Double-Ax Chromosomes! Women of Darkness II (ed. Kathryn Ptacek)

                                                                             

We're back for more women in horror with round two of Kathy Ptacek's Women of Darkness anthologies.

Something I think is interesting about this book compared to the last one is there's more of a lack of catharsis. Many of the stories seem to set up rape-revenge or similar scenarios, but the revenge doesn't come, or does in a way that's not exactly satisfying. So that will require talking about spoilers in a few elements, so you should just go get a copy of this book and read it and then come back and we can chat about it all, okay? 

Assuming you've done that. . .

The Co-op by Melanie Tem

Synopsis: A group of mothers form a childcare cooperative, which turns into group therapy about the sacrifices that motherhood entails. Sacrifices that cut both ways.

Thoughts: Super-strong opener out of the gate.  The theme of literal parental (and especially maternal) sacrifice shows up often in horror fiction; we have another fine example of it in this very book! But, Tem also examines the flip side of this dynamic. Post-partum depression became a common theme in 1990s horror fiction--I think some of that was due to the further psychological turn of the 'New Horror,' as well as the increasing number of women's voices in the field (like, say, this book!). The particular horrors of the Susan Smith case fueled this as well, I expect.

Here's an odd bit of serendipity: I was trying to recall who had the "unity of effect" theory for short stories, because I wanted to invoke it here. Then, the other day, I'm reading this interview Analog did with Steve Rasnic Tem, and the concept comes up (and of course, it was Poe. How could I forget??). 

But, about that unity of effect: It's here--every detail in the story reinforces feelings of unease and disgust and worse. Here, it ranges to things including the oppressive, dripping rain (reminiscent of Dennis Etchison's great "Wet Season"), the suicide rate at Cornell University, and, most dreadful of all, the suburban mediocrity of gelatin-based dessert 'salads.' 

An absolute nightmare, and a great companion piece to Kit Reed's "Baby" from volume one. 

Fruits of Love by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

Synopsis: The wicked Baron Saint Sebastien delights in abusing his latest plaything, Desiree. Sexual depravity, violence, and Satanic ritual sacrifice. . .nothing is beneath him. Desiree's only ally is the nurse Marta, who has a plan to hoist the vile nobleman by his own petard.

Thoughts: The one-two punch of "Baby" and "Ransom Cowl Walks the Road" from volume one was good; the opening salvo here is better. 

We are in full-blown Gothic territory here, with a devil-worshipping rapist brute of a nobleman right out of the Marquis de Sade. This also has a wicked sense of humor, like some of Sade's stuff--but I'd wager what Yarbro is up to here is more subversive and clever than Sade's weirdly tedious inverted moralism.  But, that requires spoilers, so let me do it after the jump. 

**SPOILERS**

Marta's plan is to poison the Baron with a rare plant which she'll convince him to take as an aid to sexual potency, but is in fact a deadly poison. After a long plan that involves Desiree sending letters confessing to her plot and throwing herself on the mercy of the Church, the Baron eats the poison and. . . nothing happens. After all, the tomato (known as the love fruit) was very new to the Old World at the time!

It's a fun twist, in a sort of "Charles Birkin meets Encyclopedia Brown" way. But, what I like about it the most is something similar to what Nancy Holder did in "Cannibal Cats Come Out Tonight" in volume one. Mainly, this story doesn't just subvert our expectations in terms of straight plot, it subverts them in terms of theme. Here, we're setting up a "women's wisdom" scenario like something from Susan Glaspell's "Trifles," where women get one over on men through their feminine knowledge (here, tied with historic notions of 'wise women' and herbal healing, midwifery, etc.). Except, well, Marta means well, but she has no idea what she's talking about when it comes to the tomato, and so dooms Desiree. It's not that I don't want to see the women win here--but it's Yarbro's willingness to frustrate that hope (and maybe even expectation) that gives the story its sting. 

Sara and the Slime Creature by Resa Nelson

Synopsis: As a girl, Sara coped with abuse from her stepbrother by imagining herself to be a princess beset by a slime monster. As an adult, that trauma reverberates into her present relationships--but is it only one-way?

Thoughts: In her foreword to the story, Ptacek writes that she came close to 86'ing this story because she thought it was science fiction, which she wasn't interested in. It isn't, but I'd go so far to say that it would almost be better without the speculative fiction elements. Nelson writes with delicacy and sensitivity about an upsetting topic, and does a good job of showing how past traumas echo into Sara's present-day relationships. However, other than as a coping mechanism (the titular slime monster), the only time straight-up horror/fantasy shows up is at the end, when the story takes a turn that's slightly confusing. A bit on the weaker side for this book, but some of that is surely the result of coming after two barnburner stories. 

Just Idle Chatter by Jean Paiva

Synopsis: A young boy with a tape recorder learns more than he'd like about his neighbors.

