Manson-like killer who somehow persuades a father to murder his family and, without being present, leaves a cryptogram for the police to find. Moreover, each family has a daughter born on the 14^th of the month, the killings taking place shortly before or after that daughter’s birthday. This all, of course, has an occult meaning.

Oh, there are strange dolls with orbs in their heads, too.

The performances are first rate. Malika Monroe, who in real life exudes movie star glamour, is gaunt, tired-looking, mousy. Lee’s mother Ruth is played by Alicia Witt as spacey, strange, and secretive. But Nicolas Cage’s performance anchors the movie…maybe anchors isn’t the right word. It does the opposite—casts it adrift from the “thriller” category and sends it straight into deranged, disorienting horror. Even for Cage, this is a weird one. I have no adjectives for it. I almost wish he had appeared uncredited. I don’t think I would have recognized him. I think many wouldn’t have.

Despite the familiar beats that understandably draw comparisons to Silence of the Lambs, Longlegs strides straight into the dark realms of the Satanic and the supernatural. The assured direction, atmospheric cinematography, and sound design (some super-weird choices there) work in concert with Cage (who also produces) to provide a deeply disturbing movie experience. It’s hypnotic. It’s odd. It is, at times, as utterly terrifying as modern horror gets.

 

An Intimate Portrait of Grotesque Innocence

 
Sophie White – Where I End

Reviewed by Barry Lee Dejasu

Sophie White’s latest novel, Where I End, is probably going to be the most uncomfortable read you’ll pick up this year. Originally published in 2022 by Tramp Press, this year the novel finds a new home in Erewhon Books, an imprint of Kensington Books, which will help spread the attention, accolades, and hype that this Shirley Jackson Award-winning novel deserves.

Where I End is the narrative of a young woman living on an Irish coastal island, and the morosely isolated day to day life that she spends caring for her bedridden mother…whose unknown condition has left her a paralyzed, gaunt, haggard shell that does little more than utter creaking groans, eyes flicking back and forth. The narrator, who is eventually identified as Aoileann (“EEL-un”), along with her Móraí (Gaelic for “grandmother”) toil away at bathing, feeding, changing, and constantly repositioning the mother on her bed using home-made pulley systems and leather straps. It is the mother’s terribly vegitative state—coupled with the constant, angst-ridden care routines for her—that leaves her referred to throughout the book as “the bed-thing.” Elsewhere, the inbred inhabitants of the island are cruelly indifferent—and often just plain cruel—to Aoileann, and her father is away most of the time, leaving his mother and daughter to take care of what’s left of his unwell wife. So it is that Aoileann’s world becomes very quickly flipped over when she meets an artist from the mainland named Rachel and her six-month-old baby, who’s come to the island to help set up a museum being opened…and nothing will ever be the same for Aoileann.

You’d wish Aoileann was an unreliable narrator, because the story that she carries the reader through is so grim and uncomfortable that you’ll find yourself groaning and shifting around in your seat. There’s hardly anything in the way of violence or gore, which is why it doesn’t quite fit the bill of “body horror,” as some reviews and blurbs describe it. Aoileann’s narrative is less horrifying than it is unflinching, presented in such a matter of fact and intimate delivery that brings the grotesquerie even more tangibly, uncomfortably into your senses.

Mystery and disquiet can be found throughout this tale, such as how mother somehow frees herself from her bed at night, only to be discovered in her paralyzed state in different rooms or even outside, and the mysterious symbols scratched into the wooden floors, seemingly by her. But there’s also an overpowering sense of wonder, and of beauty, to the narrative, as Aoileann’s childlike naïveté and candor captures moments of gruesomeness and bliss within the same scope. Sophie White is an artist of the written word, and readers are putty in her hands.

In some ways, Where I End reads like a spin on Shirley Jackson’s seminal 1962 novel We Have Always Lived in the Castle, if written with the hallucinatory stylings of Joyce Carol Oates and Patrick McGrath. Worth noting, too, is how the book shares some similarities to Naben Ruthnum’s depressing and disturbing novella Helpmeet, which was released the same year, and which makes a darksome companion piece.

By turns tragic, grim, mysterious, and beautiful, Where I End is a tale that you’ll never forget—even though at times the things that Aoileann does and thinks will make you wish you could.

 

Funereal Plots

Horror Cinema reviews

Matthew M. Bartlett

Salem’s Lot

Writer/Director – Gary Dauberman

This straight-to-Max movie is the third adaptation of the masterful Stephen King novel that tells the story of a writer returning to his hometown to find it on the verge of being overrun with vampires. The first adaptation, for television, by Tobe Hooper, is a masterpiece of atmosphere, with great performances, memorable set pieces, and material shockingly adult-themed, for its time.

The second adaptation remains unseen by me.

I’ve seen the 2024 version referred to as the Cliff’s Notes version. That might be slightly unfair; any adaptation restricted to under two hours has to condense the story—but in this case it’s apt. The cuts are just egregious. It’s not simply plot and suspense that’s cut out or changed, the characters are all bloodless ciphers. Ben Mears (Lewis Pullman), the writer, is supposed to exude warmth, to be a kind of father figure for Mark Petrie, the horror-obsessed boy with whom he tackles the infestation. Instead, the actor is bland and unremarkable, as is his vacuously agreeable love interest, Susan Norton.

