RJ Joseph knows horror inside and out. Whether you've read her essays & fiction before, or heard her speak about the genre, it's evident that she's a lover of, and an expert in, all things scary – and the 24 stories collected in Hell Hath... prove this beyond any doubt.


You might get the impression from the title of this book that the stories will all be about women who are somehow victimised, and there are plenty of moments where the predominantly Black cast are put through the ringer, emotionally and physically – with racism rearing its ugly head alongside body shaming, domestic abuse and other equally serious topics. But many of the women in these stories either refuse to be held back by such things, find a way to rise above them – or at the very least, turn things to their favour, no matter the cost.


All throughout the collection, characters and scenes alike are given just the right amount of attention to detail: settings are presented so richly that you can feel the warmth – or lack of – in any place you find yourself in, and the character work is just as compelling, with heroes, anti-heroes, villains and victims all given room to breathe, even in the stories which run to just a handful of pages. What makes the majority of stories hit hardest though is the way in which you feel like you're being spoken to directly, not just because of the first person narratives Joseph appears to favour, but because of the masterful way she lays down every word, pulling you in at just the right pace to make you feel comfortable before the Band-Aid is ripped away to show you the fleshy bits underneath.


And thanks to their subject matter, more than a few of these stories are pretty gruelling, not to mention emotionally devastating. As the stories go on, it's easy to recognise that the issues presented, whether through a supernatural or historical lens, are still happening to this day, which gives many of them an extra sense of unease. Even though reading these fictions gives you a sense of distance, that ability to say “well, it's just a story”, they're no less harrowing for it – and some of the stories read more like real-life accounts. Take Flesh of my Flesh, for example, which puts a mother in an unthinkable situation and leaves you reeling with the suggestion of what its last line could mean for her and her kids.


On the flip side, there's I Will Only Love You Better After Death, which is firmly in the supernatural category, but takes you back to slave era America, with bittersweet moments of forbidden love interspersed with all-too-real descriptions of abuse at the hands of slave owners, and a tragic uprising into which seeps some weird body horror. Vitally, Joseph isn't afraid to take her stories to the darkest of places, and cover subjects some might shy away from, which means you're in for a thoroughly unsettling time.


Better put, this is a complex collection of stories, feeling both personal and painful. There are times when so-called monsters get their chance to survive and thrive, and others for whom hope fizzles out or dies entirely, and by the end of the book you'll have gone through so many emotions it's hard to process them all. I know I say this a lot in the reviews of anthologies & collections I enjoy, but this isn't a book to rush through, it's one to take your time with, both to appreciate the masterful stories within, but also to give yourself some emotional breathing space, because you're going to be gut-punched over and over before the final page.


Thoroughly compelling right from the first story to the last, this is a book that no serious horror fan should be without. Highly recommended.

Over recent times the career of Philip Fracassi has picked up serious traction and his second novel A Child Alone with Strangers is guaranteed to create even more buzz. His limited-edition debut novel Boys in the Valley became such a highly valued collector’s edition that even the great Stephen King himself tweeted about his troubles in snagging one of the 500 (rare as gold dust) copies!  This new wave of interest in Fracassi’s work is well deserved and those first-timers dipping into his outstanding back-catalogue are in for a rare treat with two full collections of short stories Behold the Void (2017) and Beneath a Pale Sky (2021) being terrific introductions. Fracassi also has a range of impressive novellas, my favourites being Sacculina (2017), Shiloh (2018) and Commodore (2021).


His 2021 jump to the longer novel format with Boys in the Valley was totally seamless and this has been consolidated by the highly ambitious A Child Alone with Strangers, which at over 550 pages is by far his longest and more ambitious work to date. Early praise for the novel was universal, with Laird Barron noting “Fracassi’s novel hits me like a cross between McCammon and '80s King. Might be one of them summer blockbusters readers love.” This is a banger of a comparison and I had already thought of McCammon before I came across the quote, but was thinking more of McCammon’s later, more mature work, in particular The Listener, which this book is most reminiscent of.


