Have You Read This? The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw

There are works of horror that have violence and works of horror that are violent. They are violent with their depictions of a human body’s surgical deconstruction, violent with their brazen exploration of taboo subjects, and violent with their wanton disregard to the fairy tales that remain sacrosanct for many people. This is, of course, a good thing, even necessary, since horror is a genre that often pushes and even destroys boundaries. Cassandra Khaw’s retelling of The Little Mermaid story, The Salt Grows Heavy, is a novella that rejoices in its violence. 

It starts with the tale that everyone is familiar with, that of a mermaid princess who falls in love with a prince whose kingdom is on land and her sacrifices to be with him. What those books don’t mention is how the prince mistreated the mermaid once she was his or how the mermaid’s daughters went on to eat the kingdom. Disney execs would likely be horrified to learn that this mermaid then goes on the run with a nonbinary plague doctor who discovers a village full of murderous children ruled by “saints” who really love performing surgery. 

As a novella, this is a quick read. As a story, it’s a fever dream/acid trip of a fairy tale retelling. This is mostly due to Khaw’s writing. Not content to simply describe events as they happen, she paints a gloriously visceral picture with her words, blurring the boundaries between what is beautiful and what is horrifying. In this retelling, the mermaid who is not named Ariel is no longer a victim; instead she is a force of nature that will tear through anything to get what she wants. 

Graphic Content: Dark Spaces: The Hollywood Special written by Jeremy Lambert and illustrated by Claire Roe

 

Anthology series are some of my favorite kinds of horror graphic novels. Perhaps it’s because I grew up in the ‘80s where movies like Creepshow and shows like Tales from the Darkside reigned supreme. It might also have to do with my love of short stories, after all, I’ve always admired the way an author can tell a self-contained story. Dark Spaces, an anthology series created by Scott Snyder, is continuing this horror anthology tradition, even though their stories take place over multiple issues. However, the stories include multiple authors and artists and all tell their own unique stories while falling under the Dark Spaces umbrella. Writer Jeremy Lambert has created a story that somehow combines Old Hollywood with the setting of a Pennsylvania mining town in Dark Spaces: The Hollywood Special. 

The Hollywood Special is a luxury train traveling the country in support of the war effort, carrying fading star  and functional alcoholic Vivian Drake, who is there to boost morale even as her own career and family life falls apart. The train makes a stop in Minersville, Pennsylvania, a mining town that is reeling from a mine collapse. And locals know that the Mishmash Man, a creature that feeds on human misery, will feast on such a tragedy and Vivian discovers that she has plenty of misery to whet the Mishmash Man’s appetite. 

Lambert’s story blends a lot of setting elements that seem an odd fit within the narrative (Old Hollywood and Appalachian folk horror don’t go together like chocolate and peanut butter). However, the pairing works with the glue between them being the theme of dreams like Vivian’s career as a movie star and Minersville resident’s visions of prosperity left to rot in the darkness. Drake is also an intriguing character whose layers slowly unfurl to show why she chooses to hide inside a bottle. What really sells this story, however, is Claire Roe’s artwork, providing some bizarre dreamlike imagery as the narrative shifts from past to present, from real to imaginary. What her art does for the Mishmash Man makes this a book a must for body horror fans, but those who love a creepy atmospheric story will want to ride the Hollywood Special. 

New Arrival: Eynhallow by Tim McGregor

 Frankenstein is Mary Shelley’s famous (or infamous) tale of a reanimated monster, which is ironic since this is a story that seems to be “reanimated” on the regular. From retellings to reimaginings, Frankenstein’s monster, made from mismatched body parts and our own anxieties about death, has been stomping through popular culture and will no doubt keep going until humans stop fearing death (which is unlikely to end soon). But these stories aren’t just reanimated dead narratives, however; there are many that revisit the story while offering a new perspective on the source material, such as Tim McGregor’s Eynhallow.

