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NO-MAN AND OTHER TALES BY TONY RICHARDS
(Pendragon paperback, 335pp, 9.99 pounds)
The latest title from Welsh publisher Pendragon consists of four novellas, two of them previously unpublished, from a writer who has appeared regularly in our predecessor, The Third Alternative, as well as a host of other genre magazines, and with a common theme of be careful what you wish for because your wishes may be granted.
Title story ‘No-Man’ starts with a young boy discovering an alien presence inside an old air-raid shelter at the back of his school. The eponymous No-Man is friendly and able to grant wishes. He makes everybody like Tom, and over the years helps him with his studies and then his career. There is a price, in that Tom can't help wondering how much of his success is down to his own efforts, but all the same he can't stop himself pushing for more. It's only with the really powerful emotions that No-Man has trouble fine tuning things; he can make a woman love Tom, but the cost is she no longer actually likes him, the weaker emotion overwhelmed by the stronger. It's a double-edged sword that results in severe complications. There's an intriguing idea at work here, showing that however strange we may seem to aliens and vice versa, we're still pretty odd to each other as well, and that there are consequences when we try to force other people to feel about us in a particular way. Richards is excellent at identifying all the possibilities of this fraught scenario and mining them in such a credible way that we can immediately empathise with Tom and his philosophy of “Where's the harm?” and believe that we might act similarly even while knowing that what he is doing is wrong. I have one tiny complaint to do with the actual writing. In this story, and to a lesser degree in those that follow, there's a tendency to split lines so that what might more naturally run as a sentence becomes question and answer (e.g. “Tom? Was by nature a quiet and thoughtful type ... “). I'm not sure if this is a misjudged stylistic effect or simply a series of typos thrown up in the printing process, but I am certain that I found it irritating.
Second story ‘Postcards From Teri’ is a ghost story in which a man is haunted by the predatory spirit of his old lover, the postcards she mailed him from abroad acting as touchstones for dreams that seem compellingly real. It is the finest in the collection, and I reviewed it at length when it was originally published as a standalone novella by Tartarus. Rather than repeat myself I will post the original review to the website at ttapress.com.
Reading the other previously published story, ‘Under the Ice', there will probably come a moment when you realise that it is yet another variation on that old favourite The Monkey's Paw. David moves to Helsinki to be with the beautiful Krista, when his twin brother, her then lover, accidentally falls overboard from a ferry. The tragedy always haunts him though, and so when a magical artifact falls into his hands he wishes for Bobby to come back, which he does, only as a violent zombie whose behaviour casts doubt on Krista's role in their shared past. Similarities to Paw aside, and those magical elements and the happy ever after ending they empower are the only weak part of the narrative, this is a gripping story, one that builds well, with each step along the way following on surely from the previous one, once you accept the given of supernatural interference. Richards deftly portrays the central ménage a trois, and is equally competent at capturing the feel of Helsinki on the page, with subtle touches of atmosphere and nuances that make it all credible.
Last story and the longest, ‘A Black Glass Slipper’ is a Cinderella fable for modern times in which Owen is beguiled by Eva, an obscenely expensive call girl, and decides to rescue her from the Russian gangster who ‘owns’ her. His attempt to involve the law fails, as does his plan to offer money, while Eva herself tells him that she is not interested, though of course Owen refuses to accept this, believing she wants to love him but is afraid. In desperation he seeks outside help of a satanic provenance, but fate has another cruel twist in store. I have mixed feelings about all this. It's eminently readable and engaging, being at one and the same time the most promising story and also the one that disappoints the greatest. As a tale of obsession and self-delusion it works very well, with believable action and convincing emotions, as Owen is drawn in against his own wishes, unable to help himself, and the coldness of Eva comes over well, the indifference she has had to adopt simply to survive. It is an unsettling picture of the way in which humans can become brutalised, but then Richards introduces the satanic element and turns the story on its head. The two plot strands don't really gel, with the supernatural stuff seeming not so much to arise naturally out of the story but as a clumsy deus ex machina introduced simply to provide the desired resolution. The subtext for me is that sometimes the horror of real life is enough; you don't need the devil and all his tricks.
