The City Horror Calls Its Own: Greystone Bay (ed. Charles L. Grant, 1985)--Part I

 

I know last week I teased doing a write-up of Women of Darkness, and I'm working on that. But now that we're past October and Halloween, but still in the throes of autumn, I wanted to turn to an atmospheric series that captures the feeling of the cold and the dark. So we are headed to Greystone Bay, on this, the 40th anniversary of its literary founding (the town's "real" founding, as we'll see, is much older).

I don't know all the background of the Greystone Bay series. In the acknowledgments section at the beginning of the book, Charles Grant thanks Tor's Harriet McDougal for the idea. By this point in the 1980s, Grant's relationship with Tor was in full swing, and it's not surprising that Tor might have wanted in on the "Grant-edited anthology series" action, as Grant's "quiet horror" Shadows series was killing it over at Doubleday.

The premise is a haunted seaside town, founded by a group of mysterious settlers a few hundred years ago somewhere in New England ("A Heritage Upheld" puts it about two hours north of New Haven, which suggests Rhode Island, southeastern Massachusetts, or northeastern Connecticut). There's no consistent thesis for what (if anything) is "wrong" with Greystone Bay, although the fog plays a role, as do (in several stories), curses or traditions certain founding families may have brought with them.

The first chronicles of Greystone Bay were successful enough, since a sequel followed about every three years: Doom City came out in 1987, and The SeaHarp Hotel in 1990. Finally, in 1993, Greystone Bay would find its fate In the Fog, and the series wrapped up.

Put on your yellow rain slickers. Warm up your clam chowder. We're taking our first trip to Greystone Bay!

Prologue by Charles L. Grant

Synopsis: Captain Brian Fletcher has finally guided his ship and passengers to the New World after an arduous voyage. But what's with this fog bank?

Thoughts: Good solid atmospheric introduction. Not more to say about it than that. It goes mostly where you think it will, and sets the mood right.

Croome House by Reginald Bretnor

Synopsis: The last remnant of the Croome family (by marriage, not blood--it's important), Greystone Bay, in the 1910s

Thoughts: I bought the full set of Greystone Bay books last year and planned to read through them in the fall, but right away I ran into a problem. The prologue was good and creepy, but then the second story smacked me in the face with 1) a long story that is 2) historical and 3) I can't just skip it and come back to it later because there's important world-building.

Surprise, surprise, past me (even recent past me) was silly and wrong. This is a terrific story. Yes, it's a historical Gothic with romance elements, the sort of VC Andrews/Marilyn Ross/Dark Shadows spooky soap operas that aren't quite my thing (although if any of them are this good, maybe they are!). However, this doesn't have overly mannered or archaic prose to slog through, and very little in the way of lush, oppressive description. No, the story flies by with crisp prose and effective tone, and Bretnor does an excellent job of portraying our heroine's relationship with the Croome family. An excellent choice for a number two story--Grant's prologue is fine, but it doesn't tell us any more than the same broad-strokes "hey guys, this town is bad news" that the reader would already have from the front and back covers (heck, even if you couldn't read, you'd be able to look at that great cover painting and know something isn't good in this place). This takes the ball and runs with it, developing the themes of old blue-blood families and unholy bargains that continue throughout the book. 

As an aside, I wonder if Rancher Croom in "55 Miles to the Gas Pump" is a distant relation of these guys. . .

Used Books by Robert E. Vardeman

Synopsis: Sexually frustrated Tommy goes into Cesar's Used Books to look for paperback porno, but stumbles upon an entirely more potent sort of literature.

Thoughts: After thirty plus pages of classy historical prose, it's bracing to have the next story begin "Boy, I'd love to get into her pants." This isn't a sleazy story, though, but a mildly horny, slightly recursive story of "youthful courage" and "adolescent lust." The driving supernatural element to the whole thing, which reminds me of Strange Days and probably any number of other sf stories with a similar premise, doesn't entirely make sense but I can't argue too much. A good 'glue story'--nothing remarkable, but it's well written and entertaining.

Street Life by Douglas E. Winter

Synopsis: The residents in the houses along Linwood Avenue all live normal lives. Except for the paranoiac in the hovel that is 1430 Linwood Drive, who is obsessed with exposing...something...going on around him.

Thoughts: I love Doug Winter's stories. "Splatter: A Cautionary Tale" and "The Happy Family" are two high points of the Masques series, and I adore his zombie pastiche tales too. This isn't up to the quality of those but it is still good, although I needed to reread it once to "get" it. It's all effective enough that Winter manages to sell the final line, a bit of creepy little kid schlock that reads like something you'd hear from the child mobs of Hobbs' End in In the Mouth of Madness.

What's unnerving here is that Winter plays with our sympathies and expectations. The other neighbors are so normal, that surely the horrific element here is the insane letter-writer, tapping away non-stop in his repulsive house, sending missives that are much too focused on other peoples' ethnicities for us to want much to do with him. Yet, by the end, it seems things have reversed (and, even if we don't feel sympathy with him, Winter's had the mob kill off the guy's dog, presumably to make sure we turn against them), and the typist is, if not the only sane man, at least the only 'normal' one. Or, is this the sort of denouement so common in shadowpunk where the point of the climax is less to show a literal horror but more to make clear this is the moment of the character's fundamental undoing (whether it be physical, supernatural, or psychological)?