If you were to sum-up the plot of A Child Alone with Strangers in a couple of sentences it would undoubtedly resemble one of many trashy horror titles from the seventies or eighties, but in reality due to the depth of characterisation, particularly the boy Henry Thorne, and the compassion the reader feels for the child the novel soars above most genre fiction. Even though the action is beyond preposterous it reads as smartly as the best literary fiction with Fracassi nailing sentences to the page like an old master. 550+ is long for a kidnapping/monster novel, but it never became a slog and I whizzed through it over three days with Henry, the entity and the darkening circumstances getting well and truly under my skin. Hell, even though there are some truly brutal body horror style killings you will still end up feeling compassion for the creature!


Although the novel is seen in the third person from multiple perspectives it is Henry Thorne who steals the show, but he is satellited by a group of adults who all want something from him in varying degrees. After an incredibly powerful and heart-breaking opening Henry is kidnapped and held prisoner in a remote farmhouse surrounded by miles of forest. However, coincidentally shortly before being snatched, due to a very serious accident Henry begins to develop ESP type powers and connects with a strange force living in the woods. Unknown to the boy, however, is that this force has its own reasons for wanting the kidnappers gone and as the novel moves through the gears with some great set pieces, suspense and riveting moments. Although the action was restrained for much of the time, hold onto your hat for a truly outstanding and bloody final one-hundred pages where everything goes to hell in the most memorable of finishes.


A Child Alone with Strangers was a fine example of old-school horror where the monsters of the humankind were just as nasty (or worse) than the creatures and as things develop you might start cheering for a different side. The support characters were equally well fleshed out, from the distraught uncle and aunt to the FBI investigator leading the search. The kidnappers themselves had varying amount of page time with the main players being Liam and Jim who had very different relationships with the boy. The setting was terrific and virtually all readers are guaranteed to feel the isolation and despair of the boy as he has to survive in a freezing cold room, whilst battling a host of internal demons.


It is not easy maintaining tension for so long in such a chunky book, and even though the FBI seemed to be scratching their heads for slightly too long, it was a fascinating journey that nicely balanced the monster horror with the kidnapping angle. Both were equally believable and when mixed with feuding kidnappers and Henry’s developing powers everything evolves into an explosive mix with an ending which is a sheer barrage of non-stop visceral horror and some truly breath-taking sequences which were vicious throwbacks to seventies and eighties era horror.

Authors do occasionally explode (not literally!) and should the next name to go supernova be Philip Fracassi then it is well deserved with A Child Alone with Strangers being a quality follow up to Boys in the Valley. If you have never tried this author you will never have a better opportunity.


Tony Jones

Nettles by Adam Scovell  

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Influx Press (7 April 2022)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 162 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1910312738
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1910312735

A Book Review by Tony Jones 

Nettles is the highly entertaining third novel of Adam Scovell who is widely published in an impressive range of magazines and newspapers including The Times, Sight and Sound, The Quiutus and Little White Lies. Scovell’s writing covers a wide range of subjects straddling the horror genre and many other cinematic topics which often use photography and touch upon nature and landscapes. In 2016 he wrote the critically acclaimed Folk Horror: Hours Dreadful and Things Strange and has a highly impressive CV which includes a PhD in Music from Goldsmiths University and runs the website Celluloid Wicker Man which give a fuller flavour of his interests. Back in 2019 we interviewed Adam in one of our Five Minutes With The Author features and that can be read here: https://gingernutsofhorror.com/interviews/five-minutes-with-author-adam-scovell Interestingly, at the time of writing the interview Adam was working on the “pitching draft” version of Nettles and I am delighted it found a home with the always excellent Influx Press.


I happened to review Adam’s debut novel Mothlight (2019) for Ginger Nuts of Horror and you can read the full feature here: https://gingernutsofhorror.com/fiction-reviews/book-review-mothlight-by-adam-scovell. Thematically Nettles covers some of the same territory as Mothlight, particularly childhood and the power of natural landscapes, perhaps as a form of escapism from the pain of the real world. Both books also utilise photography, with Nettles haunting black and white images taking the narrator back to the unhappy spell in his childhood upon which the story is built around.