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ONCE BITTEN, TWICE SHY BY JENNIFER RARDIN
(Orbit paperback, 290pp, 6.99 pounds)
Jaz Parks is a CIA operative and the assistant to their top assassin Vayl, who just happens to be a several hundred year old vampire out of Romania. A former vampire slayer, who lost her team and is riddled with guilt as a result, Jaz's job is to watch Vayl's back, sniff out other vampires for him and generally make his life easy. The two are sent to investigate a plastic surgeon suspected of raising funds for a terrorist group connected to The Raptor, a vampire who is the arch nemesis of democracy (think Osama, with fangs). Things are much worse than expected though, with the bad guys plotting to unleash a demon from another dimension and a plague that will wipe out mankind. There are other complications too, not the least of which are Vayl's former wife showing up and a traitor in the ranks of the CIA, while we also get some unsettling revelations about Jaz's past.
This is horror lite, or paranormal romance, or whatever you want to call it; Bond meets Dracula according to the back cover blurb. I'd have gone more for True Lies post the Jamie Lee character's conversion to secret agent, though Vayl is nowhere near as scary as the Governor of California. Jaz is an easy to like character, good at what she does and caring towards her family, agonising over mistakes she feels she may have made and wisecracking with the best of them (her penchant for wrecking cars is a running joke). She and Vayl have a good rapport, with the hint of a chemistry that promises interesting times ahead, while his enigmatic master act is intriguing without being so far out there as to repel.
After a slow start the book picks up speed and delivers the goods, with an exciting story packed with larger than life characters, technical wizardry and supernatural grace notes. The plot has more than its fair share of ups and downs for Jaz and Vayl (well, actually a lot more downs), with some knockdown fights along the way to a suitably enthralling and momentous final battle between the forces of dark and light, one in which it could easily go either way. Last but not least, what we learn of Jaz's past sets up some intriguing puzzles to be resolved in future volumes.
It's not compulsive reading, or even horror really, but I had a good time with this and expect I will with more from Rardin.
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FIREFLY RAIN BY RICHARD DANSKY
(Wizards of the Coast hardback, 384pp, $25.95)
His business failed, Jacob Logan returns to the small town of Maryfield in North Carolina and takes up residence in the family homestead. It's a bittersweet return for him, bringing back memories of how he deserted his parents and betrayed their dreams to pursue his own. But things are not right. The fireflies, which Jacob's mother said were angels sent to guide dead souls to heaven, will not come onto Logan land, and handyman Carl Powell keeps dropping dark hints about the house and his family. Matters escalate as Jacob sees signs that the house is haunted, while his car is stolen by a strange figure. It seems that certain prominent citizens have a vested interest in seeing Jacob remain in Maryfield, and will resort to anything to make that happen, be it violence or hand picking a bride for him. Restless spirits are on the wing and Jacob must get to the bottom of it all, or see people he cares about get hurt.
The
re's good and bad to this book, if I'm allowed such an obvious statement. Dansky provides plenty of solid effects, with the sense of a haunting put over well, objects moved and doors shut, strange sounds at night and sudden changes in temperature, the whole nine yards of spectral manifestation in fact. The mysterious actions of Jacob's car, which is stolen by a party unknown much to the indifference or bafflement of the police, but keeps turning up at the most inopportune moments to tease and torment him, along with Jacob's visions and savage, inexplicable attacks by his neighbour's dog all add to the building tension. It culminates in a final push to force him to take the necessary action to resolve matters or die in the attempt, which brings on a tour de force resolution to the book, a standoff against the forces not so much of darkness as those of desperation and the human longing for peace. All of this is to the good, but outweighed by the problems I had with the story.