Thoughts: A fun little vignette that reminds me of Harriet the Spy. It also has a sort of Shirley Jackson vibe to it, which is always nice. I do think it could be a little shorter, though--it's clear early on what the 'gag' is, and going through so many permutations of it gets a little old. I'd like to compare this story to "Monster McGill" from the first Women of Darkness. That's also a very short, very slight piece.  

Still, this scratches that Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine sort of itch, where crime and mystery and horror stories all overlap. 

Act of Love by Kristl Volk Franklin

Synopsis: Memory Anne Adams lives with her family in the middle of nowhere. Between the stillbirths, the abuse, and her weird violent "spells," it's not much of a life. But it's about to get even worse. . . 

Thoughts: There's no Elizabeth Massie story in this volume, more's the pity, but Franklin provides a similar sort of story. It's all here: Curdled family dynamics in a lower-class Southern environment, with sexual perversion and gut-wrenching extreme content that's fully logically justified by the plot and the message of the story.

It takes a fair amount for a story to make me gasp in horror and disgust, but Franklin's tale made me do so repeatedly--and I was straight-up shuddering by the end. 

Arc Light by Lisa W. Cantrell

Synopsis: Joe, a welder, finds himself forced to confront his lifelong fear of the dark.

Thoughts: Something interesting about this book versus volume one is that there are more stories from the male perspective (volume one had I think two stories). This is our first one for part two, and it's very good. I am struck by how well done, for example, the friendship between Joe and his coworker Larry plays out. Cantrell introduces the two and their rapport and then sketches out a few differences between the two (Joe's white, Larry's black; Joe's a better welder and probably more insulated from layoffs, but Larry is more confident and thinks Joe's weak). It paints an accurate picture of this sort of relationship: Both men are similar, and think each of them understands the other, but they're still more different than they realize. 

It's elegant writing, done in about a page of dialogue, and my takeaway was "shoot, I should track down one of Cantrell's novels, because she writes very well."

It's so good that you almost wish it didn't veer into the territory of horro. By the time Joe ventures into the dark industrial tank to face his fear, I was thinking, "oh, this is a shame. Ah well, I've never seen a guy fight a spooky-scary with welding equipment before." But Cantrell swerves that on us--what we end up with isn't an easy catharsis of fighting the boogeyman and winning, nor is it the simple downer ending from inverting that scenario. Instead, she goes a very similar direction to David J. Schow's story "Refrigerator Heaven."

And, like that story, while I'm not entirely sold on its depiction of a Martyrs-style horrible, ecstatic experience, it's good and it's different. 

You know, I was initially going to write "this is a good middleweight story" for this anthology, but that's not even the case. There's too much to dig into here to write this off as 'middleweight.'

The Pit by Patricia Ramsey-Jones

Synopsis: Dogfighter LaVerl Pitkin and his brutal dog Little Boy make a nighttime raid to eliminate the competition.

Thoughts: I hate to say this, but I think the story's bark is worse than its bite. The buildup is superb; Ramsey-Jones (who, Ptacek mentions in the introduction, learned about dogfighting in great detail while working for the Humane Society of Utah) paints a vivid picture of a backcountry world that's fascinating to be in even while you're glad you're far away from its cruel and dangerous atmosphere.

There's also great supporting characters, like LaVerl's vile dad and the even viler bootlegger and dog-breeder. The problem is that, while the whole premise and setting of the story is effectively horrible, the rest of the story is a little light. 

Spoilers real quick. 

I think the problem is that the comeuppance of the story just doesn't really follow. Part of this is the fact that, in a horror story about dog-fighting, graphically violent comeuppance is the minimum expectation. Some of that is just understandable bloodlust on the part of us, the animal-loving horror readership, but here it would work with the theme of the story: Leave aside the intrinsic cruelty of dogfighting (hard, I know, but work with me here); within the world of the story, LaVerl's sin isn't being a dogfighter, it's that he's stepped into shoes too big for his and thinks he can wield a force that he can't control, and that doesn't respect him. How does his throat not get ripped out? Instead, he just falls in a pit and his dog runs off, leaving him to die.

I know I've been talking about thwarted catharsis, and anyway there is some poetic justice to the situation, but it's only a partial moral. After all, imagine LaVerl was the best owner imaginable and was out walking with Little Boy on some pleasant, non-homicidal errand. This probably still plays out the same. There are plenty of real life examples of pets going to great lengths to get help for their owners, but it's not the sort of thing you can count on. After such a build-up, we need something more. 

A Rainy Evening in Western Illinois by Rebecca Lyons

Synopsis: A young man caught in a Midwestern storm tries to help the victim of a car crash, but winds up in a nightmare.

