Take Me Down to Charlie Grant's City Where The Stones Are Grey And The Ghouls Are Pretty: The First Chronicles of Greystone Bay Part II

 We're back for Part II of our first trip to Greystone Bay. This is mostly a quick wrap-up, since I'm working against a deadline (see below for more), but there's still plenty of meat on the bone for us to talk about.

Night Catch by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

Synopsis: The fishermen of Greystone Bay have fantastic catches. But there's a, well, catch. . .

Thoughts: RIP to the recently late Yarbro, whose classy and literate Count Saint-Germain vampire stories popped up in many Grant anthologies. To be honest, I've never liked them that much: Vampires, when they do it for me, are repulsive bloodfeasters, snarling and fetid and obscene. Saint-Germain is precisely not that. Yarbro's stories are impeccably well-written--it's just a matter of personal taste. So, I was excited to read a non-vampire story from her.

This is great--a story of fishermen and dark pacts and secrets and terrors of the deep. It's amazing how just a string of simple sentences, one after the other, could have me feeling like I was there with Juliao, tasting the brine and hearing the buoy clang as the waters roiled around us. It works thematically with "Croome House", too.

Maybe I need to give Saint-Germain another shot.

Nocturne by Robert Bloch

Synopsis: A proto-incel details his life story to his "darling."

Thoughts: It's a testament to how crappy this story is that I completely forgot I had read it. But I did, some years ago, in Midnight Pleasures. And now I see why I forgot it. This is entirely disposable, it's nearly obvious where it's going from the moment we see it's a maniac monologuing. It reads, frankly, like the sort of bad imitation of his own work that started popping up in, say The Pan Book of Horror Stories series around the early 70s.

Let's be clear: I have tremendous respect for Bloch, who was an incredibly talented and influential figure in horror and SF, and from everything I've read also a great guy. And I know that in the '80s and beyond he was still throwing heaters: Just look at stories like "The Rubber Room," "The Night Before Christmas," and "Everybody Needs a Little Love". So if I seem a little snippy, it's not because I don't respect Bloch or his work. On the contrary, it's because I respect him and know what he was capable of (even going into the later portion of his career) that I feel this way.

By the way, it has nothing to do with Greystone Bay. It could happen anywhere.

A Heritage Upheld by Joseph Payne Brennan

Synopsis: Private detective Lucius Leffing and his friend Joseph Brennan head to Greystone Bay to investigate a grisly series of murders.

Thoughts: I'd never read a Lucius Leffing story before--the only Brennan I've read, I'm ashamed to admit, was his pulp classic "Slime", which is the first and last word in blob monster mayhem. After reading this, though, I want to plunge in. This story is just a delight to read all the way through. There isn't anything groundbreaking here--we have a Holmes and a Watson, a close-minded small town trying to cover up mysterious murders, nasty old aristocrats, and a pleasant classic television feel. There's also a (blood) red herring in the form of a salacious Satanic cult. Funny, smart, quirky, cozy, and still delivers the goods in terms of macabre content. I look forward to expanding my acquaintance with Leffing in the near future. Oh, and this totally fits within the Greystone Bay mythos and its themes of old money, older secrets, and Things Better Left Unknown.

The Only by Al Sarrantonio

Synopsis: Three friends reunite for a bar crawl...and a quest to find "the old man in the chair."

Thoughts: Maybe the best Sarrantonio story I've read. This is quite different from the weird, child's-eye-view stuff in Toybox. This story is, instead, profoundly adult in its concerns and perspective. Sarrantonio paints a great picture of the pleasure and despair of self-destruction, returning to one's roots, and going on a bender. This drips in atmosphere and good character work.

This works. There is one problem which is that this story is very similar to an incredibly famous short story, although it's different in approach. I won't say which one, but if you're reading this blog then you've read it. It's not that you can't go that angle with your own story--and Sarrantonio is doing something very different here than what that story is doing--but it does suddenly take this tale from "killer stuff, Al, what's next?" to "oh, okay. That's good too."

The Disintegration of Alan by Melissa Mia Hall

Synopsis: Gabrielle's marriage to Alan begins disintegrating one morning. Along with Alan himself.

