Fear Across the Mersey XXIV: Wherever You Look | review by Rafe McGregor

Fear Across the Mersey by Ramsey Campbell

PS Publishing, hardback, £25.00, August 2024, ISBN 9781803943701

Maurice Lavater is a midlist genre fiction writer, with his Victorian supernatural thriller series about to reach its seventh instalment. He is hosting a reading of his work at a library when one of the attendees accuses him of plagiarism. I imagine this is a regular occurrence for those who have achieved commercial success, but what is especially interesting – and authentic – is Lavater’s reaction. After an initial denial, he begins to worry that he read something, forgot about it, and when it came back to him thought it was his own invention. This is, I think, a fear all writers share regardless of the extent of their success. Lavater begins searching for the text he was accused of plagiarising and discovers it is an obscure short story, which was only published once, in a similarly obscure anthology, and never reprinted. When he eventually finds it…I won’t ruin the twist in the tale!

Fear Across the Mersey XXIII: Still Hungry | review by Rafe McGregor

Fear Across the Mersey by Ramsey Campbell

PS Publishing, hardback, £25.00, August 2024, ISBN 9781803943701

The third masterpiece in a row from Campbell, following ‘The Rounds’ (the twenty-first in the collection) and ‘On the Tour’ (the twenty-second), this is a prose paeon to the thankless, demoralising, alienating, and at times dangerous work of security guards and to the impact that work has on one’s social and personal lives. If that sounds like faint praise, it really isn’t and it takes real skill to turn such a job into a compelling narrative and to deploy fiction as a means to the end of saying something meaningful about a job which is widely regarded as wholly uninteresting and either ignoble, distasteful, or both. Bertram is a security guard in a city centre department store...he stops a woman who is using her child as an accomplice from stealing clothes, then thinks he sees them committing suicide on a railway line and is haunted by the part he has played.

Fear Across the Mersey XXII: On the Tour | review by Rafe McGregor

Fear Across the Mersey by Ramsey Campbell

PS Publishing, hardback, £25.00, August 2024, ISBN 9781803943701

The second in a row after ‘The Rounds’ (the twenty-first in the collection) that I enjoyed without reservation. Stu was the drummer in Scotty and the Scousers, a one-hit-wonder band in the nineteen sixties that released a single album and once – just once – featured The Beatles as a supporting act. He claims Ringo Starr called him his favourite drummer at some point and has never moved on from his brief and superficial brush with fame, living alone after two divorces and working in his indulgent friend’s record shop. When The Beatles bus tour suddenly passes his house, with the guide pointing it out to tourists, Stu revels in this rather pathetic rekindling of his flicker of success and becomes increasingly obsessed with, first, being at his window to wave and, second, hearing exactly what is being said about him. The real horror here is not nostalgia, but failure.

Fear Across the Mersey XXI: The Rounds | review by Rafe McGregor

Fear Across the Mersey by Ramsey Campbell

PS Publishing, hardback, £25.00, August 2024, ISBN 9781803943701

This story is narrated in the first person and present tense – a difficult combination to do well and achieved with admirable ease by Campbell (few authors can sustain the present tense for long without it becoming either jarring or distracting). It is also set entirely on Merseyrail’s inner loop (for want of a better term) and begins with a compelling hook: the narrator sees a woman leave her briefcase on the train, picks it up, and hurries to return it to her. But the woman is a practising Muslim and this is 2010 so perhaps he should be more careful…or perhaps Campbell is playing with the implicit (and explicit) biases and prejudices of his readers…which he seems to be doing when she receives the briefcase with gratitude. But then she leaves it on the next train. A real cracker of a narrative that never lets either the pace or the suspense flag.

Fear Across the Mersey XX: Chucky Comes to Liverpool | review by Rafe McGregor

Fear Across the Mersey by Ramsey Campbell

PS Publishing, hardback, £25.00, August 2024, ISBN 9781803943701

Few British people a couple of generations either side of me can see ‘Chucky’ and ‘Liverpool’ in the same sentence without thinking of one of the most shocking crimes in recent history, the planned abduction, torture, and murder of two-year-old James Bulger by two ten-year-old boys. Both perpetrators were released after only eight years and one has since been in and out of prison with paedophilia-related convictions. At the time of the murder, tabloid newspapers did what they usually do, milking the misery by exploiting what criminologists call a ‘moral panic’ about ‘video nasties’, claiming that Child’s Play 3 (1991), which featured Chucky as its antagonist, motivated the killers. This story seems to be an indictment of both the media and the moral crusaders it inspires, suggesting that the obsession with censorship is as dangerous as the obsession with violence it claims to counter. Disturbing, but perhaps not in the way Campbell intended.

