"Do You Know What The Most Frightening Thing In The World Is? It's Fear.": Fears (ed. Ellen Datlow)

                                                                                        

I've been looking forward to this one for a while.  A Datlow anthology is always going to have contemporary horror of the highest literary quality, and in this case, a couple of vintage reprints as well. I'll discuss more below, but it's one of those reprints that got me excited about this. That's because we have a story about Charles Birkin, the 20th century master of the British horror short story. If you're in the know, then just hearing that name may make you tense up a little, because Birkin has a deserved reputation for both quality and cruelty. 

He's not alone here, though: Plenty of the stories here are excruciating downers, and, although I loved this book, we're going to wade into some heavy stuff. So, be warned. What better way to do it than to cite Hugh Lamb in his introduction to another one of Birkin's stories. What applies for him here applies for the whole book: 

“[N]ot for the squeamish. Be warned, if you are at all sensitive, leave him well alone. He deals unflinchingly with such subjects as murder, rape, concentration camps, patricide, mutilation and torture.”

Bait by Simon Bestwick

Synopsis: A man intervenes to protect a woman from attack, but he's the one at risk.

Thoughts: Bestwick scores big here by taking a familiar turn-the-tables set-up and turning them further: Generally, these prey-to-predator stories see a sympathetic, vulnerable character reveal themselves as a sympathetic, empowered avenger. Bestwick, though, flips some of the sympathy at the same time he flips the power dynamic, and makes Ginger at least a little villainous. Just how villainous, though? That's the question the reader, and our protagonist, have to figure out the answer to, and quickly. 

The most provocative part of the story is when Ginger gives inconsistent backstories. At one point, she cites abuse of her own, but then she asks the protagonist whether it would make it worse if she was just doing this because she got ghosted once. I doubt either version is the truth--she's too unstable for that--and Bestwick gets to capture some of what makes Ms. 45 such an effective horror movie.

The Pelt by Annie Neugebauer

Synopsis: Debra and Mike's rural life is invaded by a mysterious animal pelt that someone or something 

Thoughts: A creepy one. SPOILERS ahead. 

There's a bit of a bait and switch here--Neugebauer sets it up so that the threat appears to be i) whatever the mystery beast is and/or ii) who or whatever delivered the pelt. But, the pelt's ultimately a red herring (maybe that was the animal in question) for conflicts that might have been inevitable anyway. Neugebauer keeps things unclear, which lets her double the reader's tension--if Debra's right, then she's in danger. And if she's wrong, then Mike had better watch himself...

Sometimes these stories (weird event leads to marital dissolution and a spouse finds themselves on the wrong end of the other's knife/hammer/gun/etc.) come off as forced.  But in this Neugebauer starts it rolling from the beginning and the payoff feels justified.

As a matter of editing, by the way, this story placement is killer (as it should be; it's Ellen Datlow we're talking about here).

A Sunny Disposition by Josh Malerman

Synopsis: Benji's left alone with Grandpa Ray. Creepy enough, but the old man's eyes are all wrong. It's story time!

Thoughts: Scariest story in the book; this one reaches out and grabs you at a visceral level. Usually, stories that are largely someone telling a story have a harder time being scary because they lack immediacy. Here, though, Malerman shrinks us down to a child's-eye view, and we have no idea what's happening next, except that it's going to be bad. This may be my new favorite Malerman story.

The Donner Party by Dale Bailey

Synopsis: Victorian social-climber Mrs. Brenn gets a taste of elite life at Lady Donner's first feast, but navigating the high life is even more fraught when human flesh is involved.

Thoughts: After horror, my second favorite thing to read is probably Victorian novels, so this was a treat. Bailey does a great job of satirical world-building and gives us a society where the high point of the London season are the First Feast and Second Feast, in which a certain ultra-privileged few may partake of human meat. 

It also reminds me something of "The Necklace," which is my all-time favorite "doomed social climbers" story, although if you squint, there's a few similarities to Charles Birkin's "The Godsend" as well. I've got Birkin on the brain, can you blame me?

