Month: March 2020

Week 111 – Weekly Horror Short Story Reviews: Campbell, Golden, Pulver, and DeBill

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Welcome to Week 111 of my horror short fiction review project! As with last week, there are two stories in particular that I’d like to highlight. The first is “Where Yidhra Walks” by Walter C. DeBill, Jr., my favorite of the week, which includes snake-like humanoids worshipping a long-forgotten goddess, but I’d also like to mention Joe Pulver’s “My Mirage”, which uses director David Lynch–who is making a film inspired by Chambers’ “The King in Yellow”–as a major character.

Demons by Daylight, by Ramsey Campbell (Carroll & Graf, 1990)

“The Sentinels”

One night two couples go up on a hill that has some menacing gargoyle figures atop it (the eponymous sentinels) and are seemingly threatened by the gargoyles there. Are the couples actually transported to some other place (a kind of extradimensional space)? Some decent atmosphere in this story, but overall the tale is ill-served by an overly ambiguous ending.

Madness on the Orient Express, edited by James Lowder (Chaosium, 2014)

“Bound for Home” by Christopher Golden

Harry Houdini boards the Orient Express at Vienna with his young publicist Ned, also encountering a plucky young reporter named Anna. Houdini is being paid to perform an escape stunt on the roof of the train but this turns out to be a trap set by his old Egyptian guide and cultist from the story co-written by the real Houdini and H.P. Lovecraft, “Imprisoned with the Pharaohs.” (I thought this callback a very nice touch.) Houdini is intended as a blood sacrifice to elder beings and Anna’s body/womb is to be the doorway through which some monstrous entity will emerge from another dimension. Houdini is forced to kill Anna to prevent this from happening, and vows revenge against charlatans and occultists alike, a nice reference to Houdini’s actual crusade against fake spiritualists.

The King in Yellow Tales, Volume 1, by Joseph S. Pulver, Sr. (Lovecraft eZine Press, 2015)

“My Mirage”

The narrator is a writer who gets involved with David Lynch (yes, that David Lynch) on the film project that he’s working on. As it turns out Lynch is working on adapting Robert W. Chambers’ The King in Yellow as a film with his own unique surreal and noirish twists. (Needless to say, I very much want this film to actually get made.) The narrator also starts obsessing over the leading lady in the film, which seems to be a very common theme among Pulver’s protagonists in this collection, before descending into madness. I appreciated the sheer chutzpah of Pulver’s story and the fact that he included David Lynch as a major character. Fun stuff.

A Mountain Walked: Great Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, edited by S.T. Joshi (Dark Regions Press, 2015)

[previously reviewed] “The Franklyn Paragraphs” by Ramsey Campbell

“Where Yidhra Walks” by Walter C. DeBill, Jr.

Very good story, but kind of a mash-up between HPL’s “The Curse of Yig” and “Shadow over Innsmouth,” so not entirely original, but still very enjoyable. Our narrator, Peter Kovacs, is passing through rural Texas during a hurricane and gets caught by rapidly rising waters in the outer bands. He is forced to stay in a small town for a few days that is both extremely hostile to outsiders and home to an insidious cult. Kovacs is an interesting fellow: he seems to be a folklorist, if not an actual occultist, and has deep knowledge of both Texas history and the occult. We never really learn much about him, other than he is driving across country, with no particular deadline, to visit a friend. In any case, a cult that worships a Native American snake goddess (the eponymous Yidhra) has taken root here, and apparently been influencing the town for a number of generations. There is clear evidence of inbreeding and some snake-human hybrids (think, the Deep One hybrids of Innsmouth, but with snake-like humanoids). There’s also a high priestess of the cult gifted with immortality, the ability to weave illusion magics, and probably other abilities, who takes a shine to the narrator—we can assume she is interested in adding his genes to the local pool. She is served by a snake-dog hybrid creature that is apparently the transmogrified form of the last outsider who discovered the cult’s secrets! This was a fun one.


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Week 110 – Weekly Horror Short Story Reviews: Campbell, Dansky, Pulver, and Wade

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Welcome to Week 110 of my horror short fiction review project! Got a couple good stories to share with you this week. My favorite story of the week was “A Finger’s Worth of Coal” by Richard Dansky, which marries the Cthulhu Mythos with a darn good time travel story, always a favorite of mine. But I would be remiss if I didn’t at least award an “honorable mention” prize to “The Deep Ones” by James Wade, which introduces dolphins as insane, evil cultists of Cthulhu. How can you go wrong with a premise like that?

Demons by Daylight, by Ramsey Campbell (Carroll & Graf, 1990)

“The Interloper, by Errol Undercliffe”

Nominally written by the eccentric horror author Errol Undercliffe (see “The Franklyn Paragraphs” for more on Undercliffe), this is, sadly, a bit of an incoherent mess. A classroom of schoolboys is mistreated by their teachers, who are all too willing to employ corporal punishment for the slightest offenses. Two of the boys end up wandering down into some catacombs or an underground network of tunnels and one of them gets trapped there. The other is too scared of his teachers to adequately explain what happened so that his schoolmate can get help. I’m honestly not sure what happened here, it was so vaguely narrated.

