Spectral Press #1: What They Hear in the Dark, by Gary McMahon – reviewed

Becky and Rob have moved into a creepy new home following a family tragedy, one gradually revealed to the reader. The space between them, of things that can’t be said, is mirrored by the space beneath their stairs, a place where nothing can be said. There, Becky feels the presence of someone they both love and miss; Rob feels something more malicious.

This is the first in a series of chapbooks from Spectral Press, sold on a subscription basis, and given that Gary McMahon seems to be an author with a bright future – a bright future of spreading misery and darkness! – this is a very collectable little item.

Different Skins, by Gary McMahon

Different Skins collects two novellas, “Even the Dead Die” and the shorter “In the Skin”, both by Gary McMahon. They share certain themes – death, identity, skin, gender relations – but are otherwise separate. The marvellous cover is by Vincent Chong.

In “Even the Dead Die” Mike Angelo (his parents must have had a sense of humour) moves through a London that he despises, soon discovering that there’s a worse London beneath. It’s a story of death, rape, murder, prostitution and sexual slavery. Structurally, there are similarities with things like Neverwhere or The Matrix, but in tone it’s closer to the movies of Clive Barker. I won’t say anything more about Mike’s discoveries; I don’t want to spoil the novella for anyone; but as you might expect they are shocking, horrifying and gruesomely entertaining.

This novella was bit of a tough read, even allowing for the gruelling subject matter, because it was marred by mistakes and patches of clunky, awkward writing. Some sentences looked good on the surface but didn’t stand up to scrutiny, while other sentences were overloaded with redundant words. For example see p. 40: “This was becoming repetitive, but despite all the information (he) was imparting, he was going nowhere near the answer to the only question that really mattered.” It’s not exactly wrong, but it’s not exactly elegant either.

Some sentences don’t quite slot together. For example, there was “a lengthy silence on the line, which was soon filled by the sound of Aunt Hilda crying” (p. 21) (was the silence lengthy or soon filled?), and “I needed air, even if it was the polluted miasma that hangs above London like a cloud of radioactive leakage” (p. 24) (if it’s a cloud above London will he be breathing it?). After a revelatory chat, his “mind was drowning in all this sensory information” (p. 52) – presumably the chat was accompanied by a laser show!

The opening line is already infamous: “London is an open wound … through which oozes the rancid puss of society.” And no, this isn’t a story about zombie cats. I’d guess the old lady with the hot body is supposed to be disconcertingly erotic rather than “discerningly erotic” (p. 54), though both could well apply, and when a baddie gets his just desserts I think the process probably involves being pulled apart rather than telling lies (“quickly dissembling him” (p. 67). There’s also a pile of smaller errors and the impression is unfortunately of a story that didn’t go through a proper editorial process.

Still, despite its flaws, it has many strong moments, lots of good ideas, and (as Tim Lebbon notes in his introduction) is written with exceptional passion. If the production is poor, the story being told is more than good enough to compensate and make this a very worthwhile and memorable read.

“In the Skin”, though, was better in every way. Dan goes on a business trip to New York, leaving behind his wife Adi and young son Max. Upon his return, his wife seems jumpy and his son seems unusually bulky. What has happened to them in his absence? And who’s that crawling around in the garden?

As with “Even the Dead Die”, the story is powerful and frightening. There is still the occasional mistake (how could he have watched both planes crash live on 9/11, and how does his laptop’s operating system run once the entire hard drive has been wiped?) but the language is leaner, direct and much less wordy – and hence more impactful. The writing is just plain better.

The author’s notes at the back of the book suggest “In the Skin” was written much more recently than the story that shares its covers (circa 2008, compared to 2002 for at least the first two parts of “Even the Dead Die”), so maybe that explains the differences between them. Either way, this was a very enjoyable book, and if my experience of the same author’s Rain Dogs is anything to go by, within a month or two I’ll have forgotten the mistakes and be rhapsodizing about the bits I loved.

Different Skins, by Gary McMahon, Screaming Dreams, pb, 120pp.

Rain Dogs, by Gary McMahon

Three years ago Guy Renford found a knife-wielding burglar in his baby daughter’s bedroom. He forced him down the stairs, then out of the house, and smashed his skull to pieces on the road outside (it’s never quite clear why he feels so guilty about this!). He’s now out of the clink and hoping to reconnect with his family, but the family of his “victim” have other plans, plans that get out of hand. Rosie is an ex-stripper, planning to leave her abusive American husband after her latest trip to the hospital. She can see dead people. Chapters generally alternate between Guy and Rosie, eventually bringing them together.

This is a good book, but it lacks a bit of polish, especially in the first half. There are too many wasted words (“for the marriage they’d shared which had been doomed from the outset”, p. 68; “She filled the kettle with water from the cold tap”, p. 123), too many stock phrases (“low moaning sound”), and too many places where a phrase could have done with a bit more work, such as “he’d been moulded by familial abuse into a fractured human being” (p. 68). Worst of all is an early scene where Rosie’s abusive husband rapes and then tries to kill her, with “the tip of his now softening member poking out of his trousers like the moist snout of a curious animal” (p. 66). Inappropriate, trite and gross in a single sentence!

There are other problems: Bella, Guy’s wife, makes an absolutely ridiculous decision towards the end of the book, throwing herself and her child into appalling danger at the least provocation to set up an exciting conclusion. The book features that unwelcome speciality of male horror writers: a woman being killed by something entering her vagina – previous entries in this unlovely series include slugs in the work of Shaun Hutson and stretchy vampire penises from Brian Lumley. It’s also a bit repetitive early on, its flashbacks to the backstories of Rosie and Guy having a tendency to lay out the broad strokes before returning to fill in unnecessary detail. The ending is unsubtly telegraphed three quarters of the way thanks to that old horror canard, the magic professor who knows exactly what you need to know; the only question is who precisely will survive.

Then there are a few plain errors, like “You’ve been watching too many Jennifer Lopez movies-of-the-week” (p. 53) – it should have been someone like Melissa Gilbert, since Jennifer Lopez doesn’t do TV movies. The word “hovel” (p. 79) seems to be used to describe a town. A three or four-year-old girl is said to be “regressing to infancy” (p. 188) which can’t have been a long journey. And there’s a glaring mistake on the contents page. The overall impression is of a book that was rushed to publication.

Nevertheless, I really liked it, and with only Ramsey Campbell’s Thieving Fear to go it was very much in the running for my vote in the British Fantasy Awards.

From the half-way point it becomes much better: basically, once things are happening and the writer has something to describe other than people moping around. The last hundred pages are exceptionally exciting. Every scene featuring the Rain Dogs of the title terrifies, their power and brutality unforgettable. It’s all about the implacability of water, and McMahon conveys this in a way that’ll resonate with anyone who’s suffered a leaky roof or a dripping tap (never mind anything more serious). I was also glad to read a BFA-nominated novel that wasn’t largely set in London. The depiction of a father’s feelings for his child is spot on, something it shares with One, by Conrad Williams, who contributes a foreword to this book.

Though the ultra-modern cover set me up to expect something a bit more edgy, this is a good, traditional horror novel in the vein of early James Herbert. It could have done with a bit of touching up here and there, but most of those issues could be easily fixed and I very much doubt that this will be the last edition we see of this novel. As a £25 limited edition hardback it was maybe a little out of its depth, but as a cheap paperback it would knock your socks off. It would make an absolutely fantastic film.

Note that the best way to get a copy of this book now is direct from Gary McMahon, who bought up the stock when Humdrumming went out of business.

Rain Dogs, by Gary McMahon, Humdrumming, hb, 224pp.