Welcome to my final special Halloween-themed post reviewing Stephen Jones’ collection, The Mammoth Book of Halloween Stories, a collection of surprisingly interesting stories all nominally tied to Halloween. As with the previous weeks, several very good stories this week. My favorite story of the week was probably “Lantern Jack” by Christopher Fowler about a very old London pub–how can you go wrong with that kind of setting? I will give an honorable mention to Jane Yolen’s poem “Halloween Treats,” which set the mood perfectly; those of you who have read my blog for a while know that I don’t normally enjoy poetry, but I will make an exception in this case. All in all, a very solid collection with FAR more hits than misses, and well worth your time picking up if you, like me, have a fondness for Halloween.

“The Scariest Thing in the World” by Michael Marshall Smith

This is the story of two artists who have known each other for decades: one has achieved enormous success, and the other…has not, and resents his more successful colleague. The less successful artist is hosting a major new art installation show and his friend has shown up for this one-time performance/viewing. The intent here is that the 300 attendees will be led down into a dark, silent basement and left there with their imaginations roaming for thirty minutes before they will be released. The idea behind this is that their imaginations will frighten them more than anything an artist could create. The complication is that during a drunken discussion many years previously, the more successful artist came up with the idea, told his friend, and then laughed it off believing the idea was silly or would never have the effect desired (I suspect he was correct)—so even this taints the host’s night. But then the successful artist accompanies the crowd into the basement, lights some flammable materials on fire, then calmly walks out, ensuring that the door to the basement is firmly shut. While this would be terrifying, it’s unclear what his motivation to commit mass murder might be.

“The Nature of the Beast” by Sharon Gosling

Cassie Wish is a detective sergeant in England’s rural Northumberland county facing a series of missing people and animals cases. The police scour the area and find a disheveled man who is keeping a young girl captive. As it turns out the young girl is actually a kind of predatory mutant who can dislocate her jaw and extrude additional shark-like rows of teeth; she is also absolutely savage and possesses an insatiable hunger. Cassie notices the girl’s unusual characteristics, but conceals this from her colleagues because she is also being abused at home by her drunk husband and the girl is a perfect instrument of revenge. No explanation or even hint for why the girl even exists, but still enjoyable.

“The Beautiful Feast of the Valley” by Stephen Gallagher

A university librarian is helping his colleague in the computer science department compile and scan in everything that the Greek philosopher is known to have said. The idea is that they will then be able to create a kind of artificial intelligence that can respond as Plutarch would have.  Things get complicated when it becomes clear that the librarian is also scanning in all the notes of a deceased Plutarch scholar, Magdalena, with whom the librarian was secretly in love. The AI starts spitting out a short story about an ancient Egyptian slave who died while in captivity, was sort of mummified and then rose from the dead, along with all the other Egyptian mummies as part of a kind of zombie-like uprising (this story is reproduced as a kind of story-within-a-story). But Magdalena never actually finished her version of the story; it seems that the AI has finished it for her, suggesting that perhaps the AI is mimicking Magdalena more than Plutarch. That summary probably sounds a little more convoluted than the actual tale; in any case, this was a good one.

“In the Year of Omens” by Helen Marshall

Not really a Halloween tale—I don’t think the holiday appears here, even in passing—but good nevertheless. Leah is a fourteen year old girl in a town where people, animals, and plants have small mutations that appear on their bodies that grow over time and eventually kill them after transforming them into odd monstrosities and hybrid-beings. (The effects are perhaps less outlandish then I’m letting on here: no fly-human hybrids or things like that, more like scales, or feathers, or shiny patches.) There is almost a sense of welcoming or contentment from those who experience their bodies transforming into something else. Everyone around Leah experiences this except for her; she craves it, even though several of her friends die from it, even while she craves the attention of her best friend’s older brother. Wistful and longing tone and atmosphere. Well done, though I don’t fully understand what was going on here.

“The Millennial’s Guide to Death” by Scott Bradfield

Silly. Not entirely sure what the point was, other than some heavy-handed social commentary to say that some millennials have trouble making ends meet, but it didn’t contain any commentary on causes or solutions, so not terribly effective. Here, Death is a millennial loser who is underpaid by his boss, Mother Nature, and is forced to live in his sister’s basement and drive an old car. Mother Nature quits her job abruptly, and then Death stops taking dying people to their final destinations, but no one really seems to notice and life goes on pretty much the same as before. Okay….

“White Mare” by Thana Niveau

Fourteen-year-old Heather and her father are trying to rebuild their relationship after the mysterious disappearance of Heather’s mother. They end up traveling to a small town in Britain when Heather’s great-aunt dies and leaves them her home, along with a horse named Callisto that Heather quickly falls in love with. There’s a brief run-in with some local surly teenagers, then a group of townsfolk show up on Halloween, force their way inside, then they kill the horse and leave its severed head as a threat. The local constabulary won’t take any action, chalking it all up to a local custom (?!), but Heather gets revenge by, seemingly, transforming into a were-horse. I enjoyed the story but now that I type out this summary I can see that the plot doesn’t even remotely make sense. Still, I enjoyed it at the time.

“Pumpkin Kids” by Robert Shearman

A very long story (perhaps a novelette?) that is not especially worth it. The narrator is a boy living in an alternate world in which is was almost a “Pumpkin Kid” (a child born on October 31) but his delivery took too long so he was born a few hours after midnight on November 1. Because of this, his parents hate him (his mother abuses him and his father eventually commits suicide because of this) and all of society holds him in contempt. In addition to the auspicious birthdate, Pumpkin Kids seem to be human-pumpkin hybrids that eventually get sacrificed by the community, who all seem to be religious zealots of some strange sort. His mother eventually kidnaps an unattended Pumpkin Kid (a definite taboo) and the narrator transforms into a Pumpkin Kid, exacting a measure of revenge against his church. Surreal and just plain weird, and not in a particularly appealing sort of way. I had very much hoped that this story would pan out, but I must report that it did not.

“Lantern Jack” by Christopher Fowler

The history of a very old London pub that has gone through many changes in ambiance, décor, and clientele over the decades. One constant element is that there are lots of unusual deaths and misfortunes among the pub’s patrons. There is a nice creepy little twist at the end that I won’t spoil.

“Halloween Treats” by Jane Yolen

A nice, charming little poem that would be great for children. Apparently Yolen writes one of these every year and hands them out to trick-or-treaters at her home, which sounds like a great tradition.