'The Fifth Moon'

This is the final part of a running review of Lost Estates by Mark Valentine (Swan River Press 2024)

The final story in this splendidly produced volume is another deep drive into English folklore. A writer, accompanied by a photographer, goes to the region around the Wssh to research a book in a series on myths and legends. The topic he has chosen is the supposed loss of King John's treasure. 

Now, like many people, I was taught that John's baggage train was simply caught by the tide and he lost a lot of precious metal and jewels etc. But as the story unfolds we find that things were not that simple. For a start, there's only one source for the lost treasure story. And a different contemporary account takes a very different line. 

This novella allows the author to plunge into rival theories about not only John and his antics but the way in which the English - both scholar and commoner - have a proprietorial interest in myth and legend. The professional theories corrects the amateur, the writer probes inconsistencies, and people 'in the know' spin a web of misdirection. The fifth moon of the title is a clever reference to Shakespeare's maybe-tragedy about John. 

An obvious comparison is 'A Warning to the Curious', in which an earlier king's treasure is plundered only to bring disaster on its finder. Here the threat, while less clearly defined, is almost as effective. And there is a nice nod to M.R. James in the climactic scene.

So, let me round off my review by saying that Lost Estates is a fine collection of tales that explore the lesser-known byways of the bibliophile world. If you - like me - enjoy rummaging in bookshops you will share the pleasures of many Valentine characters. And if you have every wondered about the boundaries between strange tales and even stranger realities, you will enjoy exploring the author's frequently familiar yet often unsettling world. 

'The End of Alpha Street'

 

This is part of a running review of Lost Estates by Mark Valentine (Swan River Press 2024)

I used to count cats. Not all the time, you understand. Just in the morning when I walked to work. I had chosen to live just a short walk from the office - odd, I know, but then I am a strange chap. The point is that counting cats became a kind of ritual. The more moggies I saw on that walk, the better I felt the day would be. A no cat day would not be a good day. Six or seven, and we're cooking with gas. Or at least, that's how I remember it. 

'The End of Alpha Street' is Mark Valentine's take on this tendency we humans have to invent personal rituals out of whole cloth. Or, in my case, a variable number of whole cats. A cat features in the story, as it happens. The narrator befriends the feline and its owner in the eponymous cul-de-sac. And in a way the story is a cul-de-sac, as an exploration of personal rituals leads the narrator to an old man and a collection of apparently random items, all of which bear information. 

There is a whiff of Dunsany about this one, in terms of playfulness at least. It's almost a story that Jorkens might tell, only it does not pivot on any kind of twist or punchline. Instead it leaves us with questions. 

'Lost Estates'

This is part of a running review of Lost Estates by Mark Valentine (Swan River Press 2024)

The title story of the collection! And it begins in fine form. 'I was playing the trans-dimensional crumhorn when the man from the Treasury called.' As the plot develops, we learn about the unusual musical combo the narrator was once part of and the unusual link to the inventor of a perpetual motion machine. 

The group is reassembled in response to the man from the Treasury. The latter is in search of an 'estate' that is in fact something altogether stranger and more significant. A musical performance turns into a very unusual gig, The theme of disappearance - accidental or deliberate - is central again. Did the perpetual motion machine work, but in an altogether unexpected fashion?

A light story, this, but not a frivolous one. It reflects a not-uncommon ambition, to discover that our quirky little interest might have wider significance - that we are as important as the people we are told are important. 

'The Understanding of the Signs'

This is part of a running review of Lost Estates by Mark Valentine (Swan River Press 2024)

Many years ago I submitted a tale about pub signs to Ro Pardoe of Ghosts & Scholars and was delighted when it was published. The story is due to reappear next year in a G&S anthology. I only wish that, when I created my supernatural conspiracy theory around the symbolism of pub names, I had had a tithe of Mark Valentine's knowledge of the topic.

The central conceit of 'The Understanding of the Signs' is far more effective than mine. What if changing the name of an old tavern somehow unleashes some archetypical entity that dwells in that location? Could the Gray Horse and the Red Lion run amok? The climax of the story grants the protagonist a glimpse of a landscape shot through with mystical significance. He senses a 'baleful power' in the motion of 'shadow beasts', which does not bode well for modern Britain. 

And now so many pubs are closing down. If only one in a dozen is the domain of some ancient entity, what might not be unleashed upon us? 

'Readers of the Sands'

(This is part of a running review of Lost Estates by Mark Valentine (Swan River Press 2024)

There is something about sand. It gets between your toes, certainly, but it also gets into your imagination. It informs Algernon Blackwood's Egyptian novella 'Sand', Ramsey Campbell's Lovecraftian 'The Voice of the Beach', Stephen King's weird sci-fi 'Beachworld', and every other short story by J.G. Ballard. The granulated rock gets everywhere. 

Mark Valentine's take on the significance of sand is somewhat gentler than those examples, but nonetheless intriguing. An eccentric scholar - is there any other kind in a story? - invites three people to visit his seashore mansion. Each of the guests has a particular expertise that relates to the strangely patterned sands of that particular coastline. One is a veteran guide to the treacherous shore, the second practices divination by sand, the third makes sandglasses but also has a strange paranormal gift. Between them they explore the possible significance of the ephemeral patterns, and almost come a metaphysical cropper in the process.