Madness on the Orient Express, edited by James Lowder (Chaosium, 2014)

“A Finger’s Worth of Coal” by Richard Dansky

Good time travel story. The story begins innocuously enough: A fireman on the Orient Express goes mad and two passengers—Walters and Higdon—carry him off the train for treatment. As it turns out, Elder Things in the distant past are attempting to retrieve a human skeleton and an anachronistic gun preserved in a coal deposit that is being used on the train for fuel. Both Walters and Higdon are accidentally sent into the prehistoric past. Walters ends up meeting a very dark fate, but I don’t want to say more because of major spoiler concerns—such is the nature of time travel mysteries. Good stuff.

The King in Yellow Tales, Volume 1, by Joseph S. Pulver, Sr. (Lovecraft eZine Press, 2015)

“Perfect Grace”

A paean to a girl. Given that it’s included in this collection, I must assume there a connection to The King in Yellow, but I really got nothing out of this one. Just too darn stream of consciousness.

A Mountain Walked: Great Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, edited by S.T. Joshi (Dark Regions Press, 2015)

“The Deep Ones” by James Wade

Dorn is a telepathy and hypnotism researcher—hey, this story is from 1969!—who has been brought in to assist in the research of Dr. Frederick Wilhelm, who is studying dolphins at a Southern Californian research center. Wilhelm is also assisted by a young female marine biologist, Jo Gilman, who originally hailed from Innsmouth, Massachusetts (if you are at all familiar with HPL’s work, you will recognize that Gilman is, unknowingly, a Deep One hybrid). Oh and there’s a hippie commune on the beach nearby, led by a former psychology professor from Miskatonic University named Alonzo Waite, who conduct mystic rituals and don’t seem to like the dolphin research. Dorm ends up putting Gilman in a trance-like state for prolonged periods as she attempts to commune with one particular dolphin nicknamed Flip at the center. Dorn and Wilhelm both fall for Gilman, which complicates matters when it becomes clear that (1) Flip, and in fact all dolphins, are loyal servants of Cthulhu and the Great Old Ones, and (2) he has impregnated(!!!) Jo Gilman. She comes to embrace her Deep One heritage, or is mentally enslaved by Flip, and they escape, aided by Wilhelm, who commits quasi-suicide. Dorn is left with a tape of Flip “speaking” and revealing his inhuman intelligence and deep love for Cthulhu. This would be more effective if you don’t stop to consider how squeaky and silly-sounding a dolphin’s voice would be if it was able to speak English. Oh and the hippies have been conducting occult rituals to try to stave off the rise of Cthulhu, so at least we have the Age of Aquarius to thank for delaying our inevitable collective demise by a few more years. I actually liked the story a lot and thought it was a wonderfully effective story from 1969—but I understand if you can’t get past the idea of dolphins as terrifying servitors of elder and inimical beings. That’s a stretch.


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Week 109 – Weekly Horror Short Story Reviews: Campbell, Goodfellow, Pulver, and Thompson

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Welcome to Week 109 of my horror short fiction review project! Some interesting stories this week (a stronger week than last by far), but my favorite would have to be “Demons Dreaming” by Cody Goodfellow, which involves some WWI vets riding the Orient Express and getting tangled up in some schemes with the original Templars and Assassins.

Demons by Daylight, by Ramsey Campbell (Carroll & Graf, 1990)

“The Franklyn Paragraphs”

This was an extremely meta and experimental “story” (I’m not quite sure it’s an actual story in the traditional sense). While it meanders a bit too much with no clear point it is very interesting nevertheless. If you’ve read many of my reviews you will know that I don’t typically care for stories with no apparent point, but I do recommend this one. The conceit here is that Errol Undercliffe was an eccentric loner and horror author who eventually disappeared, but who also regularly wrote to a young Ramsey Campbell about his weird experiences and story ideas. The text we have here is an excerpt from Undercliffe’s letters about an even more reclusive writer (and occultist?), Roland Franklyn, who has apparently died. What was the point of all this? I’m not quite sure, as there’s no actual resolution here. Despite that, I enjoyed what we have here and only wish that there was more of it.

Madness on the Orient Express, edited by James Lowder (Chaosium, 2014)

“Demons Dreaming” by Cody Goodfellow

A very interesting one. Two comrades from World War One—Glendower and Morrison—meet in Constantinople then hop aboard the Orient Express after being pursued by assassins. Morrison brings with him a tale of the Templars and the Assassins (the original historical groups) as competing secret societies serving occult (Cthulhy Mythos-related) interests. Glendower has them smoke hashish once they’re onboard and the pair enters a dream-like state that has ramifications for the real world. Fascinating story of Baphomet as an avatar of Nyarlathotep. Loved the historical elements and rival secret societies here.

The King in Yellow Tales, Volume 1, by Joseph S. Pulver, Sr. (Lovecraft eZine Press, 2015)

“In This Desert Even the Air Burns”

A brief one about a man on an endless journey driving across the deserts and plains out west, seeking a woman. It turns out that she’s Cassilda, from The King in Yellow. This is most just a vignette extract from this journey without context or resolution. Evocative language though.

