Some short horror a-day keeps my madness at bay......
Ahhh...
'Tis one of those nights when Mario Bava is directing your evening. The sky is a bizzare, glowing red color, which reflects on the clouds and makes everything turn an eerie crimson. The last vestiges of the sun have gone, as if covered up by clouds, and those last rays turn those dark clouds hellfire red with flecks of gold. I watch them slowly die away....
But nay, the time is come to make my way back home and curl up with some books from my ancient library. What shall I read? I ask myself this as I curl up on my couch....
NO! My kinfolk are here! I bid them leave to no avail, they have formed a congregation to keep me from my vices after my return. But to one's own vices left one be alone! I cry. I eye the confined instrument of my vice's freedom from the cardboard hell to which they doth have been confined, and then seek out fresh territory in which to seek a destination for my instrument in which I wish to plunge it and have it taste fresh blood!...
Now it is late, the womenfolk have gone to bed. I hear their sleep, now it is time, but I shall wake them momentarily before I strike. I shall not even use my talisman of murder, for my own strength shall suffice....
Now the deed is done! My tormentors have been sent to their richly-deserved fate! Now I seek respite with my vices. For which of my tomes hath they imprisoned? It matters not! Any and all property of mine is to be set free!
Aww damn it! I already reviewed this entire thing! Oh well, may as well review some of the stories I skipped or that I have in other volumes. They're all conveniently located here anyway.
First up is Chet Williamson's Night Deposits, and man is it a sick puppy. In some ways it's the most gruesome story in the book. What makes it grislier than the others isn't just the air of plausibility, but how it's told. While it never segues into the outright comedy of Topsy or Gary Raisor's The Old Black Hat, it's told in a simple, matter-of-fact style by what we assume is a common, small town working man, and has an undercurrent of sardonic humor which only drives home the gravity of the situation, as well as just how damn insensitive some small-town people can be even when they're trying to sound compassionate or optimistic. Once while I was travelling cross-country I stopped at a bar and some guy came in with a look of shock and grief on his face, nearly crying. He then broke down and said his daughter was just hit by a car, he started crying then and wondered if she was going to die while she was in the hospital. His friend turned and said "Well, look at the bright side, at least you don't have to worry about paying college tuition if she kicks the bucket" and everyone laughed oblivious to the guy's feelings.
Depending on how you reacted to my little anectdote should gauge how you react to this story, as well as give you a feel as to how it's written.
Our narrator describes a man named Zane Kaylor who was a kind of local legend. Zane was known as a tall, abnormally thin man who looked "Like a fence post a rough wind split in two". However, he wasn't always that way.
Back in 1934, Zane ran a wood mill and was fairly well-liked and contented, enough so that even the local sheriff let minor safety code violations slide. Unfortunately for himself and everyone else involved, Zane was also a complete cheapskate with little to no regard for safety regulations. He wasn't an uncaring or evil man, just a penny-pincher who wanted to generate as much product as possible to keep himself stable during the depression, but he also didn't want to squander any of his money on his workers, so he did the most logical thing to do in this era; he hired local children and teenagers to work for almost nothing.
The sheriff however, while on a friendly visit, sees a local boy named Tommy Martin; a well-liked pass receiver for the local football team, working on a particularly dangerous area of the saw without a blade guard. He threatens to expose Zane if this keeps up and that he had better give Tommy more than the meager safety gear he has, as well as put up a blade guard. Zane, being too cheap to order an effective one, instead hand-crafts one out of soldered tin cans(!) and leaves it at that. Tommy, being a footall player, and more than likely a complete moron and bully anyway, doesn't seem to care or notice any of this because hey, work is work and he actually enjoys his job.
How effective do you wanna bet that blade-guard is?
Tommy loses his balance and pulls the entire blade guard onto the spinning blade, which sends shrapnel flying in all directions that "Sliced his right eye open like a grape. But that wasn't the worst of it".
"The boy fell right across the blade then, and it started to chew into him at gut level. He pushed himself off, but fell back for a second, and that was when it got his hands. Both of them. Must've gone through the wrist bones slicker than shit through a goose...."
"What made it a double shame is that he was the best goddam pass receiver the high school'd had in years."
..................
As you can imagine, Zane gets his plant shut down and his ass sued. The Martins hire a hot-shot lawyer, who sues Zane for an almost unbelievable amount. Zane loses everything, including the mill and his family. He gets a job in the mill from the man who buys it from him, but eventually loses it due to his well-known alcoholism. Disturbingly however, the truth is that Zane's alocholism actually didn't interfere with his ability to work at all, and his boss Homer knew that. Why did he fire him?
Because there would be days when Zane would stop what he was doing....and stare at the saw blade.
Three months later Tommy kills himself by firing a shotgun with his toe.
