It may seem odd but even though it’s the first week of
June, I’ve been thinking autumnal thoughts this week. That’s because I’m going
to chat a little bit about an autumn-set novella of mine, SEASON OF MIST, from
2010, which I intend to reissue both in print and ebook form around
September / October this year. It’s both a thriller and a horror rolled into one, with
strong folkloric elements, with means that talking about it now ties in neatly
with another bit of fun I’ve got lined up for today.
I’ve been doing another of those gazetteers of STRANGE AND EERIE PLACES, but this week, instead of the UK and Ireland, which I’ve already
done, I’ll be focussing on WESTERN EUROPE.
In addition to those two treats, and because we’re exclusively talking
weird, scary mysteries today, I’ll also be reviewing and discussing Simon
Stranzas’s intriguingly strange and spooky anthology, AICKMAN’S HEIRS.
If
you’re only here for the anthology review, that’s fine. Just pop down to the lower
end of today’s blogpost; that’s where all my reviews go. However, if you’ve got
a bit more time, perhaps you’ll like to stick around at this end a bit longer. Especially as I’m now about to discuss …
Season of Mist
Back in 2010, I penned a bunch of original horror
novellas, which were all published together in one book, WALKERS IN THE DARK,
by Ash-Tree Press, and launched at World Horror in Brighton. The book got quite
a few good write-ups, but alas, a decade later it’s no longer in print.
However, one of the stories in there,
SEASON OF MIST –
which clocked in at 40,000 words – was almost classifiable as a short novel in
is own right, and I reckon it
’s time it saw the light of day again.
Back then in the early 2000s, I was mostly writing horror
and science-fiction (mainly Dr Who). I hadn’t at that stage developed a profile
as a crime novelist but was increasingly drawing on my police experience to
develop thriller concepts. However, when the idea for SEASON OF MIST popped
into my head, it allowed me to wear two hats at once, giving me the
opportunity to link my long-standing interest in folk-horror with the kind of
brutal crime story that is all too real in Britain today and was equally real
when I was a youngster in the early 1970s.
One particular memory of that long-ago decade still
sticks in my mind: the autumn of 1974, when the preparations for Halloween in
my hometown of Wigan, Lancashire, were made particularly scary by a local rumour that a child-killer was on the loose. In reality, there was one murder,
and it did occur on a dark October night not too far from our patch. A bunch of
teens had been playing hide and seek in the vicinity of a derelict hospital;
one of them disappeared during the course of the game and was later found cut
to pieces. It’s difficult to trace the details now, but I understand that the
murderer was eventually arrested and turned out to be a mentally ill vagrant,
who was then locked away in a secure institution.
Of course, as children, the true facts of the tragedy didn’t trouble us. We
were just awe-stricken by the raw horror of it. You see ... we too would shortly
be dressed in Halloween garb and running around the darkened streets, woods and derelict mills and
coal-tips that dotted our borough (like this one above, thanks to Dave Attrill). And this time, of course, it would be even more frightening than usual because now a real monster was on the
loose.
The chilling memory of that long-distant Halloween Night,
which was every bit as terrifying as we’d expected it to be, but which
thankfully saw no one else actually die, lingered long for me – primarily
because as well as being electrifyingly scary it was also hugely enjoyable, the
perfect Halloween in fact.
Of course, simply recreating those actual events for
SEASON OF MIST would not have been good enough. A much better idea, it seemed
to me, was to combine them with an especially uncanny bit of Wigan mythology,
as related to me when I was a tiny tot by my coal-miner grandfather.
According to local folklore, Red Clogs was an evil spirit
that roamed the colliery wastes of our town, after a terrible underground
disaster claimed the life of a collier, taking his feet in the process. In the isolated world of that 1970s industrial heartland, we were all fearfully familiar with this evil and
remorseless entity … whose mythical depredations could easily, in the eyes of a
bunch of innocent children, have masked the presence of a real serial killer.
SEASON OF MIST was the result. As I say, it’s a
40,000-word novella, which I’ll be looking to republish both in electronic
format and in print as the autumn of the year approaches. So, watch this space.
Eerie places
Now, as promised, some other stuff ...