However, I'm not entirely sure it belongs here. This is one of the stories where, if you have your wits partway about you (or if you read the back cover copy), you can guess what the kicker will be. But even that's not it--sometimes, knowing where a story is going and watching it inexorably approach a cruel conclusion is the, uh, fun? 

No, the problem is that I don't think there's a ton of specifically psychological horror here, although there's a version of the story where there is. Mrs. Brenn is so driven with social ambition that the sacrifice she's made doesn't register at all. I'm not sorry Datlow printed the story here--I'm delighted to have read it--but I'm not sure it's totally appropos. 

White Noise in a White Room by Steve Duffy

Synopsis: A retired British Army interrogator gets called to an off-the-books prison in Northern Ireland to crack a silent, implacable suspect responsible for unspeakable atrocities.

Thoughts: A good, high-concept premise (world-weary war-criminal army intelligence officers vs. Michael Myers, basically) that doesn't land for me because, I think, it rejects the straightforward genre pleasures of such an approach in favor of a more metaphysical look at the nature of evil. 

I might not be so grouchy if the metaphysical investigation were more than just skin-deep. That our heroes (who are at best a necessary evil, and at worst just an evil) are scarred and screwed-up and broken from a career of professionally scarring, screwing-up, and beating others is an interesting place to start, but it's not a novel observation on Duffy's part. He who fights monsters, blah blah, stares into the abyss, blah blah, banality of evil, blah blah. What makes this interesting is the hints of the supernatural floating around, and the sense that the contact with evil these guys have all experienced is actually a hint of cosmic malevolence.  This is what I'm most interested in!

This is, emphatically, not a book of supernatural horror, so I see that my preferred version wouldn't really fit here. But, if we're going to introduce a boogeyman figure into the proceedings, we're already halfway there. 

Singing My Sister Down by Margo Lanagan

Synopsis: A young boy attends the slow communal execution of his sister.

Thoughts: Incredible, and well worthy of the recognition it's received. As a work of fantasy, there's incredible world-building: Lanagan's fictitious community is both familiar and exotic, and it's well lived -in. And, as a work of horror, it excels: One of the strategies of the Grand Guignol was to exaggerate particular moments of shock and horror; it's the sort of thing that takes a story like Maurice Level's "In the Light of the Red Lamp" and makes an effective stage play shocker--you linger on the moment of emotional response. Watching a family member slowly die with the approval of the community is as horrific as it gets, and Lanagan wrings an entire story out of it. Mandatory reading. 

Back Seat by Bracken MacLeod

Synopsis: A destitute father and daughter reduced to pilfering from unlocked cars make an unpleasant discovery.

Thoughts: An agonizing, Birkin-esque story (I know Birkin is coming up a lot here, but it's hard considering what's coming to keep him away). However, whereas Birkin's stories tend towards a smug, aristocratic misanthropy, MacLeod's tale oozes empathy. It's more in the vein of socially-conscious, naturalistic horrors that begins in France with Guy de Maupassant and Maurice Level, and then continues into the modern era with splatterpunk-y stories like Richard Christian Matheson's "Red" and John Skipp's "Film at Eleven." 

The horror on display here is almost too hideous to contemplate, so let me lean into the social commentary aspect, because I think there's an obvious level of it and a subtler level (but even the obvious level is subtle. This is because MacLeod is a good writer). To do so, alas, means SPOILERS:

The more obvious level of commentary is that, although the father here would be viewed by the state as being unable to provide a safe environment for his daughter, he's a much better parent in every respect than the parents of the other child in the story (even though they're, on paper, more 'respectable').

The subtler level is that, in a sense, we (society) are the other parents in the story, and our protagonists are the other child: We say we care for the unfortunate, and on some sense we do, but when they're cold and suffering and need us most, we're screwing around, inside, and they're out of sight, out of mind. 

England and Nowhere by Tim Nickels

Synopsis: A vacationer investigates the playful young couple staying near her. 

