Getting Down and Dirty with Darkside: Horror for the Next Millennium (ed. John Pelan) -- Part I

 

Here's a series I'd been curious about but never got into until recently: John Pelan's Darkside series. I don't think this was an "official" series like Masques or Whispers or Shadows, but from the mid-90s through the mid-00s, John Pelan edited five collections of horror from, in most cases, newer horror writers who emerged in the 80s and 90s, mostly I think in the small press and midlist categories (and some even more obscure). All of these books use the word "Darkside" or something similar, so I do think of them as sort of a series.

I don't know a ton about Pelan himself.  A lot of his work was in the splatterpunk/extreme horror area, including in collaboration with Edward Lee; I think of him as one of the guys like Lee and Robert Devereaux who picked up the extreme horror torch over the course of the '90s. However, he was also erudite when it came to dark fiction--he edited the gargantuan Century's Best Horror Fiction retrospective of the 20th century (1 story a year), which contains his thoughtful commentary on each piece. This book isn't as long as that, but there is a lot of material to cover, so I'm splitting this (and most subsequent book reviews, unless they're shorter) into two parts.

Fair warning...this book is rough, way harder-core than I would've expected from a mainstream imprint like Penguin/ROC. Lots of sex, lots of violence, lots of sexual violence, lots of violent sex. Some of it in explicit detail. I saw a review on Goodreads that said you could think of it like Splatterpunks III (after the two Paul M. Sammon Splatterpunks anthologies), and that's a good way to think of it. Although some of the stuff in here goes way further. I don't plan to be explicit myself, but it's impossible to write about some of this without the occasional unpleasant detail. You've been warned.

 

Skinwriters by Robert J. Levy

Synopsis: A photographer with strangely delible skin begins an erotic and creative partnership with a struggling poet.

Thoughts: A strong start to the book, with an intriguing premise. Part of the first indication that you're not in a normal anthology is that Levy seems to be setting up a gory Tales from the Crypt payoff stemming from the protagonist's desperation, but he swerves and takes us someplace darker and more powerful (even if it's less bloody). At first I felt cheated, but on reflection, I think it's the better approach.

 

Ice Dreams by Elizabeth Massie and Robert Petitt

Synopsis: A small-town OBGYN gets pressed into service as a medical examiner when a series of serial murders roil the community. 

Thoughts: Part of why I got this book was wanting to experience more of the 90s horror I grew up on like in The Best of Cemetery Dance. This story scratches that exact itch--it feels just like something that could have been in CD at that time. Of course, part of that is because we are in the territory of "some guy with a cod-Freudian backstory is doing weird sex killings of women," and (as I mentioned before) even as a less-sophisticated horror fan, I started to get tired of that.

But, hey, without "some guy with a cod-Freudian backstory is doing weird sex killings of women," we wouldn't have Psycho, or Peeping Tom, or, uh, Pieces! And we wouldn't have this story, which is very good. It's mostly a straight-forward police procedural, with lashings of sex and perversion (particularly in the M.O.). The initial twist is obvious, but I think it's supposed to be, since it leaves room for some more surprises and nastiness later down the line.

On a side note, I'm always curious when I read co-written pieces as to who did what. I think I can figure out some of the Massie-r parts (there's some stuff that reminds me a lot of "Hooked on Buzzer" in particular), so maybe Petitt did the more police procedural stuff? I looked up Petitt and I couldn't find much about him other than he wrote about 10 stories in the late 80s and the 1990s, and wound up in some pretty good anthologies (including this one!).

Great story, strong stuff.

Wasting by Lauren Fitzgerald 

Synopsis: A private tutor for sick children begins working for a brilliant but obsessive anorexic girl.

Thoughts: One of the handful of stories with a hopeful ending, if you can call a story that involves a teenage girl taking anorexia to almost Gnostic levels of self-abnegation hopeful. I don't have strong feelings about this one either way, though. Overall, it's well written and has enough details and twists to it to avoid the trap of being too obvious or preachy.

Backseat Dreams & Nightmares by K. K. Ormond 

Synopsis: Another grotty inner-city, another prostitute, another client.

Thoughts: Feels like an S. Clay Wilson panel come to life.  The problem is that the whole time it feels like it's going to lead somewhere new, but no, it's just the same dreary killing hookers garbage. Well-done for this sort of thing (there is a vivid, obscene hyperreality to it that really does feel like underground comix) but a definite ceiling on where you can go with it if you're just playing it straight.

