Creatures of Another Age: Classic Visions of Prehistoric Monsters (ed.) Richard Fallon

 

9781948405874

Valancourt Books, 2021

223 pp

hardcover

I have to be honest here and say that when I first heard about this book, I was a wee bit iffy as to whether I'd be reading it, since a) my interest in paleontology has generally been limited to the nonfictional side of things and b) I'm not much of a creature-involved story kind of reader.  But because it is from Valancourt and they haven't yet steered me wrong,  I took a chance and it paid off. Even before finishing, I was so impressed that I started looking online everywhere for more of this sort of thing, resulting in a few novels written in the general time frame as the selections here in Creatures of Another Age, noted in the introduction as being

"between the 1830s, when the popularity of geology and paleontology skyrocketed, up to the end of the First World War, when cinema began to offer its own primordial prospects." 

The authors included in this collection, as the editor also states, "took geoscientific research to original and creative places,"  resulting in "necromantic fantasies, time-travel narratives, political poetry, weird ffin-de-siècle short stories, and even pseudo-Elizabethan verse drama."  Not only does this book make for hours of fun reading, but it also opens a window or two into scientific and social concerns of the time, both in the UK and here in the US.   

Not uncommon for me, my favorite stories were those written by authors I knew absolutely nothing about and whose work I didn't even know existed.    Hands down the strangest, most off-the-charts different (and in my mind for those reasons the best) of these is the work of an obscure writer by the name of Wardon Allan Curtis, whose "The Monster of Lake LaMetrie" reveals much about evolutionary anxieties (and so much more) of the time. I am not at all going into any detail here,  and I'm even offering a caveat  to anyone interested in reading this story against reading anything about it at all beforehand.  Set in the state of Wyoming,  it  first appeared in Pearsons Magazine, September 1899, and Fallon reveals in his brief introduction that in this tale the author "melds Wyoming's prehistoric associations" with the hollow-earth theory proposed by John Cleves Symmes in 1818.  What I will divulge is that it has awesome shock value in a weird/sci-fi sort of way, and it gave me a serious case of the willies once I considered the implications.      Another top-notch offering is "The Dragon of St. Paul's, by Reginald Bacchus and Cyril Ranger Gull (1899).  Fleming, the editor of a daily newspaper in London, holds the presses after hearing an incredible story so that journalist Tom Trant can write an article for a "special"  that should boost sales into the hundreds of thousands.  Back at home,  Tom relates a story that to him,  his fiancée and her brother seems to be "gaudy nonsense," "simply laughable" and "absurd"  about a strange discovery solidly encased in ice found on the return voyage of a two-year Arctic scientific expedition headed by the now-deceased Professor Glazebrook. Just hours before reaching the Channel, everything was going as planned up until the moment the professor decided to melt the ice containing his spectacular find, which turns out to have been a rash decision indeed.  As has been repeatedly revealed in old sci-films, sometimes what's been stuck in polar ice for eons should probably just be left alone.   "The Last of the Vampires," published in 1893 and penned by another unknown-to-me writer, Phil Robinson  (1847-1902),  is also on my list of favorites.   As with the previous two stories I've mentioned here, it involves humans pitted against "eerie creatures previously thought extinct," as Richard Fallon notes, so familiar to readers of popular periodicals during the Victorian fin-de-siècle.  This story is more atmospheric than the previous two, and starts out with a legend familiar to the Zaporo Indians of Peru.  As the legend goes, "Very long ago ...

there were many vampires in Peru, but they were swallowed up in the year of the Great Earthquake when the Andes were lifted up, and there was left behind only one 'Arinchi' who lived where the Amazon joins the Marañnon, and he would not eat dead bodies, only live ones, from which the blood would flow."

Local superstition also said that when a sacrificial victim was offered to "the Vampire," he would be "bound in a canoe," and after some time on the river,  the canoe would stop in "banks of slimy mud" to a creek  through which a "very slow current flowed," taking anything in the water there to a cave. Into this milieu comes a University professor and "mighty hunter of beetles" from Germany who decides to explore the cave for himself, his fate recorded in journal entries over the ensuing months.

Worthy of honorable mention is "Our Phantom Ship on An Antediluvian Cruise," by Henry Morley, part of a series making its appearance in Household Words in which the phantom ship took the periodical's readers  on "informative trips around the world."  In this installment the ship leaves London to go back "into the depths of time." 

