Editorial: Firstly, it's great – and rare – for an indie writer's work to crossover, receiving public appreciation, and use, in another sphere. Therefore, huge congratulations to Eric Stener Carlson who's achieved this. Ray Russell of Tartarus Press, wrote: 'A metal band in Switzerland–Rorcal (they tour in Europe and Japan) are huge fans of books by Eric Stener Carlson. They have composed an album inspired by the seven scary stories from his excellent Muladona, (also on Tartarus) and invited the author to record some passages from the book. The result is the album Muladona.' Secondly, a personal plug. My first full collection of strange stories, No-One Driving, is due for publication in paperback and ebook this November. Ahead of this, in September, the sainted Tim Jeffreys is publishing the title tale in Dark Lane Anthology 8. http://darklanebooks.blogspot.com/

On Dark Wings by Stephen Gregory, Valancourt Books

Poor taste isn’t something which can be justifiably levelled at Valancourt; for, here again, we are presented with a seasoned, well-practised author whom I’d just recently discovered. Despite being labelled a ‘horror’ author, Gregory’s particular brand leans more toward the subtle and uncanny, where small, psychological breakdowns ultimately impinge. In prose, the antithesis of, say, Stephen King, in using as few words as possible to intimate so much. Bluntly; Gregory turns out to be very much my cup of tea.

  Featuring the original 1983 tale ‘The Cormorant,’ expanded into Gregory’s first novel three years later, consequently adapted for the big screen in ‘87 and reissued by Valancourt in ’13. Six further novels followed; most recently 2015’s Plague of Gulls. You will have gathered by now that Gregory’s field of interest is strictly avian; reflected in this long-awaited first collection of fourteen short tales. The prose is concise, polished, and a joy to the eye, describing encounters less supernatural than chilling in their ominous descriptions of small but scalding existential threats. Favourites include;

  ‘The Boys Who Wouldn’t Wake Up’ where an aged headmaster at a boys’ school – vacated for the Christmas holiday - feels the annual encroaching guilt from a wartime tragedy he believes he could’ve averted. By far, the most touching tale with an especially satisfying use of ghosts. In ‘The Theatre Moth’ an Am-Dram script-writer / actor is plagued by a phobia she’s unable to control.

  ‘The Drowning of Colin Henderson’ follows the ocean-driven journey of a crewman, swept off deck during a storm and described from a birds-eye perspective, beyond the death up to his discovery. ‘The Progress of John Arthur Crabbe’ features the harboured ‘gift’ of a disabled boy finally revealing itself as something rather less benevolent than darkly self-serving.

  A minority of the remainder feature no supernatural element at all, but still render a subtle serendipity. If you’re a fan of the taut approach of implication rather than lurid delineation, then you’ll find Gregory a master.

Children Of The Crimson Sun by Karim Ghahwagi, Egaeus Press (Keynote Edition V)

Karim Ghahwagi describes himself as a music video director, photographer and author of both Danish and Libyan descent, born in the United States, but spending most of his life in Europe. He divides his time between Copenhagen and Los Angeles. Basic biographical details, but perhaps useful in understanding the territory of his fiction.

  The title tale opens the fifth in Egaeus's occasional Keynote series, in 16th century Malta, where a young emissary is sent – on behalf of his Abbot – to investigate the unique and ‘distressing spiritual condition’ of a local fisherman’s daughter. Having recently turned Catholic penitent, a genuinely weird tale ensues of hidden motive and questioned faith as unforeseen forces conspire to expose personal revelations as to the emissary’s true purpose. A slow-burner of a tale that harbours depths that reward with re-reading. Some of the geographical and historical detail in the opening pages, perhaps more anticipatory of a full-length novel, eventually give way to a compelling tale of amoral purpose.

  This close-to-novella length title tale is paired with the slightly shorter, ‘A Haunting in Miniature.’ Posted to an obscure village in the Czech Republic, Izabel Jelinek – representative of the Moravian Church – seeks an interview with the local Commissioner to discover the cause of a series of alleged ghostly sightings in the area. Her researches lead her to the local Napoleonic Wargaming Society; a select club of historical re-enactments by painters of model soldiers. This scene is (also) beautifully rendered as we are introduced to its longest serving member, Maximillian Novak, and the silent commitment of its members and the club members’ room is delineated. Ultimately, it is the spirit of an abandoned soul, to which Jelinek can relate, that provides the denouement and quietly effective it is too.