 

The Stick Woman  by Edward Lee

Synopsis: A woman is held captive and subjected to almost unimaginable degradation.

Thoughts: Whooo boy. Even Lee's "softest" stuff usually goes places mainstream audiences shy away from, and this is Lee unchained (as opposed to our heroine, who is very much chained). Putting this stuff in a mass-market paperback is like putting surplus Soviet jet fuel in a Diet Sprite bottle. I had a strong reaction to this one, but let me boil my thoughts down into three points.

1) The story works because it's funny. Many of Lee's strongest gross-out stories effectively function like sick jokes--"Aristocrats"-style buildups to a final line or revelation that inspires groans of disgust but also of relief.

2) The story also works because Lee pays attention to the relatable details. For me, the grossest thing in this story is the description of exactly what happens to the Stick Woman's teeth over the course of her captivity--how they decay and eventually fall out. And, look, I've never (knock on wood) been locked up and subjected to a weekly speedrun of the 120 Days of Sodom. I've never suffered multiple amputations, and I've never had my teeth rot and fall out. But--I can extrapolate from my own dental anxieties and experiences to think about how bad your dental hygiene would get in this situation and shudder accordingly  Lee's horror often goes over the top into bizarro where the blood and body parts flying around bear no relation to reality and, just like that, I lose any sense of visceral repulsion. Not so here.

3) The basic premise of this story (trophy-wife socialite is suddenly turned into a repository of abject sexual horror) was also done by Joyce Carol Oates in "Martyrdom" but I think that story is more envelope-pushing and shocking than this one. 

 

Soul of the Beast Surrendered by Wayne Edwards 

Synopsis: A teen boy with an unhappy home life finds refuge in a vivid imaginary world. But soon his imagination needs to find refuge in him.

Thoughts: Genuinely not quite like anything I've read before. Edwards' protagonist's elaborate rules for how the projections of his imagination work, right down to the use of capital and lowercase letters to determine "who" is what sort of entity, remind me of some of the games I used to make up for myself with pencil and paper in school. Nothing as disturbing as what happens here, mind you, but they were intricate.

This is a troubling, disturbing, compelling, bizarre read and I highly recommend it. This is the sort of story that pushes the envelope of horror not just in terms of explicitness of content (and there is some of that here) but in terms of style and approach.

 

October Gethsemane by Sean Doolittle

Synopsis: A transgressive artist puts a [lot] of himself into his work.

Thoughts: I'm a sucker for the micro-genre "self-destructive avant-garde artist in the late 20th century big city, ping-ponging between snooty high-class parties and edgy loft squalor". We already got a taste of it in this book with "Skinwriters," but this is the real deal. And that stupendously pretentious title, how can you not love it? There's less going on here than in some of the other stories, but Doolittle presents what does happen with an economy of effect that packs as much punch as something like, say, this next story.

 

Scars by Lucy Taylor

Synopsis: An African man is tormented by a demon who tells him to kill the American millionaire visiting his village.

Thoughts: Lucy Taylor popped up on my radar screen back when I was reading through the Hot Blood series. Even though that series is of variable quality, Taylor's contributions are generally a sure bet. She combines emotional intelligence with a willingness to wade into disturbing, sexually charged territory.

However, this story doesn't entirely do it for me. Mostly, it's good: Taylor effectively transplants the qualities of her work I just mentioned into a new and interesting setting, and there is a lot of intensity. However, although the ending adds an excitingly perverse (almost Sadean) element to the piece, it comes out of the blue. There's a problem that plagues a lot of the stories in here which is that they're doing just fine but the author keeps jamming in additional angles or elements. Sometimes it works, and it's usually not enough to derail these stories, but it does keep cropping up. 

 

ystery orm  by Brian McNaughton

Synopsis: A troubled English major's attempts to resolve a clerical error lead him into a dizzying nightmare with no clear beginning or end.

Thoughts: A lot of fun; this plays out like Confederacy of Dunces as written by Thomas Ligotti (whom McNaughton dedicates this story to). One of those cases where the strength of a single story has inspired me to go buy a whole book (one of McNaughton's single-author collections). As a side note, it's interesting to see how Ligotti's influence was spreading through the horror community at this point: McNaughton and Tritten both name-check Ligotti, and of course there's a story from him here as well. One of my favorites from this book.

 

Tears Seven Times Salt by Caitlín R. Kiernan

Synopsis: A young woman struggles to return to her family roots--which may be the NYC sewers.