Thoughts: I'm from Eastern Iowa, so I know exactly the part of Illinois Lyons is writing about here. And I can't agree more with her description of a summer thunderstorm in the Midwest.

What this story doesn't entirely nail, despite a strong opening and some effectively scary moments, is horror. All the pieces are in place, and then everything just fizzles. 

I also wonder why, exactly, it's a period piece--certainly there's no shortage of radio stations willing to play the sort of rock music referenced. If I had to guess--this is supposed to be a story being told to us "now" about something that happened in our storyteller's past as though it were a "true" story we are hearing. That would explain the lightweight horror content--if someone in real life told you this story, you wouldn't complain it wasn't exciting or scary. But we're in fiction-land here, and so we need something more. 

Coming Back by Ginger LaJeunesse

Synopsis: Debbie's death in a car crash threatens to orphan her son Jason--except Debbie wills herself back from the dead to take care of him.

Thoughts: The other side of Tem's piece (and a much more satisfying tale about undead car crash victims), this is another story about the sacrifices mothers make for their children. The difference is that whereas Tem's story identifies the horror in that arrangement, LaJeuenesse's story is triumphant. In fact, even though we have a zombie in the story, that's not the source of our fear--instead, it's whether or not Debbie will find another caretaker for her son. In other words, we feel the same anxiety she does. 

A nice element here is Mike, one of the paramedics, who at first emerges as a romantic lead. However, his relationship with Debbie is something much sweeter and more profound than that. Damn, this is a good story. 

I Know What to Do by Yvonne Navarro

Synopsis: John has a lot to deal with: Bills, the stresses of his second marriage, the financial and emotional aftermath of his first marriage. . .and now, a vicious and unusual bug that lives in his bathroom.

Thoughts: The third, and lightest, story in what I think of as a three story "breather" in the middle of the book. Lyons' story was spooky but low-impact (unfortunately), LaJeunesse's isn't exactly horror but a gentle, touching dark fantasy, and this is just funny. It's practically slapstick, with our likable schmuck husband and his braindead dog trying to handle a single nasty bug.

In some ways it's all the old 'wife jokes' and Al Bundy stuff and (especially given where the story goes), it could come off as mean-spirited, or even misogynistic. But Navarro gets us on our narrator's side easily with a couple of great lines. After "Out of that same paycheck would have to come Dolly's alimony payment. With a name like that you'd think I would have known better," I was hooked; his description of his former stepsons as "a couple of pre-teen Nazis who liked things like dissecting live frogs and pulling legs off grasshoppers" actually made me laugh out loud.

This is a rollicking good time, which is good, because we're about to hit. . .

The Drought by Lois Tilton

Synopsis: Hendrick Van Den Berge is a cameraman assisting two naturalists documenting a drought in Africa. He desperately wants to help the animals, but the stern Dr. Alicia McNutly has a strict non-intervention policy.  But even if they don't interfere with nature, nature may be ready to interfere with them. . .

Thoughts: Very powerful and brutal imagery. Between this and "The Pit," (and perhaps even the comical misfortunes of Chanci the dog in "I Know What To Do") animal lovers are going to have a hard time. I'm a little unclear as to the point of all this imagery. There's an obvious EC Comics inversion to the fact that the severe, don't intervene naturalist winds up getting trampled by elephants, but Tilton has something much deeper and darker than a simple morality play. There's an apocalyptic element to this story, which reminds me of movies like The Last Wave and Long Weekend and Take Shelter--impending catastrophe, both ecological and supernatural.

Are the animals performing a sacrifice to get the rain to come? That's a fascinating idea, although it might need a little more spelling out if that's the case. Still, the imagery goes a long way to making this story work. Just incredible. 

The Nightmare's Tale by Tanith Lee

Synopsis: A boy orphaned by the French Revolution grows up and heads to the Caribbean to get revenge. What he finds instead is a voodoo nightmare.

Thoughts: I'm coming around to this "historical horror" stuff, and to voodoo stories.  

We had a good voodoo story in the last volume (two, in fact), but this blows them both away. It's Lee's description that makes this pop; writers often use the same voodoo cliches but Lee's gifts for the grotesque and the beautiful give them life.  

It's not as good as "The Devil's Rose"--that story is surgical and precise, whereas this is sprawling and on a grand scope. As a result some of the firepower Lee brings to bear gets dissipated a little. But some of that may just be my own preferences in terms of plot over style. 

He Whistles Far and Wee by Kiel Stuart

Synopsis: The idyllic island of Eheluena is full of tourists enjoying the lazy relaxation of paradise. The Balloon Man walks among them, offering his delightful balloons as just the cherry on top of a perfect day. But this is a book of horror stories, so, come on, you know there's something sinister going on. . .

