Greystone Bay, How I Mist You: Into the Fog (ed. Charles L. Grant)

                                                                                           

All good things come to an end and so it is the case with Charlie Grant’s shared-world anthology series The Chronicles of Greystone Bay. This strange New England town came to be in the fog centuries ago, and now—after a few hundred years of mystery and misery—is about to vanish back into the fog. Lucky for us we have an all star cast to see the town off.

Let’s take a moment to marvel at David Schleinkofer’s incredible, beautiful, horrifying cover art. Easily the high point of the series in that regard, and one of my all-time favorite pieces of dark fantasy artwork. 

The Fog Knew Her Name by Elizabeth Engstrom

Synopsis: Kitten Frazier's name belies her lonely and unsatisfactory life. Looking to get away from all of it, she takes a job in the library at Greystone Bay. But she’s not the only one there working at reinvention.

Thoughts: Engstrom’s only contribution to the Greystone Bay series, which is a shame because she clearly “gets it.” This is a clever, moving fantasy which is also the best possible version of Dennis Etchison’s “Somebody Like You,” which is the one of his stories that’s never managed to click for me, even if I know what’s going on there. 

What makes this a good piece of dark fantasy, though, is the motivation for all the “sowing the seeds of love” that lover-boy Frederick is doing. It allows Engstrom to keep the sensitive, hopeful tone of the piece alive while injecting a sense of threat that’s powered by implication and is very Greystone Bay. 

Bonus points for the world-weary bartender Lee's misanthropic description of his job as serving liquor  "to stupid people so they can get even more stupid."

Warm by Craig Shaw Gardner

Synopsis: Dave’s troubled relationship with his late mother comes to the fore when a car crash leaves his wife in a coma.

Thoughts: It doesn’t quite reach the heights of the elegant kaleidoscope that was “Three Doors in a Double Room,” but this story is something that few of the stories in this series are: Scary. Oh, there’s been loads of effective horror stories, and many macabre moments, but this is the only one I can think of that actually gave me a physical jolt. Twice. I’ll leave you to discover one of them for yourself, but if you want to hear the other one, read the next paragraph. Otherwise, continue on (but you have to promise to track down a copy of the book, okay?).

Here’s the jolt: Dave is visiting his comatose wife, after having just smooched with his comely coworker. he is feeling guilty, and it doesn’t help when Amanda rockets out of her coma, grabs Dave’s arm, and starts screeching before lapsing back into the coma. Scary enough, but even worse is the revelation afterwards when her doctor, who saw the whole thing, checks her monitors and sees no indication, medically speaking, that she'd woken up at all.  Boom. 

Let me tell you, a scan of my brain reading that part would have revealed some serious activity. It's the sort of mystery-compounding double-whammy that the X-Files did so well. 

The Home by Kathryn Ptacek

Synopsis: Harborview (or, as everyone calls it, the Home) is where Greystone Bay shoves its elderly in order to forget them—all the easier because it’s on an island connected by a single bridge. Administrator Jeannine wages a daily battle to keep Harborview and its residents cared for—but, after a storm cuts the Home off from the mainland, she’s fighting for survival. 

Thoughts: Easily Ptacek’s best story for this series, which is saying something since both “Power” and “Dead Possums” were good stories (I still have some quibbles with the later, but the force of the ending has stuck with me for a while now). 

This is also maybe the most depressing story in the series, which is an accomplishment--Greystone Bay is not a place full of laffs and chuckles. And I'm sorry but we're going to have to go into spoiler territory a little to talk about what makes it effective. 

Okay, spoiler time: Once the storm hits and things go south, it's obvious that the situation at the Home will deteriorate quickly (and it's not that great to begin with). While this happens, the question the reader is wondering is, "what happened to the rest of Greystone Bay?" This is the big apocalyptic "last chronicle of Greystone Bay," after all. Did the fog take the rest of the town--or the world--away, and leave us in Joe Lansdale's The Drive-In by way of Michael Haneke's Amour? 

That's a horrible thought, but what's even worse is the reality: Greystone Bay's still alive and well and functioning--and doesn't particularly care about seeing what's happened at Harborview. 

And, at that point, every bit of misery and suffering and heartache that our characters have been feeling throughout this ordeal boomerangs back, but worse, when you realize this is, in essence, what the elderly residents of the Home have already been living with--and that this neglect is something faced by real elderly people in real life as well. If you really hate yourself, go read this story and then watch George Romero's The Amusement Park in the same day. Good luck trying to smile.

One minor bit of levity: Frances, the receptionist, loves to read paperbacks. Among them are a book about wild dogs on an island attacking summer tourists (surely David Fisher's The Pack, which was reprinted as part of the Valancourt Books Paperbacks from Hell series), and " a slim book about giant lizards." That doesn't narrow things down much, but I'm positive Frances is reading Gila! by Les Simons. How do I know? Because Les Simons was a pseudonym for Kathy Ptacek. 

Whiteface by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

Synopsis: Vito retired from the Mafia a long time ago and went into the carnival business. They’re on the finishing leg of the seasonal run, which has brought them to Greystone Bay. But there are complications—the Mob is strong arming him and his still-connected nephew Michele into taking out an informant who lives in witness protection in the Bay. Meanwhile, Vito’s new act—a pair of high maintenance leopard tamers and their cat—is getting anxious about the area's bad vibes.