Fear Across the Mersey XIX: Peep | review by Rafe McGregor

Fear Across the Mersey by Ramsey Campbell

PS Publishing, hardback, £25.00, August 2024, ISBN 9781803943701

One of the best stories in the collection so far, a slow burner whose real meaning and value are only revealed on reflection or repeated reading. ‘Peep’ is another word for ‘peek-a-boo’, the game most of us played with our parents and others as infants. The anonymous narrator had a frightful and frightening aunt who turned it into a source of surveillance, stalking, and shame and whose memory haunts him as he spends time with his daughter, her husband, and their young children, a pair of dizygotic twins. While Campbell paints a bleak but accurate picture of the simmering violence of much of Britain’s seaside and the predictable regularity of antisocial behaviour on public transport, the real horror here is the fragility of the family as a source of unconditional positive regard and safety and security. The narrator’s familiar relations are familiarly tense as he both looks forward to and dreads their departure.

Fear Across the Mersey XVIII: Watch the Birdie | review by Rafe McGregor

Fear Across the Mersey by Ramsey Campbell

PS Publishing, hardback, £25.00, August 2024, ISBN 9781803943701

This story is narrated by Campbell himself rather than an author surrogate or alter ego and begins and ends with what one might call an explicit authorial intrusion, two short passages in italics which, taken together, suggest that it is nonfiction rather than fiction. The narrative is set entirely in The Baltic Fleet, a popular pub and Victorian tourist attraction on the dockside and concerns the landlord, his parrot, and a foreign language curse scrawled on the wall in the toilets. I must admit to being confused by Campbell’s repeated use of ‘Slavonic’ instead of ‘Slavic’ to describe that language and wondered if it was a typo or an error. The former is, apparently, simply an older term for the latter, but its presence interfered with my suspension of disbelief, as anomalies often do. A laconic and lively yarn, though I’m not sure what the bookends added to it.

Fear Across the Mersey XVII: Calling Card | review by Rafe McGregor

Fear Across the Mersey by Ramsey Campbell

PS Publishing, hardback, £25.00, August 2024, ISBN 9781803943701

Along with the next story, ‘Watch the Birdie’ (the eighteenth), this is the shortest in the collection, a second ghost story for Christmas following ‘The Christmas Present’ (the third). The protagonist, Dorothy, is not enjoying the festive season, after receiving a threatening card on Christmas Eve and having rubbish dumped on her doorstep on Boxing Day. Her son-in-law points out that in addition to the addressee of the card being illegible, it was posted sixty years ago. On New Year’s Eve, she learns that the previous occupant of her home had a violent mentally ill son who drowned himself in the Mersey. His body was, however, never recovered…which adds a mundane threat to the supernatural. The tale reminded me of ‘The Ferries’ (the fourteenth in the collection) with its multiplicity of memorable and menacing images of water and the threats it poses. A good choice to share with friends and family around the fireplace.

Fear Across the Mersey XVI: This Time | review by Rafe McGregor

Fear Across the Mersey by Ramsey Campbell

PS Publishing, hardback, £25.00, August 2024, ISBN 9781803943701

The story starts with Crosby, a moderately successful artist, leaving the dentist while under the influence of anaesthetic, creating the expectation of reality blending and bending along the lines of ‘Concussion’ (the second in the collection). There seems to be something like this in play as he has recurring thoughts about and encounters with an image of a blank face and something that scrambles on all fours (which may or may not belong to the same creature). Crosby visits his girlfriend, takes part in a game show on television, and hosts an exhibition of his work as the haunting continues. The narrative is elegant in style, with very fine description in places, and carefully constructed, but if there is an internal logic it escaped me entirely. As such, the conclusion was less a surprise than a non sequitur and I still think I must have missed something somewhere.

Best of Luck by Jason Mott (Amazon Original Stories) | review by Douglas J. Ogurek

Strong pacing and redundancy collide in creature feature story exploring friendship and power structures.

“Best of Luck”, the fifth offering in Amazon’s six-story creature feature series written by bestselling authors, revolves around two friends. Will holds Barry at gunpoint for a reason that author Jason Mott gradually reveals. 

The story tends to prolong philosophical arguments and repeat the same ideas ad nauseum. Another shortcoming: conceptually, it’s not all that memorable. 

On a more positive note, “Best of Luck” builds tension by dropping key information at an impressively patient pace. Initially, the story refrains from divulging the source of the confrontation. It plops in nuggets about Will’s backstory and this mysterious Henry that he keeps mentioning until an ineffective plot twist provides answers. 

“Best of Luck”, a commentary on societal power structures, explores the concepts of passing privilege on to the next generation and gaining and maintaining power at the expense of others. Douglas J. Ogurek ***

Theaker's Quarterly Fiction #79: Unsplatterpunk! 8: out now!

free epub | free pdf | print UK | print USA | Kindle UK | Kindle US

Theaker's Quarterly Fiction #79: Unsplatterpunk! 8 is now out in paperback and ebook, edited by Douglas J. Ogurek!

Steel your guts!

The UNSPLATTERPUNK! slaughterscape expands its grisly reach with more tales that blend a positive message into a cesspit of gore and grossness. In this eighth issue, four heroines bash and slice their way to illumination.