Another fine Valancourt publication, Creatures of Another Age is neither limited to short stories nor obscure writers.  There are poems, essays, and even a short play, as well as selections by more familiar authors such as George Sand, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Jack London, Arthur Conan Doyle and Thomas Hardy. While not all of the entries included here worked for me personally (as is always the case),  in putting this collection together editor Richard Fallon hopes that readers will "see the distant past in a strange new light," and that's exactly what happened to me here.   Very much recommended.   What a great idea for a book!! 

The Cormorant, by Stephen Gregory

9781912681693

Parthian Books, 2021

originally published 1986

160 pp

paperback (my e-copy sent by the publisher, to whom I owe my many and grateful  thanks)

Recently reissued by Welsh publisher  Parthian Books just last month, Stephen Gregory's The Cormorant (1986) is exactly the sort of dark fiction I look forward to reading, in which the weird makes its way into regular life making it difficult to decide whether there is something supernatural at play here or if it's something else altogether.  I first read this book seven years ago when it was published by Valancourt,  and that was the question I was left with at the time;  after finishing this time around, the ambiguity remains.  Added to the uncertainty is the fact that we have only the narrator's word to rely on for what happens here.  My kind of book indeed.  

Winter in Northern Wales provides the natural backdrop to this story that begins when a man is bequeathed a cottage in a Welsh village "nestled under the cloud-covered summit of Snowdon, on the road between Caernafon and Beddgelert."  He  and his wife Ann were able to quit their teaching jobs in the Midlands, affording him the opportunity to devote time to the history textbook he is writing. She has a job at a local pub and he tends to their eleven-month old child Harry while she works.   The cottage had belonged to his Uncle Ian whom the (unnamed) narrator had not known very well, and it comes with the "binding condition" that the cottage was theirs as long as they took care of the cormorant Uncle Ian had rescued some time earlier.   To the narrator, the bequest is a "thunderbolt of good fortune,"  and he wasn't too worried about taking care of the cormorant, but when the bird arrives and its crate is opened, the "some kind of placid, domestic fowl" they'd been expecting turned out to be anything but.   In the middle of a quiet, lovely, warm domestic sort of perfection, as he notes, 

"it came from its box as ugly and as poisonous as a vampire bat" 

spewing feces and urine everywhere and causing destruction to their otherwise cozy environs.  

Ann, who "shuddered at the sight of the cormorant's demonic arrogance," sees the bird (which the narrator calls Archie)  as menacing, while baby Harry seems to be enthralled with the thing.  The narrator works to exert dominance and control over the bird, mentioning more than once Archie's dependence on him for its survival; at the same time it's obvious that while he's completely obsessed with it,  he has a sort of love-hate relationship with this cormorant,  referring to it once as a "Heathcliff, a Rasputin, a Dracula."  In the meantime, Ann becomes further unsettled because of her husband's increasingly strange behavior and Harry's growing fascination with Archie.  Then there's the matter of the narrator's brief (hallucinatory?) encounters with someone who leaves behind cigar smoke -- is this some sort of haunting, some sort of possession, or is there more to it,  perhaps grounded in more earthly concerns?  

The flaws in the characters begin to appear early on, but then again, we're watching this story unravel from the point of view of the narrator, whose choices throughout the narrative are just mind boggling.  One of the highlights of this novel is Gregory's purposeful, highly-controlled and taut writing style which allows for him to  adeptly turn  up the volume little by little on the slow-building horror that fills this book,   and in my case at least, setting forth an eerie atmosphere from the moment the bird's crate is opened in the cozy living room, offering its entrance as a harbinger of dread and doom. 

I won't deny that there are some extremely disturbing scenes in this book (including one especially beyond-squirmworthy event that takes place in a bathtub which is mentioned in pretty much everyone's review of this novel and got a serious and out-loud WTF from me as well), but in a sick way they accord with the narrator's increasingly-disturbed state of mind, which is in my opinion is at the heart of this novel. 

I cannot for the life of me say why, but as disturbing and horrific as this book is, I absolutely loved it. I found, as the author says in the introduction to this novel, that  

"Like the bird, the book is beautiful and ugly, intriguing and upsetting, appealing and appalling, in its different, changing moods."

 The Cormorant is not only effective as a horror story, but as literary fiction with a weird bent as well. The ambiguity here left me thinking about it long after I'd finished, going through evidence in my head for both the psychological and supernatural.  Writing it down now, I'm still thinking about it.  I cannot recommend this novel highly enough, although on many levels it is a difficult read, so beware.  

