A Twist In The Eye by Charles Wilkinson, Egaeus Press

At 66, Charles Wilkinson is one of the strange tale's old school, making him contemporaneous with the likes of Reggie Oliver and Steve Rasnic Tem and a name that's been gradually garnering quiet fame in the autumn of his years. Yet, so far, you'd be easily forgiven if, like me, you'd never heard of him.

  According to his publisher biog., the Birmingham-born writer attended school in a small town on the Welsh Marches, later studying at the University of Lancaster, the University of East Anglia and Trinity College, Dublin. His publications so far include The Snowman and Other Poems (Iron Press, 1987) and The Pain Tree and Other Stories (London Magazine Editions, 2000). A Border Poet member, Ag & Au, a pamphlet of poems, appeared from Flarestack Poets in 2013. Today, he lives in Powys, Wales, "where he is heavily outnumbered by members of the ovine community." A line from the text of one of these tales, the cliff-top wildernesses of his home country featuring heavily.

  The feted Mark Samuels has written the Introduction. Wilkinson shows himself a less pessimistic writer than Samuels - his dystopian settings occasionally have utopian overtones - while sharing his claustrophobic embrace by the weird.

  This title's collective strength is in the genuine unpredictability of its 'twists.' Most are excellent and few disappoint. 'In His Grandmother's Coat,' relates the weird legacy of an unknown curse left by the narrator's grandmother, who bred mink for unspecified cross-breeding. 'Night in the Pink House' – by far the most sinister tale – relates a mutual pleasure of sadism, between a cold, professional state torturer and his equally enthusiastic, wheelchair-bound patient, sharing their interests like a pair of anal collectors from the latter's small, cliff-side haven; one that seems to hide still greater past atrocities. The aloof tone of the torturer's narration is compelling as is the ambiguous nature of his ward.

  'An Invitation to Worship' starts out as deliverence of sanctuary for a wife from a seemingly domineering husband, gradually revealing intimations of a place less of refuge than of cult-influenced capture. 'The Investigation of Innocence' is the sole SF entry where replicant humans' now exist to supply the bees as a means to propagate a new Eden. A very clever concept.

  Then there's 'A Lesson from the Undergrowth.' After burying his father, Neil returns to the isolated home of his young adulthood. It seems still inhabited, almost, if in a state of untended entropy. Memories of events past and present seem to merge into some eternal purgatory from a particular incident revealed only in the final lines. Like the previously quoted titles, the concept only truly reveals itself on reflection, such is the subtlety of the writing.

  Being a collection of above average length (sixteen tales in all) it's perhaps not surprising that only once does it miss a beat; in 'The World Without Watercress,' where-in the conceit of who is the haunter and who the haunted is purposely ambiguous, but doesn't quite convince in connecting with this reader, feeling rather unfinished. 'Hands,' the final tale, is a – literally – touching ghost story of a widower who finds comfort from a spirit able to act out in death their apparent gift in life.

  Impressive conceptually then, the best tales mature and gain increased effect days, even weeks, after their reading. We need not only idiosyncratic voices in fantasy lands of topsy-turvy – there are plenty of those – but voices such as Wilkinson's, taking credible topics and characters and running with them to the furthermost reaches.

Ragman & Other Family Curses by Rebecca Lloyd, Egaeus Press Keynote Edition, 1 / The Felicity Of Epigones by Derek John, Egaeus Press Keynote Edition, 2

Egaeus's first two Keynote Editions – in concept at least - presumably mean to evoke those of John Lane's decadent series of the 1890s'. The black and gold covers are certainly smart enough, without aping the originals' Beardsleyan floridities, while described as "an ongoing series, presenting the best contemporary writers of weird fiction in high quality, pocket-sized hardbacks."

  In an afterword to the first, Rebecca Lloyd posits the questions that drove her to the book's theme; "What is it that keeps people locked into destructive and often bizarre relationships," she asks, "with those who must dominate?" This - Lloyd's third collection – plays out what can happen within the midst of such manifestations. The four long-short tales presented here foreground her strength, highlighting the nightmarish side of familial relationships.

