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.

'Coffin Dodger' draws on the author's expertise as a gardener, with its ex-cop protagonist reduced (or advanced?) to mowing grass in a graveyard. There's a surprise in store when a child's grave appears bearing a familiar name - one that the man used when assuming a false identity to infiltrate a protest group. (For those who don't know, this all-too-real practice is a long-running scandal in the UK, not least because of the sexual manipulation of women activists by undercover officers.) |The story escalates into horror as our non-hero uses a John Deere lawnmower to apparently fend off supernatural vengeance with a fair amount of gore. But a final twist is in store.

We stay among the vegetation with 'Cuckoo Flower', but the tone changes. A botanist describes her efforts to curb the spread of a kind of super-weed that seems resistant to most pesticides and can flourish almost anywhere - like Japanese knotweed on steroids. Bringing specimens back to the UK from the Philippines seems sensible - tackle the thing in a controlled environment. But it soon becomes clear that this is no normal plant and the scientist resorts to ever more desperate efforts to destroy it.

'Professor Beehive Addresses the Human Biology Class' is not, in fact, another tale of mad science. Instead, it's an account of a 'good school' in the 'good old days', i.e. a horror story. Two former pupils are reunited in middle age, meeting at a posh club. They discuss repressed sexuality, bullying by teachers, and the disappearance of a beautiful girl and a master with whom she was involved. It's an involved, richly layered tale that would make a good short film. It is (perhaps deliberately) reminiscent of Hartley's The Go-Between, but the tone is darker, with no hint of rose-tinted nostalgia.

'The Chiromancer' also harks back to days of repression and deceit, in this case to an exclusive Brighton club for gay men in the days when police raids were almost routine. The club is the venue in which a strange tale is told, with interjections and asides. The subject matter is one that always sends me down a bit of a rabbit hole - literary forgeries:

You may remember the story: obscure writer and scholar unearths undiscovered masterpieces by Shakespeare, Marlowe, Webster, Middleton and the like

When the writer dies, the storyteller unearths the truth about his 'discoveries'. Johnstone introduces a classic horror trope here, and one that is somewhat underused. I wish I'd thought of it! ('You will, Oscar, you will.') This one is a tour de force.

'Slaughtered Lamb' sticks to the raconteur approach, with five members of the Sacred Order of the Followers of Dionysus discussing their first jobs. This takes the reader on a trip to Ireland, and a touring theatre company.  Exposing injustices to the Catholic population of Northern Ireland goes down better than the stench, however. Until they reach the North, and make the cardinal error of going into the wrong pub in Belfast. 

Still in Ireland, we find them 'Creeping Forth Upon Their Hands'. A great title, and the story lives up to it. The setting is Munster during the Plantation, and one of two lead characters is none other than Sir Edmund Spenser, favourite of Good Queen Bess. Spenser wrote some first-rate sonnets to his wife, Elizabeth, but they can hardly excuse his 'undertaking', i.e. colonialist repression of the Irish Catholics. The story flips between Spenser's time and our own, as student Dora studies the poet's views of Ireland. Past meets present as a link is revealed between Dora and strange events in the sixteenth century. 

'A Heart of Stone' tackles one of my favourite themes in horror, the legend of Medusa. (Yes, it is a horror story if you think about it - especially Medusa's origin.) Here were have yet another Irish person setting off on what seems at first to be a fairly innocent adventure as she travels across Europe and into the Near East. But then things take an interesting turn, as it is clear she is on a special kind of pilgrimage. This is a sound modern example of the old-school epistolatory tale, albeit couched in picture postcards rather than letters.

'Mum and Dad and the Girl from the Flats over the Road and the Man in the Black Suit' first appeared in ST, so I hardly need to give it my endorsement here. I published it, it's top-notch. 

'Face Down in the Earth' takes us to Scotland and a guy called Ramsay, who we meet just after he has a bit of a scare. Dazzled by sunlight while driving he narrowly avoids hitting - a sheep? But no. Sheep don't stand on two legs. Ramsay owns a campsite on a small island that suffered during the Highland Clearances. Some people, and some ghosts, have long memories. The story embodies Faulkner's dictum that the past 'is never dead. It's not even past.'

The Clearances are mentioned in the next story, 'The Fall Guy', and the perfidies of the British class system are to the fore. 'The Fall Guy' begins with the narrator considering the stunt doubles who were the unsung heroes of many classic TV shows. The tale then moves into distinctly weirder territory - a man born with a secondary face on the back of his head. This is a grotesque and absorbing story and I won't spoil it for you here! Suffice to say it's a remarkable exploration of what might be a man blessed - or cursed - with a kind of supernatural power.

'In the Hold, It Waits' is a remarkable sea story, set in in the 18th century and narrated by a female, African pirate who adopts male dress. That in itself would be fascinating, but the narrator has taken on board her ship a mysterious cargo. A very pale Englishman pays handsomely for a casket to be taken from Zanzibar to Tierra del Fuego. I love nautical horror, and this is a compelling addition to the subgenre. There are nods to Poe (particularly 'Arthur Gordon Pym') and Coleridge here, a tale of mariners on a doomed voyage. There's also a twist that I didn't see coming but which is artistically right. Oh, and it's a very grisly tale if that floats your boat.

