I Would Haunt You If I Could by Sean Padraic Birnie, Undertow Publications / Infra-Noir 2020 (2021), Zagava / Albertine's Wooers

Editorial: Firstly, a notification sent to me by Editor, Matthew Walther: 'I am writing to pass along the details of a ghost story contest being sponsored by The Lamp magazine that may be of interest to readers of The Pan Review: https://thelampmagazine.com/2021/06/24/the-lamp-christmas-ghost-story-contest/ The winner will receive $1000; two runners up will receive $300 each. All best wishes, Matthew Walther.'

On his website, Sean Birnie describes himself as 'a Technical Demonstrator on the Photography programmes at the University of Brighton, where I deliver beginner and advanced workshops in Adobe applications such as Photoshop and InDesign, studio lighting, and preparation for digital print, and install degree shows, among other things.'  His literary art is more evocative of the paintings of Francis Bacon, the focus being the macabre physical – as well as psychological - descent of the human condition. The role of infection in sado-masochistic relationships is the prominent theme across the collection. In the tales 'New To It All,' 'Like A Zip,' 'Holes' and 'You Know What To Do,' pain is utilised as a weapon of control. 'New To It All' has the narrator recount the previously unexperienced sexual habits that (unwittingly?) drew him to his relationships. 'Hand Me Down' finds a new mother's growing paranoia for the safety of her child turn into something entirely. 'Holes' sees a man's quickly growing rash spread to his partner after he already harbours fear for his disappearance.

  In 'I Would Haunt You If I Could,' again, infection, stains and encroaching entropy foreground the title tale, and quietly compelling it is too; especially if, like yours truly, you live as a bachelor in rented accommodation. 'You Know What To Do' is my favourite here. A successful new entry in the library of the uncanny, a husband's obsession with the apparently hidden room behind the cupboard under the stairs holds a fascination, which may – or may not – be exerting a dangerous, unspoken obsession.

  In 'Dollface,' the question that hangs over the narrative is whether or not a daughter's doll is possessed. Is the father obsessed? (My hunch). Or, since it bears an alleged physical human trait, is the doll even a doll? Only the final tale – 'Other Houses' – which sees the narrator plagued with guilt over the younger sister he believes he pushed into a pond when children, didn't quite hold my attention to the end. Still, as with the previous tales, Birnie displays a superior knack for the uncanny that I so favour. This collection is a solid addition to the library for lovers of quiet horror and an undoubtedly assured debut.

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Infra-Noir 2020 collects all eleven chapbooks, released across last year, in a single volume. 'Craft' - DP Watt's opening contribution demonstrates how the perishability of art can spawn its own unexpected legacy. In 'The Clerks Of The Invisible' - the first of two Mark Valentine tales - a dying bookseller entrusts his literary estate to his chief cataloguer, with the view to contacting interested agents to seek out a mysterious book 'that mattered to him most.' The slenderest of tales by page-count, it is, however, the kind of springboard Orson Welles might have run with to manifest as an on-screen magnum opus. 'The Idyll Is Over' shines with beauty, being one of Jonathan Wood's introspective prose poems.

  'Codex Of Light' by Karim Ghahwagi has a monastic society holding candlelight and its smoke in censorious and holy esteem. 'Posterity' by Mark Samuels highlights Sybil Court, 'scholarly trailblazer of posthumous interest in the fiction of Rupert Alderman.' Court feels her reputation as an Alderman scholar could be questioned by her academic-only interpretations rather than primary research of his extant archive. (It's surely no coincidence that the late fictitious author with increasingly remote, right-wing leanings shares the initials of another English author of strange stories).

  In 'Ancestor Water' by Rebecca Lloyd (of the great Gothic novel of 2019, The Child Cephalina) an immigrant daughter, naturalised by her time in London, discovers her visiting mother alienated by her Western traits. 'Stained Medium' – the second Mark Valentine – features a bookish student of modern Gnosticism encounters one aged whose own experience is revealed as much closer to home. On a not dissimilar theme, 'The Purblind Bards' by Timothy Jarvis finds one of a band of bardic outcasts in a seaside town reflect upon what brought him to his becoming. 'The Wet Woman' - An out-of-condition actor, about to take on a new film role, is sent by his agent to a health farm to get back into shape. A late lover and rival adds some dark interest to his reluctant presence.

  'A House Of Treasures' – Familial intrigue surrounding the presence and significance of Noah Court – discovered in a unique photograph - makes for my new favourite Ray Russell tale. 'Home Comforts' – Sheltering from a downpour in a shop of this name, Megan is shocked to discover that a stuffed, life-size figure in the window is referred to as a real person who works next door. To her own puzzlement, she expresses a determination to purchase it.

  Clocking in at a modest, but sufficient, 187 pages, this is one of the more accessible Zagava releases, in a form I hope is repeated in future years. A very worthy primer to this publisher.

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                                   Albertine's Wooers

Reggie Oliver's eighth collection – A Maze For The Minotaur – is soon to be released by Tartarus Press...who've also just released a slipcase of two thorough collections-in-one of Oliver Onions tales...Swan River Press follows up its popular first Green Book of 'exclusive' short tales (issue 15) with a second (issue 17)...Valancourt have reissued some choice paperback titles in hardback. Speaking of which, the British Library's publishing arm has just released a collection of six-of-the-best by Margaret Oliphant, The Open Door And Other Stories Of The Seen & Unseen.

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.

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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.