The vampires have CGI-red eye, Kurt Barlow, the main vampire, lacks the ghoulish effects of the Hooper version, and though I thought the character was a CGI creation, he was actually played by actor Alexander Ward. His human helper, Straker, is another character so expertly (and creepily) essayed by James Mason in the Hooper version, that the character here feels like an afterthought.

Also an afterthought in the movie is the Marsten House, centrally featured as a locus of evil in the book, here just another set. This iteration of Salem’s Lot is just a collection of missed opportunities. There’s not enough of the sense of a small town deteriorating—it’s all compressed; everything happens too fast. The only spark of invention is the location of the vampiric townsfolk, changed from the book and from earlier adaptations, and that’s a little too little, a little too late.

A lyric I heard somewhere leaps to mind: “Do it right or don’t do it at all.”

This shouldn’t have been done at all.

 

I Remember What I Forgot 

Again and Again 

by Sara Howe

Recounting the Death of Anthony Servante

 

Zuma Beach

 

 During Spring Break I mostly stayed at the hotel writing while the celebratory noise on the streets grew in volume as the day turned to night. I stared at the blog screen hoping to capture the festive mood of the holiday. But my mind was is neutral. More like parked. Or kaput. Then my thoughts turned to a few years ago. I was driving my VW back then. Giving Anthony rides to the seaside community of Santa Monica. He had meeting with various family members and friends of Norinko Hanasaki, the girl who had disappeared the year before I met Anthony. Or maybe it was the year before that. I don't remember too clearly. I do remember picking Anthony up in my VW Bug that night and driving to Santa Monica. Anthony was acting weird. Well, weirder than usual. He was quite eccentric when I first met him at the Starbucks where I worked as manager. Anthony always had the Vente Pike with almond milk and four small ice cubes. To cool it down, he always said. When I picked him up that night, I brought him a Vente and he set in down in the cup holder and ignored it. Anthony ignoring coffee. Weird. 

We drove until we met with Priest Bobue, Norinko's father, Torinko, And then we transferred to Bobue's VW bus. We turned off the 10 Freeway on Lincoln Avenue and found parking. I was told to remain in the bus and to move it if the cops tried to give a ticket. Anthony, Bobue, and Torinko jumped the fence and walked carefully down the hill leading to the mouth of the Santa Monica Freeway Tunnel, northside entrance. It seems like it was just minutes that went by when they entered and exited the tunnel. But the look on Bosue's and Anthony's face showed an ancient wear. Norinko was with them also. Torinko didn't come out. 

In a way I wish I had gone in with them. But in my heart I thanked God that I was ordered to wait by the bus.

When I dropped the Santa Monica group off, I helped Anthony into my VW Bug and drove the 10 Freeway homeward to the San Gabriel Valley. I had to escort Anthony to his doorway. I fished the house keys from his jacket pocket and opened the door for him. Before I could get him inside, he darted in and slammed the door behind him. I lay my hand on the door and hurried back to my car. It was around three in the morning. I'm not sure about the time. I was going by the foot traffic and the sparse number of businesses open (donut shops, 7-11s, gas stations). I don't even remember getting home.

What the hell happened? Who could I ask? Why wasn't the news media there to cover the event? A missing girl was found. Had they forgotten about her? The questions spun around in my head. Till I fell asleep at my desk. I wanted to write about the night's events, but my fatigue knocked me out. When I awoke early that morning as the sunlight hit my face from the window, I smelled the fresh coffee, bacon, and scrambled eggs. At the thought of food, I rushed to the bathroom and threw up. 

After the midnight trip to Santa Monica, Anthony threw himself into the blog. He sent me his first drafts, I edited them, and then he post them. Like clockwork. I was working as manager at the Starbucks in the mornings and going to Citrus College at night. I managed to make time in the late hours after homework for editing. I check the work for grammar, spelling, and typos. I didn't interfere with content, didn't even make suggestions. Because I really didn't read the work. I couldn't see the forest for the trees. I saw sentences, words, and letters. If they were in the right order, it was fine for me. However, it wasn't until a friend of my from the Starbucks who followed the blog asked me questions about the content of Anthony's latest work that I began to notice the subject matter of his articles. Trauma and Therapy. He was obsessed with them. He received emails from dozens of people who had (he believed) undergone some form of trauma. He posted these accounts of trauma without edits. He wanted the accounts to be exactly as written in the emails. In addition to these emails, he began to interview counselors, psychologists, and psychiatrists about common therapy practices for the types of trauma he was hearing about from the emailers. But little did I know that Anthony was subconsciously searching for the answers to his own trauma, the trauma he had suffered that night in Santa Monica. 

He wouldn't talk about it at first, but as he begin to find answers in his study of therapy. 

Then, someone sent him an email about his traumatic experience in the Santa Monica Freeway Tunnel. That's when Anthony returned to Santa Monica to meet with this person. He was about to face his own trauma, the trauma he had buried in the research of his blog. He lost himself in the trauma of others. Until the research led him back to the origin of his own trauma. But his trip to Santa Monica would awaken that suppressed nightmare. 