'I then began the laborious task of cleaning the remaining human debris from the deck, employing broom and shovel, mop and bucket. Time after wearisome time, I filled the wooden pail and slopped it overboard. With each sickening splash of its voidance I thought I could hear an echo as of a heartbeat muffled by water. But I refused to listen, thinking it my fancy, like the unnatural motion of the strange carvings.'

'The Cutty Wren' appeared in the G&S Book of Folk Horror, so let me just cut, paste, and tweak what I wrote when I reviewed that excellent anthology. Here a very Jamesian pursuit of a mystery related to an old folk song is given a more modern spin thanks to a tense, complex relationship between the male narrator and a tough female scholar. An unpleasant incident leads indirectly to a quest that peels back layers of possible meaning. The researcher takes things too far and literally digs up one item too many.

'Voodoo Economy' is another tale of dark deeds in strange climes. The title is not figurative -- the story is in part a compelling account of 'classic' Haitian voodoo, jazzed up a little. It spans generations as we follow Carrefour, one of the walking undead, and see conflicts between rival enchanters from his perspective. A modern ingredient comes in the form of an American writer struggling with a story, vacationing on the island, and discovering a grim secret in a seemingly abandoned house.

'The Lazarus Curse' is a bold and jaunty take on one of the greatest supernatural tales, that found in variant forms in the gospels. The narrator is a certain individual who infiltrates Jesus' disciples and attempts to save him (or, if you like, Him) from crucifixion. 

But when I gave him a chance to bow out in a face-saving way, he was having none of it. It was touching, his faith in both the Romans and the one he claimed was his father. “So you think Daddy’s going to save you?” I said. “Look how he treats his chosen people!” “Ah, but that’s because you’ve been doing it all wrong all this time.”

This is essentially the Testament of Judas Iscariot, and it won't be to everyone's taste. But it is part of a 'heretical' tradition in literature, one that includes Michael Moorcock's 'Behold the Man!' and Borges' 'The Sect of the Thirty'. And yes, the story does tackle antisemitism head on.

What is it plagues me? I have heard them in the woods at dusk, with the double tread of men but unshod like to basest animals, within a month after I brought Mistress Preacher to heel. When Troopers Holborn and Bagley presented her to me I asked her who I was, knowing there could be no mistake as I now wore the fine apparel that befits my station.

'The Topsy Turvey Ones' is a folk horror tale. The action shifts between the witch-finding days of the Civil War era and modern rural England. In fact, there's a direct reference to Witchfinder General, and its ill-fated director Terence Fisher. The protagonist, Marisa, is the Chilean-born but essentially British partner of a privileged wannabe filmmaker who has high-flown ideas about the Diggers and related matters. But what the couple encounter in England's heartland is something altogether darker and more ancient than any merely human history.

'The Cleaner's Tale' concerns the Mistaktonic Innovation Centre, 'out in the hills west of Arkham'. The eponymous narrator, Maria Luisa, overhears chat between two men who have acquired a certain photograph. It once belonged to an artist called Pickman. The clever twist is one I will not spoil. Suffice to say things do not end well for anyone and some pictures are best left unexamined. As a minor point, it was jarring to have an American character use the very British word 'bung'. 

To round off the collection we have a good example of leaving the best till last, 'Holywood'. We begin with a reference to Barchester, where a character bought a church pew from an antique dealer. But it is the eponymous village that concerns Sutton, a property developer. He has put a lot of effort into entertaining local councillors, because he wants to cut down what remains of the sacred wood. There is only one holdout, Alice Austin of the Greens. And she is not overawed by Sutton's wealth and savoir-faire. 

“So is that what you do when you're not sitting as a Green councillor and being a general thorn in my side then – researching folklore?” 

The laughter moved from her eyes to her mouth now, her head thrown back to make a smooth pillar of her neck, her arms stretched out over the tree stump as she leaned against it.“I also manage to fit in my main job as a midwife,” she said.

Ah yes, a midwife... 

Thanks to Councillor Austin we learn that Holywood was in fact the place where the wood was obtained for certain carvings found in Barchester Cathedral. More precisely, the copse known as Gog's Orchard. Johnstone ties up the M.R. James tale with some modern folk horror linked to the Yuletide season. Even as Sutton thinks he has won his battle with Alice, he takes up her invitation to view some 'wassail' planned for the wood. It's a tale replete with country lore, including the Lord of Misrule and the deeper significance of holly and mistletoe. 

And thus, with a rich bastard getting his comeuppance, we reach the end of this review. This is an impressive collection that balances the hard-hitting imagery of modern horror with elements of the ghost story tradition. It reaffirms Johnstone's place as one of the most impressive modern writers of supernatural fiction.