Thoughts: Tremendously strong! This story is dripping with sewer water and 1990s Goth/alt/White Wolf edge, and I couldn't be happier. I especially like the description of the protagonist's soggy and fetid living quarters, which remind me of the dreary water-logged sorta post-apocalyptic setting of Lars von Trier's The Element of Crime. Edgy and visceral in the right ways, but with ample psychological and emotional resonance, this is a high-water mark (hehe) for the book.

 

One-Eyed Jack by S. Darnbrook Colson

Synopsis: A group of laid-off blue-collar friends have one last poker night. No money, this time, but very high stakes.

Thoughts: The destination is the ride here. It's fun to spend time with this colorful pack of characters, and their likability gives the turn to nastiness additional impact. Colson does a good job of keeping the particulars of the ultimate wager under wraps: At first I thought the story was going to go one direction, but then it goes another, and even then it's not clear until almost the end exactly what it's going to be. I'm not sure if it needed some of the more overt horror elements--I think there's a more grounded and, accordingly, more horrific version of the story that trims them. However, they do add to the element of misdirection that makes this story as gripping as a high-stakes hand of poker.

 

Elena by Steve Rasnic Tem

Synopsis: Elena's attempts to get a handle on her sexuality lead her into a series of increasingly disastrous relationships. 

Thoughts: I remember looking skeptically at Splatterpunks II listing SRT among its "Splatterpunks." He isn't. That said, if you consider the two Splatterpunks anthologies as an attempt to grapple with a "New Horror" that includes surreal, non-literal content more expressive of mental state than 'normal' supernatural 'reality,' I see it. Well, this easily earns SRT his splatterpunk wings (should he want such a thing). This is visceral, explicit, and disturbing. It is also emotionally grounded, oddly compassionate, and justifies its existence.

Side note: I don't believe that art (assuming it's all make believe and everyone involved is consenting) requires any sort of moral justification. However, I think it's legitimate (and probably good emotional/ethical practice) for the consumer of such art to demand some reason when the artist throws around representations of extreme and upsetting content. There's a phrase in Will Errickson's criticism of a Rex Miller story in Borderlands 2 that's stuck with me: "[It] doesn't have the moral weight to justify its graphic sexual violence." And, I think this easily passes that test. I'll come back to this a bit more in part 2 of this review, because there are some other stories that similarly challenge the boundaries of taste and art.

 

Family Album by Adam-Troy Castro

Synopsis: A grieving father obsessively stares at the photo album of his son's butchering at the hands of a serial killer.

Thoughts: A new top favorite story. It's hard to say much more without giving away the game, but suffice to say it's worth plowing through the couple of pages (which seem like novels, given how hard they are to read) to get to the end. If I may use an analogy that is as frivolous as this story is not: Ever sucked on a Warhead candy? For most of the time you're 'enjoying' it, it's an excruciating endurance test of sourness. As you get to the end, though, it gives you some relief and ends up being almost. . .sweet?

Having Eyes, See Ye Not? by Sue Storm

Synopsis: A woman in the country grapples with lust and guilt.

Thoughts: Content-wise, we're in paint-by-numbers territory. Blah blah religious mania, blah blah some weird sexual hangups, blah blah violent self-destruction. However, the style and writing are exquisite. I'm interested to track down more, although apparently her work is a bit obscure. It's too bad that this anthology has no  author notes or biographies; in fact, it feels at cross-purposes with cultivating a "new millennium" of horror.

 

Sisters in Death by D. F. Lewis

Synopsis: The short lives of three young sisters.

Thoughts: I don't like this, and I don't really like Des' work, but I need to change that. There's an Edward Gorey quality to this little sketch that I appreciate conceptually, but I never quite find myself picking up what Lewis is putting down. I really think this is a Sarrantonio situation where I need to immerse myself in some of his oddball writing and come out again the other side a connoisseur.

Window of Opportunity by Roman Ranieri

Synopsis: Two kids in the inner-city plot revenge on a local tough.

Thoughts: It's easy to see where this is going, and so the ending doesn't have quite the same wallop as it ought to. However, the quality of the writing is high, and you feel (at least, I do) the scuzzy, grimy, seething environment. There's much less going on here than in many of the other stories, so the ceiling is low. However, it's all well done and quite worth reading.

Still holding on? Well, don't get too comfortable...I'll be back next week with Part 2!