Dead Scalp by Jasper Bark (Crystal Lake Publishing) | review by Stephen Theaker

James Briggs is on the lam, with most of Arizona on his tail, and Mexico is out of reach. But he’s heard about a portal to a magical place where the law can’t reach. So he slices up a rabbit, takes a running jump at a portal, and after a bit of argy-bargy hands over the price of entry to a pair of bearded thugs: Clem and Bart. Clem has been in Dead Scalp forty years, though he looks about thirty. No one ages here, and they don’t get sick, but they can be killed, and the only thing that grows here is hair.

To make up for bashing Bart, James has to do some work for Bill Baldwin, the boss of Dead Scalp. He’s a real villain, a slave-owner who has had children murdered, and women kidnapped from the outside world to be raped in the town brothel. He is brutal with his punishments for those who step out of line, and the worst of these punishments is called “ingrowing”. There’s a reason all the men in town have beards: something terrible happens when they shave, or when Bill shaves them.

If the town itself wasn’t horror enough, James will soon see how much worse it can get when an ingrown corpse isn’t properly disposed of. And it was his fault…

The cover of this weird western horror novella describes it as “back in print, in a brand new edition”, but this is its first publication as a book in itself, its original release being in the author’s 2014 collection from the same publisher, Stuck on You and Other Prime Cuts. I’m glad that they disinterred it. I’ve read quite a few indie horror books recently and this one had the most startling imagery, the goriest deaths, the biggest surprises, the most shocking ideas.

Some of the human-on-human violence is extremely unpleasant, especially the sexual violence, but in that case catharsis comes when the perpetrator is punished in a horribly appropriate way. Like the much-missed Ash vs Evil Dead, the book has a cartoonish, blood-soaked, over-the-top tone, too demented to be truly upsetting. I loved the intensity of it. It doesn't hold back, doesn't save anything for later, it goes all out in its ninety pages, playing every card as quickly as possible, like a little kid playing Snap. ****