This is a seaside tale that successfully evokes British beaches at their more mysterious and even menacing. The next time I am on the coast, I will seek out the shifting, rippling patterns. But cautiously.

'Laughter Ever After'

 

This is part of a running review of Lost Estates by Mark Valentine (Swan River Press 2024)

Two stories in this collection - 'The Seventh Card' and 'Maybe the Parakeet Was Correct', first appeared in ST so of course I rate them highly. Moving swiftly along we come to the next tale, whose premise might be baffling to some younger readers. Or is the song The Laughing Policeman still well known? Somehow I doubt it.

Humor being central to a tale of supernatural persecution is not common. The only story vaguely like this one that springs to mind is 'A Psychical Invasion', the first of Blackwood's John Silence tales. There are of course lots of stories - Wells' 'The Inexperienced Ghost', for instance - that are humourous, but that's another matter. 

Anyway, 'Laughter Ever After' sees a bibliophile (yes, another one!) going to a small provincial town in search of an obscure pamphlet containing a ghost story. The story, our collector knows, concerns a song written and made famous by Charles Penrose, a music hall performer. Penrose, we learn, followed up The Laughing Policeman with the Laughing Postman and other chortling characters. He was, it seems, the classic one-hit wonder who tried to repeat his success but found he didn't really have a winning formula.

This one blindsided me, as the ending manages to feel artistically right and at the same time raise just enough doubt as to what is going on. All in all, it's a piece that sticks in the mind, a clever take on the M.R. Jamesian idea of the scholar whose quest takes him way too close to the heart of a mystery. 

'The House of Flame'

This is part of a running review of Lost Estates by Mark Valentine (Swan River Press 2024)

The life and death of General Gordon is little known today. A typical Victorian hero - courageous, strange, and obsessive - Gordon's spiritual beliefs informed his many military exploits. He suppressed slavery in much of North Africa, led an 'Ever Victorious Army' that defeated the insanely destructive Taiping rebels in China, and then died in controversial circumstances at the hands of Mahdist rebels in the Sudan. 

And it is the death of Gordon that begins this unusual story, or perhaps meditation is a better word. A young man takes to his clergyman father the terrible news learned from newspaper vendors in a small Welsh town. Later, he discovers a small book that outlines Gordon's mystical ideas. The young man is the writer known as Arthur Machen, and his contemplation of Gordon's intellectual legacy informs his visionary approach to literature.

I found this story interesting, but as I have only read Machen's better known works I suspect that I missed out on some significant references. But, as stories about (non-fictional) writers go, this is a fine example of its kind. 

'Fortunes Told: Fresh Samphire'

This is part of a running review of Lost Estates by Mark Valentine (Swan River Press 2024)

Disappearances, Chesterton remarked, are harder to account for than manifestations. After all, the family ghost is merely keeping up appearances. In this story Mark Valentine interweaves two narratives, one of a chap called Crabbe, and the other of a friend who investigates (to the best of his ability) Crabbe's vanishing. 

This is Machen territory, to some extent, with emphasis on the mysteries of landscape and deep, strange folklore. Crabbe has undoubtedly left our world - but did he end up in a better place? We read of 'voices in the garden. Lord serpent and the moss boy, iridescent...' It is a world of wonders, but is it safe? Crabbe seems to be losing his sense of identity. But is it really a loss? Or the laying down of an all-too-human burden? 

In the end it is indeed the mystery that endures. The nameless friend resolves to follow the path Crabbe took, an apparently innocuous trail across an unremarkable part of England. We can be sure he will find something. Perhaps even the person he cares for. It is as much a story about friendship, of doing the best you can, as it is about other realms, other realities. 

I'm enjoying this collection. It is relaxing to read to good prose, to encounter interesting ideas. I am writing this on election night. I hope to wake up in a new realm tomorrow. 

'Worse Things Than Serpents'

 This is part of a running review of Lost Estates by Mark Valentine (Swan River Press 2024)

The title of this story comes from an innocent remark by a character in Thomas Hardy's first published novel. Hardy's reference is to a musical instrument. But in this tale, Mark Valentine's bibliophile narrator finds something far stranger. 

Anyone who has visited Hay-on-Wye knows that there are bookshops without shopkeepers, where you can leave money in an honesty box after taking some obscure paperback from a somewhat straggling array. In this tale the protagonist finds himself in an isolated shop full of books on one particular theme - the Brazen Serpent. I am sadly ignorant of the significance of this entity but significant it certainly is. 

The atmosphere is well evoked. Do I take something and leave the money? Do I leave a note of my address so I can pay later? The book hunter decided to do the latter, but then a sudden tempest arises, the lights fail, and he encounters strange, tactile sensations in the darkness. This M.R. Jamesian touch is neat, as is the later suggestion that leaving any form of document in such a place might be hazardous. 

A slight story, perhaps, built around a single incident, but a good one nonetheless. I look forward to the next tale from the Lost Estates.

'A Chess Game at Michaelmas'

This is part of a running review of Lost Estates by Mark Valentine (Swan River Press 2024)

Chess is a fascinating game at which I am very bad. Fortunately I have yet to inherit a country estate where the requirement of the lease is that I should be prepared to play chess with the King should he ever drop by at Michaelmas. This seems like a fictionalised version of one of those quirky English traditions that foreigners find charming. (A genuine tradition, the peppercorn rent, is explained by the author here.) 