Thoughts: Halfway between the twisty, sexually-charged vacation voyeurism of Stranger by the Lake and the repulsive, incest-fueled British holiday-makers from hell of Island of Death lands "England and Nowhere." It's a lot of fun to read, although it is one of those stories where the endless throwing in of weird wrinkles and details represents borrowing against an ending that just isn't good enough collateral (see also: SGJ's story below). 

Endless Summer by Stewart O'Nan

Synopsis: A Ted Bundy-esque serial killer reminisces about his victims.

Thoughts: I've written about this before, and it's hard to add to a story like this which isn't, strictly speaking, a story at all (there's only the broadest of narrative arcs). But I love and respect it so much that I'll give a little more.

What makes this story for me is how (right down to the title) it's a story of yearning: Yearning for the past, but also a sense of yearning for a type of life and happiness that the psychopath writing this can only vaguely grasp. What he can grasp, as much as he can grasp anything, is the pain he inflicts. 

That's what makes this particularly haunting. 

My Mother's Ghosts by Priya Sharma

Synopsis: The remnants of a wealthy family molder on in their decaying manor. The most capable of all of them is a daughter with face-blindness.

Thoughts: Crazy decrepit family Gothic is always fun, and Sharma peppers the story with a soap-opera's worth of eccentricity and perversion. However, there is a problem here that reminds me of why Sharma's "Jack O'Dander" didn't work for me (this is a much stronger story than that one, though): The very end is satisfying, and the build-up to the climax is satisfying, but there's the part in-between--maybe the equivalent of the beginning of a dismount in gymnastics--that falters. I think some of it is that the move into full-on VC Andrews territory is so shocking that the subsequent revelations of what underpins a grotesque crime from the family's past don't detonate as powerfully as they're supposed to.

Still, a worthy entry in the modern Gothic canon; it's just (like Bailey's tale) more entertainingly macabre than actually psychologically terrifying.

The Wink and the Gun by John Patrick Higgins

Synopsis: A man's life is derailed by a run-in with two boys.

Thoughts: Brutal, perfect, one of the best stories ever written.

Horror, like all the other genres, is so broad that theories about "what horror does or is or means" are necessarily incomplete. But it certainly is true that one of those purposes is trying to understand the nature of a human existence that can always be derailed in a single instant by something arbitrary and horrible.

Some do that better than others, but off the top of my head there are three stories that mine that vein better than anything. One is T.C. Boyle's "Chickxulub"; the second is Jack Ketchum's "The Box"; the third is this. 

One of These Nights by Livia Llewellyn

Synopsis:  Three teen girls work out their differences at the community pool.

Thoughts: Sleazy and unsettling from the get-go, and it never lets you up for air (heh heh heh).  Mr. Miller is a memorably disgusting character but he's maybe not even the most monstrous here; everything and everyone is grotesque. Reminds me a bit of Dennis Etchison's "The Dog Park," in that it manages to turn a crowded, daytime, public space into an arena of panic and fear, with sinister intentions lurking everywhere. This won an Edgar Award in 2020, and deservedly so. 

LD50 by Laird Barron

Synopsis: A street-smart survivor of an Alaskan murderer takes up with a cowboy. Shame about the wave of dog mutilations. 

Thoughts:  Mace is at times a little tiresomely spunky and self-aware but Barron is one of the strongest writers working in the genre today, so he keeps it together and I'm interested in spending more time with Mace. It's very entertaining, but the psychological horror never hits for me, and what I think is the big marquee moment of psychological terror in the story--the second coyote hunting excursion--just doesn't do anything for me. But, c'mon. It's Barron. It's good. Read it. 

Cavity by Theresa DeLucci

Synopsis: A woman's life, told in encounters with murderers.

Thoughts: I have a love/hate relationship with this one. The through-line plot with our main character's abusive boyfriend feels a bit pat, and although I like the final twist (I actually didn't see it coming), the very ending with its suggestion of more violence yet to come (whether in the Ms. 45 vein or just the generic "I've killed, and now I want more" that pops up in too many otherwise good stories). 