Thoughts: This one did nothing for me when I read it a few months ago. I read it again today and it clicked. I think it's the result of reading so many Grant-edited anthologies recently--this feels like a total lock for a Greystone Bay story.

The one change I would make would be to get rid of the reveal of who exactly the balloon man is. I think the story would be stronger if the menace is more ambiguous and not linked to any particular mythology or archetype. You'd only need to cut one line, maybe two, from the whole thing.

Spoilers: 

Unless...unless the fact that the Balloon Man is the Devil (I suppose he could also be a satyr, but I feel like it's the Devil) is in fact suggesting that his play here is to get people stuck on loafing on the island forever

Which is an interesting riff. Of all the seven deadly sins, Sloth is one which gets the least play in horror fiction. Indeed, it may be one of the more insidious ones (since it doesn't require an overt act the same way most of the others do).  If that's what Stuart's up to, bravo. 

Dirty Pain by Lisa Swallow

Synopsis: Malcolm feels the pain of others intensely. The only way to make it stop is to hurt himself, or others.

Thoughts: The one story in this book I actually dislike. It feels like an old school Pan Book of Horror 'bloke with a knife and a bad attitude, plus some sexy bits' story. The innovation here is the weird Corsican Brothers element where Malcolm can feel the pain of others, except sometimes it's "dirty pain" (which is bad) and sometimes it's "clean pain" (which is good).

It's all confusing, and I kept thinking of a similar story that captured this sort of obsessive thinking well: "Soul of the Beast Surrendered" by Wayne Edwards. That story managed to sell it; this doesn't. I will say that the best part of Swallow's story comes from this dynamic--when Malcolm's brother takes up football in high school, Malcolm finds comfort in the pain his sibling endures on the field. 

Ironically, the biggest problem in the story is the female character, Barbie. The problem starts with the name, honestly. I wondered if Swallow wasn't going for some sort of commentary here, but I don't think so. I think Barbie's just that, well, plastic.

Earlier in this book, Lisa Cantrell showed that women can write men as well as or better than men themselves. Here, Swallow demonstrates the opposite--women can also write women as poorly as or worse than men.

A superior version of this story--at least, of the Barbie-Malcolm dynamic--would be Theodore Sturgeon's "Bright Segment," which did the whole thing with better characterization and more shocks back in 1955. 

Last Echoes by Janet Lorimer

Synopsis: A nursery rhyme-obsessed academic takes her son and leaves her husband (and the modern world behind). But we all know that many nursery rhymes have dark origins. . . 

Thoughts: Big Ramsey Campbell vibes here, as Lorimer's unbalanced protagonist interprets the world through extemporaneous nursery rhymes. This leads to the sort of the wordplay and rhyming that pops up in a bunch of his stories, although I wish there were more here.

This is a tricky story because there are some brilliant elements but it's also disappointing. The premise is killer, and there's an incredibly uncanny setpiece in the middle of the story that's one of the tensest parts of this entire book. The problem, though, is that once we've reached that climax, there's not a lot of room to move afterward. The very ending is (conceptually) gruesome, but it feels rushed. Still, that middle bit of the story is scarier than many lesser stories ever accomplish.

Daddy's Coming Home by Lynn S. Hightower

Synopsis: Cort returns home to check up on his aging mother. She's doing okay, all things considered, except that she's convinced her husband is coming home soon--which Cort knows is categorically impossible. 

Thoughts: What was in the water in the early 1990s? This is our second or third 'Southern Gothic horror story with an abusive dad' tale in this book alone! I'm not complaining, though. This is an entertaining and incredibly well-written story. I don't want to give away too many surprises, but I will say that this story takes a look at an underutilized element of a well-known horror trope. 

A Touch of the Old Lilith by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

Synopsis: The women of the Meander family are all descended from Lilith, the mythological temptress in the Garden of Eden. At least, that's what Clea's grandmother insists. 

Thoughts: It reminds me a little of Lucy Taylor's "Unspeakable" in that it explores a lot of different variations on a good theme but that makes the story feel disjointed. There is a lot going on here, both in terms of plot and in terms of theme, and it feels a little all over the place. 

If I understand the final twist right, then I enjoy it--although I can't tell if Hoffman is suggesting that both Clea and her partner have overcome their own destructive impulses vis-a-vis the opposite sex, or if it's something more zero-sum (I like my interpretation better, but I'm a sucker for happy endings). 

Footprints in the Water by Poppy Z. Brite

Synopsis: A young man's telekinetic experiments draw the attention of a dark and beautiful child of the night.

Thoughts: This is a great story, scary and sexy and unnerving. The, ahem, climax reminds me of some of Ramsey Campbell's sexually-charged nightmares from Scared Stiff, although what makes this story more troubling and intriguing is that it's just as likely everything ends in erotic bliss as it will in sexual horror. A great capper for a great collection.