As the story, unfolds, we discover that perhaps something altogether stranger and more hazardous than a quirky legal arrangement is involved. The narrator, a man of antiquarian pursuits, is called in to offer advice on the mysterious chess game, which has never actually been played. He meets both the heir to a pleasant if somewhat run-down house and lands, and a young woman with some knowledge of local folklore. 

LOST ESTATES by Mark Valentine (Swan River Press 2024)

I recently received a copy of this handsome volume (thank you very much to Swan River) and will offer my thoughts on the contents in a running review. In the meantime, consider the lovely cover. Two of the stories will be familiar to ST readers as they first appeared in the magazine.

Contents


“A Chess Game at Michaelmas”
“Worse Things Than Serpents”
“Fortunes Told: Fresh Samphire”
“The House of Flame”
“The Seventh Card”
“And maybe the parakeet was correct”
“Laughter Ever After”
“Readers of the Sands”
“The Understanding of the Signs”
“Lost Estates”
“The End of Alpha Street”
“The Fifth Moon”

“Sources”
“Acknowledgements”
“About the Author”

A slight change of plan...

 

I have revised the contents for the autumn issue, as I was very, very stupid. I originally included a story by Steve Rasnic Tem that is better suited to the winter issue. So I have swapped it out for a tale by ST newbie Roger Luckhurst. Apart from that bit of idiocy, all is well. Probably.

'Murder Considered As One of the Black Arts'

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

The final story in this fine anthology is a previously unpublished tale, it adopts a Machenesque approach, with an introduction that stresses the central MS is relatively recent. And yet it is the account of someone born in 1860. How can this be?

I suspect most readers will guess how. The memoir is the work of an Englishman who, raised in the Catholic tradition, went over to the 'dark side' by contemplating mysteries of sacrifice and demonic invocation. His life goes off the rails until, in 1888, he finds himself in the Whitechapel area of London, and a sudden impulse leads him to...

Well, I think we all know what. I don't think it's a major spoiler to say this is one in a venerable sub-genre of Jack the Ripper stories that involve the paranormal. Robert Bloch may have started it all, and many TV shows (including, rather surprisingly, the original series of Stark Trek) continued the tradition. The idea that the notorious serial killer was performing a series of bizarre rituals is attractive, in a way. And Ron Weighell makes a compelling case.

And so ends Spirits of the Dead, the work of one of the modern greats. It was a privilege to be asked to review this book. There is much that is lyrical and poetic here, a great deal of strange lore, and some excellent storytelling. 

'The Chapel of Infernal Devotion'

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

My opinion on the penultimate story in this collection has not changed since I first came across it 2015 in a collection of works inspired by Arthur Machen. So...

Ron Weighell's 'The Chapel of Infernal Devotion' is not just an erudite horror story but an extended essay on Machen's cultural significance. It follows a book collector who fails to secure a particular illustration at an auction. His researches reveal a link between the mysterious artist, who used the name Adam Midnight, and Machen. Midnight, whose real name was Philip Youlden, seems to have had a more than purely aesthetic interest in the occult. Our hero is inspired to try and find out more.

Thus begins an odyssey that takes the protagonist from the relatively comfortable world of book dealers to the strange house of Plas Gwyllion, where an elderly musician guards Youlden's bizarre and dangerous legacy. Along the way we encounter Sixties counter-culture and a sly reference to that noted Machen fan, H.P. Lovecraft. 'The White People' casts its spell, as does 'The Great God Pan'. There is more intense physicality in Weighell's approach to Machen's legacy, with the enduring theme of miscegenation between humans and other, older races.

And thus we near the end of this collection, and another previously unpublished story will round things off!

'Drebbel, Zander, and Zervan'

 

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

I always enjoy discovering new words - new to me that is - and this story begins with 'Grangerising'. 

This is apparently the 'addition of relevant but extraneous material' to books. In this case the narrator mentions that long-established practice of adding titles in the back of a book, or inserting them separately, to whet the appetite of the discerning reader. In this case, a collector whimsically sends off for a book that was advertised many years previously, using a ten bob note. Imagine his surprise when the book arrives. 

Naturally our nameless protagonist investigates, and this takes him to the eponymous bookshop of the title. Here he discovers a most unusual woman, and her late husband's strange discovery - a kind of magical time machine. 

The problems of time travel have to be explored, while the origins of the Timepiece, as it is dubbed, naturally lead to many mystical revelations. The story ends with the narrator, having inherited the mysterious mechanism, attempting to fathom its ultimate purpose. 

Time travel is of course the province of science fiction, but there are temporal twists in many ghost stories and weird tales. As it happens, I read Ron Weighell's intriguing story just after I had finished a modern Japanese tale of supernatural time travel. Coincidence? Perhaps...

'Under the Frenzy of the Fourteenth Moon'

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

The Celtic Twilight coincides - or at least overlaps - with the Golden Age of the ghost story and the emergence of modern horror fiction, i.e. that fascinating era incorporating the late 19th and early 20th century. W.B. Yeats was in may ways the mystical guiding star of the former movement, trend, whatever you call it. So it's no surprise to find Yeats - or at least his work and ideas - in this collection of weird tales by the erudite Ron Weighell. 

