Babbling Into The Void

Split Scream Volume 3 is here and Dread Stone are going from strength to strength with these double-feature, bite-size horror tales. This time, we have Patrick Barb's So Quiet, So White , and Imago Expulsio (The Red Animal of Our Blood)  by J.A.W. McCarthy. In Barb's story, following family relations in the aftermath of a terrible event, he truly puts the lie to the old saw that good prose should be unnoticeable. His writing is thick, writhing in the reader's hands. On occasion it can trip over itself, choke on itself, but at its best it is reminiscent of Laird Barron, stylised and punchy and surly. Some writing flows, but this oozes , slick and ominous. Who wants a pane of glass when you can have this glorious dark vista? Atmosphere and tone are Barb's weapons of choice, but he still manages to work in a vicious twist - more analogous to a twist of a knife in the gut than a twist in the tale. McCarthy's piece is a darkly romantic story of passion, trauma, and the t...

 Here's an interesting - and somewhat daunting - thing: in her preface to this volume, Magen Cubed describes these stories as training for her later work. I can assuredly say that if this was the caliber of my writing in 'training', I would be more than satisfied. I'm being slightly specious here - most of these stories have been previously published in anthologies or magazines, it's not like we're seeing unedited, raw drafts here - but these pieces are not simply a prelude to what came later, they are evidence of a true talent. What's true, though, is that these pieces are in the main explorations of specific ideas, for better or worse. Some of them do seem fragmentary, evocative scenes that just about have a narrative. This can be unsatisfying, but for every story with a sudden, perfunctory ending, there is a beautifully crafted gem of imagination like 'A Fresh, Clean Soul', a work of emotional weight like 'Ain't No Grave', a fun little...

Another Split Scream , another double-feature - and what a double-feature it is. This time our novelettes (the handy little explainer intro is also repeated in this volume) are The Shivering World  by Cynthia Gómez and What Ate the Angels  by M Lopes da Silva. The first follows a young woman's struggles with poverty, identity and patriarchy, and the sacrifices required to escape the position she is in, as manifested both figuratively and literally by the story of La Llarona. The second is a razor-sharp exploration of toxicity - within ourselves, within our relationships, and in the foundations and history of its setting, Los Angeles. There is an acute sense of embedding in both these stories; a feeling that we are really seeing into a character's life, a real tangle of relationships and emotions, daily struggles and internal experiences. Though both writers have unique voices, they are united in their ability to ground the uncanny in affectingly real worlds. In that vein, the...

 I've not been reading as much horror as I'd like, so I needed a short sharp burst of nightmares. For that,  Split Scream Volume 1  was the perfect package. The book consists of two novelettes by different authors, preceded by a (frankly welcome) editorial note explaining just what a novelette is, exactly. Then we're into it - two unique and compelling stories, each with their own dread atmosphere. The first novelette, Carson Winter's The Guts of Myth , grabs from the off. Just look at this opening: I always thought I looked a little like Roger Moore. I wore the same suits and I had the same chestnut hair. We were both English, even though I only got in on a technicality. The real difference between us was that he was a movie star and I was a crook. But that was fine. I doubted either of us were keeping score. Can there be any doubt that we're in the hands of a master? This is a punchy blend of noir and cosmic horror that calls to mind classic Laird Barron while mai...

 One thing I love is a themed horror collection. An array of different takes on the same theme, commonalities spiraling off into individual and idiosyncratic concepts. Make that theme something as deeply personal as a trans perspective on body horror, and you have the makings of something not only exciting and inventive, but insightful, painful, powerful. The variety on display here is dazzling and every story offers something unique; even some that explore similar territory on the surface do so through deeply personal lenses. Some are acutely, painfully in the present moment; others draw us to the distant past, imagined futures or other worlds. There are stories that invoke mundanity, the gothic, schlock, religious horror, science fiction, all spun around the anchor of the human body and its transformations. Speaking as someone who rarely feels grounded in his own body, these stories made me deathly aware of my chest tightening, my stomach churning, my skin crawling. None of these...

Three years ago, three friends broke into an abandoned house. A house haunted by fascism, a house that was fascism. What happened inside has transformed them all. Alice, a trans woman, is incessantly visited by ghosts as she drifts dissociated through a hollow life. Ila, once Alice's best friend, has become a minor celebrity among TERFs, but is uncomfortably aware of the way her new community tokenizes her Jewish and Pakistani identities. Hannah, the third of them, never came out at all. And always the House is there, waiting, looming, reassuring, threatening, promising, hating. There are words I want to attach to the experience of reading this book. Gruelling. Harrowing. Not because it is a slog - rather, the prose flies - but because of its subject matter and, perhaps more importantly, Rumfitt's skill in manifesting an atmosphere of oppression, in inhabiting the minds and bodies of the protagonists as they exist within that atmosphere, in pushing the reader on through misery ...

 Ambiguity is everywhere in Prince of Darkness . The thing that the religious and scientific characters can agree on is that there are places where the common-sense, intuitive rules do not apply, whether that's the level of quantum physics, or within the human heart. While Carpenter does juxtapose the scientific and religious viewpoints, they are not at odds with one another. Victor Wong's physicist and Donald Pleasance's priest are friends, not opponents, trying to work together to puzzle out the mystery. There is debate between the two positions, but, crucially, both recognise that they don't hold all the answers, that there are points where their certainties break down. Instead, they are both attempts to explain the universe from a human perspective - attempts that, it is increasingly clear, fall woefully short. This is cosmic horror, expressed not through the vast, but the minuscule. Just as humanity is humbled when looking outwards, into the boundless universe, so ...