Anthony Servante died alone. His son oversaw the cremation. Officially there was no wake. Family and close friends were invited to the scattering of ashes into the morning waves of Zuma Beach, where Anthony spent much of his childhood. Starless by King Crimson was played as his ashes were dropped into the ocean foam. His son did not wish to attempt to toss the ashes since the morning wind common to the beach was kicking up sand and threatened to toss the ashes right back in our faces. Anthony would have got a kick out of that. 

But his story doesn't end there.

The story continues in Santa Monica, California. Just to be clear: Santa Monica lies between Venice and Malibu. Further north along the coast we find Zuma, Cabrillo, and Santa Barbara. Anthony knew all these beaches; he played pinball and chess on the Santa Monica Pier in the 80s. In Venice he followed the "Art" scene of the 70s. But Zuma was his favorite. It was his haven for midnight treks. 

So it wasn't surprising that Anthony took that late-night trip to help a friend. A friend he never met. But once. Her name is Norinko Hanasaki.

 Between Anthony's notes and my recollection of the Santa Monica events, pre and post, I believe I can compile a timeline that may clarify and maybe explain Anthony's sad demise. I've been putting this compilation for some time now, with the 2020 pandemic only helping me to procrastinate, but the time has come to lay out the story as best I can. But I need to be clear about this telling: This is not my story, and this is not Anthony's story. We are/were but bystanders to the history that unfolded before us. Ultimately, this is the story of Norinko Hanasaki, her family, and her friends, for they brought us into their story. 

Anthony and I are merely the storytellers.

Sunday, March 21, 2021

 

Now on Sale

Unthinkable Tales Volume 4

 

 

 When we are confronted by a horrific memory or a traumatic recollection, we trigger a defense mechanism: for some, we whistle, for others, we deny the experience. We find ways not to think about the fears we have buried deep in our mind. Unthinkable Tales bring these horrors to the surface. 

Here, your defense mechanisms will not protect you. 

Contributors include Dani Brown, Lorraine McLeod, and Devora Gray. Plus three new poets.

 

Why Not Will Ferrell?

1. The Request

Mordan sat in his car for a few minutes. He glanced at the folder on his passenger seat. He didn’t need to read the contents again. He already spent the morning with the doctors as they explained what kind of cancer he had and how the treatment would work. He held his grip on the steering wheel, hands on the ten and two o’clock positions. He wasn’t ready to start the car. He stared at the passing cars leaving the hospital parking lot. They probably had a flu or a bad cold, he thought. Not him—he had cancer.

With the best treatment available, Mordan would live long enough to plan for his own funeral. What a joke. What about with the worst treatment?! He knew the answer to his own rhetorical question. With the worst treatment, he’d already be dead.

Out of habit he opened the glove compartment. The gun was still there, locked and loaded, as they say. His cell phone played a chorus of Wheel in the Sky by Journey. Hair music for a guy who was losing his hair. He swiped the screen, entered the six-digit PIN, and said, Yeah?

“Got your call, Mordy. What’s up?” It was Claymen, the Dispatch, the Go-Between for targets and hits. The Front Man who received and distributed payment to the Seeks, the Button Boys, the Gentlemen.

Mordan was a Seek. Fifty years old going on negative prime.

“Thanks for the call back, Clay. I need a favor.” He waited for a response. Long seconds went by.

“Keep talking,” Claymen answered.

“You know all that blood I’ve been spitting up?” he asked

“Yeah, of course. We’re all concerned, especially the Upstairs Department.” He paused again.

“How’d they find out? I only told you.” He knew the answer, but needed to hear it anyway.

“You know I tell them everything. No ifs, ands or buts. Everything.” He sounded defensive, but Mordan knew he had to snitch. Part of the job.

“Anyway, that favor.” Another pause.

“Ask,’ Claymen said, somewhat contrite.

“I need to be put down, but professional-like. Quick and easy. What’ll it cost me?” Mordan took a deep breath and coughed up bloody phlegm into a couple paper napkins. He rolled the paper into a wad and tossed on top of the pile of bloody wads on the passenger side floor.

“What’d the doctors say?” Claymen asked with real concern.

“I think my request to you should answer that question.” Mordan gently snorted a laugh to triggering a cough.

“How long?” he asked.

“Months, with treatment, but I ain’t getting no treatment, so you do the math.” He snorted again.

Claymen took a deep breath, opened the phony leather cased journal on his desk, and regarded the first name on the list of four. He considered the time frame. Trial next Friday. That gives us six days. It’s possible.

“Your assignment will be delivered to you tonight, so be home. It’s a rat. Exterminate by next Wednesday. You’ve got four days. Nothing special. No message. Just the rub. Got it?” Claymen asked.

“Got it. Be home. No frills. Hit and run, right?” Mordan said.

“Right.” Claymen answered.

“And what about my thing? I don’t want an amateur doing it.” His voice sounded tired and worried.

“Quick and easy. Got you covered. Do this thing right. That’s all.” Claymen reassured him.

Mordant ended the call. He started the engine and headed home. Last question to pass through his mind, Why me, why not Will Ferrell?

