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A review by megapolisomancy
The Dark: New Ghost Stories by
3.0
Almost a year since I read this one, but I just stumbled across my notes, so let's see how much has stuck with me (and how much sense I can make of said notes). Datlow's introduction says she set out to collect "very scary" ghost stories, but many of these stories don't even make a pretense of trying for that affect (surely Kelly Link did not intend "The Hortlak" to scare anyone, for example, unless they have a morbid fear of pajamas), so I'm not sure how successful she was. That aside, this is kind of a standard collection of freshly-commissioned modern ghost stories, with most of your usual suspects for authors and your usual ratio of great-to-good-to-bad. The standouts were the always-reliable Ford and Lee, the new-to-me O'Driscoll, and Koja.
The Trentino Kid by Jeffrey Ford
A clammer who's afraid that he might have misspent his life encounters the ghost of a drowned boy. I recall that this was all caught up with the death of the narrator's father in some way. Reminiscent of Graham Joyce's "Black Dust" in its use of the ghost story to explore issues of class and work. Existentially scary, but the ghost himself is not scary or even malevolent.
The Ghost of the Clock by Tanith Lee
A young woman goes to live with her mean old aunt in a mansion by the sea. I have “I don’t believe in ghosts.” written down, which I think was the first line of the story, so it's one of those ironical post-modern deals, but it's Lee, so it's a good one, even though it's less baroque/more conversational than I usually expect her work to be. There's a haunted clock, and even now the ghost (the Woman in Yellow, evoking both the wallpaper and the king-in-) sticks out to me as being one of the scarier ones in the collection, and thematically we're concerned with aging (clocks, get it) and, again, work and class. The twists felt a bit forced, though, and apparently I thought the ending was weak. Also it reminded me of "Thurmley Abbey" but I don't remember why.
One Thing About the Night by Terry Dowling
A modern-day psychomantium provides a promising set-up - a man had bricked up his house's windows (after his wife and kids died) and created a mirrored hexagonal room, and then vanished, I think, leaving our ghost-hunting protagonists to come investigate. A weird combination of science fiction and horror as they endlessly discuss “mancy words” (ie "sciamancy") and atavism, specifically in terms of humankind's fear of darkness/night. For a horror story revolving around creepy mirrors, you'd be better served by Arthur Porges' "The Mirror" (1966).
The Silence of the Falling Stars by Mike O'Driscoll
An existential Western collides with the Weird Place in Death Valley, the haziness from the heat artfully reflected in the dreamlike and increasingly-distorted narrative. Our emotionally-stunted protagonist, a ranger, encounters a British family visiting the park. Rocks move inexplicably, someone is a ghost(s?), the timeline gets confused, and a sense of wrongness pervades everything, in an almost Kiernan-ish way. I loved this one, need to re-read it, and need to find more by O'Driscoll.
The Dead Ghost by Gahan Wilson
A club story, sort of, about a corporate lawyer in the hospital who sees “not a corpse, but the ghost of corpse.” Aiming for humorous, but it didn't connect (for me, anyway).
Seven Sisters by Jack Cady
I have no memory of this one - my notes tell me it was an oddly-written and tiresome ode to the creative spirit centered on seven mansions in the Pacific Northwest along with something having to do with immortality and ghosts.
Subway by Joyce Carol Oates
Oates at her most oblique, which is not my favorite mode of hers - a teenage runaway, desperately lonely, looks for love in all the wrong places.
Doctor Hood by Stephen Gallagher
A woman visits her widower father, who is a mad scientist researching dark matter and/or death. Full of awkward writing, as in “She sat tight, like someone scared of making an erroneous bid at an auction.” This one was also kind of ghostbuster-y, with the dad refusing to let go of the mom, who just wants to be released.
An Amicable Divorce by Daniel Abraham
An obnoxiously whiny divorced guy blames his ex-wife for the death of their child, which is now possibly haunting her.
