'Feeding the Peat' by Claire Dean - Running Review of Uncertainties IV

And so we reach the end. This excellent anthology has, for me, illustrated yet again the broad range of Gothic fiction, and more than hints at a genre revival in this century far more impressive than anything in the last. Perhaps this is because, like the Victorian era, ours is one of uncertain peace, irrational fads, scientific progress, and deeply unstable societies that are mirrored in confused personal identities and relationships. And people still like spooky stuff a lot. 

'Feeding the Peat' is very close to all those folk horror tales that appeared on our TV screens in the Seventies (if you're British). I'm thinking of 'Robin Redbreast', Nigel Kneale's 'Baby', 'Children of the Stones', and of course the near-legendary 'Penda's Fen'. Claire Dean's story sees Kath, single mother of two fractious children, go to her great-aunt's house to clear the place out, as the old lady has to go into a home. Feeding the peat is an old tradition - it involves milk - and the children become oddly fixated on it. The locals are unfriendly, and a visit to the confused old lady in hospital hints at something dark in her youth. Then Kath discovers something hidden between the fridge and the kitchen wall...

This is a clever story that skirts the boundary between the supernatural and psychological realism, never quite letting the reader be sure where it lies. The same can be said of most of the tales in Uncertainties IV, and it's a tribute to editor Timothy J. Jarvis that he has managed to offer readers such variety, and maintain a consistently high standard.