A few months ago, on January 9, I posted a blog – My Own
Gazetteer of Strange, Eerie Places. It was a round-up of my top 20 strange and
scary places in Britain and Ireland. Places I’d love to
visit in my fiction, or, in one or two cases, places that I already had visited.
It proved to be a popular post; it received a lot of
hits, and there were lots of positive and interested comments on Facebook and
Twitter.
Given that people apparently liked it so much, it seems like an obvious next step to do the same thing again, only now to venture
beyond the boundaries of the British Isles, in fact maybe to take this show all over the world, though obviously we can only visit one geographic
region at a time.
I thought I’d start the ball rolling this week with Western
Europe.
It’s one of the oldest constantly inhabited regions on Earth, it has a long, complex history (much of it blood-soaked), and there
is literally a wealth of legend and folklore to get our teeth into. It’s also a
corner of the globe where many truly ancient monuments have been lovingly
preserved.
I should say straight away that I’ve had to be sensible
with the number of places which for these purposes I’ve considered to be part of Western Europe. It could never be as simple as drawing a new
line of longitude down the centre of the continent and treating
everything to the west of it as fair game. For one thing, it would take forever
to research so many potential venues, and for another, even opting only to include the very best, I’d finish up with many more than 20. So, I’m going to be discerning, and, as in the future I
intend to write separate blogs about the eeriest, scariest places in
Scandinavia, the Mediterranean and so forth, today I’m looking exclusively at
Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Portugal, Switzerland and Austria.
So, without further ado, please enjoy (and feel free to
comment on):
GAZETTEER OF STRANGE, EERIE PLACES 2:
WESTERN EUROPE
1 Beelitz-Heilstätten
A district of a historic town in Brandenburg,
eastern Germany, and home to an infamous abandoned hospital complex, some 60
buildings strong and for the most part accessible, which for years now has
enabled members of the public to enter it at will, holding night-time vigils
and taking multiple eerie photographs. Despite its exceptionally grim
appearance – numerous film companies have shot footage here, making full
gruesome use of the endless bleak corridors and rubble-strewn, graffiti-covered
treatment rooms – the 100-year-old ruin has no specific reputation for occult
or supernatural activity, though like all derelict medical complexes, it
possesses a distinct aura of misery and melancholy. If it adds kudos, past
patients include arch-villains Adolf Hitler and Erich Honecker.
2 Chateau Champtoce
It isn’t much to look at today – there’s scarcely enough
of it left to be haunted – but Chateau Champtoce in Maine, central France, was
one of several castles belonging in the early 15th century to legendary
warrior, warlock and serial child-murderer, Gilles de Rais. A hero of the
Hundred Years War and right-hand man to Joan of Arc, Gilles de Rais later
retired to private life, where he is said to have sunk into a quagmire of
depravity. At least 80 peasant boys, but maybe as many as 600, are said to have been
lured into his various castles, where they were sodomised, sexually tortured
and murdered, sometimes amid hellish Satanic rites. De Rais was hanged and
burned in 1440, and though debates rage about the extent of his guilt, some
claiming that the Church framed him, most historians consider him guilty as
charged.
3 Lisbon backstreets
Though Portugal is regarded as a holiday idyll, it
suffers severe social problems that most visitors never see. Some 2.6 million
of its inhabitants live below the poverty line, and many of its larger cities’
most run-down neighbourhoods consist of slums and shack housing where drugs and
crime are rife. One scary myth emerged in Portugal’s capital, Lisbon, several
years ago. It concerned an unknown gang who would prowl the most deprived
neighbourhoods late at night, leaping on random victims and offering them
death, a beating or ‘a clown face’. Most opted for the latter, unaware that it
meant the sides of their mouths would be slit, creating horrific Joker-like visages. It’s a very spooky story that has legs even today, despite it being discredited in 2009, when police
and health services failed to locate a single record of any such assault
victim.
4 IM Cooling Tower
The much-photographed Power Plant IM has been disused
since the early days of this century, and though scheduled for demolition and
regularly patrolled by security guards, still stands tall in the Belgian town
of Charleroi, a dangerous, dystopian edifice beloved by urban adventurers.