Feeling Remains by Ramsey Campbell
The younger halves of dual mother/son pairs break into a dead neighbor's house and get haunted by means of a photo album, which allows Campbell to ruminate on the isolation of the elderly. Absolutely fantastic ghostly stuff unfortunately coupled with absolutely obnoxious characters who are more caricature than anything else.
The Gallows Necklace by Sharyn McCrumb
Another one that hasn't really stayed with me, this was a very old-fashioned English ghost story about a woman whose suitors drowned, the ending of which I found unearned/unconvincing.
Brownie, and Me by Charles L. Grant
A melancholy, low-key affair about a lonely old man planning for death after outliving his wife and son. Another story that weaves in work, this time on trains.
Velocity by Kathe Koja
A question+answer format with a cranky conceptual artist (he crashes bikes into trees), fixated on the memory of his father, who was a famous suicide (who drove into a tree) and toxic asshole and is now a ghost. Interspersed with descriptions of a red house that I think was the father's and now the artist's.
Limbo by Lucius Shepard
Started off well - mobster type on the run starts encountering ghostly stuff in the fog around the rural, lakeside cabin he's hiding out in, he relates more to the dead than the living, etc etc - before a plot twist reveals that his love interest, a survivor of domestic abuse, is actually a monster whose abuser was a victim of her manipulation. Vaguely reminiscent of (but vastly inferior to) M. John Harrison's "The Great God Pan." On paper Shepard seems like he should appeal to me more than he actually does in practice (even the liminal ghostworld we find ourselves in here didn't do much for me).
The Hortlak by Kelly Link
Two convenience store employees - one a young naive guy, the other an older bullshitter - work overnights and plan on changing the face of retail with their new, surreal system of bartering and commodity organization (ie arranging candy by chewiness/meltiness). As usual with Link, I love about 90% of this, but the constant accretion of self-consciously quirky details does wear on me. This one would appear to be more about zombies (consumers) than ghosts, but there are suggestions that all is not as it seems with our narrator and his Turkish coworker.
Dancing Men by Glen Hirshberg
A Jewish American teacher shepherding middle schoolers around Europe deals with the legacy of the Holocaust, during which his (still-living, which is the rub) grandfather was interned in Chelmno. There's some questioning of identities, and victim-blaming, and anger and guilt, and a weird collision of the golem story with Native American folklore. I had a rocky start with Hirshberg ("The Two Sams"), but enjoyed "Mr. Dark's Carnival" maybe more than I should have and liked this one even more.
The Trentino Kid by Jeffrey Ford
A clammer who's afraid that he might have misspent his life encounters the ghost of a drowned boy. I recall that this was all caught up with the death of the narrator's father in some way. Reminiscent of Graham Joyce's "Black Dust" in its use of the ghost story to explore issues of class and work. Existentially scary, but the ghost himself is not scary or even malevolent.
The Ghost of the Clock by Tanith Lee
A young woman goes to live with her mean old aunt in a mansion by the sea. I have “I don’t believe in ghosts.” written down, which I think was the first line of the story, so it's one of those ironical post-modern deals, but it's Lee, so it's a good one, even though it's less baroque/more conversational than I usually expect her work to be. There's a haunted clock, and even now the ghost (the Woman in Yellow, evoking both the wallpaper and the king-in-) sticks out to me as being one of the scarier ones in the collection, and thematically we're concerned with aging (clocks, get it) and, again, work and class. The twists felt a bit forced, though, and apparently I thought the ending was weak. Also it reminded me of "Thurmley Abbey" but I don't remember why.
One Thing About the Night by Terry Dowling
A modern-day psychomantium provides a promising set-up - a man had bricked up his house's windows (after his wife and kids died) and created a mirrored hexagonal room, and then vanished, I think, leaving our ghost-hunting protagonists to come investigate. A weird combination of science fiction and horror as they endlessly discuss “mancy words” (ie "sciamancy") and atavism, specifically in terms of humankind's fear of darkness/night. For a horror story revolving around creepy mirrors, you'd be better served by Arthur Porges' "The Mirror" (1966).
