Goodbye Horses: The Black Carousel by Charles L. Grant

                                                                              

After a long absence from Oxrun Station, Grant returned one last time to his scary New England town. And so do we--if you're just joining us now, see coverage of Nightmare Seasons, The Orchard, and Dialing the Wind at the respective links!

Spoilers follow, more so than for the other entries. So just go read the dang book, it's not that hard to track down, and all of these are very worthwhile!

Prologue

Synopsis: Oxrun Station's new chief of police, Derick Stockton, comes from a long line of Stocktons who've led the Station's finest, but he's not himself a native of the town. A few citizens take it on themselves to educate him about what he's in for, all centered around a visit from the Pilgrim's Travelers carnival.

Thoughts: We remember the redoubtable Abe Stockton, the Oxrun Station police chief whose notes and files formed the contents of The Orchard and Dialing the Wind. Here, the shoe's on the other foot.

One gripe I have with these sorts of framing devices, and it's one which only Nightmare Seasons avoids, is that there's no way people are saying verbatim any sort of story which has this amount of psychological depth and lush description. I get it's a convention of the subgenre, but still. 

Penny Tunes for a Gold Lion 

Synopsis: A mailman slipping towards midlife crisis meets a mysterious young woman at the carnival, all while his beloved garden dies.

Thoughts:  We encountered troubles with the Oxrun Station Post Office back in Nightmare Seasons, with poor old postmaster Pat. 

A lot of prime Grant elements here, not least of which is "man past his prime drinks a bunch and tries to juggle multiple women." Otherwise, we have a Something Wicked This Way Comes scenario, which makes sense because a major theme of that book is the acceptance of aging and mortality, and also the empty promises of a dark ride on a malefic carousel. This is a theme that comes back in the final story--the carousel is just a fancy that kills time; an evasion, not an escape, as the carnival girl says. After all, it's the illusion of progress and movement, but no actual movement, because (to paraphrase Pink Floyd) everything is relatively the same but you're a little bit older. 

There's maybe a little too much going on here--some of the business about the garden never adds up in the right way, as though there's a metaphor too many in this story--but I'm just quibbling at this point. A strong opener, and one that emerges from the shadow of Bradbury to cast its own darkness.

Will You Be Mine?

Synopsis: Twelve year old Fran's family has moved her from Cambridge to Oxrun Station, and she hates it. Even worse, the preteen social scene has a bewildering set of rules, and the price of rebellion is higher than you'd think.

Thoughts: More like Charles L. Stine! This hits all the Goosebumps notes (it's particularly similar in some ways to The Ghost Next Door), down to a preteen protagonist who's just moved to a new town, which my millennial compatriots may recall was the Goosebumps plot device par excellance. 

In fact, this would fit in fine with the YA horror of my youth. Besides the subject matter, it is written in a straightforward, simple manner without the lush description that characterizes Grant's work; this helps put us in Fran's headspace. 

There's very little to do with the carnival here, which is a pity, because I'd like to see how the kids act at Pilgrim's Travelers. In some ways, this makes sense--this story is more about the social and supernatural dynamics of Oxrun Station than about the magnification or literalization of a character's psychic drama. 

A great ending, too, one straight out of Goosebumps.

Lost in Amber Light 

Synopsis: Twenty year-old Drake hates almost everything, including life with his overbearing mother and the snobbishness of their upper-class relatives. A trip to Pilgrim's Travelers brings that hate to life.

Thoughts: We're back to the carnival as the center of the story, and of the two carnival-centric stories in the book, I like this more.

There's a moment when Drake's walking home and everything seems deserted and locked up that it feels that Grant's gone to the same well that he did for "The Chariot, Dark and Low," but this is a different story and very nasty.

There are sublimely grotesque images here, and just in time for the reader (me) who feels we haven't gotten enough carnival imagery. Once again, just because Grant was sparing with violence and similar content doesn't mean he didn't use it. 

And, just as it seems that the carnival is a mere sideshow to what's going on, Grant comes in with a great, meanspirited ending. 

The Rain Is Filled with Ghosts Tonight 

Synopsis: Aging Kayman fights to keep his wife and his sanity, as figures both living and dead surround him. 

Thoughts:  As the title suggests, this is a gloomy ghost story, but the ending is a little hazy. It seems powerful, but I struggled with figuring out the stakes. The epilogue made it clear, though.

It's a little at cross-purposes with the "all we can do is hang on" message of the wraparound. Kayman's been holding on for a long time; even before we get to his story, he pops up in "Lost in Amber Light," still acting virile. The ending in fact suggests that Kayman needs to stop the "carousel" of his life. In "Penny Tunes" we heard that the carousel doesn't offer an escape, but an evasion, and that's what Kayman's currently trying to do: He's evading the death of his friends by "keeping them alive" in his memory (which may or may not have a correspondence to reality; this is Oxrun Station, so it could go either way), and evading the problems of his life by not letting his wife go. Stopping the carousel would be facing facts.  

Epilogue 

Synopsis: The partygoers give Stockton a few final notes about the fates of the Oxrun residents described above, then it's time for a field trip. . .

Thoughts: Hey, it's The Orchard! 

Grant, again, provides a little more resolution to the stories; Casey's is consistent with what we thought before, although the note about his garden feels like a fillip upon a fillip. Fran's makes logical sense but doesn't pick up on the thread left at the end of her story; she just gets what she wants and never suffers, apparently (which is fine, she doesn't deserve to, but it sort of robs her story of the stakes it'd established). Drake's is okay, but the best is Kayman's which puts everything I mentioned above in relief (and has a bittersweetness to it I appreciate).  

I hope you've enjoyed another trip through Charlie Grant's world. Happy Halloween!