New Arrival: Rust Maidens by Gwendolyn Kiste

There are a lot of stories involving characters looking back, particularly when they were younger, when they had years of living ahead of them as well as miles of potential. Some would say there is an inherent sweetness involved in looking back at who you were when you had fewer responsibilities and way more opportunities to daydream. However, horror is all about peeling back the sunlit façade and revealing its festering, squirming underside. Sometimes, on closer inspection, those memories of childhood, of coming of age become tainted, particularly when a traumatic event or entity (a shapeshifting clown monster, for example), is introduced. Offering two narratives, looking back on the past while setting the tale in the present offers the protagonist perspective, even explaining many of the protagonist’s actions in the present. Gwendolyn Kiste does the same thing with the protagonist in her novel The Rust Maidens, a girl named Phoebe Shaw, but Kiste does more than simply keep the focus on one protagonist, the girl she was and the woman she’s become. Kiste also shows a city’s, perhaps even a world’s, transformation.

The story takes place in two eras, the early 1980’s where Phoebe has just graduated high school with her best friend Jacqueline and an older Phoebe who comes home to a neighborhood that is collapsing before her eyes. As she looks at the ruins of what her Cleveland neighborhood Denton Street has become, she remembers how things changed for her and how things changed for Jacqueline and four other girls the local news called the Rust Maidens. These girls grow wounds on their bodies that don’t bleed but leak water, their bones beneath look metallic, and their nails have the look of broken glass, as though each girl is literally becoming the decay around them. Kiste definitely gets to play up the body horror in these transformations, but she really gets emotional mileage out of people’s reactions to the Rust Maidens, treating them like either sideshow attractions or as an overall blight on their community. Phoebe begins her life as a high school graduate thinking about leaving, and now she must do some real growing up to try and help her best friend and what she’s become.

Phoebe is a sympathetic character because of her strong moral center despite her often rash decisions, and she particularly contrasts herself with her parents, who seem to be acting for what they perceive as the good of the community. Having the older Phoebe look back on her younger days shows how that youthful idealism she felt has been irrevocably tarnished by simply existing after this experience. Even after all that, however, there is still a core of Phoebe that wants to do right by the Rust Maidens and who must pay penance. The movement back and forth between the two narratives flows very well and readers will want to follow along to see how both narratives, past and present, end.

Another main character that deserves mention is Denton Street itself, both the past and the present incarnation. Closely tied communities where decisions are made through de facto committees have given way to isolation and many of the landmarks Phoebe remembers are derelict, decayed, and waiting for the wrecking ball, which makes sense that the Rust Maidens began here. Reflecting society today, where manufacturing jobs dwindle and once-thriving towns are left to collapse, the city itself is its own character than can only disappoint the men and women that give their lives and livelihoods to factory work only for these factories to abandon them. It is in this city, which has become a beautiful ruin, that Phoebe tries to discover what she lost.  

New Arrival: Little Black Spots by John F.D. Taff

Many have said that the art of the short story is dead, but rumors of its death are greatly exaggerated (Or to use a more contemporary phrase, fake news). Short stories are the perfectly digestible tale for people on the go. Don’t have the hours and days to devote to a 600-page epic? There are plenty of short stories out there you can read on your lunch hour. This is especially true in horror. I was introduced to horror through short story collections like Stephen King’s Night Shift and Jeff Gelb’s Hot Blood series. While the horror short story has lay dormant beneath the public’s consciousness yet sprouting up in anthologies and magazines showcasing the cream of the carnage-laden crop, the short story is not only very much alive, but writers like John F. D. Taff are taking it in new, exciting directions while keeping it very much grounded in a reality very much like ours. If you’re not familiar with Taff, read some of the stories in his collection Little Black Spots. Then, be sad that you haven’t heard of him before reading this article.

Little Black Spots shows that Taff has explored different kinds of horror and is not afraid to incorporate what has come before him in his own unique visions of terror. If you’re a fan of Clive Barker’s body horror or Hot Blood’s erotic horror, you might like his tale “The Bunny Suit.” While shopping for Halloween costumes, a couple finds a bunny suit for the wife to wear. If you’ve ever read a story where there’s something bought from a mysterious shop (basically the premise of the Friday the 13^th television series) then you know that this item is more than just a discount costume and the wife becomes something else when she puts it on. But the real horror comes from the husband’s narration of the tale, as he reacts to his wife’s changes and how he is the one who is forced to remove his own disguise.

“A Winter’s Tale” has a group of children whose home life might remind people of Harry Potter, except with more parental alcoholism and neglect. However, it isn’t a giant or a wizarding school that comes for these children. A finalist for the Bram Stoker Award for Best Short Story, this tale works on a myriad of different levels, from the beautiful depictions of the winter landscape to the simple horror of the children’s home life, including the pressures weighing on protagonist and older brother David, the only caregiver for his family. His mother is a modern day below-the-poverty-line version of Lady Tremaine (Cinderella’s stepmother) and his father has been gone for a long time, so it is David who must deal with the horrors in his life, both supernatural and tragically mundane. The reader is shown in heartbreaking detail what kind of horrible person the mother is, but the father might in fact be worse.