2. The Assignment

The manila folder sat alone on the empty kitchen table of my sparse apartment. I ignored it as I pulled a beer from the six-pack ring holder and returned the rest to the fridge. Some old Chinese to-go food was festering mold in the containers. Should’ve grabbed a burger. I clicked open the beer and looked at the folder. For years, Claymen’s been trying to get me to use a computer for my assignments, and for years, I’ve turned him down. Old school. You can’t hack a folder. Job done, burn the paper trail. Easy peasy, asthma wheezy. I unfolded a chair that I stole from the local high school and joined the folder at the table. I chugged half the contents, belched, and set down the can. I flipped open the folder. The front page had a picture of a man in a nice suit, the photo paper-clipped to a data sheet: Name, address, family, business, hang-outs, car model, mistress. They always got a mistress, and it only helps me to know that in case I have to track the hit to her address, which is about fifty percent of the time. Usually, I find them at work. And that’s all I know. No reason why he must die. No how I should kill him, slow or quick. No message. No nothing. Just make sure he’s dead.

But, if I remember correctly, this guy was going to talk, to squeal, turn state’s evidence, whatever they call it. What did he know? Claymen don’t like such questions; however, in the state I’m in with death at my door and all, what’ll it hurt to ask myself that question. What’s he gonna blab about that’s so important that he’s gotta be gone and no more. Just like I’ll be soon. Stop thinking and start prepping. Wednesday’s child is full of woe. Tell me about it.

3. The Preparation

The lake at Belvedere Park was stocked with fish, fresh every month, for the fishermen. To the south the freeway was always crowded with traffic either headed to or from work around Downtown Los Angeles. To the north ran Brooklyn Avenue, the heartbeat of East Los Angeles. West and east didn’t matter in the big picture. The park breathed life into the community. Mordan grew up in the Big M Projects facing the lake, so he got to see the restocking of fish every month. His parents wondered why he was so fascinated with the park. While kids were celebrating the weekend in the playground or the community swimming pool, Mordan was watching people come and go from the park. If it cleared his mind to do so, thought his mother, so be it. It kept him out of trouble, although she wished he had friends who shared his solitude. She guessed it would be difficult to to alone with friends, she guffawed gently. His father tried to teach him to fish, but Mordan preferred to watch his father catch and release the fish. Mordan asked his father why they restock if people keep putting the fish back. “Because the fish get caught so many times, their lips get ripped off. The die and float to the surface. The restock men skim the dead fish with a net before they toss in the fresh load. Not all seems as it appears.” Mordan then asked, “Why don’t we eat the fish we catch?”

“These are not fish for eating. They are sport fish, for catching and releasing. It’s like a game.”

“Why do you release them then if they’re going to die? Don’t they suffer each time they get caught?” Mordan stared into his father’s face. “You should just kill them. It’s better for them, and it’s better for you.”

“How’s that?” his father asked curiously.

“You save them from suffering. You can give them a quick death. We can’t eat them, so their only purpose for being in the lake is to suffer.” Mordan watched his father’s hard features soften.

Suddenly, his line tightened. He had hooked a sizeable fish. He reeled it in and retrieved it in the net before it could tear itself off the hook and jump back into the water. He grabbed hold of the slippery fish with his calloused hand and showed it to Mordan. He then slammed the fish down on the concrete, killing it instantly. As his father smiled down on him, eleven year old Mordan grinned proudly.

Little did either of them notice at that moment the black mist that emerged from the gills of the dead fish.

It was night, the park was empty, so Mordan had the park all to himself. He had done all his preliminary work to prepare for the hit. Now it was time to watch the lake, to listen for the fish, jumping into the air to catch a moth or mosquito, and to consider the reward for his killing the rat. He thought back to that day he first saw the dark mist as it sprayed from the fish he had caught. He assumed it was poisonous and backed away, but the black bubbles floated over the water and slowly entered the tranquil lake, leaving soft ripples that died almost as soon as they formed. After that, Mordan killed fish after fish to recreate the mist. It took several tries, but it finally happened, and he began to understand the pattern. He opened his school backpack and took out a glass jar. As the mist formed, he quickly but gently placed the glass jar mouth-down over the fish as the gassy mass was released. Once it was in the jar, he slid the lid underneath the dead fish and sealed the jar fish and all.

The blackness swirled around looking for an exit, and then it tried reentering the fish but couldn’t. What are you? Mordan asked. Then the jar hummed, vibrated, and shattered. The black gas expanded and formed what looked like a baseball sized moon. His young curious hand wanted to touch it, but it darted away, over the lake, spun and dropped into the water. That’s when the lake water began to boil as dozen of the dark moons popped into the air. They were angry. Mordan ran home, leaving his backpack behind.

“Where’s your backpack?” his father asked.

“I must have left it at school. It should be in my locker,” Mordan lied.

“Dinner’s on the table,” his mother told him. “Microwave it if it’s cold.”

They were watching Family Feud. He went into the kitchen and ate cold chicken and mashed potatoes. He hoped his backpack would still be there in the morning. He’d have to get up extra early before heading to school.

Mordan the hitman waited patiently for his visitor. It arrived around midnight. He watched the speck of blackness rise from the lake and widen to the size of a vertical football. Inside the dark shape, there was nothing in itself or on the other side. The hitman walked around the floating void. No matter what side he was on, he couldn’t see through it. A few pathway lights were on, the moon was almost full, the headlights from the cars driving by the park were flashing by, but nothing penetrated the black football. Right on cue, the cops drove across the newly mowed grass and stopped their vehicle in the sand of the playlot, right next to the swings. Over the speaker, “Stand and raise your hands where we can see them.” He stood and showed his spread fingers in the direction the cop voice came from. Damn spotlight was blinding. He heard the sound of two car doors opening and saw the silhouettes of two armed cops, guns leveled at him.

