Screen to Scream: Near Dark and In the Valley of the Sun

Bill Paxton's Severen looks like me 
eating hot wings.

Vampires have often been portrayed in movies and books as sensitive, brooding, and sexy monsters. There are some media, however, that show them to be just monsters, monsters that happen to feed on blood and violence. They may make these vampires compelling, but they never let the reader/viewer forget what they are. Two such examples of this are examples of a mashup genre people might call Vampire Westerns: the gritty 80’s movie Near Dark and Andy Davidson’s debut novel In the Valley of the Sun.

Near Dark, acclaimed director Kathryn Bigelow's best kept secret of a vampire movie, stars Adrian Pasdar as Caleb Colton, a nice guy cowboy who falls for drifter Mae. Mae (Jenny Wright) has a secret, however, and all it takes is one bite before Caleb is indoctrinated into her vampire family, including patriarch Jesse Hooker (Lance Henriksen) and scene-chewer Severen (Bill "Game Over, Man" Paxton). The family takes Caleb in, even taking him out to dinner. Of course, dinner involves starting and subsequently consuming bloodbath at a local bar. Not partaking, Caleb still holds onto his humanity, even as he tries to both save his younger sister and help his new girlfriend as the family comes looking for them. Long before Twilight, Caleb and Mae exemplified a vampire romance and all the internal conflict and bodily bloodshed it entails, especially as both young lovers try to quell their murderous urges. 

Travis Stillwell, the protagonist of Davidson’s novel, knows something about fighting these urges, but he is also no stranger to killing. Not only is he a Vietnam veteran whose seen his fair share of death, he’s brought it to many young girls throughout Texas. He is given eternal life by Rue, a vampire who shares her blood with him and insinuates herself into his existence. Rather than use his vampiric abilities to sate his hunger with the blood of young women, he focuses on one family, a single mother and her son. Near Dark is horror, but it also has a few action movie moments, like a Terminator moment involving a semi-truck. It moves quickly from one scene to the next while In the Valley of the Sun focuses on Travis, the mother, and the Texas Ranger trying to stop him, fleshing out these characters while drawing them closer until the understated Western-like showdown that serves as the novel's climax. Near Dark features flaming vampires in the sun while In the Valley of the Sun features people and vampires exploding with unrequited passions. 

Fearsome Five: Five Staycation Books

Remember when asshole jellyfish 
were the least of our problems?

People probably had lots of vacation plans for 2020, if they started planning back in February.  And even then, many had probably held out hope that the pandemic would release its grip on the world and those vacation plans could still happen this year. We've plummeted into August and summer is flying by, but COVID-19 looks to have made itself at home in our lives and in our minds. Travel might be out of the question, but look at all the stories out there of trips outside of one's hometown, outside of their home, that go completely off the rails. Horror stories have proven time and time again that travel is overrated, maybe even dangerous.  Need proof? Here are five examples: 

Castaways by Brian Keene. When people think of vacations, some might think of sandy beaches, ocean waves, picturesque sunsets, and palm trees gently swaying in the breeze. The beach is where many people go to forget their troubles, but the people in Brian Keene’s novel discover worse issues than sunburn on their tropical island excursion. Sure, there's a reality show competition, but there are also the other inhabitants of that island who aren't exactly welcoming to tourists. 

Travelers’ Rest by Keith Lee Morris. Not interested in the beach? There's always the open road, seeing every part of this country, from beautiful mesas to majestic forests, but there's the possibility of stopping at a place that wouldn't mind you staying for a spell . . . or forever. Traveler's Rest looks like a welcome break from a long winter's drive, but for the Addison family, the hotel is actually a place where reality breaks way more than the Wi-Fi. Just like some people need working Wi-Fi, some people insist on a working reality. 

The Troop by Nick Cutter. Some people don't need a working Wi-Fi and might find themselves renewed by being away from the screens that constantly war for our meager attention spans. Return to nature, enjoy a roaring campfire, sleep under the stars. But anyone who remembers the line about nature being "red with tooth and claw" surely knows that nature isn't always relaxing. In fact, nature can often try to kill you. The stalker of the scout troop in Cutter's Lord of the Flies coated in body horror is no giant monster, but something small enough to get inside you, small enough to gnaw its way into your core. Visit these woods and you'll be hungry for more than just some time away from your iPhone.  