The third, most unsettling option: They are out to get him, but our sympathies throughout the story are correct, and we should continue to identify with the denizens of Greystone Bay as they cleanse the neighborhood.

Something in a Song by Galad Elflandsson

Synopsis: A struggling young musician lands a gig at an Irish pub.

Thoughts: Great story. Here in Boston we have lots of divey Irish pubs, so this story is easy to imagine. This is a gentle, simple story that sweeps you along for the ride. It's like day-drinking on a Sunday in the autumn. You're there, you're warm and laughing and having a couple beers. Then something wakes you up and you realize it's later than you think. Too late, perhaps. Recommended.

Hiding from the Sun by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

Synopsis: Mary (if that is her name) lives an antiseptic life at home, hiding from germs, the sun, and children. But one "door-knob rattler", Teddy, threatens her peace.

Thoughts: This reminds me a lot of Hoffman's later, superior story "Imprint," which takes the same notion (a victim of child abuse reenacting the same) and takes it to much better and more horrific places. "Imprint" is one of the finest stories of its era, unstinting in both its transgressive content and its emotional sensitivity. This isn't "finest," but rather just, er, fine.

It also feels out of place here. Maybe it's because I've already read "Imprint," (and admittedly it's not very fair to judge this story by the standards of another story that wouldn't exist until 5 years later) but the horrors that are happening here are the sort that can happen anywhere, not just Greystone Bay. Which is perhaps true of many of the stories here but this one really feels unmoored from any sense of place.

Memory and Desire by Alan Ryan

Synopsis: A man visits Greystone Bay to solve the mystery of his father's disappearance there years earlier.

Thoughts: Very ambitious, and very good. It's difficult to paint a full picture of the story because 1) I don't want to give anything away and 2) even if I did, I'm not totally sure I get it. So what I will say is that the first part of the story is interesting and sets up the second part well, and the second part is a beautiful paean to nostalgia and summertime and early tastes of adolescent freedom. The overlap between the two parts is interesting because at first it seems like one of the parts is obviously "reality" and the other isn't, and then it seems, at least briefly, that it's the other way around. What exactly is going on here, I'm not sure of, but Greystone Bay reaches out to take what it wants.

Which is not to say it doesn't give you something in return.

The Red House by Robert R. McCammon

Synopsis: Bobby Deaken and his parents live in one of the many identical slate grey clapboard factory-owned houses in the working class neighborhood of Accardo Street. But when the factory owner paints one of the houses bright red to woo super-worker Virgil Sikes, Bobby's dad has a meltdown.

Thoughts: I thought I'd already read this one--it appears in Blue World, and that volume has two or three stories of weird cursed homes and neighborhoods, but I guess I missed this one the first time around (I'm overdue for a rematch with that excellent volume soon anyway).

McCammon contributed a story to each of the first three Greystone Bay books, making him a stalwart of the series. This one is less horror than prime McCammon in his sort of "optimistic fantasist" mode. As with a lot of McCammon's stuff, it's packed full of detail and flavor, and hints of other horrors in Greystone Bay (I especially like the references to the Elvis impersonator who couldn't get his makeup off, and the mysterious fire in the 1970s that destroyed most of a church).

This isn't really a horror story as much as a fantasy, and a fable. Some of it is on the nose, sure, in the sort of strident earnestness and pleas for tolerance, liberalism, and individuality you might get from a classic Twilight Zone episode.

The father's point of view is presented somewhat sympathetically too. It's not about the red house as such, it's because the red house means change, and that change threatens the life that he's precariously clinging onto economically. "One red house is all it takes. Then everything starts to change. They paint the houses, and the rent goes up. Then somebody thinks Accardo Street would be a nice place to put condos that overlook the Bay. They bring machines in to do the work of the men at the factory. . .One red house and everything starts to change."

Then, as now, there is some truth to this. And then, as now, this anxiety leads people like Mr. Deaken to lash out against the wrong targets, and to channel legitimate concern and dissatisfaction into paranoia, bigotry, and violence.

People sometimes slam McCammon for being a little too...optimistic? Sometimes I see what they're getting at--They Thirst is great but the very ending feels a little too sunny. But some of us like happy endings and uplifting morals, and to see at least one character make it out of Greystone Bay and choose what "color house" they want to be. It's important every once in a while, even in a genre known for perversion and inversion and nastiness.

And maybe we roll our eyes at the earnestness or think it's a little ham-fisted, and sometimes that's true. But sometimes we're like Bobby's parents, determined to cling to our own Grey Houses, refusing to think beyond the prison we've made for ourselves.

Life isn't full of fairy tale happy endings, and it's a mistake to think so. But it's at least as dangerous, maybe more, to think it never holds them.

And, on that cheery note, I'll see you next week to continue our trip through Greystone Bay (where the endings will get mostly much less happy, I promise)!