  As with the protagonist of the previous tale, Jelinek’s true motive - and identity - at first appears ambiguous, until the relationship is – by the climax – joined. Again, local history has returned in the form of an unwitting victim and their harboured past.

Their Dark And Secret Alchemy, Edited by Robert Morgan, Sarob Press

Three longish short tales – Richard Gavin’s ‘Ten of Swords: Ruin,’ Colin Insole’s ‘The Dead of Maridunum’ and Damian Murphy’s ‘The Axis of the Lodestone’ – highlight three of my current favourite authors.

  Richard Gavin’s tale opens on two sisters’ – Desdemona and Celeste - waking in their temporarily abandoned, sprawling lakeside house to a day of what they perceive to be unpredictable, but inevitable, omens. When the younger, more curious, Celeste steals into their parents’ bedroom, she seeks, and finds, a hidden velvet pouch, shaking its contents onto their bed; a series of Tarot-type cards. Picking the cards ‘Ruin’ and ‘The Queen,’ Celeste, memorizing the ceremony once performed by her more expert mother, steals out alone to bury them in the family vault, much to her elder sister’s chagrin. Demanding she returns them before their parents’ get back, Desdemona fears the damage has already been done through her sister’s playful ignorance. Their absent parents – practising experts in the Occult – return to the house to arrange an evening meal as a particular ceremony requiring specific tenets. Unaware of Celeste’s earlier disturbing of fate, the family descend into the consequences of extreme horror.

  I particularly enjoyed the formative scenes with the ambiguity of era. Gavin clearly intended this, since its indefinability increases in significance towards the tale’s end as portals are disastrously breached. An impressive opener. Gavin’s sixth collection of ‘fear and sacred converging’ will be due 2020-21.

  Colin Insole needs no introduction from me. Having swiftly become one of the finest exponents of English folk horror he has, simultaneously, remained beneath its radar. This should – and must – soon change. Of his latest entry, suffice to say that it is so densely plotted – ranging in time from the 14th century to the 1960s’ - that if it were not for the sinister omnipresence of the ubiquitous trickster-clown, the reader could drown beneath the history. Since this ‘history’ is so knowledgeably utilised, you are ensured to remain afloat.

  Murphy’s first collection – Daughters of Apostasy, previously reviewed here – struck an excellent balance between the trajectory of plot, description and pace. With Murphy’s prose here, much product knowledge of his subject is on show, but – from midway - somewhat at the expense of the latter where description's the main focus. Its strongest suit is in the omnipresent enigma of the distant landed boat and the gradual revelation - to the discovery and unexpected significance - of the two-faced God. Greater forward momentum in its middle third may well have attained the tale a fifth star. On a personal note, it’s pleasing that, in a 2017 interview, Murphy cited Insole, John Howard and George Berguno as favourite authors, to which I wholeheartedly concur. You can’t go far wrong with such good taste.

  Collectively, Their Dark and Secret Alchemy showcases three of the best exponents of their genre.

Sylvan Dread – Tales Of Pastoral Darkness by Richard Gavin, Three Hands Press / Pagan Triptych – Stories By Ron Weighell, John Howard & Mark Valentine, Sarob Press

Never a fan of Grand Guignol horror whose conclusions offer no hope, there is a strange kind of alternative offered in several of Sylvan Dread's conclusions; of renewal and re-birth as part of a lost primeval nature. Amoral, non-human perhaps, but not entropic. Outside each tale's protaganist are the secret motives of nature and its amoral drives for continued procreation. Gavin's philosophical trigger is from the theory of Rudolf Otto; the German scholar of comparative religion, whose Idea Of The Holy is quoted from at the top of the first tale. ('Thistle Latch'). Described by Otto as a "non-rational, non-sensory experience or feeling whose primary and immediate object is outside the self,” this might be an aposite definition for the uncanny as a whole.

