'The Malleus Bone'

This is a running review of the book Spirits of the Dead. Find out more here.

The late Ron Weighell's collection The White Road remains one of the classics of modern British weird fiction. Sarob Press have now produced a handsome volume of tales that underline just how great a talent we lost when the author passed away in 2020. 

The new (and possibly last) collection of the late Ron Weighell's stories hits the ground running with an excellent ghost story. There is a distinct touch of M.R. James in the way a very ordinary and nice married couple encounter the supernatural. A middle-aged man is told by his wife to dress nicely because they have guests. He finds his belt needs a new hole if he's to wear those new trousers. From this, much follows. 

Weighell's strengths are to the fore here, particularly his erudition. There is black humour aplenty as a modern, liberal-minded man finds himself possessed by the crazed attitudes of a seventeenth-century witchfinder. Gradually the protagonist's life starts to unravel, The archaic language of a Bible-thumping bigot is effectively rendered as the inner - and sometimes outer - voice of a man convinced he is going insane. A rational explanation is offered but in the end the irrational truth asserts itself in the most disturbing way possible.

An excellent story, then. Let us see what the next tale has to offer!