After a cavalcade of summer travel, I’m back in the saddle, reelin’ in the years like Steely Dan’s mighty steel sex toy. This time we have another fractured tale of death and weirdness from Caitlin R. Kiernan, a fat load of pulpy goodness from Mr. Hugh B. Cave, a delightful children’s classic with some groovy Edward Gorey illustrations, a modern YA fiction take on demon possession and a sweaty thriller full of sex and murder.
For those just joining me, this is my journey through the following “Best of” Horror lists:
Reedsy Discovery Best Horror Books
Stephen Jones & Kim Newman’s Horror: 100 Best Books
Stephen Jones & Kim Newman Horror: Another 100 Books
If you want to check out my previous entries, they can be found here:
Part 27 | Part 26 | Part 25 | Part 24 | Part 23 | Part 22 | Part 21 | Part 20 | Part 19 | Part 18 | Part 17 | Part 16 | Part 15 | Part 14 | Part 13 | Part 12 | Part 11 | Part 10 | Part 9 | Part 8 | Part 7 | Part 6 |Part 5 | Part 4 | Part 3 | Part 2 | Part 1
Now let’s go siphon some gas from that clunker down the road cuz we’ve gotta get this bucket of bolts on the road!
The Red Tree (Caitlin R. Kiernan, 2009)
List: NPR
Sarah is a writer who has fled her native Atlanta to Rhode Island to try to get past her writer’s block and get over a tumultuous relationship she was in that ended very tragically. When she discovers a lost manuscript from a clearly unhinged individual obsessed with an old tree is her yard, she develops a deep fascination with both the author of the manuscript and the history of the tree and its surrounding property. As Sarah delves deeper into the lore surrounding the tree, it begins to have an effect on her mind.
Like The Drowning Girl, this Kiernan novel is pretty weird and fractured with a very unreliable narrator. This one didn’t work quite as well for me though. For one, it leans a little more heavily into the relationship melodrama. Also the curse surrounding the tree feels a little too abstract with an inconsistent pacing. Still, it has some pretty interesting moments worth checking out if you’re a fan of Kiernan’s work already. I don’t think I’d recommend it as one to start with though.
Murgunstrumm and Others (Hugh B. Cave, 1977)
List: Jones/Newman
Murgunstrumm and Others is a massive collection of Hugh B. Cave’s pulp horror short stories from the ’30s to ’50s mainly and is a pretty hefty and entertaining package to be sure. Cave in particular seems to be rather fond of vampires, kicking off this tome with the title novella “Murgunstrumm”, one of the better stories in the book that while fairly straightforward is still executed quite well. Other vampire stories include “Prey of the Nightborn”, an early stab at a kind of erotic vampire horror that’s all the rage these days, the similarly-themed “Purr of a Cat”, the kind of dumb “Brotherhood of Blood” and one of Cave’s better known stories “Straghella”, a pretty cool mix of vampires and ocean horror.
Many of the stories in here are definitely indicative of the time they were written. If you’ve read a lot of early Weird Tales magazine, you’ll recognize familiar themes cropping up again and again, particularly involving mad scientists and supernatural revenge. Most of these stories are decent but rarely really good. Some of the stories also play out very much like Tales from the Crypt, Eerie, etc. with macabre supernatural events ending in a twist where the antagonist gets his just desserts. Stories like “The Crawling Curse”, “The Dead Man’s Belt” and “The Cult of the White Ape” fall into this bucket. Those are usually pretty fun but sometimes a little on the goofy side. There are even a couple of stories in here that seem to tie in to Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos. One of my favorites in the book is the very weird “The Whisperers” which goes a long way on atmosphere and bizarreness with its basement aberrations. Several of his stories involve weird cults like goofy hillbilly cult in “The Caverns of Time” and the kind of racist “The Prophecy” (actually several of these stories are “of their time” in terms of racist slang, so be warned if you’re sensitive to that kind of thing). Overall, I liked this collection pretty well but it definitely felt too long and repetitive in places. I will say your enjoyment of this book will depend on how much you like the cheesy, lurid pulp writing of this time period. I dig ’em though
The House with a Clock in its Walls (John Bellairs, 1973)
List: NPR
Lewis is a lonely, chubby kid whose parents have just died in a tragic accident, leaving him in the care of his uncle Jonathan, an eccentric fellow who, along with Jonathan’s neighbor and friend Florence Zimmerman, are practitioners of magic (Mrs. Zimmerman much more adept than Jonathan). Uncle Jonathan lives in a spooky old house formerly owned by a powerful wizard named Isaac Izzard which has a mysterious ticking emanating from the walls at all hours of the day that Jonathan is unable to find the source of. When Lewis makes a terrible mistake in an attempt to impress a would-be friend, it awakens a powerful evil that will take some creativity and ingenuity to stop.