“We got a call that there was a man with a gun firing into the lake. Would that be you?” the cop asked. Neither cop lowered their gun.

“I called you,” said Mordan. “I need the right bait.”

“Bait for what?”

“For some catch and release,” Mordan explained vaguely. “It’ll all be over soon.

Tenacles of black slime shot from the dark sphere and wrapped up the cops like Christmas packages. Then the darkness engulfed them both, swallowing them up like marshmallows. There was a humming in the air right before the packages were pulled into the lake. The water boiled and bubbled for about an hour. Mordan watched till the stillness on the lake broke as the two officers were tossed onto the concrete ground that surrounded the water. They were mangled but still breathing. He remembered finding his backpack all those years ago similarly ripped apart. He removed his gun from his holster and shot both cops in the head. He smiled as he once smiled to his father all those years ago.

He was ready now to do his job.

Coming soon

Part 4. Wednesday's Child

 

The Futility of Not Believing in Ghosts

Rhys Hughes

I once had an Iranian girlfriend who told me a strange story about what happened to her father in their garden in a very desirable part of Tehran. He saw a face peeping at him from among the flowers, a strange yellow face much larger than that of a person. He wasn't sure if the face was itself a type of gigantic flower. Then it laughed at him silently and rolled its eyes and the father felt chills spread all over him. He retreated to the inside of the house and it was a long time before he ventured into that garden again. We had been talking about ghosts, so I asked my girlfriend if the peculiar face among the flowers might also be a ghost.

“There are no such things as ghosts!” Anahita said with great emphasis. Then in response to my puzzled frown she added, “There are only genies who pretend to be ghosts.” She meant djinn, who aren't at all the way we in the West imagine genies to be, but are a separate class of beings unrelated to angels or humans. They are faster and stronger than people and few of them are left now. Those that remain have been offered another chance at salvation. What the one in the Tehran garden wanted can't be ascertained. Maybe it just wanted to create some mischief. For Anahita it was very important to differentiate it from a ghost.

As a Muslim, it was impossible for Anahita to accept that ghosts exist. A ghost is the disembodied soul of a once living man or woman. But in Islam there is simply no room on the Earth for such spirits. You die and the Angel of Death come for your soul and takes it away and won't return it until the Day of Judgment. Therefore if someone sees a ghost, or if you see one yourself, it can't be a ghost but something else. It must be an entity that only seems to be a ghost. If it looks, walks and talks like a duck then it's a duck, but this rule doesn't apply to ghosts. How about the ghost of a duck? Let's not get too clever for our boots. Ghosts don't exist in Islam, or rather the way they are defined is different, and this difference is essential to enable encounters with them to be accommodated within the strictures of the religion. It is the same problem faced by atheists or anyone else who doesn't believe that the souls of human beings are able to survive death, or who don't believe that souls exist at all, that they are illogical and an error of language. Yet ghosts continue to be seen. So alternative explanations must be found as to what they are. Hallucinations, mirages, electromagnetism, autosuggestion or misinterpretation of something real.

For it is futile not to believe in ghosts. I don't believe in them and yet I once had a ghostly encounter anyway. I was in a hotel bar with some friends. We had attended the wedding of a student we had been to university with. This was in Solihull, a town just outside Birmingham. There were four of us and apart from the barman we were the only customers in the place. Suddenly a table in the middle of the room, at least three metres from where we were standing, flipped itself over so that its legs were pointing at the ceiling like those of a frozen dead horse. The barman remarked very casually, “The ghost is early tonight,” and we all just nodded as if this was perfectly fine, as if his explanation made utter sense. It didn't feel odd, neither the event itself nor the barman's observation. It just felt normal, small talk. Later when we left the hotel, the four of us stopped and looked at each other. “Did that really happen?” The incident was already acquiring a dreamy aspect, as if it was something remembered from childhood rather than a very recent event. And now the barman's words hit us with delayed force and became in hindsight as fantastical as one would have expected them to have been inside the hotel bar.

This remains my most profound ghostly encounter despite its simplicity and often I have discussed it with those who are interested in such things. I developed a theory that I always knew was contrived and whimsical but which I offered as a serious idea anyway, just to gauge the reactions of others who had endured similar cases. Perhaps there are other universes, an almost infinite number of them, all in parallel, with the most adjacent ones being most similar to ours, differing perhaps in only one detail or so. This is not an original concept by any means, but I wondered if somehow the bar of that hotel was a place where two almost identical universes overlapped. While we believed we were in a bar in Solihull in our familiar universe, we were actually in a bar in Solihull in the universe next door, a universe absolutely the same as ours with one difference, namely that ghosts existed there, were normal and nothing to elicit surprise, which is why we had accepted everything so calmly, almost disinterestedly. The moment we left the hotel we were back in our own universe, where ghosts don't exist, and that's why we were now surprised.