The story is straightforward. The narrator ventures to a remote area of Ireland to examine a collection of Yeatsiana, only to discover hitherto unknown writings. These include an ingenious device that seems to be some kind of mystical computer made - appropriately enough - of paper. There are also 'mystical utterances' by Yeats' English wife, Georgie, who was a spiritualist medium.

This literary treasure trove leads the narrator to decipher a baffling text and then, unwisely, to read the mystical phrase produced. He then has a vision of his own, followed by a dizzy spell. Strange dreams come, so vivid that your man can't tell the difference between the waking and sleeping world. 

Just as things seem hopeless, however, beauty makes a very Yeatsian appearance in the form of a lovely dream-woman who appears in the waking world. The possibility of enduring love is snatched away, however, leaving the narrator to wonder if it was all a cruel trick of the Fay. The story ends in speculation, with references to Blake and alchemy, as our lovelorn mystic concludes that the mystery woman was a siren of sorts.

More from this compelling collection soon, with another intriguing title loomng into view.

'The Tale Once Told'

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

Now here's a nasty little story, in the good sense of the term. Adrian and Catherine discover a hidden door in their newly-bought manor house. The door proves to be that of a closet, inside which is a painting of two people - apparently brother and sister. A diary is also retrieved and offers information about the rather odd looking former occupants. 

The couple decide to make the painting central to a Christmas party, which will require guests to don Victorian attire and play suitable party games. But, by the time the guests arrive, strange transformations have been wrought upon Adrian and Catherine. They are really not themselves at the party, where the games - though engaging - seem to lack a certain jollity.

This is another tale in which Ron Weighell seems to be channeling past masters, with a hint of Hugh Walpole and perhaps Blackwood on one of his bleaker days. Good fun, and a worthy addition to the sub-genre of Yuletide horrors. The second one in this volume, in fact...

More from this collection soon. I sense something Celtic and mystical heaving into view...

'The Mark of Andreas Germer'

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

The previous tale in this collection featured book burning, usually a monstrous act. But perhaps, as this story suggests, some books would be better destroyed? This brief tale concerns a disturbing volume that transforms a mild-mannered bookworm into something altogether more exotic and unpleasant. Fauns and satyrs feature in the book, and also in a dream that becomes a nightmare. Pan is truly the god of panic here - panic, and worse. 

Our bibliophile wakes to find his body naked and bruised, and his room in chaos. His discarded clothes are damp. Then comes a terrible revelation. Plotwise this is familiar stuff - the mysterious object that casts a spell on its possessor and compels him to commit heinous acts. But Weighell handles it well, giving it an authentic frisson of Decadence and a hint of the Silver Age of the ghost story i.e. the interwar period of Benson, Burrage, and Wakefield among others.

So, another enjoyable tale. And the title of the next offering is intriguing...

'The Invisible Worm'

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

I assumed from the title of this one that it would be Blakeian i.e. it's drawn from 'The Sick Rose'. And perhaps the story is, but not in ways I could have predicted. Because this time Ron Weighell takes us to Renaissance Italy and a period of history that saw an extraordinary flowering of scholarship. Unfortunately, it also saw something else - an outburst of censorship and anti-intellectualism that resonates all too uncomfortably with the modern West.

The story concerns Eleanora, a beautiful and accomplished young lady whose father - a true humanist - has ensured that she is as well educated and independent as any young gentleman. There is a long, sensuous description of classical statuary and texts as our heroine walks in her father's gardens. But then a fly in the ointment appears in form of a black-clad monk of distintinctly mean visage. Gradually it becomes apparent that we are in or near Florence in the days of Savonarola, and the Bonfire of the Vanities rounds off the tale.

In the square at Altichieri a mountain of beauty and wisdom was ablaze. And as the fire grew, fed on exquisitely wrought paint, wood, and the pages and bindings of precious books, it grew so fierce, so all-consuming, that Eleanora Corvino found herself wondering just how far the flames might spread.

I find myself wondering similar things whenever cynical politicians and media hacks stir up another moral panic. A relatively slight tale as to plot, 'The Invisible Worm' carries considerable weight nonetheless. Wherever they burn books, burning people becomes more probable. 

'Spirits of the Dead'

 

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

The title story of this collection has an epigraph from Poe and turns out to be a homage to the man and his work. It is the early Seventies and the unnamed narrator finds himself benighted and caught in a thunderstorm in upstate New York. He seeks refuge in a splendid house that, rather oddly, is unlocked but also apparently untenanted. This is a nod to 'The Oval Portrait', the first of several Poe tales that our man experiences in a kind of reverie. 

It's a short, relatively slight tale that packs a lot of imagery into a simple plot. There are ravens, of course, plus the suite of rooms from Prospero's castle and a catacomb featuring a particular Latin motto. The denouement is not surprising, but does satisfy. This one made me want to reread Poe for the first time in years. It's also interesting to see how Ron Weighell puts his own creative stamp on ideas and imagery that have inspired so many authors. 

I'll have more opinions on this collection very soon. 

'The Palace of Force and Fire'

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

"So many, I had not thought that Dreamtours Holiday Company had undone so many."

This third story from the latest (and last?) collection of Ron Weighell's stories is a hallucinatory tour de force. A man only described as the Tour Guide struggles with a major drink problem while conducting a group of sightseers around historic Sicily. 