I didn't find Jacob particularly likable or care what happened to him (or the rest of his family either for that matter). He came over as a self-absorbed jerk, which made it impossible to sympathise over his troubles; curiosity was the best I could manage. The only engaging characters were librarian Adrienne, the honey trap element of the story, and feisty, go getter Jenna, Jacob's city friend who comes to help him out and ends up with her life in peril. There are too many red herrings, such as Jacob's various altercations with police officer Hanratty and his suspicions as to her past, while the idea at back of it all, the explanation for all that happens here, is simply risible. There are so many hints of much bigger things going on in the text, but the book just doesn't deliver on them, as if the author had written himself into a corner and then couldn't see a more rational way out of his character's dilemma. Ultimately Firefly Rain is like one of those Hollywood blockbusters where all the money went on sfx, with only pennies over for script and casting.
Copyright © 2008 Peter Tennant
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[Back to Table of Contents]
THE MORNING AFTER—Carole Johnstone
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Carole Johnstone is a Scottish radiographer and physicist living in Essex. A relative newcomer to published fiction, ‘The Morning After’ is her first success!
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At least it was downhill. There was that.
Although one sixty degree nightmare of a slope and five hundred steps hardly made a walk in the park. Particularly if you had overslept by half an hour—and on a day where even being on time might be too late. After eight-twenty, there wouldn't be another train until nine, and this would stop at every station along the way, taking twice as long as the express that he still believed he could make.
He'd made it to the second series of stone steps in record time; ahead of an intruding hedge of nettles, he could see the distant Auchinfoil Road below, and beyond it the town grid and the Clyde. It was early enough yet that the sun hadn't quite made it above the hills of Dumbarton across the river, though upon the rocky peninsula between, the windows of its castle caught what light there was in glares that outmatched the steady drift of the Clyde. This was the longest stretch in his journey: more than two hundred wide and low-lying steps—the kind where one step was too little and two too much. The kind that was more likely to bust open your face before lending you any speed.
Normally he wouldn't have chosen this route. It might have been a hell of a lot quicker than the tortuous hairpin roads that graduated down from the housing estates at the top of the hill to the town centre below, but it was the stamping ground of junkies and drunks. And it played havoc with his bad knees.
He looked at his watch. Eight-fifteen and he was still, to all intents and purposes, in Devol—at best more than ten minutes from the bridge that led to the station. He should have waited for the bloody bus.
Despite the cool early morning air and the stiff breeze that came off the clouds, his head still pounded. Four Nurofen and a pint of Irn Bru hadn't come close to touching the hangover that he had woken up to. He didn't want to dwell on its misery because he didn't want to think about its foundation. The night before.
Stacey had likely only agreed to meet him in Connelly's because he'd plagued her night and day for more than two weeks. She'd looked good though, as if she'd made an effort for him—and that combined with three swift Aftershocks before she had arrived had made him feel irresistible.
The feeling hadn't lasted long. He got no further than his opening gambit: the sincerest of apologies that would make way for certain reconciliation and a possible promise on the night-bus home, when she handed him a whisky and told him that she had a new bloke, a bloke called Frankie who came from Slaemuir and worked in an abattoir or something as rank. A bloke who had apparently been waiting in the next booth along for just such an introduction.
Close to the bend that would take him onto the last set of steps before Dubbs Road, he nearly ran straight into a back garden gate that was hanging open onto the steep alley; only a hasty turn that twisted at his knees averted disaster, though he paid for the save with a nasty tumble down at least half a dozen steps. He came to rest too close to a congealed puddle of pink puke, and when his hands sought to push backward from it (his stomach threatening to put pay completely to his efforts), one landed on something plastic that rasped against the concrete.
"Fuck!"
The syringe was empty save for a small red deposit at its head, and he had come nowhere near to touching the needle itself, but he recoiled backward in disgust, scrambling to his feet and slapping the palms of his hands against his trousers while he cursed again.