This nonsense resonated with people and the unsettling feeling that maybe it was true nonsense, the worst kind, began to grip me. I was intrigued to discover that many people who'd also had ghostly experiences felt the same way at the time, blasé, aloof, very accepting of the manifestation. They were calm too until after the incident was over. Only then did they question the veracity of the phenomenon and their reaction to it, as we had done that day in Solihull. Of course others offered jocular solutions to the occurrence. We had come from a wedding and were standing at a bar. Clearly we were drunk! But I don't drink alcohol. Ah, then we were exaggerating for effect? Not in this instance, no we weren't. Might I have dreamed the whole thing but thought it was real? Yes, that's plausible, but that doesn't change the fact that so many people I spoke to also had a feeling of 'normality' when a supernatural event happened to them even if the events weren't really supernatural.

It is futile not to believe in ghosts. The real question is to ask instead what exactly are they? If they are not the spirits of dead people, they are phenomena of psychology or physics that remain untested. They are a problem that hasn't been solved, yet the probability is that one day they will be understood. Then atheists will be able to rest more easily. They already force themselves to rest more easily by dismissing ghosts as an irrelevance in the modern world, but the solving of this problem scientifically will be a blessing because it will remove the coercion they apply to themselves. All of us are human beings, emotional beasts, including atheists, and when a ghost appears we jump in fright and our hair stands on end. Even if we don't believe in ghosts, our goose pimples do. Our rational minds don't really have sufficient strength to enable us to act in tandem with our sceptical claims.

What is true for atheists in this regard is equally true for those who subscribe to a religion that forbids the definition of ghosts as the souls of the dead, and in fact most of the world's major religions dislike this definition. Yet we remain enamoured of the floaty spirit that has been released from the ties of sinews and the tubes of bones and the garb of flesh and we wonder what it would be like to be a ghost ourselves, and we tell ourselves secretly that one day maybe we'll find out, because whatever our faith or lack of it there seems to be a residual belief, almost never talked about, more of an ambivalent hope than a certainty, that after death we get a chance to be ghosts at least for a while. That we don't immediately ascend to paradise or descend to perdition or have our identities snuffed out. That there is a pending period in which we get to have some fun, to enjoy ourselves, to blow around in the breeze, to pass through walls and spook the people we knew in our lifetimes.

The incident in Solihull was my most remarkable ghostly experience but not the only one. The others were all sensations rather than sights, a feeling that something wasn't right about the places I was in. Those places were always remote and always locations I encountered on hiking trips. Perhaps tiredness had something to do with my extra sensitivity or maybe it merely muddled my mind a little. Sometimes the unsettling experienced happened in the daytime and sometimes at night. Often I might be looking for a spot to camp and after finding one would settle down. Then minutes later, or an hour later, or many hours later, I would be compelled to pack up again and move on, in a state of near panic. Near the rather isolated Pwlldu Beach in Gower, South Wales, I heard what sounded like a bell tolling under the sea. I later learned that I was camping in a place called Grave's End where on November 26th in the year 1760 a ship named The Caesar was wrecked on the rocks with the loss of ninety pressganged men locked in the hold.

The corpses of those unfortunates were buried in a gully that was filled with soil and a ring of limestone rocks was placed on top to mark the site. Unwittingly this is where I had chosen to bivouac. I had to leave and blunder my way through a wood that was pitch dark. Anything was preferable to remaining in that unwelcoming spot. That wood also has a reputation for ghosts and my panic compelled me to keep going until I reached the next beach along, where I slept soundly and happily. It really does appear that some geographical locations come with a good feeling, some with a bad one. This is indisputable. But surely there is a host of rational explanations for why this should be so? I have felt a malevolent presence in a number of areas during these hiking trips and now I avoid those places at night. I regard myself as a sceptical man, yet my actions appear to indicate otherwise.

If we consider the matter closely, it will became plain that the malevolent quality of the atmosphere of those haunted places is an argument against the idea that ghosts are the spirits of dead people. In the unforgettable words of the most famous of all ghost story writers, M.R. James, ghosts are “the angry dead” and yet how can anger be associated with any entity that lacks a body? Anger is an emotion and absolutely requires a physicality in which to exist. It is not that the body is a vessel for anger but that anger itself is a function of a body. Without a heart to beat faster, without lungs to breathe deeper, without blood to increase its pressure, without the glands to secrete adrenalin, how is anger practical? It simply isn't. The most that a disembodied soul can feel in this regard is a cold and indistinct intellectual disdain. There are no anger opportunities for the souls of dead people. And is true malevolence possible without the input of at least some anger? No, alas. It is equally futile to doubt the existence of ghosts and to believe we will become one.

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Three Ghosts in a Boat

Rhys Hughes

A friend was talking about ghost stories and why the Victorians were so good at them. It occurred to me that whether or not they were good at them back then is irrelevant, because they are certainly good at them now. Every story of any kind told by any Victorian has become a ghost story because all Victorians are dead.

Even a light comedy such as Three Men in a Boat is a ghost story in the present age because when we read it we are reading the words of a dead man. It may well have been a story told by a living man once, but now it’s a dead man’s story. A ghost story. In other words the content of the story might not be a ghost story, but the form of it is.

And yet we laugh when we read it. It appears that a story featuring ghosts written by a living person is spookier than a story featuring men written by a ghost. How strange!

If a dead man whispered words in your ear while you were lying in bed, you would be scared. But when you read a book in bed by an author who is no longer alive, you are reading the words of a dead man, and if the book is a comedy you aren’t scared. And yet in both instances a dead man is communicating with you.