Originally built in 1921, it was for a brief time the biggest coal-burning
plant in Belgium. Incredibly, despite its antique status, it continued to
function – albeit with various modern adaptations – right through until 2006, when
its excessive C02 emissions led to a protest by Greenpeace and its closure the
following year. It presents us with another totemic Western European
structure, which though incredibly eerie to look at has no actual history of
odd or uncanny events. But check it out. It can’t really be excluded from a list like this, can it?
5 Castle Frankenstein
Yes, this is it, the original one-and-only Castle
Frankenstein. It stands in the Odenwald mountain range in western Germany and
was the official home of the powerful Frankenstein family from 1250 to 1662. It
fell into ruin in the 18th century and remains in that state to this day. The
Odenwald are heavily wooded and the centre of many legends, including one tale
that a local alchemist, Johann Dippel, who lived in the castle after the
Frankensteins had vacated it, dug up a corpse and brought it to life with black
magic. Stories that Mary Shelley was inspired by this nightmarish folk-tale are
doubted, some scholars claiming that she was never even in the region. That
aside, the castle is reputed to be the centre of much paranormal activity and
is regularly the site of televised Halloween and Walpurgis ghost-hunting
events.
6 Paris Catacombs
All kinds of urban myths surround this infamous network
of ancient underground ossuaries. One holds that hidden in its darkness is the
entrance to Hell, another that diabolical sects convene here, and yet another
that it is filled ghosts who only make themselves known after midnight,
attempting to lure lonely explorers into the depths. What is fact is that over
6 million human remains are interred here. If that isn’t unnerving enough, a video camera
was once found down here containing footage which indicated that the cameraman, who was never seen again, was being chased by
something. Stranger still, on another occasion, a fully-equipped cinema was uncovered by police,
complete with working phone-lines and cameras that were filming them; the
cinema’s creators were never located, but a note was left, which said: ‘Don’t
search!’
7 Chateau Miranda
Sadly, it was demolished in 2017, so no one can ever
visit this famous neo-Gothic castle in the Namur region of Belgium again, but
if wasn’t one of the scariest looking buildings in all of Western Europe, I’d
be astonished. Though construction commenced in 1866, it was 1907 before it was
completed, and its owners, the aristocratic Liedekerke-De Beaufort family, only
occupied it until WWII, at which point it was taken over by German forces.
Though it survived that era intact – it even survived the Battle of the Bulge!
– the family never returned, and it became an orphanage and hospital before
abandonment in 1991, from which point it was the focus of urban explorations
and ghost hunts. Unfortunately, amazingly even, it was never known for its
supernatural activity, but looking at it today it surely should have been.
8 Fribourg Forest
Not many of us would associate Switzerland with scary
places given the general magnificence of its Alpine landscape. Most pictures
from rural Switzerland strike us with awe rather than fear, but then in 2013
the newspaper, Le Matin, acquired this picture of a mysterious being known as
Le Loyon, a weird giant wearing a boiler suit, cloak and gas mask, who for the
previous decade had reportedly been seen wandering the paths in Fribourg Forest,
in western Switzerland, terrifying all those who encountered him. The story was
taken seriously by both local law enforcement and the press, though no assault
or threatening behaviour was ever reported. Initial fears that Le Loyon was an
alien or some kind of cryptid have now been dismissed as more recent sightings
suggest the ‘giant’ is only slightly over 6ft tall.
9 Two horrors for the price of one
Two streets in the vicinity of Paris. Very pleasant, very
unthreatening. Except that both – the main road in Gambais, a rural commune in the
Île-de-France (top), and Rue le Sueur, a stone’s throw from Avenue des Champs-Elysées (bottom) – have a chilling past. The former housed Henri Landru, known as
‘Bluebeard’. A ‘lonely hearts’ predator, Landru seduced single women, who he’d
lure back to his home, where they’d be killed and dismembered. By 1919, he’d
murdered at least 11, though police failed to trace a further 72 that he’d been
in correspondence with. In Rue le Sueur meanwhile stood the home of Marcel
Petiot, who during WWII tortured and murdered at least 23 desperate folk he’d
lured there, having promised them escape from the Occupation (though his real
total was more like 60). Both killers died on the guillotine, unrepentant to the last
10 Woods of Eefde
The peaceful woodlands surrounding the village of Eefde
in the East Netherlands province of Gelderland are a singularly pleasant place, but are also said to be the haunt of the Witte Wieven, which literally
means ‘the white women’. They are the centre of a mysterious rather than
frightening Dutch legend, which holds that herbalists, midwives and other
valued village wise women would, after death, be buried with full honours and
their grave sites venerated afterwards. As such, their spirits would rise and
wander the locality, offering assistance and hindrance depending on the worthiness
of whichever person came into their path. The belief appears to stem from the
Dark Ages, wherein pre-Christian tales of Elves were woven in with Church
teachings about the afterlife. Eefde is renowned for its ‘white woman’
activity.
