Fear Across the Mersey VII: The Companion

Fear Across the Mersey by Ramsey Campbell

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

The second sentence of this story may resonate with other readers who have walked Liverpool’s coast as much as it did with me: ‘A couple of paper cups tumbled and rattled on the shore beneath the promenade, and the cold insinuating October wind scooped the Mersey across the slabs of red rock that formed the beach, across the broken bottles and abandoned tyres.’ The protagonist, a man named Stone, is not just a visitor to the fairground, that staple of the horror genre, but an afficionado who spends each of his holidays in a different one. The first indication that he might be a little more than idiosyncratic is when he has a vision of his dead mother and the tale builds to a taught and thrilling climax when he boards the Ghost Train ride. Campbell matches his early eloquence with a deft narrative twist in the very last sentence.

Fear Across the Mersey VI: The Man in the Underpass | 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 by Lynn, a ten-year-old girl, and Campbell captures her voice perfectly, maintaining suspension of disbelief from beginning to end. As the title suggests, the narrative revolves around an underpass, specifically an obscene image painted by graffiti artists, and is driven by another young girl’s obsession with the pre-Columbian deity it depicts. The plot thickens when someone splashes what might be red paint or human or animal blood all over and the police are called. What elevates the tale to the sublime, however, is the atmosphere in which cause and effect take place, which is infected by parental neglect, casual violence, animal cruelty, sexual predation, and an all-too-human predilection for embracing evil in any form it takes. Having already learned to expect the unexpected from Campbell, I wasn’t completely surprised when the identity of the man in the title wasn’t what I anticipated…

Fear Across the Mersey V: The Height of the Scream | review by Rafe McGregor

Fear Across the Mersey by Ramsey Campbell

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

I found this tale difficult to follow, in consequence of swift changes of location accompanied by minimal description, and wasn’t sure if the supernatural was involved or not. The juxtaposed episodes themselves – a hip house party where the hosts attack one another, the scene of a violent suicide, a confrontation with a mutilated war veteran on a bus, the anonymous narrator’s argument with his best friend, and another death – are carefully and innovatively curated, revisiting ‘The Whining’s’ treatment of our great capacities for inhumanity and indifference. I nonetheless felt that I was intended to have a better grasp of whether or not the inhumanity and indifference was merely quotidian or something altogether more spectacular and that the failure wasn’t entirely my own fault. Campbell’s touch is just a little too light here and it’s one of the few short stories I’ve ever read that would have benefitted from more exposition.

Fear Across the Mersey IV: The Whining | review by Rafe McGregor

Fear Across the Mersey by Ramsey Campbell

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

The title of this tale made me chuckle, bringing to mind various colleagues in various workplaces over the years, and I wondered if there would some humour in it. Definitely not: this is the most harrowing so far, a brutally realistic narrative concerning a starving stray dog on the superficial level and staging our capacity for inhumanity to other people and other species at the thematic level. I’ve already mentioned that Campbell has a knack for portraying compelling characters who are unsympathetic, which is evinced again here. On the basis of reading only four of the stories, he also has a knack for setting up the reader’s expectations for narrative resolution and then subverting those expectations. One might say the same of many authors, but Campbell’s subversions are so subtle that he configures an experience which is simultaneously anticipated and astonishing. Clearly the hand of a master of the craft.

Fear Across the Mersey III: The Christmas Present | review by Rafe McGregor

Fear Across the Mersey by Ramsey Campbell

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

The first story in the collection narrated in the first person, with all the challenges and opportunities that brings, and the first where I was familiar with much of the geography (though I’m sure it’s changed considerably in fifty years). ‘The Christmas Present’ is indeed about Christmas in terms of its thematic content and succeeds in exploring the meaning of the holiday in an intellectual and even philosophical way without ever becoming either didactic or dull. This is a signal achievement, given the story’s brevity, and the change of pace in the last two pages creates a rising crescendo with a sudden sense of urgency as Christmas (and who knows what else) approaches at breakneck speed. The conclusion is particularly satisfying, presenting a neat rather than contrived twist, a twist that is both expected and not quite what one was expecting, bringing closure in spite of ending in medias res.

Fear Across the Mersey II: Concussion | review by Rafe McGregor

Fear Across the Mersey by Ramsey Campbell

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

Like so many of the best short stories, ‘Concussion’ begins with a classic and consummate ‘hook’, a device whose purpose is to grab our attention immediately and then drag us through the narrative at breakneck pace until our efforts are rewarded with and in a rich resolution. The hook is the first paragraph, consisting of only two sentences, the second of which is an even bigger barb than the first. Campbell withholds his dénouement until the very last (much longer) paragraph and although it is perfectly plausible, it doesn’t quite fulfil the promise of the preface. What is remarkable, however, is his representation of the surreal or oneiric, sustained with great skill through all the intervening paragraphs. Campbell’s effortless switches between flashbacks and flashforwards are not only completely coherent, but provide a continual reminder that what we are reading is one or more of a hallucination, illusion, fantasy, or daydream.