The beauty and strangeness of the various temples is well evoked. You get the feeling the author didn't just do a package tour but immersed himself in all things classical. There are a few acerbic comments about Brits abroad, but most of the tale involves the unpeeling of arcane truths about the Guide. He has, it seems, a background in esoteric research, but ventured too far into certain areas of scholarship and has paid the price. 

The Tour Guide sees the world around him as a kind of hellscape, inhabited by ghosts, demons, and less definable entities. His drinking, combined with the horrors he experiences, means that he experiences the world as an unholy chaos. He survives, barely, until a mysterious American tourist, Dollarton, turns up and offers to play a series of games. For all his down-home amiability, Dollarton's agenda is a sinister one that our nameless protagonist can't escape. 

Not an easy read, this story, but the intense prose suits the premise and it lives up to its remarkable title. 

'Older than Christmas'

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

The second story in this collection features an amiable but rather solitary clergyman preparing to celebrate Christmas on his tod. The young, enthusiastic vicar has not won over the locals in a rather isolated rural community. He has received no invitations for the festive season, nor has he had the courage to issue any. And so our man prepares for a solitary evening on December 24th. Until there is a knock at the door...

The priest first suspects that his unexpected callers are a bunch of carol singers, but he soon realises his mistake. They in fact appear to be a group of bedraggled homeless people. But what an odd, mismatched group they seem to be. An old man, a woman, a pretty girl, and a dwarfish individual grasping a life-sized doll - what might they want? 

As with the previous story, Weighell's deep knowledge of folklore and religious history is evident here. The title is a clue as what the visitors signify, and what they worship. Suffice to say our protagonist does not grasp the implications of it all until things have done too far.

This is a good, pithy tale that packs a lot of imagery and atmosphere into relatively few pages. Onward to the third story!

'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! 

SPIRITS OF THE DEAD by Ron Weighell (Sarob 2024)

 

'The stories: “The Malleus Bone” “Older than Christmas*” “The Palace of Force and Fire” “Spirits of the Dead” “The Invisible Worm” “The Mark of Andreas Germer” “The Tale Once Told*” “Under the Frenzy of the Fourteenth Moon” “Drebbel, Zander and Zervan” “The Chapel of Infernal Devotion” and “On Murder Considered as One of the Black Arts*”. With an extensive introduction by Mark Valentine.
*Previously unpublished and original to this collection.'

I have received a review copy of this book and will start a running review shortly.

Find out more at Sarob Press.

Supernatural Tales 56 - contents

The next issue - due out in the autumn - will see a mixture of familiar names and some newbies. I hope, as always, that the stories find favour with the eager masses!

Contents (not necessarily in this order, however):

'The Night Visitor' by Steve Rasnic Tem

'Violet' by Rosanne Rabinowitz

'A Day Like No Other' by Sam Dawson

'Corpsed' by Matthew G. Rees

'The Haunting of Ian Bland' by Lisa Pritchard

'Hell Is' by James Everington

'Braunhofer's Coaches' by Martin Ruf, translated by Louis Marvick

Provisional cover, art by Sam Dawson.

Helpmeet - a brief review

Codex Nyarlathotep

I've been a bit slow off the mark with my reviews this year, for various reasons. But I must mention the latest poetry pamphlet from Cardinal Cox, one of the most interesting writers on weird fiction we have. Instead of producing short stories or essays, this poet creates small, inexpensive pamphlets containing plenty of erudite notes as well as his often inspired verisyfing. 

I've always liked Nyarlathotep, and this small collection does the mysterious geezer proud. Here we find the Starry Wisdom Cult, the obsequies of Queen Nitocris, and an interesting sidelight on witchcraft. The latter is particularly good. Couched as an interrogation of a woman who has 'no sins to confess', it begins with the usual turning of the screw. But then, hilariously, the woman implicates almost all of the solid citizens who accused her in the first place. Was Nyarlathotep the Black Man of the woods? Suffice to say it's convincing. Even the bit about her changing into a hare.

What I like best about Cox's work is the way he confabulates real scholarship with fiction, both is own and others'. The origins of the cult, the influence it wielded, the authentic feel of ancient and very strange Egypt - immensely enjoyable stuff. And Cox's versatility shines in such pies as 'The Stele of Nephren-Ka', which reads like a straight translation from a learned journal. Also impressive is 'Rex Mundi':

And the Earth is like unto an apple (such as offered by Eve to Adam) and at the core there is but one seed. And this seed is the Faceless Pharaoh, crowned like unto a statue such as might be found in the hot desert...

Anything idea, no matter how bonkers, that eventually takes us to the hollow earth is fine by me.

As always, you can obtain a copy of Codex Nyarlathotep from Cardinal Cox by sending an SAE to:

58 Pennington

Orton Goldhay

Peterborough

PE2 5 RB

Yet Another Triumph for Glorious Regime of Supernatural Tales - All Citizens Must Engage in Spontaneous Demonstrations of Joyfulness

Helen Grant's Christmas and distinctly Icelandic folk horror story 'Nábrók' from issue 56 has been selected by Ellen Datlow for her long-running and prestigious anthology The Best Horror of the Year. Well done, Helen! An accolade truly deserved and not the first, I feel sure. 

Here is the full table of contents:

'Schalken the Painter' by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

A reading by yours truly of one of the all-time classics. I hope you enjoy it! 