Thoughts: Another one that is good although it's less clear what if anything it has to do with Greystone Bay. This one is fine but it's a little too on the nose. Playing out the collapse of a relationship or a personality by literally disorganizing the body is a common theme in horror; two stories I can think of that do it well are Ray Garton's "Pieces" and Richard Christian Matheson's "Break-Up." There are of course others. And, this isn't a bad entry into the genre.

I would have liked it more if Greystone Bay as a "character" had more influence. Perhaps Gaby and Alan don't live in Greystone Bay, but they're just visiting, and when they cross over into the cursed town, sketches of Alan that were just sketches become infused with the weird Greystone energy and become vessels of sympathetic magic.

In a Guest House by Steve Rasnic Tem

Synopsis: Brian's trapped in a house and a lifestyle he can't really afford, even if his wife and kids don't understand it. A stay at a strange boardinghouse provides some relief. At first.

Thoughts: It's always treat getting to a story by a Tem in an anthology because you know it's going to be reliable quality at a minimum, and usually much more than that. And, in honesty, we're coming off a slight slump in the back half of the book so we need (like Brian's career and bank account), a shot in the arm. This does it. It reminds me a lot of Robert Aickman's "The Hospice," which is a strong strange story in its own right, and also (if I recall correctly), inspired Ramsey Campbell's "The Entertainment," which may be my favorite horror story of all time.

What I like the most about this story is an intelligent observation about the class structure of Greystone Bay that is simultaneously true of what we've "learned" in the book so far about the fictional setting, but also entirely true about real life: Brian's wife strong-armed him into moving into a house on the prestigious old-money North Hill neighborhood. To her, it's a status symbol, even if they can't really afford it. But Brian knows that, given the size and position of the house, it's really converted servants' quarters. Nice? Maybe. But to the people who know, the people they'd want to impress, the house just reinforces their striver and outsider status.

This isn't just Greystone Bay, of course: I've known people in Boston who have moved into absolute shoeboxes (and not shoeboxes for human shoes, shoeboxes for if they made shoes for mice) on Beacon Hill just so they could say they lived there. And there are I'm sure all sorts of other situations in communities around the world. This is just part of how Tem's story effectively ties real-world, relatable anxiety to more supernatural/psychological horrors.

It occurs to me by the way that the Brian in this story faces a similar situation to Captain Brian from Grant's prologue. Both of those men are in the subservient position of being a service provider to the families of Greystone Bay--Captain Brian literally as the captain bringing the settlers from England, and "Salesman Brian" as a salesman and then symbolically by living in servants' quarters. In both cases, they are half-invited, half-compelled to stick around with the founding families of Greystone Bay--and, while they're still alive (ish?) at the end of the story, their fate doesn't seem enviable.

I don't know whether that's intentional--I'm reading a lot into this--but if any writer and any anthologist had the subtlety and intelligence to make that sort of connection, it would be Tem and Grant.

Power by Kathryn Ptacek

Synopsis: A woman returns to Greystone Bay for revenge against the three men who raped her.

Thoughts: Where Ptacek's story stands out among other rape-revenge and similar stories is that it's neither smug nor nihilistic. It doesn't gloat in the revenge (or in the crimes leading to it), and it doesn't act as though there's no value in the revenge. It's simply what it is: Grim and necessary and serving a function. And it's good.

Does this have a lot to do with Greystone Bay as we've come to know it? Not a ton as such, although the adding to the Native American background is nice--it gives a sense that there's been power and deadly mystery lurking on this land even before the founding families of Greystone Bay arrived.

A strong end to a good collection.

By the way--I'm probably taking the next week off. This blog is reading and writing horror fiction, and while I've been having loads of fun doing the former and sharing it with you, I have a story of my own I'm working on to try to meet a submission deadline.

But, a preview of coming attractions:

1. The Rack II contributor BD Prince graciously sent me a copy of his recent short story collection to review. I'm about part of the way through and will try to get to that later this month.
2. I've been mentioning Kathryn Ptacek's Women of Darkness repeatedly the last couple weeks and have about a third of a write-up of that one in the can already.
3. There are three more Greystone Bay books, and I've started reading around in Doom City. But, I want to avoid monotony and I want to kepe a mix of things going. So it might be a little bit before the next one.
4. If there's anything you're interested in me reviewing, let me know! I'm mostly interested in the 1980-2000 stretch of time, and primarily in multi-author anthologies over single-author collections, but I'm flexible, and enjoy an excuse to read a new horror book.