Nettles is told via two storylines told twenty years apart, the first set in 2001 has the shadow of the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers in the background which coincides with the month the unnamed narrator starts secondary school. The story kicks off on his first day in which he is savagely singled out and bullied. In the second timeline he is returning to the Merseyside area of Wallasey to visit his mother who is shortly relocating to Wales. The man who now lives in London is troubled by the return to his childhood home, which obviously has many ghosts and bad memories, and armed with his polaroid camera is attempting to reconcile himself with his past. The fact that he has gone out of his way to lose his distinct Merseyside accent show how much he disassociates himself with him childhood hometown.


If you were bullied at school or do not like reading about that subject then this brief but captivating novel might make uncomfortable reading and there are a lot of triggers. On his first day at secondary school, he is isolated and cornered by a group of boys, who obviously have a ringleader, and is savagely whipped on his bare legs by stinging nettles. From this first day onwards, the boy is earmarked as an easy target or victim and because of this he is restricted from making friendships and every day is a battle to avoid the bullies. None of the characters are ever named and the ringleader is always referred to as “Him” with many of the teachers being equally unpleasant. Was this really 2001? As It seemed more like something from the brutal sixties or seventies. But as we find out our memories can play tricks.


These school scenes positively crackled and one almost felt the boy was on a battlefield and the lulls in the action were during the lessons when he was out of reach from the bullies, however, during recess, break and lunch hostilities would resume. Getting home from school is another day survived, but by that stage he was already dreading the next. I went to school in the eighties and Nettles was so psychologically on the button it made me sweat. Growing up in the north of Scotland, I knew boys exactly like these bullies and vividly remember similar circumstances when isolated and outnumbered. This is always the way bullies operated. However, you reap what you sow and my mother has since told me that many of the most savage bullies from my year in school had premature ends, a couple very young. And coincidentally there is most definitely something of that in Nettles.


The story has a strange almost magical realism or dreamlike quality as he continues to struggle at school and in the playground he begins to hide in the marshland/mosslands under the nearby motorway and is attracted to a strange stone called Grannies Rock that sits on derelict land known as The Breck. This is key to the story as these places give him the inner strength to resist the bullies and not cry when attacked. This psychological battle of a child on the edge, who could not talk to his parents, was perfectly pitched and one would hope a similar plight in 2022 would attract attention, rather than being ignored as it was in 2001.


As in Mothlight memory plays a key role in Nettles. Is the narrator remembering things correctly? Should he truly be feeling guilt for something that occurred in 2001? I have vivid recollections of some of the events from my own childhood, but also recognise the fact that my memory can also play tricks on me and others recall shared events slightly differently. All of this plays a part in what is obviously a very personal novel by Adam Scovell. But is a Polaroid camera enough to lay to rest the ghosts of yesteryear and escape the past? It was a harrowing journey and I loved the unexpected beauty of the marshlands and the temporary sanctuary it gave him.


I sped through Nettles in a couple of sittings in what was a deceptively easy book to read, it was poetic, moving and a powerful exploration into the past. Did the narrator actually need to seek redemption or was his memory actually distorted from the traumatic events of when he was twelve years old? This quiet and introspective novel is highly recommended and may well have you thinking of pivotal childhood moments from your own past.