In both instances the words of a dead man are going into your mind. It’s the same thing! So don’t laugh when reading Three Men in a Boat. Be scared instead! That book is a direct communication from a dead man to you! When we consider the matter objectively, Three Men in a Boat must be scary. Logic demands this.

So let’s take logic seriously and always be scared by it from now on. Because a dead man is communicating with us through it. That’s the very definition of a supernatural experience!

When funny incidents happen in the book, tremble with fright. That’s the correct reaction. Shiver with dread.

Because a GHOST is TELLING JOKES!!!!

Reprinted with permission from Rhys Hughes.

 

Arsenic and Old Lace Meets Hell House; 

or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Ghosts

Carissa Orlando – The September House

Reviewed by Barry Lee Dejasu

The past decade has seen some seriously unusual and imaginative takes on haunted house novels. Cassandra Khaw’s Nothing but Blackened Teeth, Jennifer McMahon’s The Invited, Grady Hendrix’s How to Sell a Haunted House, Jac Jemc’s The Grip of It—the list goes on, but there’s nothing repetitive or boring about them, because they’re all wholly original and unique from one another, reinventing one of the oldest tropes in horror fiction again and again. Thus it is that with her debut novel The September House, Carissa Orlando doesn’t just think outside of the proverbial box—she expertly pulls the box apart and reconstructs it in a shape of her own design.

Margaret, the protagonist, is living in her dream house, a big, beautiful Victorian out in the countryside that she and her husband Hal had purchased. Her daughter Katherine is grown up and living on her own, which was a blessing for her, because she didn’t have to experience the dark truth of the house—that it is in fact quite haunted, and in many more ways (and by more ghosts) than one.

Bleeding walls, screams throughout the night, a maid with a savage wound down the side of her face, a little boy with a mouth full of fangs, and so much more dwell within its walls—but it’s mainly in the month of September each year that they manifest. Imagine every haunted house trapping happening all at once—the madness of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House and Robert Marasco’s Burnt Offerings coupled with the frenzied violence of Richard Matheson’s Hell House—and you have some idea of what horrors occur in The September House, with one unusual touch: the hauntings aren’t the outright focus of the book. Instead, Margaret’s narrative focuses on how she’s come to accept the bad with the good, and to enjoy living in her beautiful dream house, at all costs. If she can handle a month’s worth of supernatural chaos once a year, the prize is of course her gorgeous dream home.

It’s against this backdrop that Margaret finds herself in a serious predicament: her husband Hal recently stepped out on her, which hints at marital tensions that are only gradually explained. However, Katherine becomes deeply concerned because her father seems to have gone missing—and she is singularly determined to find him…and she is coming to Margaret’s house to start her search. Oh, and did I mention that this is in early September? …Uh-oh!

If this sounds like the start of a comedy, in some ways it is. Although this book isn’t written solely for laughs, there are some genuinely funny moments that this scenario of inconvenience and the uncanny creates. Margaret’s on a constant mission to keep Katherine safe from the knowledge of her house’s dark nature at all costs, having to do everything she can to literally hide the horrors away. She scrubs blood from the walls daily, keeps certain rooms and their dismembered occupants closed and locked, and has to remind the attentive, kind, murdered maid to not move around dishes and other objects—all while her headstrong daughter is storming from room to room trying to determine what may have happened to Hal. In a lot of ways, this novel plays out a bit like the classic stage play (and Cary Grant-starring film) Arsenic and Old Lace, where the horror at hand is a household given, and it’s up to the protagonist to prevent others ranging from loved ones to law enforcement from learning about the grim details.

All this isn’t to say that this haunted house tale isn’t without its share of creepiness. The hauntings are uncanny and unnerving (especially the fanged little boy), and often the passing mentions of them make their presences even more disquieting. The moments of horror are plentiful, but usually fleeting, because for the majority of the book, Margaret is all but shoving them behind doors and sweeping them under carpets with the urgency of a screwball comedy.

A noteworthy aspect of the ghosts is that although they may come across as a rogue’s gallery of different kinds of hauntings (and perhaps they were brought into the story in that manner), Orlando very smartly links up their presences in an organic and cohesive way that makes it all make sense, instead of an everything-and-the-kitchen-sink mess that’s strictly all for show. What’s more…there’s also a deeper, darker horror at work in the basement, but fitting in with Margaret’s narrative of her efforts are focused on welcoming her daughter into her house, we don’t outright have much of an idea of what’s going on down there…and as with the best slow-burn horror tales, the revelation comes in good time, and for good reason.

Margaret’s plight may sound far-fetched, but a very earnest and sympathetic narrative keeps her character into a very real light. She genuinely loves her home and the time and effort and work she took to live there. The ghosts are worth all of their trouble—in fact, Margaret refers them as “pranksters,” and handles their presences with an almost matter-of-fact attitude. She has a good thing going for herself there, and even with her husband having left her, she’s determined to make the best of it. And while she’s so focused on keeping Katherine from knowing about the pranksters, it’s not solely as an effort to keep her home intact—she loves her daughter, and she wants her to not have to worry, even as the questions surrounding Hal’s disappearance begins to loom.

