Weirdbook #44, July 2021
“Let Me Be Your Swamp Snake” by Adrian Cole
“A Whisper in the Death Pit” by Kyla Lee Ward
“Deadest Man in Town” by Franklyn Searight
“Penumbra Over Millwall” by Jim Edwards
“Birth” by M. Stern
“Okiko’s Doll” by Stefano Frigieri
“Heatseeker” by Tim Curran
“The Librarian” by Sharon L. Cullars
“Dream Warriors (1) Team Spirit” by D.C. Lozar
“Bang!” by Chris Kuriata
“Death and the Vampire” by James Dorr
“The Dust of Sages and Fools” by John R. Fultz
“Push Dagger” by John C. Hocking
Reviewed by Victoria Silverwolf
After a year’s absence, this publication returns with a baker’s dozen of imaginative tales. The issue is dedicated to the memory of Franklyn Searight, who authored the magazine’s longest story.
As its subtitle informs the reader, “Let Me Be Your Swamp Snake” by Adrian Cole is one of the adventures of detective Nick Nightmare. With the help of an ex-policeman, now inhabiting the body of a massive swamp creature, he enters another universe to prevent frog monsters from invading New York City. Their quest involves obtaining information from a witch, and stealing a magical staff from a serpent goddess.
As this synopsis indicates, the plot is full of supernatural occurrences and exotic dangers. Nick Nightmare’s hardboiled narrative style adds a touch of classic crime fiction. Fans of old-fashioned pulp adventures may enjoy it, even if it is difficult to suspend one’s disbelief.
In “A Whisper in the Death Pit” by Kyla Lee Ward, a young archeologist explores the ruins of an ancient temple in Kazakhstan. She witnesses an older colleague enter the tomb of the temple’s mummified cultists, leading to the disappearance of both women.
The author creates a realistic setting, making the story’s supernatural content seem believable. There are no surprises in the plot, and the climax is predictable nearly from the start.
“Deadest Man in Town” by the late Franklyn Searight involves a man visited by the ghost of an old friend. The specter explains that he’s been sent by God to fight a coven of witches. He needs the help of his pal, because he has no physical form, and cannot handle objects. Their battle against evil involves the living man’s lover and an entity from the Cthulhu mythos.
Although not fully a comedy, this yarn has a tongue-in-cheek quality that lightens the mood of horror. The living man’s lack of surprise at meeting the dead fellow, and the lover’s matter-of-fact discussion of her powers as a witch, as well as the character’s backwoods accents, give it the feeling of a tall tale. The story is quite long, and may wear out its welcome before it reaches the end.
“Penumbra Over Millwall” by Jan Edwards takes place in a fantastic version of England, apparently in the early Twentieth Century. The main character is an agent of the Ministry of Arcane Events. She visits an elderly woman who turns out to be more than she seems, meanwhile fighting off an invasion of humanoid sea monsters.
The title is an obvious allusion to H. P. Lovecraft’s 1931 story “The Shadow over Innsmouth,” which features the same creatures. Although the author adds a touch of steampunk, as well as a pair of sea goddesses, the resulting tale is perhaps overly dependent on its inspiration.
“Birth” by M. Stern is a bizarre story, combining realistic depictions of an Internet podcast with dream sequences and flashbacks to the childhood and academic career of the protagonist. The podcast’s host eats anything that his audience sends him. When the protagonist offers him an ancient worm-like creature, the result is a miraculous transformation.
This description may make the plot seem incoherent and even grotesque, but the author manages to make many disparate elements come together into a unified whole. The story’s structure provides an unusually profound character portrait of the protagonist. The ending is unexpected, and offers strange beauty as well as cosmic awe and wonder.
“Okiko’s Doll” by Stefano Frigieri, translated from Italian by Amanda Blee, deals with a little Japanese girl whose homemade doll is destroyed by a bullying schoolmate. She discovers a wish-granting doll, which allows her to exact a terrible revenge.
This eerie tale, offering a European’s look at Asian folklore, reminds me of the Japanese-based stories of Lafcadio Hearn, perhaps best known for inspiring the classic movie Kwaidan. The plot, however, is entirely original. The unnamed narrator, who relates the story as having happened years ago, offers a sense of reality to the supernatural events. This deceptively quiet chiller provides a genuine feeling of terror.
The title of “Heatseeker” by Tim Curran refers to an ancient Martian monster killing human workers on the red planet. It tracks them down, one by one, as they wait for rescue.
This gruesome science fiction shocker provides the kind of thrills found in a space-based horror movie, in the tradition of Alien. Readers expecting literary sophistication, or an original plot, will be disappointed.
In “The Librarian” by Sharon L. Cullars, humanity has nearly been wiped out by invaders, except for the domed city of New Chicago. In order to escape the impending destruction of this last redoubt, magical technology allows them to escape into the worlds of novels. The title character uses this power for her own purpose.
The combination of fantasy and science fiction in this story is often jarring. (The invaders seem to be both alien and demonic, although this is not completely clear.) The protagonist’s motivation is a strong one, but seems trivial compared to the fact that the entire world’s population will soon be wiped out.
The somewhat awkward title of “Dream Warriors (1) Team Spirit” by D.C. Lozar indicates that this is the beginning of a series. High school students accidentally gain superpowers through nanotechnology that connects them to a supernatural realm. The ruler of that realm sends a minion to possess someone they know. The teenagers must battle the enemy, in the real world as well as in a dream world, to survive and to save others.
The contrast between cosmic horror and the ordinary concerns of adolescents creates a sense of bathos. Whether or not a girl will be able to serve on the swim team, for example, seems of little importance when compared to the possible destruction of the Dream Warriors. The ruler of the dream realm is called the King in Yellow, an allusion to the title of a book of short stories by Robert W. Chambers (1895) and later loosely connected to the Cthulhu mythos. The reference to previous works of supernatural horror does not serve the present tale well. This story may appeal to young adults more than older readers.
In “Bang!” by Chris Kuriata, a babysitter discovers that the child she cares for can cause people to lose their clothing when he pretends to shoot a gun at them on the television screen. It turns out that this ability works on recorded films, not just on live broadcasts, leading the babysitter to attempt to change history.
The premise, seemingly farcical at first, becomes more serious as the story goes on. The change in mood is not always a smooth one. The ways in which the babysitter tries to alter the past are familiar ones, often seen in stories of time travel and alternate history.
Only two pages long, “Death and the Vampire” by James Dorr does indeed deal with the Grim Reaper meeting a bloodsucker. Their encounter leads to an unexpected conclusion. This brief tale has a promising premise, but the resolution is anticlimactic.
“The Dust of Sages and Fools” by John R. Fultz takes place in a fantasy world utterly different from our own. The protagonist leaves his native city, now destroyed, on a flying carpet after he literally swallows sorcery, giving him great magical powers. He travels to the ruins of another city, where he meets what seems at first to be a child, later revealed to be something else entirely. An encounter with another supernatural being leads to a flashback, revealing what happened to the ruined city.
This story has a weird, exotic mood, reminding me of the works of Clark Ashton Smith, but lacking the same elegance of language. Although much of the plot is imaginative and original, other parts of it are similar to familiar tales of sword and sorcery.
“Push Dagger” by John C. Hocking is a grim, brief tale narrated by a man who was killed by the weapon in the story’s title. He relates why he was murdered, what became of his killer, and what fate awaits the person to whom he is speaking. This little shocker is likely to appeal to readers of crime fiction.
Victoria Silverwolf has been watching Daniel Craig in the role of James Bond recently.