I'm told my voice sends people to sleep so maybe try it at bedtime. 

ATARASHII GAKKO! - HANAKO (Official Music Video)

'Hanako of the Toilet' is a famous Japanese urban myth of a girl ghost that haunts... well, you can work it out for yourself. 

(I think the red armbands indicate that they are prefects, btw.)

Supernatural Tales 55 is now available to order in print form

 

New stories by Mark Falkin, Carole Tyrrell, Cliff McNish, Tom Johnstone, Reggie Chamberlain-King, and Timothy Granville

Cover art by Sam Dawson

Go here to order from Lulu.com

LET YOUR HINGED JAW DO THE TALKING by Tom Johnstone (Alchemy Press)

ST 55 features a tale by Brighton's finest purveyor of contemporary horror, Tom Johnstone. And it just so happens that Alchemy Press is about to issue a new edition of a cracking collection of stories by the selfsame chap. It seems only reassonable, therefore, to offer readers of this blog (hello Derek!) the rundown on this fine tome. (NB I received a pdf copy from the author.)

The title story focuses on that horror-friendly form of entertainment, ventriloquism. Anyone who has seen Dead of Night knows the potential in 'the voice from the belly', and the creation of an alternate personality attached to a doll. In this story, the narrator is haunted by the first vent act she saw:

'The manikin sat on the man’s knee, like a child, but its dapper tweed jacket and silk cravat and barbed insults suggested an urbane man-about-town. If this was a child it was a creepily precocious one...'

There's more to it than creepiness, of course. The narrator's father is an apparently normal businessman but his warehouse conceals a horrific secret. This revelation is neatly handled, with just enough ambiguity to give it an old-school feel, while the overall tone is modern to the point of grittiness.

ST 55 - Opening 6

Fathoming the Pyramid

Timothy Granville

Robin raised his eyes to the encrusted ceiling. In the gloom it took him half a second to realise what he was staring at.

“Bit OTT?” asked Georgie.

“I like it. I think.”

“Good. I think I like it too.”

They were standing at one end of a small room with a red and white chessboard floor. The light filtering through the narrow windows overhead revealed the walls and domed ceiling were covered in shells, masses of bivalves foaming around huge conches and cones.

“It could be awful, couldn’t it?” said Georgie. “Like some monstrous suburban garden feature. But actually…”

ST 55 - Opening 5

The Invisible Boy

Reggie Chamberlain-King

They’re playing The Invisible Boy again. It’s obvious from their keen attention. They’re too quiet. They’re not listening to me, but for the tell-tale noise that will give him away: a scuff, a shuffle, a sneeze... a sneeze would do for him. I can see it in their bastarding little faces, their eyes fixed on me as though they’re listening, but their ears are cocked, alert to something else... a pin drops. I could follow the twitch of Quinn’s red, flexed lobe or the subtle twist of McKiernan’s neck and I could sniff out The Invisible Boy. But I don’t.

ST55 - Opening 4

The Lord is my Shepherd

Tom Johnstone

‘CARNIVOROUS’. That was all it said. At the time, Sarah Dyson didn’t connect it with the Grey Lady or the River Wellsbourne. Just now, her preoccupations were more mundane: finding some way of removing the graffito from the sign outside the church near Preston Manor. The gardeners would have a solution for removing it. There was one of them who was always flirting with her. Bernard, his name was. Once, he complimented the coat that matched her orange-red lipstick. He wasn’t the only one. Her manager Geoff had the tiresome habit of saying, “You look like vermilion dollars,” in a mock-gumshoe voice, whenever she wore it.

ST 55 - Opening 3

Mrs Crace

Cliff McNish

In Memoriam: Robert Aickman

“When a garden flower is crushed it cannot simply be put back together; why do you never grasp such matters?”

Such was Father’s typically irritated response to a minor breakage by his own small, motherless children. Gilly and I learned to make a show of listening attentively whenever Father lectured us. He was very much a man to enlarge upon our innocent faults during this period.

“Can you repair the stem, mm? Will the tulip’s stamen miraculously return to life?”

“No, Father.” Our faces duly bowed.

This was during the worst of the austerity era following the war, 1946–47. Scarcity was a watchword everywhere, even in a well-to-do family such as ours with its own servants and grounds.

ST 55 - Opening 2

Porcupines

Carole Tyrrell 

I needed a pen and stationery cupboards aren’t what they used to be. First day as Head of Finance and Brewsters wanted figures quickly. But the laptop wasn’t ready yet according to IT. So, I had to enter the sarcophagus-like silence of Head Office. I collected a temporary ID at the front desk from a security guard and took the lift to the fifth floor. The lift doors automatically opened and ahead of me were two double doors. A sign attached to the wall beside one of them helpfully announced that this was the Finance Department. I pushed one of the doors open and emerged into a room devoid of life. Instead, it was tenanted by desks, chairs, coat stands and on top of a low filing cabinet was a dusty coffee machine surrounded by a cluster of ill-assorted mugs. But no people, just flashing lights indicating long unanswered voicemails on the desk phones.