Tony Jones

The owner of Weird Punk Books is a genius. The cover art of Pornography for the End of the World, a haunting image of a female torso encircled by giant, antennaed flatworms, had me hitting the preorder button before I’d even read the book’s synopsis. Fortunately, the content lives up to the painting’s premise. Brendan Vidito’s short fiction collection is comprised of nine tales ranging in length from three to twenty-plus pages, tackling subjects such as isolation within a group, pre- and post-apocalypse, and sex without limitations, all served with a generous helping of the grotesque.
​
“Apate’s Children” first appeared in the mini-anthology Teenage Grave, and when I reviewed the quartet of dark tales a year and a half ago (here), it was my favorite of the four. The story depicting a partner’s penance after an admitted transgression holds up and is one of my favorites in Pornography as well. The other eight stories are also reprints. In “Church of the Chronically Ill,” Cameron joins his mother in a religious ceremony that doses creepy cult ritual with both a heavy hallucinogen and a fistful of dread. In “The Living Column,” Leland is a lonely traveler, a stranger in a strange land, who is passed a business card promising companionship. What he gets is something beyond both his expectation and his wildest erotic nightmares.

“Glittering Guignol” is set in an island mansion whispering of Jeffrey Epstein seediness but offers enough delirium-fueled vengeance to leave the most feminist of readers satisfied. In another bizarro horror entry, “Nostalgia Night at the Snuff Palace,” friends traveling together, animal pack-like in a post-apocalyptic world, stumble upon a movie theater where the line between viewer and participant is frightfully obscured.

Much of the collection incorporates body horror; more specifically, it employs the motif that the body is fluid and malleable. In “The Human Clay,” Liam Hedland is a “trafficker of illicit biological material.” When his sleazy employer offers him an evening in his brothel, a “playground of flesh and metal,” in gratitude for a particularly difficult transport, Liam discovers there are no limits to scientific imagination…or an artist’s experimentation. In a futuristic society, a woman manufactures life in the form of a fully-grown man. Her reasons for doing so and the scientist’s reaction to her creation are revealed in the witty and feminist piece of flash science fiction titled “Mother’s Mark.”

A Cassandra character is one who warns of future disaster but is ignored, much to the detriment of those who do not heed the warning. In “Walking in Ash,” an entry more psychological than splatter or weird—and my other favorite story of the nine, an anxiety-paralyzed man senses that something terrible is coming but cannot put his finger on what it is, even as the rapidly-building panic threatens to consume him. Finally, in “The Chimera Session,” Jillian and Michael’s “relationship had reached the terminal stage of its existence [but]…it seemed wasteful to simply discard five years of hard work and co-habitation.” In order to repair their bond, the pair decides to take “extreme measures” and that step comes in the form of the story’s eponymous exercise. The activity promises to renew the couple’s passion to what it had been in its initial infatuation stage, and their journey is a plummet down the Carrollian rabbit hole in the very best way.

In one of the author’s stories, there appears a prominent image of “a woman’s torso devoid of head and limbs…its skin was porcelain, unblemished, and inviting to the touch.” In others, worms subtly (or not so subtly) wriggle in and out of scenes and viscera. These symbols combine in Pornography’s cover art by Wieslaw Walkuski; in this case, one can, in fact, judge a book by its cover. Vidito’s newest release presents his readers with a buffet of weird tales that are at times batshit crazy but consistently eerily fascinating.

This time out, we’re entering Wierd Western territory, as Keene takes us down into the eponymous valley, to meet a band of dangerous outlaws, some unfortunate lumberjacks, and a  very strange bunch of cryptids. Hilarity ensues, and by hilarity, I mean of course carnage.


I’ve been looking forward to this one.


See, I happen to know from past episodes of The Horror Show and his newsletter that Keene’s a fan of the western genre. It’s easy to see why; it’s a rich environment for a pulp storyteller - mythic, dangerous, gritty, a constant sense of peril and no safety nets to speak of. Nineteen books into this journey, it’s pretty clear this genre ticks a ton of boxes for Keene. Add in a horror brief, and I was expecting a wild ride. I was very much not disappointed.


The tale opens with a gang of six outlaws (Tom, Henrik, Vernon, Eli and Clara, led by Morgan) making their way through Crazy Bear Valley, encountering a group of lumberjacks at work. Unfortunately for the working men, Morgan’s gang is on the run, desperate, and in need of somewhere to hold up, and that goes exactly how you’d expect. Keene’s in his element, here, setting up the confrontation, the tension, even having Morgan set the men at their ease before opening fire. It’s great because it works on two levels; there’s a psychological realism to the killers trying to get their victims off guard, but of course it’s also dramatically satisfying, creating a moment of visceral shock as Morgan opens fire, sparking off a brief massacre.