Thoughts: “Gangster goes into witness protection in Greystone Bay” would have been a good premise on its own, but Yarbro goes all the way here. Any two of “horror,” “carnival,” and “Mafia” are already high concept; putting the three together is madness. But it’s very, very good. Yarbro plays the story entirely straight, while still letting some of the absurd fun of the situation shine through. My favorite moment comes when Vito continues putting on his clown wig and makeup even while he's lecturing one of his concessionaires about not complaining. It's hilarious, all the more so because it's understated.

I would pay silly amounts of money for someone to make this a custom Hitman level.

O Love, Thy Kiss by Nancy Holder

Synopsis: It's 1938, and the arrival of the refrigerator in Greystone Bay threatens the lucrative ice business controlled by the descendants of the Bay's original founders. That's fine by Cody Greystone Montague--he can't wait to get out of town and matriculate at Yale in the fall (to his girlfriend Miriam's dismay). But Cody can't escape a family destiny of ice and blood.

Thoughts: Even with the wrapping up of events in Greystone Bay, there's never been a single "canonical" set of stories/explanations for what's going on. That's fine with me--but if I had to pick a single grand unifying explanation for Greystone Bay and its magic and its fog, I'd go with the one in this story. 

I really don't want to say too much about this one, in part because it's the best story in the book (and one of the best in the series)--suffice to say it takes its time building up the dark and ghastly secrets behind the Greystones and the early history of the community, then delivers. Hard. It also pays off the set up from the cover art. 

I guess there's just something about ice and snow that brings out the best in Nancy Holder.

Ice House Pond by Steve Rasnic Tem

Synopsis: Rudy, an unhappy man who has lost two families to accidents, purchases an isolated parcel of land including a massive pond, a rotting house, and its connected out-building: An ice house with dark secrets. 

Thoughts: The other of the ice house stories in the book, which also pays off that amazing cover art. It's an SRT story, so there are multiple levels--even though this is mostly pretty easy to parse. Whereas in "Aquarium", for example, there's a lot more work the reader has to do, here SRT is more forthcoming with the symbolism and metaphors. Which doesn't at all render them toothless.

For example, in one powerful moment, Rudy describes how his father (a Holocaust survivor) deliberately chose the worst nursing home he could find, even though he could afford a much nicer one. Rudy realizes his father is trying to find a place that reminds him of the concentration camps. Later on, Rudy himself goes to sleep without any heat or warmth in his cold house (not even an electric blanket), because sleeping with warmth is, he thinks, the privilege of those with a spouse or a family member to sleep next to. 

What doesn't hit you--until you're thinking about the story the next day--is the connection there. Like father, like son: Both are masochistically denying themselves physical (and emotional) comfort in an attempt to keep the horrific conditions of their past alive and tangible. 

Another thing which drew my attention was the use of the accumulation of ice to symbolize the accumulation of bodies--first, in the direct metaphor to the piles of corpses left behind by the Holocaust and similar atrocities, but then in terms of the horror of existence, the endless proliferation of life and subsequent suffering itself. The horror of teeming numbers of bodies as such is something Rasnic Tem has used before to good effect (see my musings on the political nature of his story "The Poor" here)--and it's deployed in spectacular fashion here. 

Like all of his stories, I suspect I need to give it another read or two before it yields all of its secrets; I still have some unanswered practical questions about what Old Finney was up to (even by the standards of Greystone Bay, he would have been an amazingly prolific serial killer). Maybe I'll work it out on the next reading.

Josie, in the Fog by Charles L. Grant.

Synopsis: The fog has finally returned to Greystone Bay, and the town is dying. Everyone is leaving town as soon as they can, but Rick is staying behind. He has to wait for Josie. Never mind that this "one who got away" has been dead several years now. . .

Thoughts: And here it is, the end of Greystone Bay, and I have mixed feelings. It was always going to be hard to tie everything up, and what's great is that Grant does stick the landing as far as the fate of Greystone Bay is concerned. Unfortunately, the story itself isn't as strong as it could be because the emotional core just isn't that compelling.

At its heart, this is a synthesis of two stories I love--Alan Ryan's "Memory and Desire" from Greystone Bay and Grant's "Across the Water to Skye", which is not a Greystone Bay story but almost feels like a test run for one. "Memory and Desire" is a dark supernatural romance about past love and current yearning, tied to a man doomed by the Bay. "Across the Water to Skye" is a soft apocalyptic tale of humanity's hollowing-out, with the backdrop of a seaside tourist community. 

At first, I thought my problem with the story is that Rick and Josie's relationship isn't contingent on the fate of the Bay, but I actually like that the more I think about it. The Bay will come and the Bay will go, but Rudy's doomed love for Josie won't just outlast normal space and time; it outlasts even the tides of the supernatural. 

No, the problem is that the heart of the heart, as it were, comes down to an adolescent falling out between Rick and Josie in a scene that would work in a Richard Laymon story, or an 80s slasher movie or teen sex farce, but feels too puerile here. I'm not saying Grant is being puerile, to be clear:  I see what he's doing, and the whole drama would probably be enough to anchor a "regular" one of his stories (say, something along the lines of "My Mary's Asleep" from The Orchard). But, it's not quite satisfying for a story that's doing a whole quiet horror ghost story bit and also showcasing the erasure of a haunted city. 

Still. . .this is a good story that ends a great book that ends a tremendous series. I'm sad that we have no more chronicles of Greystone Bay to review (although we still have a gargantuan number of Grant anthologies to go through, and we'll come back to some of those in due course), but I hope you've enjoyed our journey through this haunted town.