“Purple Soda Hand” is a personal favorite of mine. The title alone was enough to pique my curiosity, but there’s also a solid, colorful addiction horror story that begins with a child discovering a bottle of soda with a surprise inside. It’s less a Cracker Jack or bottom-of-the-cereal box surprise and more the need-to-call-the-health-department-immediately surprise. But this surprise doesn’t make the soda taste any different. In fact, young Mike would do anything to drink that soda, including and especially the heretofore unthinkable.

Throw in some erotic horror, sad vampires, severed hands, and possessed parking garages and you have a collection that shows a willingness to experiment with subgenres and demonstrates the ability to tantalize as well as terrify. Fair warning: the publishers who made this book call Taff Modern Horror’s King of Pain, hence the collection’s title taken from a lesser-known song by ’80 band The Police (Is Sting somehow collecting royalties?).  Taff doesn’t write like he’s in pain, but he sure makes his characters experience pain, which you will also experience as you empathize with these well-drawn and downtrodden protagonists. Bring an ibuprofen and a nightlight as you partake of these little black stories.

Have You Read This? Joe Hill's Strange Weather

The book in this month’s Have You Read This, Strange Weather, seems like a no-brainer in a season where I was, honest to God, wearing a t-shirt last week and worrying about windchills getting to single digits for this one. It most certainly fits this time of year, but I had actually planned on writing about Joe Hill’s novella collection for a while now. I had read a few of Joe Hill’s works, from his seminal graphic novel collection Locke & Key to his short story collection 20^th Century Ghosts. Sure, Joe Hill is the son of Stephen King, as synonymous with horror as Hulk Hogan is with pro wrestling, but reading him for so long has meant that I have got to see him grow quickly as a writer and move ever so slowly out of his father’s shadow.

One could argue that the stories in this collection are held together by the subject of weather. Storms, in particular, are incidental plot devices in the first two tales, while the latter ones uses clouds and rain more extensively. The stories here really run the gamut between fantastical nostalgia to apocalyptic horror to real world suspense. The four stories chosen for this collection show how Hill has grown as a writer in different areas.

The first in the collection, “Snapshot,” is the most reminiscent of Hill’s father, using a mystical object to explore the real world terror of loss. Like any of King’s child protagonist, Michael has trouble fitting in, but this story is also about finding connections in the little moments we have with others and the horrifying consequences of having those moments with someone taken away. This story should resonate with anyone who has ever lost a loved one, particularly if that someone was stolen by degrees.

“Loaded” is a tale of real world terror that deals with the current epidemic of gun violence. There is no need for magic or demons from the Macroverse for horror when you have a man with a lot of anger and access to automatic weapons. “Loaded” not only pulls its horror from the headlines of school and office shootings, this piece also jabs at the media for being all too willing to put the “good guy with a gun” on a pedestal after he foils a shooting. As more of his story unravels, so does his sanity until he becomes a very bad guy with a gun.

“Aloft” is the piece that feels the most like Hill’s unique voice, not as much horrifying as it is fantastic, particularly when first-time skydiver Aubrey becomes stranded on a cloud that serves as both concierge and jailer, giving him whatever it can form from its vaporous substance but not inclined to return him to Earth. Though it’s more whimsical than the other selections and a welcome break, what really helps this story stand out from just an adventure piece as he searches for rescue is the double narrative that takes place before Aubrey’s fateful jump and how the world below him influences his thoughts and actions as he is stranded hundreds of miles above it.

“Rain” is a very standard apocalypse scenario but with a very interesting premise: what if the rain that fell suddenly became lethal, no longer falling drops of water but crystalline shards of death. The protagonist Honeysuckle is interesting and she encounters several oddball characters who help her but who also have no qualms about being violent now that society and civility is on the decline. This story also borrows from our world by referencing our current political leadership and Hill does paint a bleak picture of a world where the skies can rain death at any moment, but the end is also left with a surprisingly hopeful message, showing how people can be duplicitous and all too willing to hurt each other but are ultimately at their best when they have each other’s back.

More and more, authors are trying their hands at shorter works, churning out collections full of a multitude of stories, from novellas to short stories. Hill has demonstrated time and again that he has no shortage of imagination and can no doubt feed a reading public eager for stories that can be read during a lunch break or a wait in the doctor’s office. Even if the weather outside started raining frogs, I could relax knowing that, as the frogs pelt my window, that writers like Joe Hill will write plenty of fully-realized, well-written stories to keep me occupied, whether that storm lasts for an hour or a season.

Fearsome Five: Five Women Horror Authors to Watch Out For

As this Women in Horror Month draws to a conclusion, I must offer my apologies to any Women in Horror that I might have forgot to write about, particularly since there are so many women out there in the horror field. That’s why I’m devoting my Fearsome Five list to five women authors to definitely be on the lookout for, especially since they may be behind you. 