The novella drips with atmosphere, with a real dirt-under-the-fingernails vibe that infuses the entire narrative. The gang are an unpleasant, amoral bunch, and the crimes that they are fleeing from give the reader (and maybe the author) permission to feel ambivalent or even gleeful about their eventual fate. At the same time, inevitably, Keene gives them enough humanity that I found myself anxious on their behalf when the fur inevitably started flying.


Before we get to that, honesty dictates that I address the sexual politics of the piece, although on that score I don’t have a huge amount to say. It transpires the lumberjacks were keeping a woman, Crystal, under essentially slave conditions, including raping her repeatedly. Her ‘rescue’ under the outlaws does lead to an unarguable improvement in her material conditions, in that she’s provided clothing and fed better, and is no longer tied to a post in the centre of the room. On the other side, she’s still expected to provide sexual favours for that improved situation. Is that gross as fuck? Of course it is. It’s supposed to be. The outlaws are not good people. Moreover, it’s pretty clear that Morgan understands enough about psychology that he understands that the relative improvement in her situation is likely to inspire loyalty; it’s a calculated manipulation, in other words, of a piece with his vile, self-serving character.


I feel like there’s a lot that could be said here, in terms of unpacking the psychological impact of abuse, versions of Stockholm syndrome (which I understand is heavily contested, if not outright debunked), and of course the way more skilled abusers weaponise kindness alongside cruelty. But it’s not the central focus or concern of the piece, and frankly, I don’t want to. So, instead, I’ll note that this content is part of the story, it’s as gross as you’d expect it to be given the subject matter, it’s not presented in a way I found remotely prurient or titillating, and I thought it was both horrible, and entirely psychologically plausible, given the period and place. This is something about which reasonable people can and will disagree, and that’s fine too.


I do, however, want to talk about the cryptids.


In the afterword, Keene talks about his fascination with Bigfoot/Sasquatch, and how he was delighted with the chance to write a story with them. What I really enjoyed about the narrative was how the creatures themselves are shrouded in mystery for much of the story. Keene takes his time, establishing the characters and the setting of the cabin in the valley, and the creatures don’t even make an appearance until around the one-third mark. Even then, Keene uses the Spielberg shark technique; allowing glimpses, sounds, and (an advantage prose has over film) smell to build a very satisfying sense of tension. It’s a smart choice, in that it builds enough of an impression that when one of the gang inevitably shoots one of the creatures for meat, the level of foreboding is off the scale before we’re even treated to a close-up description.


There’s also a sense of inevitable doom to proceedings, not a million miles away from what we talked about during Urban Gothic. Of course, these callous, vicious outlaws are going to kill one of the creatures, of course, they’re going to make the decision to stay overnight, and of course, the tribe of the murdered creature are going to return to get their revenge.


None of this is intended as a criticism in any way; it’s a strength of the narrative, baked into the bones of the Western. The knowledge of the contours of the story doesn’t serve to undermine the tension but exacerbates it; I felt that old familiar sick sense of dread, as soon as Gunderson pulled the trigger. And Keene knows we know, luxuriating in allowing the tension to escalate for the reader as the disquiet and understanding gradually dawned on the outlaws.


The final siege is another action horror setpiece handled with typical cinematic energy and brio by Keene, the feeling of inevitable doom somehow making the raw violence and gunplay feel even worse in its desperate futility. I've said it before, and I’ll no doubt say it again; Keene is absolutely masterful at describing scenes of action and carnage; the prose flies along, the sights, sounds and smells come thick and fast, and throughout as the reader I felt like I had a crystal clear grasp on the unfolding chaos. This kind of thing is incredibly difficult to do well, and, again, Keene does it as well as I’ve ever seen it done, and far better than most.