FantasticLand by Mike Bockoven. Maybe escaping into nature isn't your thing. Maybe you're searching for something more . . . fantastic. Time to go to a land which promises rides and games and fun galore, a place where "fun in guaranteed." But what happens when the system that makes all the rides, games, and fun run breaks down? A place full of dreams can easily turn into one full of nightmares once the power goes out and the authorities are nowhere to be seen. I mean, the teens that get trapped in FantasticLand make do by forming gangs, battling for supplies, and even getting into some recreational cannibalism. Aren't those turkey legs at Disney World great? 

Worst Laid Plans: An Anthology of Vacation Horror by Samantha Kolesnik (editor). If I missed something, it's more than likely covered in this anthology edited by the author of the disturbing debut novel True Crime. Meeting new people you wouldn't otherwise? V. Castro's story suggests that's a bad idea. Still think the beach is a great place to relax? Hailey Piper might suggest anywhere else. Want to learn more about our reptile friends? The story from Malcolm Mills shows one can know too much. The introduction to this collection is written by horror reviewer and blog celebrity Mother Horror, who I'm guessing would suggest you just stay home and read.

Have You Read This? Doorways to the Deadeye by Eric J. Guignard

One of the reasons I love to read fiction is because I know that fiction is more than words on paper, more than the descriptions attributed to a character or a scene. Stories, whether they're novels, novellas, short stories, or heck, even limericks, become more than the words that compose them. They grow from mere words into people, worlds, universes when they are read, pondered, absorbed, and especially shared. I happen to be a particular fan of this particular brand of metafiction (shout out, of course, to Clive Barker's story "The Forbidden," which in turn birthed Candyman). Eric J. Guignard takes this idea of fiction becoming real and creates a fantastic and exciting universe in his novel Doorways to the Deadeye. 

Guignard focuses not on literature, per se, but on uniquely American legends. These aren't tales of Pecos Bill and Paul Bunyan, however. These are tales of gangsters, lawmen, heroes, and Luke Thatcher, riding the rails in Depression-era America discovers through the Hobo Code that these legends gain flesh-and-blood reality in a world of Anathasia, also called the Deadeye. Luke Thacker is no Pecos Bill but he becomes one as he unlocks the secrets of this other world, using it to help the love of his life and to protect it from those legends who seek to do it harm. In Anathasia, the more the living remember you, the more powerful you become, and there are those who seek to expand their legend to the point where it supersedes all other folklore. 

This is a great book for people who love their worlds fun and fantastical. Guignard has also avoided pigeonholing the various legends Luke encounters into the tropes their legends happen to fit. In other words, nefarious gangsters can become your allies, stalwart lawmen might be hunting you, and the greatest enemy of all is one of our nation's founding fathers. Apart from creating a consistent yet entertaining universe in the Deadeye, Guignard fills his tale with characters brimming with personalities, especially the legends who have tics and quirks they might not have been initially known for. One of the joys of reading this book was to wait and see what legend Guignard reinterprets next. While this book definitely falls more on the fantastical than horror, there is a scene involving a very unassuming yet infamous axe murderer that would make any gorehound salivate. Overall, this is a book for fans of horror and fantasy as well as for people who believe fervently in the power of imagination. 