RIGHT NOW!

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Anyway, on with the list.

5) Mira Grant/Seanan McGuire. Two different personas in the same person, the team of Seanan McGuire and her pseudonym Mira Grant has whatever kind of horror you’re looking for. Seanan has you covered if you like paranormal adventures, particularly in her Ghost Road series series about a ghostly hitchhiker, and Mira has you covered if you like your horror more crimson, whether its zombies from her Newsflesh series series to mermaid (yes, mermaids) in Into the Drowning Deep.
4) Ellen Datlow: Not as known for writing as she is for editing, but she has edited quite a few stunning anthologies, including for the Best Horror of the Year series. She has edited anthologies focusing on everything from Halloween to the sea to dolls. As the gateway to many of the authors I myself have recently discovered, Ellen Datlow is definitely a name you want to know if you want to sample the different horrors out there.

3) Tananarive Due: Not a new author but definitely one who has consistently produced unsettling southern Gothic horror since the ‘90s. While not the household name of Koontz and King, she is definitely well-known as an African-American horror writer who penned such well-known tales as The Between and  The Good House, combining societal issues, the African-American experience, and supernatural terrors to create fiction that enlightens as well as frightens. As more and more diverse writers from all walks of life enter the horror field, it is important to remember those who helped pave the way.

2) Yoko Ogawa: Japanese horror, or J-Horror, has created its own horror niche in American cinema, but authors like Ogawa join the ranks of Koji Suzuki, author of the Ring and Dark Water, to bring a different flavor of horror to American shores. While she is known for writing thrillers, Ogawa’s short story collection Revenge: Eleven Dark Tales seems like a compact read, but these stories weave together and twist themselves into a demented tapestry. She’s one to watch if you prefer your horror to build slowly but disturb profoundly.

1) Gwendolyn Kiste: She’s a relative newcomer who burst onto the scene with her short story collection And Her Smile Will Untether the Universe, but Kiste stood out for me, and signaled big things for her future, with her debut novel The Rust Maidens. Part dark fairy tale, part coming-of-age story, this story covers everything from far-out body horror to the real life horrors of economic collapse. So many different ideas and aspects are woven together to create a story that’s both horrific and beautiful, both tragic and uplifting. It’s really what good horror with a fully-realized setting and characters should be.

Have You Read This? Bubba and the Cosmic Blood-Suckers

Becky Spratford has a great blog about readers’ advisory and horror. Truthfully, her blog serves as an inspiration for my own little shadow library in cyberspace. Within her blog or when she gives Readers' Advisory talks to other libraries, she describes horror as thus:

“Horror is a story in which the author manipulates the reader's emotions by introducing situations in which unexplainable phenomena and unearthly creatures threaten the protagonists and provoke terror in the reader.”

The underlined part is important because, by limiting her definition to stories that “provoke terror,” it gets to what many would call a fundamental experience of reading horror: actually being scared. Many stories, though, get put in the horror category because they have ghosts or witches even though they might be romance, suspense, or in this case a return to one of  Joe Lansdale’s best stories. Joe Lansdale’s Bubba and the Cosmic Blood-Suckers has the same comedic tone as his truly excellent short story “Bubba Hotep,” but it also falls well into the genre of action adventure.

Like many horror/action hybrids, this novel has its share of vampire-like creatures as well as ghosts and zombies, but it focuses on a supersecret organization dedicated to protecting America from supernatural incursions. It almost sounds like Clive Cussler crossed with Stephen King, except for the fact that one of their greatest assets is the King of Rock N’ Roll himself, Elvis Presley. And there are vampires, but they don’t sparkle, and they don’t brood. What they do is suck blood until people are pretty much empty Caprisun containers, still somehow alive but able to be rolled up like a sleeping bag.

Yes, this novel is an official prequel to one of Lansdale’s greatest stories—which can be found in The Best of Joe Lansdale, if anyone’s interested. People familiar with the Oceans movies might recognize the formula of getting a team of individuals together, each with a specific set of skills, and set them against something, only this is no casino they’re knocking over but the queen of vampires Big Momma.

While it doesn’t always have the sweet sentiment of Bubba Hotep, save for when Elvis talks about his Mama’s soul, used by Colonel Parker to blackmail Elvis into serving the team, this tale is still an entertaining blend of Lovecraftian horror, vampire hunting, sorcery, and what many readers would see in Lansdale’s mystery series Hap and Leonard. You might picture the narrator simply regaling this story on a back porch, iced tea or beer in hand, you’ll marvel at the amount of smart one-liners that put many action movies to shame. In short, you might find the sensibilities of this story to be—I so hope I’m the first to use this word—Lansdalian. While it might not have you sleeping with the lights on, it does offer a enjoyable, schlocky adventure for cinephiles who are nostalgic for ‘70s and ‘80s horror that was more excessive than ethereal and who love movies that have more explosions than expositions.