There's good stuff, too. Some great moments of psychological dread, many tied to the threat of male violence. One that stuck with me was "[T]here is a woman on every treadmill at our gym, every woman outrunning her own would-be killer in her mind. It's an impossible balancing act; being desirable enough but never in too easy reach".

There are other gems as well--the riding instructor with the sealed juvenile murder conviction, and the strange "mixture of emotion [that] clouds her eyes when she spurs her horse just a bit too hard," and even a few funny bits, like the suicidal sky-diving instructor (this last one feels like one of Michael Arnzen's great micro-horrors).  

Souvenirs by Sharon Gosling

Synopsis: Former globe-trotter Reg is being pushed into assisted living by his well-meaning daughter. Ah well. He doesn't need much. Just one keepsake. 

Thoughts: "Murderer remembers their past crimes, largely through the lens of inanimate objects" is a well that we've been to twice already in this book, with great results, but third time isn't always a charm. 

Even the great Charles Birkin couldn't make the "discovering the aftermath of the offstage crime" plot that compelling; by my reckoning he turned in three examples of this genre, and at least two of them suffer from the fact that the final horrific revelation is too obvious and too far in the past for us to care (the third example, "Dark Menace," does work a little in the Grand Guignol tradition of elongating the final moment of emotional horror). I suppose the psychological terror we're supposed to feel here is the terror of proximity to a maniac who's been reactivated and is ready to begin a reign of terror at the nursing home. . .but, between you and me, I'm not that threatened. 

Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? by Joyce Carol Oates

Synopsis: A teen girl attracts the attentions of the sinister Arnold Friend.

Thoughts: Incredible. I'd heard of this as one of the touchstones of great Oates horror/suspense stories but hadn't read it until now. I also knew it was based off of some real mass murderer--I think I thought it was Bundy, but clearly not for a 1966 story. In fact, it's based on Charles Schmid, "The Pied Piper of Tucson," who held sway over a teenage social circle and killed three teen girls. He was also the inspiration for Jack Ketchum's The Lost, which I have read (and recommend), but which I also didn't realize was based on Schmid.

Anyway, this is, like "The Lottery," one of the handful of twentieth-century horror stories that's become part of the American short story canon. It's hard to add a new critical angle to a story that's been picked apart for sixty years by everyone from academics to high school and college students in English class, so let me just say that it's a barn burner. This is a hypnotic and reality-warping tale that's grounded in sordid reality but soars to fantastic, fairy-tale heights. It is almost a dark, twentieth-century variant on a trickster tale. A masterpiece, like most everything Oates writes. 

The Wrong Shark by Ray Cluley

Thoughts: A man returns to his Martha's Vineyard hometown, where he remembers the production of Jaws and an incident that scarred him for life.

Synopsis: A beautiful bit of misdirection. For most of the story, Cluley pulls us along with a mixture of amusing and interesting bits of inside baseball about filming Jaws (I don't know whether all or even some of the factoids are true, but they seem plausible), and little bits of conflict: The fraught relationship between Darnell and his dad, strained race relations in America (both then and now), and Darnell and whatever trauma he experienced. Then we get to The Incident, and although it's upsetting and unpleasant, it doesn't quite seem up to what we've come to expect from a story in this book. 

Then Cluley executes the turn, and (if you're me), you audibly gasp. Now, that's a story. 

21 Brooklands: Next to Old Western, Opposite the Burnt Out Red Lion by Carole Johnstone

Synopsis: Susan's life in a grotty slum with her wretched family is bad, but that's nothing compared to what happens when the lights go out.

Thoughts: Another mixed bag. On the plus side--after Malerman's story, this is probably the scariest story in the book on a visceral level. It's good, and easily earns its psychological horror stripes. In addition, I enjoyed (if that's the word) the way we begin with the miserable family setting and then make things even worse once the genre elements kick in. 

The "answer" to everything is too neat for me, and tends to undermine the power of the story. Now, some of that's a given. It's always going to be creepier when you don't know what's happening than when you do. And, I'm not faulting Johnstone for giving us an explanation: I'm firmly in the Stephen King camp of believing that it's always better to throw open the door and show the monster than to hedge bets and leave the threat out of sight. I just think the particular answer isn't compelling. 