Once again my many thanks to the very good people at Parthian.  

The Dangers of Smoking in Bed, by Mariana Enriquez

 

9780593134078

Hogarth, 2021

originally published as Los Peligros de fumar en la cama (2017)

translated by Megan McDowell

187 pp

hardcover

I had picked up this book this past January, long before it was longlisted (and then shortlisted) for this year's International Booker Prize.  There was never a question of not buying it;  I had read and loved this author's Things We Lost in the Fire some time ago.  That book was excellent, with a slight edge over this one, but after finishing The Dangers of Smoking in Bed I was not only impressed, but my first reaction to this book echoes exactly what Lauren Groff says about it on its back cover:

"After you've lived in Mariana Enriquez's marvelous brain for the time it takes to read The Dangers of Smoking in Bed, the known world feels ratcheted a few degrees off-center."

It didn't take until the end of the book for that "off-center" feeling to take hold -- after the first story alone I had to stop, think, and sort of shake my head back into the real world before moving on.  

In an interview after the publication of Things We Lost in the Fire, the author noted that her stories

"are quite rooted in realistic urban and suburban settings and the horror just emanates from these places,"

and in The Dangers of Smoking in Bed the author examines the darkness and the terrors that co-exist in "these places" side by side with every-day life --  as one character says so eloquently in "Rambla Triste" (one of my favorites in this book), "the incarnations of the city's madness."  Most of her characters are women from adolescence upward,  their daily concerns are normal, including appearance, sex, relationships, family, drugs, and so on.  It isn't too long into any of these stories however before it dawns on you that you've made your way into a situation where normal has taken a bizarre turn.  In "Our Lady of the Quarry," for example, a group of girls all hanker after the same guy who doesn't seem to notice them in the way they would like; they are jealous of their "grown-up" friend Silvia ("out of high school for two years") whom Diego does notice. A typical scenario, to be sure, but what one girl does in trying out  "an infallible way to snag your beloved" provides the spark for what comes next as the story moves into the realm of the eerie.  Elsewhere, a girl digging in a garden unearths bones that turn out not to be those of an animal as her father had told her; a young girl who looks in a well at the home of a "witch" becomes stricken with paralyzing agoraphobia; a homeless man who is turned out of a neighborhood leaves behind a terrible curse; gentrification leaves homeless ghosts walking the streets of Barcelona; two teenaged groupies take the words of their favorite singer to heart ... and more. 

Nothing is out of bounds here -- fetishes, voyeurism and cannibalism included -- but as the dustjacket blurb says, the stories are written with "resounding tenderness toward those in pain, in fear, and in limbo."  They  also reveal a concern with economic and social inequality as well as Argentina's inescapable past.  Two chilling stories in particular (which also happen to be my top two favorites) also highlight the anxieties of the period of the Dictatorship (1976 - 1983):  "Kids Who Come Back," in which a woman who maintains the archive of lost and disappeared children begins to notice an unsettling trend in Buenos Aires, "this city full of ghosts," and "Back When We Talked to the Dead"  centering on a group of five girls who spend time with their Ouija board as a way of asking the spirits about their relatives who had been disappeared.  Violence and ghosts go hand in hand in this book. 

I read a lot of supernatural and weird fiction but not a lot of what I'd call  horror, but if more writers in the genre did it like Mariana Enriquez, I could easily go that route as well.  Here the terrors leave in their wake a "city of ghosts" and women doing what they must to find stability in their unstable, even haunted surroundings.  With the exception of "Kids Who Come Back," the stories are relatively short which, in my opinion, gives them an incredible measure of power.  Whereas some readers have noted that the stories felt underdeveloped, I disagree.  I don't need everything explained to me -- each story made an impact as is.   Enriquez's work is original, fresh, modern and above all powerful, and while not all of these tales were to my personal taste, overall this is a stunning collection that should not be missed, except perhaps, by the squeamish.  

Mist and Other Ghost Stories, by Richmal Compton

 Good grief. The last time I posted was in February; since then it has literally been one thing after another with what seems like very little breathing space in between. That doesn't mean I haven't been reading -- au contraire, I've actually read a lot as a sanity-saving measure.  Mist and Other Stories is just the latest in a lineup of some pretty awesome books, so I'll begin with this collection of supernatural/ghostly tales, which, while perhaps not the most hair-raising stories I've ever encountered, are certainly compelling enough that I  read them all in one sitting.  Here you'll find ghosts, as promised, along with haunted houses, haunted people, and more. For those readers of the dark who love older supernatural tales, it is  no-miss read;  for me there's also the added bonus of discovering a new author in the genre. 