Having already seen the film starring Jack Black, I had a general idea of what to expect with this one. One nice touch was the delightful illustrations from Edward Gorey, an artist I tend to enjoy quite a bit. The first half of the film and book stay pretty close together with some slight deviations here and there. The film also gives a little more backstory to several of the characters interestingly enough. Of course the film also adds dumb fart and poop jokes, so… revisionism is always a mixed bag. Where they differ is in the latter half of the story. In some ways, the scope of the book is smaller but also fits with the general tone of the small town quaint macabre strangeness that the book cultivates. Overall, I liked it pretty well even though my son didn’t pay much attention to it (we read it together). I may check out the other eleven (!) books in the series at some point after this whole mega-list thing is done.
Spirit Hunters (Ellen Oh, 2017)
List: NPR
Harper just moved into a new town where she feels alone and ostracized. To make matters worse, her family have moved into a haunted house and her little brother Michael has been possessed by a malevolent spirit that Harper has no idea how to get rid of. As Harper learns more of the history of the house and with the help of a friendly ghost named Rose and a powerful spirit hunter that may be more familiar to her than she realizes, she begins to think she might actually be able to help free Michael of the evil spirit that’s taking control of him.
This was a pretty decent little book intended for middle schoolers that acts as a pretty solid Exorcist-lite intro to horror for the younger set. While the writing is a little juvenile at times with Harper’s little brother Michael being pretty damned annoying both pre- and post-possession, it’s still a pretty engaging if not predictable novel that should deliver some mild scares for the younger members of your household. I also liked that it included an element of traditional Korean mysticism that helps set it apart from other similar books. It’s definitely a step above any Goosebumps book I’ve read, and is apparently the first in a burgeoning series that follows Harper on her journey to becoming a powerful spirit hunter.
House of Flesh (Bruno Fischer, 1950)
List: Jones/Newman
Harry Wilde, pro basketball player going through a divorce, heads back to his hometown of North Set to get his life together and mentally unwind a little. His fate takes a dark turn when he locks eyes with off-kilter but somehow sensual Lela Doane, wife of the burly and handsome local vet who is rumored to have murdered his first wife and fed her to his dogs. Harry knows he is going the wrong way in life with his late night dalliances with the intense Mrs. Doane, but he just can’t help himself. But is someone setting Harry up for a fall? Between the local sherriff Bill Hickey who had a crush on Doane’s first wife to Hickey’s father, the local lawyer who seems to pushing Harry into the arms of Mrs. Doane to a local shady character trying to blackmail Harry to a jilted local girl that’s in love with Harry, it seems like everyone in this town could be harboring secrets that all tie back to murder most foul.
While not really a horror novel (David Bischoff in Jones/Newman’s Another 100 Horror Books refers to it as a “gothic novel for males”, whatever that means…), this is still a cracking good noir that reminds me of James M. Cain but in sexual overdrive. Wild passions ooze from every pore of this novel as our characters spend sweaty nights together and days obsessing over each other. It seemed like everybody in town was in love with somebody that either did them wrong or didn’t love them back with poor old Harry Wilde stuck in the middle, setting the whole thing to finally boil over. I do like a good crime fiction story and Fischer writes with a muscular pacing that kept me engaged the whole time pretty well. I thought the ending was a little on the predictable side but that’s probably more just me being jaded from watching hundreds of film noir and reading lots of crime pulp novels. Overall it was a solid one I was glad I checked out.