The Silence of the Falling Stars by Mike O'Driscoll
An existential Western collides with the Weird Place in Death Valley, the haziness from the heat artfully reflected in the dreamlike and increasingly-distorted narrative. Our emotionally-stunted protagonist, a ranger, encounters a British family visiting the park. Rocks move inexplicably, someone is a ghost(s?), the timeline gets confused, and a sense of wrongness pervades everything, in an almost Kiernan-ish way. I loved this one, need to re-read it, and need to find more by O'Driscoll.
The Dead Ghost by Gahan Wilson
A club story, sort of, about a corporate lawyer in the hospital who sees “not a corpse, but the ghost of corpse.” Aiming for humorous, but it didn't connect (for me, anyway).
Seven Sisters by Jack Cady
I have no memory of this one - my notes tell me it was an oddly-written and tiresome ode to the creative spirit centered on seven mansions in the Pacific Northwest along with something having to do with immortality and ghosts.
Subway by Joyce Carol Oates
Oates at her most oblique, which is not my favorite mode of hers - a teenage runaway, desperately lonely, looks for love in all the wrong places.
Doctor Hood by Stephen Gallagher
A woman visits her widower father, who is a mad scientist researching dark matter and/or death. Full of awkward writing, as in “She sat tight, like someone scared of making an erroneous bid at an auction.” This one was also kind of ghostbuster-y, with the dad refusing to let go of the mom, who just wants to be released.
An Amicable Divorce by Daniel Abraham
An obnoxiously whiny divorced guy blames his ex-wife for the death of their child, which is now possibly haunting her.
Feeling Remains by Ramsey Campbell
The younger halves of dual mother/son pairs break into a dead neighbor's house and get haunted by means of a photo album, which allows Campbell to ruminate on the isolation of the elderly. Absolutely fantastic ghostly stuff unfortunately coupled with absolutely obnoxious characters who are more caricature than anything else.
The Gallows Necklace by Sharyn McCrumb
Another one that hasn't really stayed with me, this was a very old-fashioned English ghost story about a woman whose suitors drowned, the ending of which I found unearned/unconvincing.
Brownie, and Me by Charles L. Grant
A melancholy, low-key affair about a lonely old man planning for death after outliving his wife and son. Another story that weaves in work, this time on trains.
Velocity by Kathe Koja
A question+answer format with a cranky conceptual artist (he crashes bikes into trees), fixated on the memory of his father, who was a famous suicide (who drove into a tree) and toxic asshole and is now a ghost. Interspersed with descriptions of a red house that I think was the father's and now the artist's.
Limbo by Lucius Shepard
Started off well - mobster type on the run starts encountering ghostly stuff in the fog around the rural, lakeside cabin he's hiding out in, he relates more to the dead than the living, etc etc - before a plot twist reveals that his love interest, a survivor of domestic abuse, is actually a monster whose abuser was a victim of her manipulation. Vaguely reminiscent of (but vastly inferior to) M. John Harrison's "The Great God Pan." On paper Shepard seems like he should appeal to me more than he actually does in practice (even the liminal ghostworld we find ourselves in here didn't do much for me).
The Hortlak by Kelly Link
Two convenience store employees - one a young naive guy, the other an older bullshitter - work overnights and plan on changing the face of retail with their new, surreal system of bartering and commodity organization (ie arranging candy by chewiness/meltiness). As usual with Link, I love about 90% of this, but the constant accretion of self-consciously quirky details does wear on me. This one would appear to be more about zombies (consumers) than ghosts, but there are suggestions that all is not as it seems with our narrator and his Turkish coworker.
Dancing Men by Glen Hirshberg
A Jewish American teacher shepherding middle schoolers around Europe deals with the legacy of the Holocaust, during which his (still-living, which is the rub) grandfather was interned in Chelmno. There's some questioning of identities, and victim-blaming, and anger and guilt, and a weird collision of the golem story with Native American folklore. I had a rocky start with Hirshberg ("The Two Sams"), but enjoyed "Mr. Dark's Carnival" maybe more than I should have and liked this one even more.