Unkindly Girls by Hailey Piper

Synopsis: Another beachside summer vacation with Daddy. Another group of 'unkindly' girls with their revealing swimsuits, some of whom will wind up dead before the summer's over. Morgan sees the way Daddy looks at her, but she'll be safe, as long as she stays demure and kindly.

Thoughts: Incest and swimming--a great combination, apparently, since this is story number three in this collection (assuming I'm interpreting the Nickels tale correctly) to mix them together. A dubious micro-genre to be sure, but this is very squirm-inducing. Some of this is the power of words--it turns out that "kindly" and "unkindly" are creepy words, especially when used this way. 

This is another story with a problem that's a nice problem to have: All of the fear and unease is in the buildup to Daddy's inevitable killing spree and then the Final Girl confrontation. Credit where it's due--the showdown in the waves is exciting and one of the most memorable images in the book. The terror just deflates a bit by then, is all. 

A Lovely Bunch of Coconuts by Charles Birkin

Synopsis: A group of bored SS officers at a concentration camp hold a carnival-style contest where prisoners compete for prized jobs in the camp kitchens.

Thoughts: Fears is one of two books I've bought solely because they had a Charles Birkin story in them. However, while Hugh Lamb's A Wave of Fear was necessary for me to get my hands on the remarkably spiteful "Marjorie's on Starlight," I already had this story. . .and didn't particularly want to read it again. Instead, I got it because I knew that if this was the vein that Datlow was mining for the book, it was going to be an all-timer. Indeed, I think this is my favorite Datlow anthology to date, narrowly unseating Darkness: Two Decades of Modern Horror (although that's essential if you don't have it). 

Birkin continues to languish in obscurity in the United States (a "low profile," you might say, and if you get that particular Charles Birkin joke I love you, you wonderful person, you), although some recent much-needed reprints of some of his collections, and the inevitable word of mouth effect that someone like Birkin inspires (I do my part as a major Birkin evangelist) are changing that. In other words, I felt a little bit of sadistic glee seeing that this bummer-bomb of a story was getting a wide release. 

On to the story itself: 

The story is most notorious for its setting and the unspeakable reveal, but what makes it powerful is that it's a series of escalating cruelties (first the concentration camp setting, then the coconut shy game, then the horrible run-off between the two old men, and then. . .), and they don't end with the big reveal. In fact, the most devastating sentence for me comes at about the 5/6 mark of the story. By this point in his career, Birkin was a master at this telescoping nastiness. 

The other element I want to highlight is the way that Birkin's characteristic misanthropy plays out. Birkin does not, thankfully, single the inmates out for scorn the way he sometimes does his victims (cf. "Marjorie's on Starlight," which is almost hilarious in this regard). Instead, he reserves his hostility for the Nazis (always a good choice), who among them check off every SS stereotype. And, this is where the all-encompassing spitefulness of Birkin comes out. See, even though the Nazis have their ghastly joke, it's very clear during the story that the war's not going their way, and they're on the downhill side. Even the brutal final lines underscore that point (although the Nazis don't know it). You'd think it would make it better, but it doesn't. It's less a sense of "justice is coming" as much as it is "oh, absolutely everything and everyone in this story is doomed."

Teeth by Stephen Graham Jones

Synopsis: A physically and mentally deteriorating homicide detective investigates the 

Thoughts: A frustrating one. SPOILERS ahead. 

 It starts off as a fun, weird little crime story (some of the protagonist's quips remind me of Donald E. Westlake), and then gets more convoluted . 

The story gets drunk on the winding possibilities and red herrings and non-red herrings, before settling on an answer that's both straightforward and implausible (if the "culprit" is an autophagous guy, why does he care about getting rid of the evidence? Why not just throw it in the trash? Who's going to look through his trash?). 

The scene at the end is an honest to goodness jump scare in book form, and it works well (maybe that's why it's here to close off the anthology and give us a final scare before we leave). But for all the convolutions, this isn't very, uh, fleshed-out.