Eynhallow’s main character is not the scientist or his monster, but one Agnes Tulloch, a mother of four who feels increasingly isolated thanks in part to her emotionally abusive husband and because the rocky, secluded island of Eynhallow is not the island paradise her husband promised. Then a mysterious stranger moves to the island to work in secret. Agnes works for and soon befriends the man, not knowing that he is Victor Frankenstein, animator of dead things, or that his monster is looking for Victor to fulfill his promise of a bride.

Many adaptations, like Victor Lavalle’s Destroyer and Frankenstein in Baghdad use more modern settings, complete with modern problems, to inject a dose of relevance into the source material. McGregor goes a different route and expands on a part of Mary Shelley’s original work that had great potential for drama, a drama that pulls main character Agnes into its orbit. McGregor gives Agnes the role of narrator, letting readers learn all about her hardscrabble life and her dreams of escaping it, so when the horror finally comes crashing down on her, readers’ hearts will break for her. Definitely one of the finer reimaginings of the Frankenstein story, Eynhallow demonstrates McGregor’s knack for creating fleshed-out (living flesh, that is) characters.

 

Graphic Content: Breath of Shadows by Rich Douek and Alex Cormack

 

Scott McAdams famously said in his book Understanding Comics that graphic novels were a medium, not a genre. He furthers this distinction by reminding readers that the graphic novel is simply a different medium, like books and television, to tell a story. That said, when graphic novels are used to tell horror stories, there must be two elements considered to fully utilize the graphic medium: the story and the pictures that tell the story. One such example of this is Rich Douek and Alex Cormack’s Breath of Shadows.

Shadows takes place in the 1960’s and Jimmy Meadows seems to have it all. His band The Shades have achieved international stardom, and their latest album just went gold, but Jimmy has a powerful addiction that threatens to ruin his and his bandmates' careers. With his bandmates fed up and Jimmy wanting to live for something other than his next fix, he and his crew travel with a group of explorers into the jungles and lost temples of South America to discover a cure for Jimmy’s addiction. This is definitely a story where the proposed cure could potentially turn out to be worse than the disease.

Much like their previous collaborations Sea of Sorrows and the award-winning Road of Bones, this book shows both writer and artist pooling their talents to create something horrifyingly harmonious. Writer Douek does not portray Jimmy and the other members of his party as likable people. They all have an assortment of addictions and agendas that turn out to be quite self-destructive. That said, readers aren’t really meant to like these people; it’s much more fun to watch a group of jerks walk slowly and steadily into a trap before seeing their horror as they realize that the trap has snapped shut. Artist Cormack shows an affinity for drawing skin-crawling horrors, an adjective that is all too appropriate. The visceral and disconcerting artwork just might have you scratching at your skin as you try to convince yourself there is nothing crawling on or beneath your skin. Douek and Cormack have once again created something more frightening than the sum of its parts and Shadows is recommended for horror lovers who don’t mind squirming in their seats.

Graphic Content: Dead Mall by Adam Cesare and David Stoll

 For many adults, the mall was a distinct part of their childhood, whether as a hangout, a place to eat, or the place to get the latest Third Eye Blind CD or Stephen King novel. But the mall has fallen on hard times. More and more of these monuments of consumerism have become empty, derelict, and simply waiting on nature or a well-placed wrecking ball to end its misery. Such a structure makes it the perfect place where something malevolent can haunt and can hunt souls who simply want their heart’s desire. The Penn Mills Galleria from Adam Cesare’s and David Stoll’s Dead Mall is such a place.

The galleria has long been abandoned and is about to be demolished. Before the wrecking ball wipes it off the face of the earth, five teens decide to break in and see the empty stores before they’re gone forever. The galleria might have been dormant, but it’s still hungry for souls. These five teens must resist the siren call of the mall if they are to survive the night. The mall promises to give you just the product to fill the hole inside you, but that price will be very high indeed.