  In 'Ragman,' a moody, manipulative father decides to isolate himself from his family, in his junkyard, surrounded by the bric-a-brac of his trade. His daughter arrives, poorly received, but stays over in a bid to persuade his return. She is reminded of those parts of the yard that made her uneasy in childhood and, apparently, still does; especially the 'mirror hall' and the half-articulated focus of her past fear that begins to daily emerge in the present. Occasionally, the wealth of personal backstory feels in danger of crowding out the plot. This doesn't slow the pace so much as slightly blur the reader's focus. 'Fetch' features the narration of the type of arrogant, misogynist husband you want to punch from his first line; expecting wifely commitment without giving it, while advising upon writerly knowledge not held. It would be funny if not so dangerously close to the well-healed middle-manager types of whom it so expertly offers a glimpse.

  'Teuthida,' Lloyd admits in the afterword, was "inspired by aspects of Lovecraft's life." While this is almost too obvious in the name of main character 'Henry Lawncroft,' this in no way mars the slightly seedy and disturbing aspects of soiled gentility well conveyed through the plot; in particular the odd control-freakery of his mother. 'For Two Songs' is the best tale here. A younger daughter, deemed second-best in the affections of a father, mourning the loss of his eldest, shares wounds as much psychological as physical. The Victorian obsession with death and photography are well-utilised here, where the horror slowly emerges through cool, matter-of-fact conversations.

  I look forward to Lloyd's interest in dysfunctional families being fleshed-out and expounded upon at greater length. With a debut novel imminent, I eagerly await how such ideas might expand given the chance to breathe in more space.

Oxford Dictionaries defines 'felicity' as 'intense happiness' and 'the ability to find appropriate expression for one's thoughts.' 'Epigones' is 'a less distinguished follower or imitator of someone, especially and artist.' The series second title uses the framing device of two reflective love letters to one now lost. (The writer playing the author himself, signing-off as 'D.J.').

  'A Tale from Bede' - on a rain-soaked Sunday morning, a driver, on an aimless journey, arrives at a carboot sale whose silent patrons appear to be in purgatory. Their soiled goods, it seems, are "all they have left." A simple, understated parable of desperation and loss. (Perhaps what Bede himself supposed existed beyond his rather more optimistic message...). 'Le Frotteur de Livres' --- In this most decadent of tales, (a frotteur translated as "one who rubs"), a Freudian analyst recalls an interview he conducted in London with the French founder of 'The Society of Psychoanalysts' who recalls one of his most intriguing formative cases with a most notorious 'pervert.' In particular, his onanistic relationship with increasingly rare texts.

 'In Our Deep Vaulted Cell' follows. (Formerly discussed here http://panreview.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/transactions-of-flesh-homage-to-joris.html). 'Oblivion' returns us to a purgatory of a different, more interesting, kind with a superb opening line; "It is Tuesday the 43^rd of March and I have hanged myself." 'A Note from the Archivist' continues the masturbatory, obsessional quality of 'Le Frotteur de Livres' and the best of Mark Samuels. A film archivist receives anonymously sent scenes of a great lost film and gradually becomes as increasingly determined to complete it as its late director. 'Cosmogony of Desire' – previously unpublished – is the fictionalised tale of a historical event when, in May 1945, priceless works of art by Gustav Klimt were purposely vandalised by the SS while departing the Schloss Immendorff near Vienna. The cosmogony referred to here felt, to me, at first ambiguous; but seems to refer to male Freudian perceptions of sex and death in art, indirectly connecting the observer to the decomposing paint from its destruction and the reader to the recurrent theme of the earlier tales. Unreservedly recommended.

Written In Darkness by Mark Samuels, Egaeus Press / Supernatural Tales 28, Winter 2014/15, Edited by David Longhorn

Mark Samuels' name has been dormant in my subconscious now for over a decade. In fact, since his first collection. ('Black Altars,' 2003). I'd done nothing to follow him up – until now. The enticing bridge between then and now was his last set, 'The Man Who Collected Machen,' its paperback long visible on the shelves of the – then - varied choice of small, new-imprint bookshops. Barring one or two anthologised tales since, it seems I should have read more. In a recent interview, Samuels stated his belief. It's worth mentioning that he has one: 
 
“I am a Roman Catholic. But I really wouldn’t dream of trying to incorporate any moral teaching into my weird fiction. I am not a proselytiser. What attracts me most about the Church is its mystical dimension. I also believe that we exist in a fallen universe and that human nature is immutable.” (teemingbrain.com)

Quite an old-fashioned view from a writer born three years afterme. It is true – on the evidence here – that he never preaches. Still, it is often mindset and accompanying assumptions, we all have, that betrays the path being trod. 'A Call to Greatness' satirizes the Europe of today with the decadent myths of the past. A man of unknown history sends a parcel to a jaded Eurocrat that harbours a grand sweep of a tale of an exotic, fundamentalist fanatic and his account of past glories.
   'The European dream was dead, he thought, the Europe of grand ideals was buried in the ashes of apathy. There was no brotherhood of nations, only the squalid struggle of the political and financial masters to line their own pockets, while the masses were brainwashed into a zombie-like existence under the false flag of liberty. All its values were secular and materialistic – with propagandistic jargon employed to justify citizens from detecting the corrosion of their own souls.' (p.13).