A Mountain Walked: Great Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, edited by S.T. Joshi (Dark Regions Press, 2015)

“The Spawn of the Green Abyss” by C. Hall Thompson

Very much in the vein of Lovecraft’s “The Shadow Over Innsmouth,” with people slowly transforming into quasi-amphibians and being called by inhuman intelligences that live under the sea. James Arkwright is a brain surgeon who spends some time in a coastal New Jersey town recovering from nervous exhaustion. He is asked to treat a reclusive outcast, Lazarus Heath (what a great name), and ends up falling in love with and marrying Heath’s daughter Cassandra. Lazarus is dying of some strange malady and, it seems, developing vestigial gills. Arkwright learns that Heath is a former sailor who had been shipwrecked on a deserted island for a couple years and had somehow emerged from the experience with an infant (Cassandra) he claimed as his own. Arkwright and Cassandra marry, then she becomes disconsolate and pregnant and needs to return to her ancestral home. As it turns out, she is being summoned by some Lovecraftian entity living in the ocean to serve as its consort, and the infant she carries has been spawned by this entity. She begs to be killed before this can happen, and Arkwright obliges. The conceit of the story is that at its outset, Arkwright is unrepentant and on trial for murdering his pregnant wife. I don’t know that Thompson really does much here that Lovecraft didn’t do first, but it’s a nice bit of body horror and spirit possession by an eldritch being.


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Week 108 – Weekly Horror Short Story Reviews: Campbell, Suleiman, Pulver, and Johnson

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Welcome to Week 108 of my horror short fiction review project! I have to be honest: this week’s stories are not exactly the strongest we’ve seen in the last two years. Having said that, the best of the lot is undoubtedly “Far Below” by Robert Barbour Johnson, which picks up Lovecraft’s ghouls and asks what would a society be like that knew there were hideous, intelligent, murderous humanoids living underground in our cities?

Demons by Daylight, by Ramsey Campbell (Carroll & Graf, 1990)

“At First Sight”

Campbell is entirely too coy with this one: the story would have been considerably improved just by clarifying the ending a bit. Valerie is an office worker who had a bad break-up she still hasn’t fully recovered from. She meets a mysterious man in a bar who, it is implied, has probably been following her around. At the same time, Valerie is being wooed by a shy co-worker. Oh and she doesn’t get along with her roommate, who is likely having a tryst with someone (?) in the empty apartment above their unit. There’s no real sense of menace here, as one might legitimately hope for in a horror story, just a pall of confusion about what, if anything, is going on here.

Madness on the Orient Express, edited by James Lowder (Chaosium, 2014)

“The Face of the Deep” by C.A. Suleiman

Kind of a pointless vignette. Alfred Pendleton is knighted (sort of) on the Orient Express after doing some kind of unstated service for the British Empire. Alfred gets drunk then has hallucinates, or perhaps has some sort of encounter with the Cthulhu Mythos. He is found the next day to have thrown himself off the back of the train. Not at all satisfying because of the almost complete lack of context. There were some interesting elements here, but it really needed much more explication.

The King in Yellow Tales, Volume 1, by Joseph S. Pulver, Sr. (Lovecraft eZine Press, 2015)

“Long-Stemmed Ghost Words”

A woman is very badly injured and mutilated in a car accident in which she also loses her poet lover. She takes solace in his poetry and the idea of Carcosa. Some interesting elements here, but too stylized and stream-of-consciousness for my liking.

A Mountain Walked: Great Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, edited by S.T. Joshi (Dark Regions Press, 2015)

“Far Below” by Robert Barbour Johnson

A fun story, but I’m not entirely sure why this one shows up as one of the very best stories ever published in Weird Tales magazine. There’s not really an actual plot here, it’s actually just a description of the current situation, so perhaps it would be better termed a vignette? In any case, it picks right up where Lovecraft’s “Pickman’s Model” (one of my favorites of his) leaves off: there is a species of hideous humanoids (“ghouls”) living in subterranean crypts and tunnels beneath human cities who eat our dead and sometimes, when they’re especially hungry, the living. Humans can degenerate into these things as well. This story is being told by a worker in the New York City subway who is part of a secret government agency that tries to keep the subway system as ghoul-free as possible without alerting the public. They have found technological solutions to this problem—patrol cars, lights, acoustic sensors—but they still have to keep patrols out to hunt the ghouls down. My problem with this premise is similar to my reaction to the film version of Stephen King’s “The Mist” (spoiler alert): when monsters are unleashed on humanity and the army can simply machine-gun them down, or destroy them with flamethrowers, it takes all the fear out of it. At that point it’s just a resource management problem: it sucks that there are monsters in the world and we have to keep killing them, but organized humans are very good at killing things on a large scale. Really the only creepy part is that it becomes clear that the people who are working in the tunnels are very slowly being transformed into ghouls themselves (but again, that problem can be fixed by simply swapping out guards every so often). I wish this premise had formed the backdrop for a stronger story.


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