11 Chateau de Raray
Possibly the ultimate fairy tale manor house, Chateau
Raray in Picardy (as famously photographed above by Simon Marsden), is an exclusive hotel and golf course these days, so you’re
unlikely to turn up there and feel creeped out in any way. But if the current
building, which dates back to the early 18th century, doesn’t overwhelm you
with its otherworldly atmosphere, then the myriad gardens, arches, shaded walks, and
rows of busts and statues surely will. It’s no surprise that in 1946,
avant-garde film-maker Jean Cocteau chose it as the location for many of the exteriors
in his haunting masterpiece, La Belle et la Bête. That said, it isn’t just an
embodiment of magic and mystery. A couple of particularly eerie tales hold that
the main building is haunted by the ghost of a servant girl who hanged herself,
and the gardens by a statue that moves around at night.
12 Kampehl
From the sublime now to the grotesque, in a rural church
at Kampehl in northeast Germany. Here, you’ll find an open
coffin and in it, the mummified corpse of Christian Kahlbutz, an ill-tempered
landowner of the 17th century, who, when accused of murder, swore that if he
was guilty of the charge, God would never let his corpse rot. He died of
natural causes in 1701, but in 1794 workmen re-opened the vault and were
stunned to discover the uncorrupted corpse. All kinds of myths are attached to
it, including a tale that during Napoleonic times, some French soldiers
attempted to crucify it in the village centre, but that it became animated in
its outrage, driving them away in terror. During the 20th century, two doctors
autopsied the remains, but were unable to explain their non-deterioration.
13 Porte de Martray
The last of the medieval gateways to the city of Loudun
in southwest France. Loudun was the scene of extraordinary events in 1634, as
made famous by maverick movie-maker, Ken Russell. Though a lurid take on the
true events, his controversial 1971 movie, The Devils, was largely accurate in
its portrayal of a religious town in the grip of Satanic panic. When members of
the local Ursuline convent accused non-celibate priest, Urbain Grandier, of
sending demons to sexually torment them, a brutal enquiry followed, resulting
in Grandier’s torture and eventual burning at the stake in the town square.
Though an impressive document survives, purporting to show Grandier’s written
pact with Lucifer, historians blame mass hysteria by the nuns and political
contrivance by Grandier’s old foe, the lethal Cardinal Richelieu.
14 Salzburg
The wonderfully baroque capital of Austria, Salzburg, can
boast a plethora of ancient eerie tales, but supernaturalists are best advised to visit it during the Christmas season, when the Krampus and Perchta
parades are held. It’s a well-loved costume event, but visitors are often
unnerved as the shaggy, horned brutes rampage down the snowy streets, snorting
and roaring. Krampus, now familiar to non-Tyrolean audiences via Hollywood, is
seen as a kind of anti-Santa, a monstrous being that takes away naughty
children rather than rewards those who are nice. Perchta, meanwhile, appears as
a half-animal hag, whose purpose is also to terrify and punish those who
haven’t performed well during the year. Both are believed descended from winter
gods that were worshipped and feared in the mountains during the pre-Christian era.
15 Dadipark
Dadipark is no longer with us, having been demolished in
the last couple of years and turned into a green recreational zone, but the
one-time amusement park just south of Antwerp, in Belgium, was a derelict,
overgrown edifice for the best part of two decades, having been forced to close
after an increasingly gruesome series of accidents. Opened in 1950, initially
as entertainment for children whose parents had made pilgrimage to the Dadizele
basilica, it was one of the first of its kind in Europe, and soon grew into a
huge operation, though safety concerns were continually aired as a succession
of nasty incidents left visitors injured. When a child lost his arm in 2000, it
was the final straw. The park stood empty and decaying for many years,
countless ghost stories celebrating its eerie, desolate appearance.
