Have You Read This? A Long December by Richard Chizmar

Short stories and horror seem to go together as easily as chocolate and marshmallows. Horror stories, as a reading experience, can be a tightening of screws, a steady walk down a dark hallway to a door that may or may not have something behind it, an experience of terror that’s over before your lasagna is done cooking or your child’s leaving school and heading for your car parked in the pick-up line. Especially in a world where multitasking can seem like the norm, a quick draught of terror is the perfect pick-me-up. However, the short story isn’t the McDonald’s hamburger of horror. It takes skill to create a complete narrative, create a character the audience can empathize with, and have it end in a way that satisfies in only a few pages. There are a few masters of the horror short story (King, Matheson, and Poe, to name a few), but one other name to add is Richard Chizmar, editor of the horror literature journal Cemetery Dance, who demonstrates his skill with the form in his short story collection A Long December.

Many of the selections in this collection could be read on a lunch break, but they all show an economical style that still maintains tension. “The Lake Is Life” is a dark coming-of-age tale about a girl who discovers what she’s capable of during a summer with her grandmother. “The Silence of Sorrow” is both heartbreaking and horrifying about a man who discovers something awful about his son. “The Season of Giving” is a Christmas tale where the spirit of giving delivers some brutal revenge. The titular story explores the bonds and boundaries of friendship as a man discovers something very sinister about his neighbor, something that tests his loyalties and his resolve. Any one of these stories can be used to teach a master’s class in the art of the short story, period, not just horror.

One of the joys of being the Scary Librarian, and being in a library, is the possibility of discovering something not quite on the New York Times Bestseller List, or not quite being made into a movie. Richard Chizmar is as essential as Richard Matheson, or even Stephen King, in a library’s horror collection. If short stories and horror are chocolate and marshmallows, then Richard Chizmar is the graham crackers. And I could really go for some S’mores.