Have You Read This? Into Bones Like Oil by Kaaron Warren

Many people describe the overall purpose of the horror story as creating emotions like fear, dread, and terror in the reader. There are also readers like Paul Tremblay who create disquiet, the feeling taht something is not quite right, and that whatever is "not quite right" could lead to something truly awful. Rather than relying on jump scares or moments that grab the reader by the throat, these authors of disquiet create scenes that settle like a miasma over readers, causing them discomfort while pulling them deeper into the universe the writer has created. Kaaron Warren goes all into creating atmosphere with her novella Into Bones Like Oil.
The premise of the book sets it apart from the average ghost story. Protagonist Dora is the latest resident of the Angelsea rooming house, which is located near an old shipwreck. Broken people come to the Angelsea, including Dora, who has recently lost her daughters, but the Angelsea is also home to a unique brand of ghosts, ones that speak through the living while they sleep. You can probably get a good night's sleep at the Angelsea, but expect a ghost to use you as its mouthpiece and whisper its secrets to anyone willing to watch and listen to you sleep.
The book goes all in on atmosphere. The characters are profoundly miserable, with even their social gatherings full of a kind of sickly tension that remains throughout the encounter. Day and night also have very little difference between them; everything being a dreary overcast of the soul. Even he ghosts themselves aren't the most frightening thing in this book; rather, they are treated like a morbid feature of the hotel, but still a feature as mundane as the view from the balcony or the continental breakfast, which lies one of the more fascinating aspects of the book. Much like Micah Dean Hicks's Break the Bodies, Haunt the Bones, the spirits are fully ingrained into this shadow universe full of magical realism. Angelsea owner Roy is more disturbing than the ghosts that speak through the emotionally dead yet living people who rent his rooms. Not only does Roy pump the spirits for information about the shipwreck, he is willing to cut deals with his living tenants to get the ghosts to speak through them. Basically, Roy has no problems exploiting the living and the dead and the living all cater to Roy's need to hear the dead speak.
The book is not a plot-driven piece; there is no grand climax or eureka moments for these characters. Nobody really learns anything and the denouement is truly minimal. I actually listened to this book on audio during a long drive. It was raining and the sky was a dismal gray that makes a story like this feel appropriate. Finally finishing the book was more like coming up for air rather than the satisfaction of unraveling a story. This book is not for readers whose reason for reading is opening up a story like it's a puzzle box. This novella,which makes Into Bones Like Oil only the briefest dive into sadness, is for readers who like their stories to take them to other places, if only for a little while.

New Arrival: The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones

Who doesn't love a good ghost story? That may depend on the individual and what stories they've witnessed. For every The Haunting of Hill House or The Turn of the Screw, there are a thousand examples of poorly-written, doomed-to-be-direct-to-video dreck. A good ghost story is more than just creaking staircases and jump scares. A good ghost story has real emotion, a well-laden atmosphere, and a spirit with a clear motivation, whether its malice or revenge, or even both. Adding to the list of great ghost stories is Stephen Graham Jones, whose latest The Only Good Indians shows a unique ghost story that is miles ahead of the multitude of mundane bump-in-the-night tales.
I classify this tale as a ghost story, but the antagonist isn't wearing a white flowing gown nor do they rattle any chains. The spirit that follows four Native American best friends is just as much of a character as the four men who transgressed by hunting on the wrong land. The book doesn't seem to have a first-person or third person narrator, but weaves its way through the narratives and lives (or unlives) of the four men and one vengeful spirit in such as way as to not be jarring at all. Rather, the reader becomes like a spirit that travels behind the eyes and into the minds of the various people that are tied together in this story.
The book unveils many issues, ranging from cultural identity to the strength, for better or worse, of tradition, but it also showcases Stephen Graham Jones as a top-notch storyteller. Somehow offering sumptuous description without flowery words, Jones's words maintain that tricky balance of moving the reader through the story at a quick pace while also immersing them in life on the Reservation and beyond. No character in this story feels underdeveloped or one-dimensional and when tragedy befalls them, the reader might audibly gasp in shock at the brutality and the emotion of their passing. Rare is the author who can balance between brutality and beauty, of storycraft and carnage, but Stephen Graham Jones, called the Jordan Peele of horror fiction, looks at modern issues in a way that makes everyone want to look as well.