16 Montsegur
The last stronghold of the Albigensians, Montsegur is a
mountain-top castle, which like so many of its kind in southern France is
remarkably well-preserved (though in truth, it is much rebuilt). Overlooking
the beautiful Languedoc, it is riddled with ghostly tales – spectral mists,
whispering voices and shadowy figures – most of which allegedly relate to the
atrocities of the Albigensian Crusade, which in the 13th century confronted the
Albigensian (or Cathar) religion, a radical offshoot of Christianity declared
heretical by the papacy. The campaign was earmarked by numerous slaughters,
though it ended in 1244, at Montsegur, where the last of the Cathars were holed
up. After surrender, all 244 survivors were burned alive in a gigantic bonfire
down in the valley. The site is still known as the ‘Field of the Burned’, and on dark nights, distant weeping can allegedly be heard.
17 La Jument lighthouse
Made famous by this incredible photograph taken by Jean
Guichard in 1989, the La Jument lighthouse was always considered one of the
most dangerous postings in the world. Located off the coast of Brittany, it was
an area long notorious for huge seas, roaring waves and catastrophic storms.
Before the lighthouse was even built, there were numerous wrecks on the nearby
coast. Between 1888 and 1904 alone, 31 ships went down there. These included
the 1896 sinking of the SS Drummond Castle, which cost 250 lives. Even after
the lighthouse was opened in 1911 (its construction delayed by a procession of
incredible storms), there were repeated reports of it being inundated by waves,
windows shattering, furniture washed out to sea, keepers only just surviving.
It still stands today but is now fully automated.
18 Palais Garnier
The Palais Garnier opened in 1875 to house the Paris
Opera, and still stands today in all its opulent glory. One of the most famous
opera houses in the world, the Palais Garnier was named after its architect,
Charles Garnier, and was a grandiose structure, both inside and out. However,
it was put on the map once and for all by Gaston Leroux’s 1910 novel, The
Phantom of the Opera. Everyone knows the famous story, but few know that Leroux
based many of its key elements on allegedly true melodramatic tales concerning
the Palais Garnier. There is a huge underwater reservoir, though not quite a
candlelit lake, while staff often blamed odd accidents on a resident ‘Phantom’.
There is even a story that a missing actress’s bones were found locked in a
cellar trunk many years after her unexplained disappearance.
19 Moosham Castle
Moosham Castle is a well-preserved medieval fortress in
eastern Austria. Privately owned today, though some sections of it are open to
the public as art galleries, it is a peaceful, scenic place, and yet its
history comprises some of the grimmest events ever put on record. Already the centre of
numerous baronial feuds during the Middle Ages, in 1675 the Zaubererjackl witch
trials were held there, which eventually saw 139 people, most of them men but
many of them children, hanged, burned and strangled. Others were spared death,
but branded and mutilated (their hands chopped off). The bloodshed didn’t end
there, the castle becoming the centre of a werewolf scare in the early 1800s, when
hundreds of animals were found torn and half-eaten in the vicinity. Local
peasants claimed the former evil had precipitated the latter.
20 Rennes-le-Chateau
A Pyrennean religious centre, which allegedly sits on a
great mystery. The story starts with Bérenger Saunière, a humble priest who in
the 1880s occupied this crumbling rural church, and yet went on not only to rebuild
it lavishly, but to deck it with bizarre statues, including this chilling image
of Asmodeus, and by the 1890s, to have spent over 650,000 francs doing so.
Saunière died in 1917, never having disclosed this fortune’s origin. Some
believe he practised simony, though there is doubt that the crime of selling
Masses could ever have raised such a sum, while others insist that he found the
treasure of the Cathars, and others that he had discovered documents proving
that Christ’s descendants (yes, you heard that right!) had founded several
lines of European kings – if true, you could only guess at the potential pay-off he could have demanded.
