BOOK REVIEW: ​GREAT BRITISH HORROR 2: DARK SATANIC MILLS.

by joe x young 

 
William Blake’s ‘And did those feet in ancient time’ (aka ‘Jerusalem’) provides the title for this anthology which appears to follow a very loose ‘urban’ theme.

First up is Paul Finch’s ‘Tools of the Trade’. This is basically a different slant on the Jack the Ripper mythology, with a paranormal investigator discovering Jack’s ‘Tools of the Trade’ in an abandoned Hotel. He enlists a journalist friend to make the most of the discovery, though as we can imagine all is not what it seems. It’s well researched, which is really obvious as there’s a lot of it on the pages, there are many details that I knew, others I didn’t and the majority of which stretch the story out to the point where I was wondering if anything was actually going to happen. When it did I was relieved, but I didn’t think the ending quite fitted all I endured to get there. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good story, I just found it heavy going at times. Great to see the Ripper approached from a new angle though.

The second story, Cate Gardner’s ‘Fragments of a Broken Doll’ is a somewhat bizarre tale of a little girl called Trill; she lives in a house adjacent to a prison and soon encounters an escapee. What happens next is very much in keeping with this story’s overall weirdness and perfectly explains the relevance of the title. Strange, disjointed and fascinating, I was hanging onto every word.

Andrew Freudenberg’s The Cardiac Ordeal, in stark contrast to the previous tale, is a thoroughly plausible nightmare scenario for a young couple whose infant daughter is abducted. What follows are ransom requests which push the couple to the brink of insanity and then some, all of which is played out on the father’s perspective, and it’s all nasty stuff, culminating in a horrific although somewhat rushed twist. There are certain things left unresolved, the reason for which becomes clear and leaves the reader with the unspoken question only the reader can answer. “What would YOU do in that situation?”

Story number four is ‘The Lies We Tell’ by Charlotte Bond. Meet Cathy, she is a hard-working estate agent and mother who is very much in control of her life and those of her family whom she lies to and manipulates to make her life easier. Throughout the story she is in situations where she keeps hearing clicks, primarily ascribing these to the heating system she ignores them, until she continues to hear them wherever she is. When at home she finds constant deliveries of little folded pieces of paper with six-figure numbers on them, with each newly posted piece the number increases. Both the clicks and the pieces of paper prevent this story from being dull, as we know something is coming, but exactly what’s going to happen isn’t even hinted at until the dark fantasy denouement brings a fitting end to proceedings. I hope I never hear the clicks.

Angela Slatter’s ‘Our Lady of Wicker Bridge’ concerns the disappearance of social worker Hermione whose car was found burned out, but no body discovered. The second story in this anthology to feature a strange little girl, this one is every bit as creepy and the atmosphere layers on the sense of isolation and dread in this above average ghost story.

John Llewelyn Probert’s ‘The Church with Bleeding Windows’.  What’s that you say? “Every bleedin’ church has bleedin’ windows or they’d be too dark inside!” You’d be right. If you’re into body horror and Demons then this is the story for you. This is a complete change of pace, hitting the ground running with a bucket-load of gore as a small group of people attending a therapy meeting in a church are terrorised by something unholy. This is my favourite of the stories in this anthology as not only does it get to the action early on and sustain it, but it’s also gruesomely funny with an internal logic which pans out perfectly. It had me engrossed and in places laughing out loud at a story which is as disturbing as it is funny.

Following on from that we have ‘Sleeping Black’ which is, although well written, a somewhat basic ghost story harking back the olden times when little boys used to be sent into chimneys to clean them, and occasionally would get trapped and die there. Marie O’Regan doesn’t really take me anywhere in this story where I haven’t been before as right from the get-go it is predictable and never really gets into its stride, giving a much greater sense of the lady of the house’s proclivities than anything supernatural.

Gary Fry entertains next with a somewhat unorthodox tale of Witchcraft in ‘Satin Road’. A mildly rebellious youth called Dean is the target of resentment from classmates and faculty alike. The reason is merely that Dean likes Heavy Metal Music, Horror Movies, and the supernatural and has long hair. He also wears Heavy Metal band design T-Shirts which put him in violation of the school dress code. I can readily sympathise with Dean as when I was growing up I knew kids just like him, in fact I was one (except for the heavy metal stuff) and was singled out for a lot of abuse, so this story rings very true in the delivery and indeed intent of the bullied boy whose revenge is as bizarre as it is exacting.  The first-person POV gives weight to the story, and were it not for one aspect which reminded me perhaps a little too much of a creature from a classic horror movie I would give this story eleven out of ten. As it stands it’ll have to make do with a nine-point-five.

Non Standard Construction by Penny Jones is the story of a guy called James who is somewhat down on his luck and looking for new digs in London. After many want ads are scoured he eventually finds a place and secures his tenancy, which really is where things take a turn for the even worse. Any sympathy I felt for James was heightened when things started going wrong, but in all honesty I would say that this story doesn’t really maximize as much on horror as misery and there’s a lot of missed potential for a much greater story here. I think if anything it was a slow build up which didn’t really travel to a satisfactory ending and I could readily have read a much longer story which actually had something more to say among the supernatural line.

Gary McMahon’s ‘The Night Moves’ concerns Miles, a man obsessed with perfecting the titular ‘night moves’ a Martial Arts Kata which is seemingly impossible to attain Mastery of. Even his former teacher ‘Hoodoo’ hadn’t achieved it, which only makes Miles more determined. Nothing else matters in pursuit of his goal, one which promises the ultimate reward and comes with a twist as deep and dark as a black hole. There are many stories, some in this very anthology, which have a huge build up to a rapid payoff, and in most cases they seem like a let-down, yet the meandering of this tale serves to strengthen the ending as, were it to be any more spun out at the end, it would have a diluting effect which would ruin the concept. It’s perhaps the most ‘felt’ of the stories in this anthology, as if Gary McMahon has lived and breathed his character.
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The last story is the almost ridiculously titled ‘/’dƷɅst/’, I say ‘almost’ as it’s a phonetic script translating as ‘Just’, which will make sense much later on in the story but even afterwards could probably seem pointless. I have a few problems with this story as I can’t see how or why Carole Johnstone’s routine ‘Police procedural’ belongs in a book of primarily urban supernatural scares. I think it highlights a difficulty the genre faces these days in that more and more books and TV detective shows are blurring the lines with ever more creative serial killers and ever more bizarre murders, even though what’s on offer here isn’t particularly effective in that way either. Where do we draw the line? Normally anthologies will attempt to finish on a high, y’know, leave the reader with something awesome so the parting memory of the book is a great one, but in this instance I think they goofed. I like to read stories which even if they are a little odd or rough around the edges are at least intelligible, but the constant use of Scots pronunciation here is off putting to the point where I have no desire to read any more of Carole Johnstone’s work for fear of even more characters sounding like Groundskeeper Willie in The Simpsons. Mangled linguistics aside I found the story was really more of an introduction to the life of the DCI than much to do with the serial killer or his victims. It could have been so much more, but became in my opinion the low point of the Anthology.
Overall, Great British Horror 2: Dark Satanic Mills is a great collection and well worth the effort. Who knows, maybe you’ll disagree with me in places or entirely. That’s your choice; all I can say for certain is that there’s bound to be something here to float your boat.
 

FIRST TRAILER & POSTER FOR FRIGHTFEST HORROR ‘BOOK OF MONSTERS’