Elsewhere, Samuels comments; 
 

'“The Other Tenant” is a generic satire on the idea that only people on the left can be “nice” (some disgruntled soul called it little more than “red-baiting” in a review of the anthology it first appeared in, which rather proved my point).' (ibid.)

Writing as a leftist myself, I am not convinced. It reads more as a warning against ideology, generally, and its distancing effect upon Robert Zachary in particular. A latterly afflicted individual with no apparent self-awareness beyond present tense perceptions. 'An Hourglass of the Soul' concerns a newly-employed computer operator and his employer's instruction for him to “drop everything for a few days in order to reconfigure the mainframe” at a mysterious, underground complex somewhere in Mongolia. Continuing the sub-genre of dystopian SF is 'The Ruins of Reality,' where, again, extreme power of management over the employee is exercised, only this time to the ultimate degree. Both concern forms of mind-control; the latter particularly graphic in its depiction as enforcement from above compelled from within.

  'Alistair' is classic Gothic territory, involving an old, large, weed-entangled house, the half-hidden generations from whom it was passed and the weird echoes harboured in the newborn.

   'My World Has No Memories' is set upon a small boat, lost and adrift, its one occupant just awoken, with no working guidance, and suffering amnesia. He appears to be a survivor – but from what? And what is the strange organic growth held in a jar?

  In 'Outside Interference,' a skeleton office staff in the midst of transferring to a new building find themselves trapped “in the middle of the coldest winter snap for a century or more.” While, the one way out may be no way out at all.

  'My Heretical Existence' finds a city's sole authority on its hidden masonic 'tribes' become an unwitting inititate. The closest to a derivate entry here.

  'In Eternity Two Lines Intersect' is an appropriate title since it virtually returns us to the setting and circumstance of 'The Other Tenant,' with a recovering patient with lingering psychoses and no apparent memory of his past. Then, this latter point is this collection's running theme.

  Samuels has admitted in various interviews that he works within long-established genre. However, like Reggie Oliver, Mark Valentine and others, he has become something of a master at each. If the settings here are traditional, this is an exceptionally accomplished collection, with not a weak entry amongst them.

* * * * *

ST founder, David Longhorn, has been editing this thrice-yearly anthology of new writings from his North-East England home since the year 2000.

   Three of the eight entries are especially satisfying in their narrative focus, interest and completion, without too obvious recourse to well-extracted sources. Gillian Bennett's 'Mr and Mrs Havisham' explores the true identities of a painting's subject, a wronged spirit, a dictatorial husband and the woman who comes between them. My favourite entry here.

   Sam Dawson's 'Look Both Ways' depicts a lonely man's return to the faded seaside haunt of the family holidays of his youth and the spirit of his late younger sister, whose ghost also returns to watch for him and wait... Dawson's depiction of Seahaven, past and present, is very well done in the limited word count.      (He has also drawn this and previous covers).

   Finally, Tim Foley's 'Snowman, Frozen,' which manages to evoke Stephen King while shaving him of his over-long narrative excesses, leaving highlighted the latter's storytelling strength.  Mention should also be made of Michael Chislett's fantastical 'A Name in the Dark.' A woman crossing into a twilit garden steps from this world into another, experiencing a form of fairy-led 'Midsummer Night's Dream' self-revelation. If it reads like part of a larger project, that's because it is, according to its author in the 'about' section at the back. Despite the intriguing opening, this may try the patience of some unused to such a radical change from naturalistic scenes.

   The back pages also feature reviews by Longhorn himself; on Swan River Press's 'Dreams of Shadow and Smoke,' Ron Weighell's first collection in seventeen years, 'Summoning' (Sarob Press), John Howard's essay collection, 'Touchstones,' (Alchemy Press) and 'The Loney'; Andrew Michael Hurley's intriguing, debut, folk-horror novel for Tartarus.