9781908274281

Sundial Press, 2015

originally published 1928

191 pp

hardcover

As if to signal that this will be no ordinary book of ghost stories,  the first two entries, to my great delight, are inspired by the figure of the Great God Pan.   In the opener,  "The Bronze Statuette,"  a "modern" but somewhat shallow sort of young woman ("she had become engaged to Harold Menzies simply because his dancing step and his game at tennis suited hers") at a house party undergoes an unexpected and extraordinary change after the host's father brings out a small bronze statue, "a thing of extraordinary grace and beauty."  Following that one is  "Strange," which also takes place during a house party, where one of the guests, "a chap called Strange," enchants the others with his presence as well as his syrinx.   

No ghost story collection would be complete without a haunted house or two, and what Crompton has on offer here strays a bit off the beaten path in that area. For example in "Marlowes," a woman who, along with her husband has left her home and is staying in a hotel while repairs are being made, confides to another guest that they love their Sussex house, but for a while there it didn't love them back.  Of course, "there's a story about that."  A full tank of petrol would have prevented the happenings at "The House Behind the Wood,"a personal favorite,  in which a threesome find themselves stuck in the cold night "six miles from anywhere."  Frank, married to the "fragile and delicate" Monica decides that sleeping in the car would likely bring on a case of pneumonia, but luckily for the couple and Frank's childhood friend Harold, there is a house nearby with a light shining in the window.  The caretaker has no petrol, but he does offer them a place to stay out of the cold. Let's just say that Frank blames what happens next on a nightmare, but oh Frank, it's not the drains that are causing it.   "The Haunting of Greenways" is another favorite in which the actual spectral visitation begins about ten pages in, but the events leading to that point are really the main show, centering on a young woman who is incapable of true happiness and  "had that gift for self-torture that belongs to the mentally unbalanced."  The title  story in this book is the last but by no means the least; I thought it was one of the best in the collection.  "Mist" finds a hiker who has lost his way in the "bleakest part of the moor" and luckily finds his way to a small inn for the night.  Surrounding and stranding him is the mist, "like something sinister and malevolent."  After boredom and cabin fever set in toward tea time, he decides it might be good to get out and go for a walk. But wait -- what's that "dull light flickering in the fog?"    

Of the remainder, three are well worth honorable mention: "Rosalind," "Harry Lorrimer, and "The Oak Tree,"  the first two of which are excellent and the third entertaining.    In the first, a young artist is haunted by his passion after he dumps the woman he loves for someone more suitable for marriage; the first vows that she will never let the second have him.  In the second, two old school friends, Gregson and Harry Lorrimer, meet by chance, and after a visit to the home of Harry Lorrimer, his friend makes a chilling discovery.  Gregson feels uneasy about Harry, but the uneasiness soon turns to sheer horror when he learns what's really happening with his old schoolmate.   Finally, "The Old Oak Tree" is the last of its kind, sitting in the yard of Bletchleys on "prehistoric land" where Druidic worship may have once been carried out.  Indeed, an old flat stone lies at its base;  Mr. Fellowes informs his wife that it was likely used for human sacrifices, but  Mrs. Fellowes  feels sorry that no one worships it now, and promises it a garland a day.  Sure enough, she keeps her word and the oak tree begins to take on a "new lease of life," which Mr. Fellowes doesn't necessarily like.  

Original 1928 edition cover, from Sundial Press 

 Crompton's characters range from wronged women to people haunted by their pasts, including ghosts who aren't quite ready to give up the pleasures they had in life; her stories occur mainly within the framework of upper middle-class existence  where strange events have the potential to disrupt an otherwise comfortable life. Her real focus here though (for the most part) seems to be on the people themselves, taking her time to develop her characters just enough so that what leads up to the supernatural happenings is well understood by the time you actually get there.   Above all though, she excels in atmosphere -- not simply in natural world phenomena (which is itself so well done that in the last story, for example, you can actually see and feel the clammy fingers of mist in the forest) but also in the way she ever so slightly ratchets the tension experienced by her characters in the midst of uncanny events.   

Mist and Other Ghost Stories is a fine example of ghostly tales done in an original fashion and done well.  While not every story is perfect, it is still a collection that I would most wholeheartedly recommend.