Zane continues to sink into depression, and finds odd jobs. He gets a job as a janitor at a local bar, and his impeccable work earns him the friendship of the employees and customers. One night, Zane finally pays off the (monetary)debts he owes so the patrons throw him a party. Big mistake. He has a breakdown, and states that he will never be out of debt. Decades pass, and he still vows to repay the debt in full.
Soon, he notices a local bank where he payed off his bedts in small deposits close. However, the building is left standing. Our narrator gets up one night and sees Zane leaving. He begins watching Zane enter the building at odd hours of the night with a knife, coming back each time seemingly in pain. Zane keeps talking about how he almost has the debt paid off. And soon he begins wearing gloves, and losing weight, and eventually keeping his hands and face hidden from view....
God. Damn.
Definitely not for the faint of heart, Deposits proves you don't need ghosts and goblins to tell an effective horror story. And damn is it effective. Reading it just now made me feel like someone dumped a bucket of ice water down my back.
In contrast to the full-throttle horror of Deposits, where you can almost hear the whir of the blade and hear Zane making his ''deposits'' in the abandoned bank, the other story at hand I want to review is Edward D. Hoch's The Faceless Thing, which, while boasting an element of explicit supernatural horror, is a model of understatement in comparison.
Many years ago, as a child, a once prominent but now retired politican had an argument with his sister while out playing near a cave in an area that fills up with water, becoming like a swamp. He was known for rough-housing. One day, he noticed the Ooze. Out of it rose a terrible monster, which killed his sister. He tried to forget it, and did. Now he has returned to see, just one last time, if it's still there, and if he can avenge her death.
But he's such an old man. The valley is old. If it exists, the creature is old too. Shortly, he begins his quest. But he's such an old man....
While it sounds like a typical ''Man hunts monster who traumatized him as a child'' story, Hoch's poetic prose and sense of despair elevate this. The ending is in many ways, a work of absolute genius; With plenty of ambiguity as to the reality of the situation, which can be read on several different levels. I'm not saying any more. This is a beautiful story, and anyone who doesn't cry after reading it just simply is a sociopath. This elevates the somewhat laughable device of the muck monster, an archetype mostly used well in comic books, into something sublime.
Speaking of comics, and moving from the sublime into the ridiculous, expect some more excerpts from Monster Masterworks very soon, as well as a look into some comics of a more intelligent and sophisticated nature; that's right, I got some EC., Warren and Skywald coming up.
~
'Tis one of those nights when Mario Bava is directing your evening. The sky is a bizzare, glowing red color, which reflects on the clouds and makes everything turn an eerie crimson. The last vestiges of the sun have gone, as if covered up by clouds, and those last rays turn those dark clouds hellfire red with flecks of gold. I watch them slowly die away....
But nay, the time is come to make my way back home and curl up with some books from my ancient library. What shall I read? I ask myself this as I curl up on my couch....
NO! My kinfolk are here! I bid them leave to no avail, they have formed a congregation to keep me from my vices after my return. But to one's own vices left one be alone! I cry. I eye the confined instrument of my vice's freedom from the cardboard hell to which they doth have been confined, and then seek out fresh territory in which to seek a destination for my instrument in which I wish to plunge it and have it taste fresh blood!...
Now it is late, the womenfolk have gone to bed. I hear their sleep, now it is time, but I shall wake them momentarily before I strike. I shall not even use my talisman of murder, for my own strength shall suffice....
Now the deed is done! My tormentors have been sent to their richly-deserved fate! Now I seek respite with my vices. For which of my tomes hath they imprisoned? It matters not! Any and all property of mine is to be set free!
Aww damn it! I already reviewed this entire thing! Oh well, may as well review some of the stories I skipped or that I have in other volumes. They're all conveniently located here anyway.
First up is Chet Williamson's Night Deposits, and man is it a sick puppy. In some ways it's the most gruesome story in the book. What makes it grislier than the others isn't just the air of plausibility, but how it's told. While it never segues into the outright comedy of Topsy or Gary Raisor's The Old Black Hat, it's told in a simple, matter-of-fact style by what we assume is a common, small town working man, and has an undercurrent of sardonic humor which only drives home the gravity of the situation, as well as just how damn insensitive some small-town people can be even when they're trying to sound compassionate or optimistic. Once while I was travelling cross-country I stopped at a bar and some guy came in with a look of shock and grief on his face, nearly crying. He then broke down and said his daughter was just hit by a car, he started crying then and wondered if she was going to die while she was in the hospital. His friend turned and said "Well, look at the bright side, at least you don't have to worry about paying college tuition if she kicks the bucket" and everyone laughed oblivious to the guy's feelings.
Depending on how you reacted to my little anectdote should gauge how you react to this story, as well as give you a feel as to how it's written.