People might remember Adam Cesare as the twisted mind behind Clown in a Cornfield and its sequel, and he definitely brings that madcap kind of horror to Dead Mall, where the story is told by the titular mall who is not sorry that it must consume its patrons like they were Auntie Anne’s pretzels. Like in Cornfield, he takes the trouble of creating fleshed-out teen characters with their own wants and desires, then pushes them into the wood chipper–the chipper in this case being a mall that transforms its victims based on where they decide to shop within the mall (“shop” might be a misnomer since no money’s exchanged, but the mall’s victims pay the price with their humanity).

Stoll’s illustrations bring the mall’s victims to life in grisly detail, adding a touch of irony to their designs, such as a 50’s looking housewife who seems to have a doughy face (HALF HER FACE appears made out of dough). Stoll, however, shows some real cosmic horror chops as the teens descend into the mall’s depths and see all its fleshy insides and Cthulhu-inspired decor. Fans of the Hellraiser movie series (especially part 3, which had a man shoot razor-sharp CDs at people) will love the artwork here.

Overall, the book is great for fans of Cesare’s writing and of gutbucket body horror that skews ironic.

 

Have You Read This? Man Fuck This House by Brian Asman

 

Horror fans with Internet connections are likely familiar with the following meme:

 

 

 

 

 

The idea behind this meme is a cliche at this point: a family looking for a fresh start moves into a haunted house. However, several authors try to take this formula and add their own spin. One such author is Brian Asman who delivers a very out there, body horror, kaiju-inspired take on the concept with his novel Man, Fuck This House.

The story starts with a typical suburban family, the Haskins, moving into what appears to be a typical suburban home. Wife Sabrina is the typical housewife who has finally stopped to breathe long enough to ask what happened to her life. Her kids are distant, with her youngest being maladjusted at best and murderous at worst. Her husband is too wrapped up in his own life and work to notice that his wife is in dire need of emotional support. With no one left to turn to, Sabrina finds an unlikely friend in the house she just moved into. It’s a house that seems to respond to her wishes and it tries its best to make Sabrina’s life easier, even if it’s her family getting in the way of her happiness.

The story isn’t as much Gothic ghost story as it is a manic monster story, much less a haunting as much as a slow sort of possession. Sabrina suffers from loneliness, possibly because she is taken for granted by the family, and the house, or whatever intelligence dwells in its walls and beams, is there to provide comfort. This allows the house to ingratiate itself subtly into Sabrina’s life before Asman hits the Crazy button and this ride of a story goes full monster. Add in some truly disturbing body horror moments and Man, Fuck This House goes beyond the haunted house trope to create a truly fucked-up story about a dark relationship between a housewife and her house.

 

Have You Read (Listened) to This? The Queen of the Cicadas by V. Castro

 

Folklore from around the world has inspired many different kinds of horror, and many authors and creators have learned how to draw from their own culture and folklore to depict some very modern horrors. One such author is V. Castro, whose deep dives into Mexican-American culture and Aztec theology have yielded some very original takes on horror tropes. In the same way she upended the possession trope in her novella Goddess of Filth, she once again upends the avenging spirit trope in her novel The Queen of the Cicadas.

The novel focuses on Belinda Alvarez, a woman who is unhappy with her current circumstances and is attending a friend’s wedding on an idyllic farm. However, this farm is where migrant worker Milagros is murdered and who also makes a deal with the Aztec goddess of death Mictecacíhuatl. When these two women’s paths intersect across time and across the border between life and death, it will not just be an opportunity for vengeance. They will create a movement that could potentially change everything.

Castro has a penchant for description and for a narrative that shifts rapidly but this actually pulls the reader in without it becoming distracting, more like riding an amusement carnival dark ride rather than being pulled in multiple directions. Belinda Alvarez, the narrator guiding us through the story as Milagros, is a woman who is in search of direction but finds purpose in helping the subject of this urban legend. Maggie Schneider also provides an authentic, emotional voice for Belinda, showing her evolving spiritually and emotionally as Milagros, the spirit, also evolves.