THRILLERS, CHILLERS, SHOCKERS AND KILLERS …
An ongoing series of reviews of dark fiction (crime,
thriller, horror and sci-fi) – both old and new – that I have recently read and
enjoyed. I’ll endeavour to keep the SPOILERS to a minimum; there will certainly
be no given-away denouements or exposed twists-in-the-tail, but by the
definition of the word ‘review’, I’m going to be talking about these books in
more than just thumbnail detail, extolling the aspects that I particularly
enjoyed … so I guess if you’d rather not know anything at all about these
pieces of work in advance of reading them yourself, then these particular posts
will not be your thing.
An intriguing anthology of weird, open-ended tales,
chilling in tone and concept though rarely indulging in blood and gore or
utilising standard supernatural tropes, and written in homage to the late,
great Robert Aickman, a British author of the 20th century, who specialised in
the strange and macabre rather than the out-and-out horrific.
Rather than just tell you everything that happens from
one story to the next, I’ll let Undertow provide the intro. Here’s their
official blurb, which nicely hints at the enjoyable weirdness to come.
Edited by Simon Strantzas, ‘Aickman’s Heirs’ is an
anthology of strange, weird tales by modern visionaries of weird fiction, in
the milieu of Robert Aickman, the master of strange and ambiguous stories.
Editor and author Strantzas, an important figure in weird fiction, has been
hailed as the heir to Aickman’s oeuvre, and is ideally suited to edit this
exciting volume. Featuring all-original stories from Brian Evenson, Lisa
Tuttle, John Langan, Helen Marshall, Michael Cisco, and others.
Can strangeness in itself be scary? Probably not, though
it can certainly be unsettling. And indeed, that was my main reaction to most
of the contents of Aickman’s Heirs … a feeling that I was ill-at-ease, that I’d
somehow been disturbed without really knowing how or why, and yet at the same
time was deeply satisfied.
As that was also my reaction to much of Robert Aickman’s
fiction (he wrote 48 short stories in total – many of which have become staples
of ‘classic horror’ collections), then I can only conclude that editor, Simon
Strantzas, and the numerous writers he has brought together for this book, have
hit their main target quite successfully.
We have here an entire range of weirdness, most stories
hinting at the grotesque rather than explicitly demonstrating it, and yet, though they rarely hit us with a killer last line or murderous unseen twist,
always leaving us deeply discomfited.
Take Brian Evenson’s Seaside Town, in which a mismatched
couple visit a French coastal resort where dreariness is the watchword, only
for the male of the pair to be inexplicably abandoned by his partner, with no
real clue where he is or why. Or Richard Gavin’s Neithernor, which sees a
snobbish art critic determined to investigate when he uncovers evidence that
his artistic cousin might be a hostage in the grotty little gallery in the next
town.
Another key trait of Robert Aickman’s was his relentless
merging of the mundane with the bizarre. Very illustrative of this, Ringing the
Changes was perhaps one of the great man’s most famous and certainly most
oft-reprinted tales, taking another awkward couple to another dull seaside
town, this time on the English east coast during the off-season, settling them
down in one of the most depressing pubs imaginable, and then filling the air
with a clangour of church-bells which literally will not stop until the dead
themselves have been wakened. Picking up the torch in Aickman’s Heirs, Nina
Allan’s lengthy tale, A Change of Scene, pays direct tribute to the story, in
some ways that I won’t mention here as that would be too much of a spoiler,
though put it this way, it’s set in the same miserable town (spelled only
slightly differently), features another strained couple – two lifelong friends
this time, both widowed (again, one of them may have been in the original tale)
– and has much to say about the resort’s curious number of church steeples.
Less recognisable, perhaps, but equally disquieting in
its clash between the ordinary and the extraordinary is John Howard’s Least Light,
Most Night, which sees a reserved, even rather shy office worker reluctantly
accept a curious invitation to attend the house of a colleague whom he doesn’t
know well for tea and biscuits, at which point he is drawn into a very odd
world indeed.
Robert Aickman rarely missed a chance to evoke a
dreamlike, often nightmarish atmosphere. And Aickman’s Heirs goes for this too,
in a big way.