I also enjoyed the coda; the entire gang meeting their inevitable grizzly end, but Crystal as the lone survivor felt like a piece of rough natural justice, and the closing image of her allowing the river’s current to carry her out of the valley had a kind of poetic quality that I appreciated a great deal.


Overall, An Occurrence In Crazy Bear Valley ranks very highly amongst the Keene novellas I’ve read so far; the western setting imbues the narrative with a sense of legend and mythology, and Keene does a great job in using that atmosphere to build a sense of tension and dread. Bad men, scary creatures, and an apocalyptic final shootout - what’s not to love?


Backing up the collection is Lost Canyon of the Damned, a longish short story featuring fleeing a band of survivors fleeing a zombie apocalypse (again in the old west time period) and a mysterious hidden canyon. The canyon leads to a lost valley of the dinosaurs, similar to Doyle’s The Lost World, only using the canyon and surrounding mountains as the self-contained ecosystem in place of the plateau from that novel.


It’s a fun romp - the zombie plague in this era is called Hamlyn’s Revenge, and affects animals too, giving us first undead coyotes, and then, inevitably, zombie dinosaurs. And yes, it absolutely is as entertaining as that concept suggests. It’s also slight, and the story doesn’t so much end as stop. I enjoyed what I got a great deal, but the narrative felt like it had more space to run than the word count allowed for. I’m wondering if any of what’s going on in this tale will be revisited in The Lost Level series. Certainly, Keene has a flair for writing about, and a keen appreciation for, dinos as well as bigfoot. The carnage here is, again, gleefully written, and all the better for it.


And that’s it for An Occurrence In Crazy Bear Valley. And if we were sticking with the strict chronology, we’d be getting into Clickers III next; however, I couldn’t resist spending some time with the author's Preferred Text of Terminal, which recently got released for the first time. So, with apologies to the purists, we’ll be tackling that one next. Looking forward to it.


KP
16/7/22
​

When you have been reviewing horror fiction for as long as I have, it is easy to become jaded and somewhat stuck in a rut regarding your reactions to what you read. Yes, you enjoyed it, and yes, it was good, but that wondrous elation felt when reading the likes of Clive Barker, Brian Lumley, Hailey Piper, or Paula D. Ashe for the first time just wasn't there. However, now and then, a book comes along that re-ignites your passion for the genre, and The Creeper is one such book.  


Now you will hate me for saying this; I hate myself for saying this, but the less you know about this novel, the better. Trust me, there are several vital scenes whose impact will be dulled if you have even the slightest of prior knowledge, not so much twists and turns or giant reveals of the like favoured by Shyamalan, but scenes that are so powerful in their ability to scare you right to the core of your being. I'm not joking here; there were at least three points where I had to put this book down and take a moment or two to soothe my thumping heart and frayed nerves.  


If you want a basic plot summary, here you go; a pair of students are sent to a mysterious and isolated village by an odd academic scholar to find the truth about The Creeper. And all hell breaks loose as modern Ireland sensibilities clash with Irish mythology's dark and dangerous worlds.  


Trust me, that summary doesn't do any justice to what you are about to witness within the pages of this terrifying tome.  


People often talk about the landscape as a character within a novel. Shine has done an exceptional job at creating not just a believable setting for the novel with his descriptions of the bleak Irish countryside that surrounds the village of Tír Mallacht, but by using it as a powerful driving force with regards to the sense of isolation and disconnection of Tír Mallacht, with the modern world. You are totally invested in the horror that centres on Ben and Chloe as they investigate the legend.  


It is clear that Shine has mined his own experiences of being a history graduate, as the interactions and methodology of Ben and Chloe's interactions with the locals were spot on. Imagine a local place for local people, where the softening touch of the blackest of humour is replaced with even more soul-sucking terror.  


Shine's descriptions of the community and the dynamics of how it survives not just in a modern world but from the threat of The Creeper reminded me somewhat of a twisted version of The Wicker Man, but just remember you need to follow the rules if you want to survive in this community.  