Have You Read This? Kin by Kealan Patrick Burke

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre ends with the heroine Sally escaping by diving into the bed of a pickup truck. She's laughing maniacally, victoriously, as the truck drives away from the site of the massacre while Leatherface, the man responsible for most of the movie's bloodshed, can only swing his buzzing chainsaw in the air impotently, defeated. The movie ends on that note of triumph, but what if there was more to the story? Would the movie still have its impact if it followed Leatherface having to tell his family his prey escaped? Or followed Sally through her attempts to process what happened to her friends, the ones murdered by Leatherface's sadistic clan? Kealan Patrick Burke explores these questions, as well as the overall effect of trauma, in his ode to cannibal backwoods killers Kin.
Unlike Chainsaw, Kin begins with heroine Claire Lambert's harrowing escape from the diabolical Merrill family. She is naked, missing extremities, including her eye, and her body is running completely on instinct after escaping her captivity. Make no mistake that Burke does not shy away from the gory details, from describing the family's preparation of victims to the effects that horrors, like the ones the Merrills perpetrate on everyone, affect everyone in their orbit. Burke adds multiple stories, from the family that rescued Claire when they drove by, to a brother whose come home from a war only to start a new one when he discovers his brother, Claire's boyfriend, was one of those killed in the massacre. Now outside forces wanting retribution are bearing down on the Merrill clan, which is ruled with an iron fist and a Bible by Papa-In-Gray. Papa-in-Gray has trained his boys to hunt and to fight, to protect what is theirs and take what they want. It is truly unknown, as you read, who will walk away from the book's final showdown
One of the hardest balancing acts to maintain with books that don't shy away from violence is balancing it with some empathy. The advent of the movie genre "torture porn" shows the results of violence without empathy. Luckily, Burke knows how to make characters the reader can sympathize with. Even the mostly despicable members of the Merrill family show themselves to be more than cardboard monsters, particularly Luke, the son who is starting to question Papa-In-Gray's authority. If this were merely another book full of violent deaths and depictions of brutality that would make a med school student nauseous, I couldn't recommend this book, but Burke does know the craft of writing, making beautiful sentences, and showing us characters whose need for vengeance is as strong as their need to heal. While this book is not everyone's cup of bloody tea, Kin goes well beyond violence for violence's sake.

Screen to Scream: In the Tall Grass

I sometimes feel a little self-conscious about admitting my fandom of Stephen King and Joe Hill, the maligned and allegedly aggrandized master of the macabre and his boy Joe, a regular chip off the old tombstone, who's getting as much name recognition as his father through a similar amount of media saturation. Yes, there are many indie authors out there breaking boundaries and tearing down walls (and Stephen didn't help his case with THAT tweet!) and many might think that Stephen's horror belongs in the past, but I do owe something to Uncle Stephen for turning me onto horror. I also owe Joe Hill, a storyteller who in many respects has surpassed his father, for showing me how magic and awe can still be woven into a story, almost a throwback to Ray Bradbury and . . . well, his dad. I usually turn to a Gabino Iglesias or Nick Cutter for stories that hit like a sucker punch to the gut whereas a Stephen King/Joe Hill tale might be like a trip through a neighbor's haunted house on Halloween, a neighbor that's maybe a dentist when it's not Halloween. I enjoy their fiction but their stories don't necessarily shock me. Then I read "In the Tall Grass" (from Hill's Full Throttle collection) and I saw the Netflix movie based on the story.
The story begins like a typical Stephen King or Joe Hill story: normal-seeming Cal and Becky Demuth are driving along, their deep yet placid brother/sister relationship explained in the introduction. Becky is pregnant and Cal, the dutiful brother, is driving his sister to San Diego to stay with relatives while she has the baby. Then they hear a young boy's cry for help emanating from a sea of tall grass. Stopping to offer assistance, Cal gives a "Captain Cal to the rescue" before he runs headlong into it, followed by Becky who loses her signal and soon her way. The siblings, separated, are lead not only away from each other, but toward a dark fate thanks to whatever lurks in the grass and the power it has over those who enter its domain. The Netflix movie manages to add onto this premise by including the baby's father as well as a time travel narrative that's difficult to follow at times, but both stories become very dark very quick. What starts off as a fun spooky tale becomes darker and more disturbing as the violence is taken to unexpected places. "In the Tall Grass" is about isolation, madness, and even a little folk horror, but both movie and book both show a major strength of both father and son, creating fleshed-out and empathetic characters that the readers' hearts will break for once the horror closes in on them. What makes this story different is the sheer level of savagery the characters endure, not in a gratuitous way but one that shows just how unrelenting, ancient, and barbaric the thing in the grass is. It's a story that shows that father and son can break out the buckets of blood when they need to, but you should experience both for yourself. Just be sure to have a Ray Bradbury or Neil Gaiman palate cleanser story on standby.