Take David Nickle’s Camp, which plucks a sophisticated
newlywed gay couple out of the city and sends them on a do-it-yourself
honeymoon in the Canadian wilderness, where a slow and terrible transformation
commences. Or Lynda Rucker’s The Dying Season, wherein another couple trapped
in a failing relationship visit a holiday resort so miserably rundown that it
scarcely seems possible it could exist in the real world.
With all these stories, of course, and all the others
contained herein – there are 15 in total – Aickmanesque ambiguity reigns
supreme, solutions often left to the interpretation of the reader. Characterisation
typically runs deep (though, at times, is complex – with loneliness and
isolation key and repeating themes), while menace arrives subtly, much of the
damage self-inflicted, our heroes beset by the results of bad choices and poor
personal judgements.
Again like Aickman’s originals, the stories are expertly
crafted and exquisitely written. You’d expect that from highly regarded
professionals like Lisa Tuttle and John Langan, whose contributions – The Book
that Finds You and Underground Economy, respectively, are among the best in the
tome. But Camp is a particularly excellent example too, as are The Dying Season, A
Change of Scene, and DP Watt’s deceptively gentle A Delicate Craft.
Don’t just take my word for it, though – check it out
for yourself.
In fact, in this case you really should, because
Aickman’s Heirs, like most of Robert Aickman’s own work, will probably divide
horror fans. Those who always need a clear resolution, or who like to be
jump-scared out of their skins, and of course those who consider themselves
gore or splatter hounds, most likely won’t be enamoured. In many ways, the
stories in here are literary shorts at least as much as they are horror – but
if you have any interest in the ‘other’, that strange, outré world of
speculative writing, where nothing is necessarily what it appears to be,
messages are purposely mixed, and much of the quiet terror stems from frailties
of the human psyche, then Aickman’s Heirs could definitely be an anthology for
you.
And now …
AICKMAN’S HEIRS – the movie
Just a bit of fun, this part. No film-maker has optioned
this book yet (as far as I’m aware), but here are my thoughts on how they
should proceed, if they do.
Note: these four stories are NOT the ones I necessarily
consider to be the best in the book, but these are the four I perceive as most
filmic and most right for a compendium horror. Of course, no such horror film
can happen without a central thread, and this is where you guys, the audience,
come in. Just accept that four strangers have been thrown together in unusual
circumstances which require them to relate spooky stories.
It could be that
they’ve all got lost in an underground catacomb and are then confronted by a
mysterious monk (a la Tales from the Crypt) or are the subjects of memoirs
related by a vampire to a famous horror author in an elusive and Gothic London
club (al la The Monster Club) – but basically, it’s up to you.
Without further messing about, here are the stories and
the casts I would choose:
The Dying Season (by Lynda E Rucker): A gentle artist and
her bullying corporate husband spend an off-season holiday at a drab seaside
trailer park, which is almost empty except for the disturbingly strange couple
across the way …
Silvia – Emma Dumont
John – Toby Regbo
Lynn – Ruth Wilson
Gabriel – Miles Jupp
Two Brothers (by Malcolm Devlin): When William’s older
brother, Stephen, goes to boarding school, the younger sibling is left to his
own devices in their big country house. He yearns for his brother’s return, but
when Christmas arrives, and Stephen comes home, he has subtly changed …
Father – Philip Jackson
(Alas, my knowledge of child actors isn’t broad enough to
effectively cast either Stephen or William).
A Delicate Craft (by DP Watt): A lonely Polish plumber looking
for work in the English East Midlands meets and befriends elderly Agnes, who
teaches him the delicate art of lace-making. A rare skill, for which there is a
terrible price to pay …
Boydan – Antoni Pawlicki
Agnes – Helen Mirren
Seven Minutes in Heaven (by Nadia Bulkin): A sulky
20-something is fascinated by her hometown of Hartbury’s eerie twin, Manfield,
which still stands a few miles down the road despite having been evacuated
after a pesticide disaster. In due course, she uncovers a terrifying truth …
Amanda – Jessica Henwick
This is a really
delightful thing that has come completely out of the blue. In short, I’ve been
invited as a guest to attend a very famous hostelry, The Brasshouse pub on
Broad Street in Birmingham city centre, mid-afternoonish on Sunday July 28, at a special ‘Meet the Author’
event, which this year is part of the Birmingham Jazz Festival (now in its 35th
year).