A status-seeking it girl takes self-injury to throbbing new heights in a commentary on the allure of attention via victimhood. The Bachelor unites with Squid Game when a hand model joins a reality TV competition and learns that beauty goes beyond designer stilettos and jewellery. Bullied high schoolers achieve vicarious vengeance in an allegorical tale that explores the power of camaraderie. Kung Fu Sue, returning for her third UNSPLATTERPUNK! performance, gives fans another fix of her fighting virtuosity and nonchalance as she takes on a drug cartel with pachydermatous power.

The moral of the gory

If you’re looking for a splatterpunk anthology that wrings some positivity out of the carnage and nastiness, then this is the anthology for you. Mind you, you’ll still get the cracked bones, exploded heads, and ruptured organs… but you’ll get it with a ray of hope.

Contents

• Star Struck – Kevin Brown
• The BTB Royale – DW Milton
• Schoolyard Saints – Alistair Rey
• Kung Fu Sue and the Drug Lord’s Elephant – Harris Coverley
• The Quarterly Review – Stephen Theaker and Douglas J. Ogurek review The Blood-Drenched Honeycomb by Leo X. Robertson, Dating After the End of the World by Jeneva Rose, Dead Scalp by Jasper Bark, Envy by Ash Ericmore, The God of Wanking by Peter Caffrey, A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay, Millionaires Day by Kit Power and the Ploopy Knob.

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Here are the blood-spattered contributors to this issue.

Alistair Rey is the author of the fiction collection The Art of Ghost Writing. His work has been featured in the Berkeley Fiction Review, Weirdbook, Juked magazine and Lowestoft Chronicle, among other publications. Rey’s fiction also appears in anthologies alongside such authors as Stephen Graham Jones, Philip Fracassi, Jonathan Sims and Gemma Files.

Douglas J. Ogurek is the pseudonymous and sophomoric founder of the unsplatterpunk subgenre, which uses splatterpunk conventions (i.e. transgressive/gory/gross subject matter) to deliver a positive message. His short story collection I Will Change the World… One Intestine at a Time (Plumfukt Press), a juvenile stew of horror and bizarro, aims to make readers lose their lunch while learning a lesson. His novella Stone Ovaries and Bowling Balls Trapped in Beautiful Prodigy World (Planet Bizarro) offers a minefield of immaturity filled with bodily expulsions, princesses, deranged mothers, malapropisms and guacamole.

DW Milton is a pen name. The author has a day job but would rather be writing speculative fiction.

Harris Coverley has had more than a hundred short stories published in Penumbra, Crimeucopia, JOURN-E and The Black Beacon Book of Horror (Black Beacon Books), amongst many others. He has also had over two hundred poems published in journals around the world. He lives in Manchester, England.

Kevin Brown has two published short story collections, Death Roll and Ink on Wood. His fiction, nonfiction and poetry have been published in over 200 literary journals, magazines and anthologies. He has won numerous writing competitions and was nominated for multiple prizes and awards, including four Pushcart Prizes.

Stephen Theaker’s reviews, interviews and articles have appeared in Interzone, Black Static, Prism, Dark Horizons and the BFS Journal. His story “The Reader-Queens of Tranck” appeared in the BFS anthology Emerging Horizons, edited by Allen Ashley. He has written many novels, none of them well-regarded.

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As ever, all back issues of Theaker's Quarterly Fiction are available for free download.

Fear Across the Mersey XV: The Depths | review by Rafe McGregor

Fear Across the Mersey by Ramsey Campbell

PS Publishing, hardback, £25.00, August 2024, ISBN 9781803943701

Like its immediate predecessor, this story is also set in Neston and London (as well as a couple of other locations). Jonathan Miles is a famous crime fiction writer facing every author’s greatest fear: he has run out of ideas and has nothing left to say. Desperate for inspiration, he rents a house where a particularly violent crime took place. It doesn’t seem to help, but it does give him nightmares about even more violent crimes which, if he doesn’t immediately write them down, seem to come true. I read this immediately after finishing Joel Lane’s This Spectacular Darkness: Critical Essays, which includes three essays on Campbell and although I don’t rate ‘The Depths’ quite as highly as Lane, it is definitely one of the best in the first two-thirds of this collection. The real horror is, of course, the death of creativity and the desperation to recover it, not the nightmares.

Fear Across the Mersey XIV: The Ferries | review by Rafe McGregor

Fear Across the Mersey by Ramsey Campbell

PS Publishing, hardback, £25.00, August 2024, ISBN 9781803943701

James Berry works in publishing in London and his uncle, a retired sailor, lives in Neston, on the western side of the Wirral Peninsula, which sits between the Mersey and Dee estuaries. Like much of the coast north of Liverpool, most famously Southport, the sea has retreated from Neston, leaving an inhospitable, in-between wetland. Berry’s uncle disappears while he is visiting, apparently sucked into the saltmarsh, and Berry is haunted by a ship in a bottle he finds there. Campbell makes very good use of the uncanniness of a location that is neither earth nor ocean and describes the collapse of the border between the dry and the wet that follows Berry when he returns to London with inventive imagery. Aside from an internal logic that would have benefitted from more scaffolding, this is another compelling tale of terror that demonstrates Campbell’s mastery of the short story as a literary form.