  'Primeval Wood,' the second tale here, concerns Neil Keller and the hawthorn idol he discovers that appears to infect him with potent dreaming, just as his relationship ends, leaving him vulnerable to fight this unknown and unknowable foe alone. In 'A Cavern Of Redbrick' a boy's regular bike ride around a gravel pit is suddenly disturbed by the ghostly presence of a girl upon the roof of its shed. This 'presence' leads him, unwittingly, to the revelation of a terrible family secret and portentous conclusion.

  In 'Fume' the warden at the holiday hamlet of Beech Point observes the exodus of renters at the end of the summer season. En route home for dinner, Clark spies a small, illicit encampment and stops off to investigate. Within the sole tent he sees what appears to be a swaddled corpse. Bursting its wrapping elicits the 'fume' of the title that also burns his skin and causes a personal change – inside and out - that may be more than mere hallucination. In 'Weaned On Blood' an abbot, newly-arrived at a rural monastry, is initiated into a sacrificial ritual as a means to sustain a much darker tradition. The abbot decides, for the good of the brotherhood, to act unilaterally to reveal the recipient.­

  In 'Mare's Nest', the husband of a couple still very much in love must face the imminent death of his wife. He, a sculptor, she, a poet, they agree upon a pact to both physically manifest and entrap forever the spirit of her favourite self-composed poem of the title. If that sounds trite, the tale's real strength is in the authentic depiction of the husband's uxorious emotions, which are genuinely heartrending.

 This is the fifth collection by a writer who, being usually distant from 'horror,' I've previously overlooked. I see in the case of Richard Gavin at least, this has been my loss. The territory and subject matter may otherwise both be familiar to its seasoned readers. For myself, glimpses of frightening beauty in Gavin's exotic prose style transcends that in much of the genre.

According to one of the three afterwords that inhabit this collection of long short tales, Ron Weighell implies that his contribution to this Blackwood tribute represents the fifth to feature his continuing character, Dr. Andrew Northwoode, "respected Fellow of Belden College, Oxford, and eminent scholar of antiquities various." The Edwardian influence of the prose style and its derring-do usage makes 'The Letter Killeth' easily the most traditional of these three. A strange bequest delivered to the College library, its mystical contents, and the malevolent force it threatens to unleash is well done and informed and affectionate rather than merely derivative.

  It reads more like Machen-informed Wheatley, than Blackwood inspired, but, as other recent author-dedicated anthologies have shown, such inspiration doesn't necessarily mean bland homage. I don't know of Weighell's previous work, but he's clearly a man of some deprecating wit. He ends his short, intermediary afterword (the first of three by each author) disappointed that he had to rely less upon imagination than usual, since he's reached his ongoing character's age-group.

  'In The Clearing' takes its cue from Pan's Garden's 'The Man Whom The Trees Loved.' A city man who, from the opening line, "had never made much time for anyone," suddenly finds a haven for some peace and quiet, where time is all he has. Suspended from his post, (for a reason left intriguingly unexplained), he suddenly faces what has long been harboured, perhaps even repressed, within himself, as previously unexplored feelings uncannily mingle with perceptions he can no longer recognise or trust. Is what he sees merely from his own point of view? Or is he being externally, objectively affected? The tale has a brave ambiguity, that stays with you long after its end. Yet, whether it is entirely successful – in its own terms - is hard to guage in that I wasn't entirely certain what Howard wanted to achieve. Rather than lead you, however, its snail pace demands your attention and gradual recall.

  In its assured feel for the Edwardian uncanny, 'The Fig Garden' is classic Valentine. A childhood ritual among friends, involving a procession and the near-holy imbibing from a figtree, resonates across time and the life of one man, semi-conscious of vague connections he can sense but not clearly define. He comes to suspect he might have a role in something far greater than himself. It vaguely reminded me of David Lindsay's rare mid-Twenties novel, The Violet Apple, in its philosophical theme.

  The dustjacket evokes that of Blackwood's one-hundred year-old novel, Julius LeVallon, by its cool colour pallette and of a sole figure standing awestruck and exultant amongst a mountainous landscape.