Our narrator describes a man named Zane Kaylor who was a kind of local legend. Zane was known as a tall, abnormally thin man who looked "Like a fence post a rough wind split in two". However, he wasn't always that way.
Back in 1934, Zane ran a wood mill and was fairly well-liked and contented, enough so that even the local sheriff let minor safety code violations slide. Unfortunately for himself and everyone else involved, Zane was also a complete cheapskate with little to no regard for safety regulations. He wasn't an uncaring or evil man, just a penny-pincher who wanted to generate as much product as possible to keep himself stable during the depression, but he also didn't want to squander any of his money on his workers, so he did the most logical thing to do in this era; he hired local children and teenagers to work for almost nothing.
The sheriff however, while on a friendly visit, sees a local boy named Tommy Martin; a well-liked pass receiver for the local football team, working on a particularly dangerous area of the saw without a blade guard. He threatens to expose Zane if this keeps up and that he had better give Tommy more than the meager safety gear he has, as well as put up a blade guard. Zane, being too cheap to order an effective one, instead hand-crafts one out of soldered tin cans(!) and leaves it at that. Tommy, being a footall player, and more than likely a complete moron and bully anyway, doesn't seem to care or notice any of this because hey, work is work and he actually enjoys his job.
How effective do you wanna bet that blade-guard is?
Tommy loses his balance and pulls the entire blade guard onto the spinning blade, which sends shrapnel flying in all directions that "Sliced his right eye open like a grape. But that wasn't the worst of it".
"The boy fell right across the blade then, and it started to chew into him at gut level. He pushed himself off, but fell back for a second, and that was when it got his hands. Both of them. Must've gone through the wrist bones slicker than shit through a goose...."
"What made it a double shame is that he was the best goddam pass receiver the high school'd had in years."
..................
As you can imagine, Zane gets his plant shut down and his ass sued. The Martins hire a hot-shot lawyer, who sues Zane for an almost unbelievable amount. Zane loses everything, including the mill and his family. He gets a job in the mill from the man who buys it from him, but eventually loses it due to his well-known alcoholism. Disturbingly however, the truth is that Zane's alocholism actually didn't interfere with his ability to work at all, and his boss Homer knew that. Why did he fire him?
Because there would be days when Zane would stop what he was doing....and stare at the saw blade.
Three months later Tommy kills himself by firing a shotgun with his toe.
Zane continues to sink into depression, and finds odd jobs. He gets a job as a janitor at a local bar, and his impeccable work earns him the friendship of the employees and customers. One night, Zane finally pays off the (monetary)debts he owes so the patrons throw him a party. Big mistake. He has a breakdown, and states that he will never be out of debt. Decades pass, and he still vows to repay the debt in full.
Soon, he notices a local bank where he payed off his bedts in small deposits close. However, the building is left standing. Our narrator gets up one night and sees Zane leaving. He begins watching Zane enter the building at odd hours of the night with a knife, coming back each time seemingly in pain. Zane keeps talking about how he almost has the debt paid off. And soon he begins wearing gloves, and losing weight, and eventually keeping his hands and face hidden from view....
God. Damn.
Definitely not for the faint of heart, Deposits proves you don't need ghosts and goblins to tell an effective horror story. And damn is it effective. Reading it just now made me feel like someone dumped a bucket of ice water down my back.
In contrast to the full-throttle horror of Deposits, where you can almost hear the whir of the blade and hear Zane making his ''deposits'' in the abandoned bank, the other story at hand I want to review is Edward D. Hoch's The Faceless Thing, which, while boasting an element of explicit supernatural horror, is a model of understatement in comparison.
Many years ago, as a child, a once prominent but now retired politican had an argument with his sister while out playing near a cave in an area that fills up with water, becoming like a swamp. He was known for rough-housing. One day, he noticed the Ooze. Out of it rose a terrible monster, which killed his sister. He tried to forget it, and did. Now he has returned to see, just one last time, if it's still there, and if he can avenge her death.
But he's such an old man. The valley is old. If it exists, the creature is old too. Shortly, he begins his quest. But he's such an old man....
While it sounds like a typical ''Man hunts monster who traumatized him as a child'' story, Hoch's poetic prose and sense of despair elevate this. The ending is in many ways, a work of absolute genius; With plenty of ambiguity as to the reality of the situation, which can be read on several different levels. I'm not saying any more. This is a beautiful story, and anyone who doesn't cry after reading it just simply is a sociopath. This elevates the somewhat laughable device of the muck monster, an archetype mostly used well in comic books, into something sublime.
Speaking of comics, and moving from the sublime into the ridiculous, expect some more excerpts from Monster Masterworks very soon, as well as a look into some comics of a more intelligent and sophisticated nature; that's right, I got some EC., Warren and Skywald coming up.
~