Read By Dawn, Volume 3 : Edited by Adele Hartley Cornelia at 13:42 on 20 August 2008
Every one of the 28 stories in this collection is distinctive and memorable, although tone and atmosphere vary as much as the length and subject matter. All are imbued with evil, but relatively few aim for the visceral impact of Michael Keyton’s 'Bony Park', where a homicidal stranger lures a young boy to a quiet riverside venue and anticipates the nasty ramming of a knife into a mouth ‘until the point scraped against bone.’ The same could be said for grisly Christmas tree decorations in 'Tinsel' by Frazer Lee, and the vampire-like woman who imagines ingesting a body, in 'Sighs' by Patricia MacCormack
Insane protagonists, male and female, are de rigueur of course, such as the kidnapper who thinks he can find his former mate hidden inside another girl’s body in 'Wendy' by Ryan Cooper. On the whole, though these tales aim for a mental chill rather than a gut reaction. Monsters are manifestations of mental derangement, and although possessing supernatural features they resemble animals, as in 'Shuck', Rebecca Lloyd’s unsettling tale of psychic possession.
The latter suits a preference for the longer narrative which drags the reader into reluctant proximity to characters and locations that form the stuff of nightmares. 'What Will Happen When You Are Gone?' For instance, by Jeffery Jacobson, is an example of the ‘Don’t go in there!’ house-of-horror story, in which tension mounts to a terrifying denouement when a young house-hunting couple view a run-down mansion.
Almost all these stories are set in remote country areas, like 'Chinese Graveyard' by Joel a. Sutherland, where weird events go relatively unnoticed except by the unfortunate victim. An exception to this rule is Scott Stainton Miller ‘s 'The Wait', an apocalyptic urban tale where escaping hellish neighbours in a block of flats incurs its own perils from wandering gangs of street marauders.
Fear and pity are evoked where the victim is a child or bereaved parent, as in 'Lost' by Sam Thewlis, where a mother broods with misleading tenderness over her dead child or the haunting chill of the graveyard in 'Windchimes' by Paul Kane. All too frequently children are a source of danger, too, as in Vanessa H. Reid’s portrait of the offspring-gone-wrong, 'Sonny Boy'. Humour comes as a delightful palate-cleanser in the poem-like 'Them Potions I Drank' by Brian Rosenberger and the comically sinister domestic fantasy 'Murder for Breakfast' by Oren Shafir, one of several stories that depend for their effect on a twist-in-the-tail rather than a slow build-up.
Ghosts are expected visitors in a horror collection, such as the lonely narrator of 'Blind Spot' by Jamie Killen or the victim of a watery medieval drowning in 'The Devil’s Tavern' by Alison J. Littlewood. Witches, too, come in many guises, including the kidnapper-with-spindle in 'Treats' by Samuel Minier. Science-fiction and fantasy genres are present in the weird surrealism of 'In the Cinema Tree with Orbiting Heads' by Keke-W, recalling traditional Chinese tree-ghost legends, and the futuristic story of a body-builder who becomes organically identified with his house in 'Extensions' by Andrew Tisbert.
Dysfunctional families figure in several stories, such as the twist-in-the-tail revenge story 'Coming to a Close' by Aurelio Rico Lopez 111 or the portrait of destructive group insanity in David Wesley Hill’s 'The Pain of Others', one of the most powerful stories in this immensely readable collection.
Cornelia