When he got moving once more, he now welcomed the diversion of Connelly's. His hangover had reasserted in shaky legs and breath, and vibes so bad that he almost turned back for home. He didn't look at his watch for fear it would decide him to defeat; instead he cannoned down the steps without looking anywhere but dead ahead, concentrating on the memory of the night before so that there was no room to consider what he might be stampeding over.
Now that had been a cosy tête-à-tête alright, the three of them ensconced in a booth so tight that their knees were all touching. Frankie—a bloke who looked like he had gone a few rounds with Joe Calzaghe on a good day—Stacey, her boobs hanging out of her top, an ugly rash spreading up her neck, and him, sat like a bloody spanner opposite them both, caught between wanting to break both of their heads and making a run for the door.
A red flash on his left distracted his concentration, and upon a half-demolished brick wall, the philosophy of the Devol Ned Cru was surmised: bucky lane for the devol! fuck the oronsay mob. hink again boys—devol ya bass. And further down: gibby casuals sheep it fuckers! All very entertaining if you didn't really need to make a train that was likely getting ready to pull into the station, while you were still at least two hundred bloody steps above the town centre, trampling over used syringes and God knew what else.
When he looked again towards the Clyde, he saw that the sun hadn't yet risen above the Dumbarton hills, and when his gaze was drawn once more towards the glinting windows of the castle, a random memory that Merlin was supposed to have holed up there while in exile came into his head. His primary school teacher had once told him that the name Devol came from the Gaelic Diabhoul—the name of the evil one. And even at six years old, he'd known who that was well enough. Considering the amount of junkies and soap dodgers around the place (and that was just in the scheme, not in the boarded-up factories and dodgy back alleys like this one), they were likely right.
He remembered Stacey's face when he had told her what he thought of her. He might have been better advised to have kept an eye on Frankie all the while he had been calling her a dirty hing-out and the like, but hangover-hindsight was a bitch. And his thumping head was testament to more than just whisky and shots.
His breathing was wheezy now, and not just because of the altitude. His desire to catch the eight-twenty had become something of a dream-like panic: a need to get to that exam or interview; a
need to outrun a chasing bogeyman that no longer had anything to do with Strathclyde Council likely giving him the boot for being late once too many times. When he looked down again, the Clyde still seemed as far away as it had ever been. Surely he had to be close to the road now? Even once across Dubbs, there remained another steeper set of steps before the gable of the Star Hotel heralded the beginning of the town centre.
Some nettles brushed against his leg and his pace faltered; he caught a glimpse of grey-blue sky before he righted himself, though the dizziness endured too long and his head developed an evil pulse that almost floored him again.
He remembered following old Frankie into Nicolson Street and then accepting an invite up a nearby close. Frankie looked beaten-up enough, but he reckoned that he had at least ten years on him. Stacey's new bloke was old. And slaughtering pigs likely didn't bring home much more bacon than suspending the housing benefit of dole bludgers. The unintentional pun started a laugh at the back of his throat; one that stifled his lungs and brought back his terrible druth.
When an obstacle flashed into his careering path, his curse was lost to the desert in his throat, but this time he managed to swerve around it without too painful an incident; one knee almost buckled as he tried to right himself on the way down, but a slapped palm against the nearest wall righted himself again. He might have been okay were it not for another unexpected change in direction: he found himself veering suddenly to the left, his right side bouncing off the wall like a pinball, headed for the back fence of a house on the other side of the path before he was able to stop himself.
His breath was hoarse and rasping in the sudden quiet. His thighs burned and his knees screamed. Bereft of the repetitive rhythm and steady tattoo of his run, he leaned hard against the fence and spat twice (the second producing nothing at all), his head still beating with its nasty pulse.
When the dizziness passed enough for him to feel able to turn around again, he did so without much enthusiasm. For a moment he considered running again, but niggling curiosity sent him back towards the opposite wall. Something on the ground caught his eye, and while that tattoo inside his head might have tried to make him look away, he found himself doing just the opposite: crouching even closer to the nearest step.
Black Static Horror Magazine #3 Page 14