ST 55 - Opening 1

The Rock Statue

Mark Falkin

“What does any individual, terrestrial life or death matter when seen from a galactic perspective? Yet, we still throb.” —Marilyn Nelson

On the way there, they each notice the hawks perched on the expressway lights. Sabrina thinks they look like finials. She wrist-drives as she talks to her mother loudly on hands-free. Morgan is at ten and two listening to an audiobook with an annoying narrator. Janice steers with her right hand low on the wheel, left hand out the window ruddering her car’s wake. Karen grips the steering wheel’s middle bar and listens to NPR. War in Eastern Europe. The latest virus variant making its move across oceans. The signal is lost once beyond the exurbs.

Read an AI generated ghost story

I gave MS Copilot the following prompt, which is not complex and you can see where problems arose..

Please write a ghost story in the style of M.R. James set in Edwardian England at Cambridge University. It should be 3,000 words long and feature a mysterious book with a Latin title, a professor in his mid-forties who wears glasses, and a young woman reporter. The book tells how to contact spirits of the dead. The professor wants to use it to discover buried treasure somewhere in the grounds of the university.

The Book of Shadows

Professor Arthur Langdon was a respected scholar of ancient languages and literature at Cambridge University. He had a passion for collecting rare and obscure books, especially those related to the occult and the supernatural. He had amassed a large library of such volumes in his office at the university, where he spent most of his time studying and translating them.

One day, he received a letter from a colleague in Italy, who claimed to have found a remarkable book in an old monastery. The book was written in Latin, but with a strange and unfamiliar script. The title was "Liber Umbrarum", or "The Book of Shadows". The colleague said that the book contained secrets of contacting the spirits of the dead, and that he had managed to decipher some of the rituals and spells. He also said that the book hinted at a hidden treasure buried somewhere in the grounds of Cambridge University, and that he was willing to share the information with Langdon, if he agreed to help him with the translation and the exploration.

'The Crucifix'

The penultimate story in Peter Bell's new Hauntings, 'Portrait', was first published in Supernatural Tales back in 2014 as '|The Refurbishment'. It seems an eternity ago, and I hardly need to add that my opinion of the story is at least as high as it was when I accepted it. So, moving along, we come to the final tale. And we also come full circle, as we began in The Cairngorms with 'The Bothy' and now we head north of the border again. On which note:

'Pamela was sure there was more to Scotland, a wilderness to experience.'

Perfectly valid in context, but not ideal from a tourist information viewpoint. 

'The Crucifix' is superficially quite simple as to plot. Pamela, an unscrupulous book dealer, finds herself out of work and takes a job in Scotland, cataloguing a country house library on a behalf of a widow who just wants to sell her late husband's books'. (As a minor aside, isn't it surprising that - in all those Lovecraftian knock-offs - nobody ever seems to consider how staggeringly rich they could become by simply selling the Necronomicon and all those other arcane volumes?) The family were hardcore Covenanters who killed 'witches' and Catholics with grim enthusiasm. Pamela happens to be wearing a crucifix bequeathed by her grandmother, but takes trouble to hide it.

Things go quite well, not least when Pamela discovers that the late laird's collection includes some immensely rare and valuable items. This is a story that only a true bibliophile could have written, especially the scene in which Pamela discovers and immensely rare copy of Dracula. In some old-fashioned ghost stories, Pamela might take a hint and play it straight, just brushing up against terror before doing the right thing. Here, however, greed takes charge and our anti-heroine finds herself facing a judgement on her morals that, while harsh, is not entirely unwarranted. 

And so we reach the end of Hauntings by Peter Bell. I think this is the author's best collection, harking back to the classics and paying homage to the greats of the field, but offering much that is new and interesting. This volume is a worthy addition to any library, haunted or otherwise.

'The Swing'

The next story in Peter Bell's new collection, Hauntings, is in fact 'The Tunnel'. But that story first appeared in Supernatural Tales (issue 17, many years ago) so I hardly need to add that I found it more than acceptable. I'll move on, therefore, to a short tale that first appeared in the second Brian Showers anthology in his Uncertainties series.

As you might expect, this is a tale that offers the reader a choice - how much to believe? The time is that unspecified period a few decades ago, with the 'slight haze of distance' recommended by Dr. James. A group of boys are hanging out at a friend's house and the topic of conversation turns to ghosts. A claim is made - Mr. O'Neill across the road has a picture of a ghost. The photograph is obtained, and proves to be disturbing - it has a 'hideous impression of authenticity' (a phrase I thought was plucked from 'Pickman's Model', but I was wrong). 

The photograph subsequently attracts the attention of a mysterious, patrician-looking visitor, and is taken who knows where? The boys grow up, and eventually, the narrator receives news of Mr. O'Neill's death. The man's son explains the possible origin of the phantom captured by his father's camera. Then a story in a tabloid newspaper revives memories of the photograph. Is it a coincidence that so similar a fate befell someone else decades later, and at the same spot? 

While a relatively slight tale this one impressed me. I have always found ghost/spirit photography fascinating, along with the idea of events recurring for arcane reasons. Some places are arguably cursed, haunted, or otherwise rendered uncanny. And, as the author makes clear, such spots are as likely to be found in a run-down housing estate as in a ruined abbey.

The review continues tomorrow.

'The Curator of Souls'

 

A middle-aged academic falls for a student twenty years his junior. Dr. Slade is unwise but infatuated. Laura is beautiful, erudite, and mysterious. She vanishes periodically, refusing to say where she has been but sending Slade postcards that sometimes bear enigmatic messages. Eventually, after introducing Slade to many and varied erotic experiences, Laura takes her lover to meet another professor, whose studies mirror certain episodes in the writings of Edgar Allan Poe.