The dynamics between Ben and Chloe are another high point of this novel, their journey from wide-eyed, keen to make an impression and some serious money, to abject terror as the Creeper latches onto them and tears their semi-idyllic world apart. 


As for Dr Alec Spalding, I loved this character; the reclusive, slightly odd, but not quite Howard Hughes odd academic who sends Ben and Chloe on their nightmarish adventure is a wonderful creation. The parallels between the isolation of the village and its people, mirroring the isolation of Spalding, was a clever touch, with both being prisoners of their faith and duty. It's a pity that this novel is entirely self-contained, especially about his character, as he genuinely is a magnificently realised player in the novel. Imagine Mr Burns trapped in The Masque of the Red Death.  With Machiavellian dealings, deep paranoia and a bittersweet sense of isolation even from those who probably do care about him, he is a complex and satisfying character to base this novel around.  


We can't discuss this novel without some mention of The Creeper. However, I am going to be as vague as vague can be on this issue. Suffice to say; that this is one of the most fascinating monsters committed to the page in recent memory. It's a creature that could be discussed for hours regarding the notion of what a monster is, whether monsters are born or created, or do they become monsters because of the world around them. Never mind, who is the al monster of the novel? But let's just say that Shine's descriptions of the monster when it is finally thrown into the spotlight is pure terror; I still don't like looking out the windows at night; such is the power to terrify that this creature has been imbued with.  


In terms of the narrative, this is distinctly a book of two halves. Initially, Shine exquisitely handles the exposition with a claustrophobic, creepy and spooky foreshadowing of what is to come. Things are hinted at; clues are scattered throughout, but nothing is fully revealed until the second half of this novel explodes at you. The balance between these two halves is perfect, with part one permitting the main characters to develop sufficiently so that we genuinely care about what happens to them when the proverbial Irish peat bog hits the fan. And as for the second act of The Creeper, if you don't finish this with your heart beating out of your chest, sweat dripping off your forehead while thinking out loud, "Oh my God, that was brutal but brilliant", well, there must be something wrong with you.  


There is a very fine line between excellent and genre-defining, a line very few books cross, but one that The Creeper jumps across that line with both feet. ​

The Witnesses Are Gone Paperback – 6 Oct. 2022 by Joel Lane  

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Influx Press (6 Oct. 2022)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 102 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1910312975
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1910312971

A Book Review by Tony Jones 

Influx Press are undoubtedly one of the finest literary independent presses in the UK (or anywhere else for that matter) and if they cherry pick a work for rerelease then you can guarantee it is worth further investigation. Joel Lane’s brilliant but brief 80-page novella The Witnesses Are Gone first appeared as a limited-edition hardback, released back in 2009 by PS Publishing and one hopes this new version will bring this near-perfect tale to a fresh audience. Although Lane won many awards, including two prestigious British Fantasy Awards and a World Fantasy Award, when he tragically passed away in 2013 was relatively unknown to the book buying public at large, but was both influential and highly respected in the horror community.


When I first read Lane’s debut novel From Blue to Black (2000) over twenty years ago I was unaware of his reputation as a short story master and over the subsequent two decades have enjoyed periodically dipping into his impressive, truly genre bending collections, some of which have also been rereleased by Influx Press. Simply put, Lane ranked amongst the finest British short story writers of his generation and transcended genre fiction by infusing politics and grim social realism often with a low key dose of the supernatural. From Blue to Black made a permanent imprint on my brain and it remains one of my favourite books about music, art, bands, obsession, drinking and was a beautiful, fragmented memoir of living through the grunge scene of the early nineties. Like most of Lane’s work it is set around the Birmingham area, and he does for this city what Ramsey Campbell did for Liverpool, bringing to life the underbelly, the rundown pubs, empty streets at night and presenting it in a totally unromantic and realistically bleak manner, but with the uncanny often lurking around the corner or hiding in plain sight.