And while Katherine’s firecracker attitude at times can be grating and frustrating, it comes from a place of genuine concern. She doesn’t always (okay…usually doesn’t) have the best ways of processing and expressing her emotions, and as a result often comes across as temperamental and short-fused. Because the deeper into the whereabouts of her father she goes, the more frantic she becomes, and often to some volatile extents, but there are some genuinely touching moments between her and her mother that show that, like the rest of the book, hers is a story that is far from black-and-white.

While reading this book near the end of this past September, I found my overactive imagination piecing together certain plot points and imagining certain outcomes, and for a while, I became worried that the book was heading in a direction that I wasn’t going to enjoy. In fact, it got to the point that I was letting out annoyed groans and worrying that what had been such a solid read was taking a sharp turn toward a frustrating denouement. But while I of course won’t spoil anything, I’ll simply say that the way things turned out, I was most definitely not disappointed.

The tale of Margaret’s dream home and the struggles she faces to keep it is an unforgettable one, full of comedic scenarios and genuinely surprising turns. There’s horror, there’s humor, and there’s heart, all in equal amounts (and often all at once), making for a truly one-of-a-kind read. In a world of unusual haunted house novels, this one is as unusual from them as they are from their predecessors. The September House is a genuine and original treat for horror fans, and one that deserves to be read any month of the year.

 

Gothic Poems for October

Rhys Hughes

Here are four more poems from my work in progress, 77 Gothic Poems, a series of sombre, morbid and ghostly lyrics inspired mainly by the melodic visions of Edgar Allan Poe and to a lesser extent by the German Romantics of the late 18th Century. These poems contrive to be gloomy in spirit, even sometimes ghastly, but I hope they are musical too and will evoke nostalgia in the reader. Nostalgia for what? Not for haunted castles, blasted valleys and subterranean chambers, or for goblins, imps and vampires, but for that curious feeling that welled up inside us when we were younger (and rather more impressionable) after reading stories of phantoms and demons for the very first time.

The Skylight

On his back on the sagging bed

the poet in poverty

feels in his head the weight of the night

outside the skylight.

There are no frights worse

than the curse of his circumstances

and his situation

was created by his procrastination.

His epic is unfinished.

He is

like a line in that incomplete work,

burning with fever,

twisting continually out of the true,

pulsating, overdue,

a former believer grown cynical, a

fool with blue flesh

in an elongated pool of cold sweat.

The skylight watches him calmly,

as if he is

nothing more than a fading stain,

as if it really is

what it seems to be:

an eye with a universe for a brain.

Glass Maiden

She is made of glass,

a transparent truth, and yet

she was not born that way,

nor one unlucky day

was she transformed by her

own desire to shine

like cold fire in the setting sun.

Slowly her limbs paled

for no clear reason

and her thinning flesh

revealed her bones,

the femurs seeming

like stone clubs abandoned

behind a mystic window that

looks into a distant past:

our prehistory.

She moans constantly

but there is very little

anyone can do

for her: she should be framed

and silvered,

turned into a mirror

of her times, hung on the wall.

An appalling outcome

but the only practical one

when the parts

reflect less than the sum.

The Duel

Hermann buttons his frock coat

on a chill morning

before the sun has risen. Down

the twisting stairs

he goes, tiptoeing from his attic

room. It is snowing

outside.

But

he is bold.

As he slides on the icy cobbles

he manages a thin

smile: his duty is vile but utterly

necessary.

For the sake of honour

and decency: such things matter.

One might die

beneath a worse sky than clouds

full of snow. Who

is to say that he shall be the one

to lose everything?

Blood, life, every pinch of pain

and strife?

Hermann knows how to wield

a blade: he is not afraid

of anything now:

but how might he explain these

doubts that consume

his brain?

He suspects that the duel will be

a stain (not on his name

but on his soul). And courage is

perilously close to vanity.

The gravity

of the situation burns

his nerves like a complex

fuse with many knots.

His soul, mangled:

ruined whether he wins or loses.

But how?

He passes beyond the city’s

crumbling walls

that once held enthralled

a superstitious

population: his elation is

tempered by his

temper:

Which is cold, a controlled mood,

sanguine, fatalistic

within reasonable limits.

But what limits are reasonable? A

sharp grin appears

on his lips, as thin as his blade. He

shall wade through

the blood of his opponent,

no doubt.

In a woodland the glade waits,

moon drenched,

the snow aglow,

icicles shining on the branches

of dead trees:

blunt blades like clubs of silent

hate, and Hermann’s

fate flying in haste to meet him

at long last.

His opponent, already there:

they stare at each other,

twin brothers.

Hermann confronts himself,

a mirror image,

and to break a mirror rouses

a curse. He sighs

but first he bows low. Token

courtesies, then

the impossible

battle begins.

Inevitable,

astounding, eternal:

an infernal nocturnal struggle,

and whoever wins

must also lose: Hermann rues

the day, all days,

that he came away unscathed

but broken.

The Goblet

The goblet

in the hands of the

twisted hobgoblin, gripped

tight, will be drained

in three notorious gulps

high above

the gulfs of black eternity.

The wine that is spilled

will slick his chin

and allow the sinful curses

to slide with

blasphemous ease from his

unglamorous mouth.

Drunken demon, he laughs

on the bridge

that arches the fathomless

depths of the abyss

in its tortured span: he can

afford to be blasé:

his death means nothing

to anyone anyway.

Expendable ghoul, subhuman

and subterranean fool.

But the goblet will endure for

many appalling years.

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