This story bears an epigraph from 'The Oval Portrait', but Laura is very reminiscent of Ligeia and Morella. Peter Bell successfully creates a convincing affair that hints at self-destructive tendencies on Slade's part. The finale delivers the goods, as intellectual playfulness gives way to bizarre - one might say grotesque - discoveries. This is another fine tale from Hauntings, which captures some of the Romantic weirdness of Poe while remaining firmly grounded in English horror tropes, particularly the idea of horror revealed within a sleepy cathedral city.

Another one tomorrow - so far, no duds!

Next issue - cover and contents

 

'The Cry of the Curlew'

 'Anxiety is never a good counsellor'. 

In this story from Peter Bell's Hauntings a retired teacher returns to her deceased aunt's house in rural Aberdeenshire to find things changed. Fiona's girlhood memories are a mixture of the idyllic and the disturbing. Devoting her time to studying earth mysteries and related matters, Fiona sets out to investigate the area with an adult, informed eye. Instead, she gets lost in one of the vast conifer plantations that were created after the notorious Clearances, and stumbles upon some ruins that arouse feelings of unease.

This is a relatively gentle tale, but one that lingers in the mind. The curlew's cry, held to be ominous by some, is a kind of leitmotif running through the story. The truth that emerges after the visit of a respected professor is a sadly familiar tale of working-class folk victimised by callous landowners. Not exactly a ghost story, then, more an account of a haunted landscape. The beauty of the rural skies stands in contrast to the bleakness of glens set aside for rich men to shoot game. But then, the story is loaded with powerful imagery, not least the scene in which Fiona gets lost in the woods and suffers near panic. 

More from this running review tomorrow. So far I am enjoying Hauntings, as you may have guessed!

'Ragnarok'

This story from Peter Bell's new collection Hauntings (Sarob Press 2023) jogged my memory. The protagonist ventures to another one of those remote rural churches, this one containing a remarkable hybrid monument to Christianity and Norse mythology. I think I visited the same church with Peter during an excursion arranged by A Ghostly Company. And the cross in question is fascinating, with Odin and other Scandinavian hairy types getting equal billing to Jesus and his entourage. 

The idea of a 'blended family' of deities is here taken a little further, though. The cross is decorated not merely by Norse deities but entities that recall our old pal Howard Philips Lovecraft and his school. The stained glass in the church confirms that something distinctly odd is going on. But the true horror occurs when the protagonist explores the nearby countryside and encounters the most disturbing manure heap in contemporary fiction. I kid you not. 

This is a fun story, a pick-and-mix combination of M.R. Jamesian tropes with Lovecraftian monstrosity. I suspect the author had a lot of fun writing this, and I certainly enjoyed reading it. More tomorrow in this running review.  

'The Reunion'

The third story in Peter Bell's Hauntings strikes a remarkable contrast to its predecessors. A book dealer exploring the former East Germany for rare finds instead discovers a deeply personal horror. An earlier version of this story appeared in Delicate Toxins from Side Real Press, and as you might expect if you know that publisher, it is tinged with decadence. Here we find absinthe, seduction, hallucinatory moments, and many an obscure volume emphatically not for sale.

But this is also a tale of personal tragedy, the way one incident can hollow out a person's life, leaving them a kind of human-shaped shell going through the motions of existence. The protagonist, a widower called Julian, first ventured into East Germany not long after the Wall came down. His small daughter vanished, inexplicably, in one of those trivial moments of inattention all parents know. Cue the intrusive and unhelpful media interest and the horrifying realisation that the child could not be found.

Years later, Julian returns to Saxony for an auction that proves disappointing, then gets lost and low on petrol. He finds refuge at what appears to be a kind of time-warped brothel with an aged madame, a remarkable library, and some even more remarkable girls who watch Julian 'like cats about to pounce'. One, in particular, reminds him of his lost daughter. The original horror of loss is multiplied by a dark denouement. 

The writing in this one surprised me. While still recognisably Bell's, it is far more intense, with poetic passages. 'Monstrous clouds were reaching to the apex of the sky, a bloody canyon rending the tumultuous heavens; crimson, scarlet, vermilion (...) The gloom became intense. But it was not the outside he dreaded, but the darkness within himself.' 

An excellent tale, which nods to Lovecraft, Ewers, and perhaps Jean Lorrain as much as Dr. James and his disciples. I wonder what haunted domain I will be exploring next? Stay tuned for more of this running review.

'Rounding the Stone'

The second story in Hauntings by Peter Bell is an old-school and very enjoyable ghost story that namechecks M.R. James. You know something bad is going to happen to the protagonist when he dismisses MRJ's fiction while praising his scholarship. The story has a near-contemporary setting, with lockdowns and masking referenced. But it's not concern over the virus that leads to resentment from the locals when our narrator sets out to find an obscure chapel in the Welsh borders. 

This is a nicely balanced story, redolent of many a classic tale, and rounded off by scholarly references. It leaves just enough unexplained while linking the latest pandemic with earlier plagues, and stressing how Christian tradition sometimes dovetails with earlier beliefs. As always, Bell evokes that spirit of place so essential to the Jamesian tale.

Tune in tomorrow for my opinion of the third story!