Short story specialists never seem to get their moment in the literary spotlight and it is a shame Lane did not produce a more substantial body of mainstream fiction in the vein of The Witnesses are Gone as it is an outstanding novella. Like much of his shorter work, it is best categorised as ‘weird’ rather than horror, whilst his two novels are slightly more mainstream avoiding genre labels altogether. Lane had the uncanny ability to move between all literary formats from novels, novellas, poetry and short stories, with the latter being the area he was most prolific in, but if you prefer longer fiction this story is a perfect place to start and gives an authentic flavour of his unique style.


The Witnesses Are Gone had me on the hook by the end of its second sentence in which Martin Swann, full of regret, tells us that if he had not followed his obsession then his girlfriend Judith would still be alive. But does he really feel that at fault? Over the course of the story events do guiltily circle back to Judith, but predominately the story digs deeper into Martin’s obsession with discovering as much as he possibly can about an ultra-obscure French film director, Jean Rien. After Martin moves into his new house in the Tysely area of Birmingham he stumbles upon a box of bootleg video cassettes, one of which includes a copy of a morbid and disturbing film called ‘L'Éclipse des Sens.’ Although he cannot really explain why, he fails to shake images of the film from his subconsciousness and begins to research into Jean Rien before being quickly frustrated by a series of internet dead ends. Whilst Swann searches for these films, the USA and the UK symbolically search for the mythical ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ Iraq were supposed to possess. Politics were often a bubbling undercurrent in Joel Lane’s tales.


The Gulf War rumbling in the background dates the story to the noughties and there are lots of other pop culture references, from The League of Gentleman, Urban Gothic, to the characters watching Season 2 of Angel on video (the uncut American version, again indicating Swann was the obsessive type). However, although Martin Swann’s search for Jean Rien uses the internet in patches, the majority of it is refreshingly old-fashioned (the internet was perhaps not yet the beast it now is I guess?) and he scours old film magazines, contacts horror fans/geeks and other oddballs via magazines such as the Fortean Times. Older readers will surely smile at this search/obsession as in the pre-internet days we all remember the personal obsession to track down hard to find cult-classics from the banned (in the UK) The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, through Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, to El Topo and even Kurosawa’s The Magic Mountain. Back in the day one had to really put the legwork into finding cult films and Martin Swann truly goes that extra mile!


Events then have an almost surreal quality to them as Martin goes on a bizarre personal odyssey which takes in Gravesend, Paris, Aberdeen and Mexico in the search for Jean Rien and his films. Whilst his girlfriend is the voice of reason he becomes increasingly unhinged and she more distant. However, even if events get weirder the plot has one strong foot in reality with Swann being fully aware of his obsession. The eighty pages are populated with bizarre scenes which veer from gritty realism to unsettling moments in a Paris porn cinema to the drug induced flashes in Mexico which would not have been out of place in an Alejandro Jodorowsky flick.
.
The Witnesses Are Gone is an unsettling dreamlike first-hand account of a journey into the darkest parts of the underworld which totally turns the trope of the ‘cursed film’ on its head. Ramsey Campbell’s The Grin in the Dark might be a notable point of reference or even Hideo Nakata’s Ringu. Interestingly, Simon Bestwick is thanked in the acknowledgements and surely his superb version of the ‘cursed film’ story A Different Kind of Light (2021) makes its own respectful nods to Joel Lane. The whole concept of a filmography somehow deleting itself and luring individuals into their own type of hell was a great idea and shows how obsession can colour and devour our lives should we let it. But then again, your take on this story might take you elsewhere, as nothing is truly cut and dried.


Hopefully, this timely rerelease will help a new wave of readers discover the weird fiction of Joel Lane. It is also worth noting that an anonymously published short story The Vanishing Life and Films of Emmanuel Escobada is also credited in the acknowledgements as the inspiration behind the novella and that might lead to its own obsessive hunt! I am going to resist looking it up on the internet (as you just never know where the search might take you….)


Tony Jones