Reviews In The Machine : Too Many Eyes, by Patrick Loveland
I’m not entirely sure how I managed to miss this story or how it was kept out of the press, but evidently somewhere in New York there is a now empty grave no longer possessing its former occupant. The long since deceased Rod Serling has risen from the grave. He is once again walking among us, but living under the protection of an assumed name.
And that name is Patrick Loveland.
I realize that it comes off as somewhat of a cheesy line, but the fact is that I’m actually starting to write this review before I’ve even finished reading his most recent book. We are talking about an author who, by all rights should have been born seventy-five years ago, just so he could rise to fame and glory as one of the writers on shows like The Outer Limits or The Twilight Zone or Tales From The Crypt. Because whenever I read his stuff, all I can think is that I want this story on my television, right now and in beautiful black and white with an amazingly creepy score.
Somebody has got to make that happen.
There are plenty of writers out there with great, vivid imaginations. But Loveland always seems to take it to the next level, in a way that’s so completely out there and yet so entertaining that all I want to do is go back to the beginning of the story and look for details that I missed the first time through. It’s at this perfect level with monsters and visual effects in the stories that make you wonder what the hell is going on in this guy’s dreamscapes.
I loved how the stories felt like pieces in a larger puzzle. The stories all feel like they belong together, not simply a common theme but that they could all be happening in a common universe. Several of them are direct continuations of the stories that came before. The stories in the book are separate, but like a mass of swarming tentacles, they are all connected as well. Or, to put better in the context of the book, the stories all feel like different sets of eyes, blinking at you in the darkness which shrouds the creative epicenter that lies at the heart of all of this.
There were a few stories that stood out for me, in particular. The leadoff title, “Ekwiiyemak (The Place Where It Rains)” was a fantastic opening salvo. The genre has come to be called “weird western”, which I have had a hard time wrapping my head around. I’m just not sure what it means. Regardless of how you label it, I think that westerns and horror are a match made in heaven. There is so much unknown to westerns, just from the era they are set in, so many stretches of blank, dark territory where who knows what is going out there. Who knows what could be lurking in the trees over that ridge or in the darkness of those caves? I think Loveland plays those aspects to perfection and makes the historical setting work perfectly with his own narrative sensibilities.
“Iris and Kayyali Beyond Trolltown” presents an engaging world upon which this narrative is drawn. And I liked that Loveland didn’t bore us with a ton of dry exposition, giving us way more than we really need. What information is given comes in a natural pace with the story and did exactly what it needed to do. This was an exciting story and I think I should point out that Loveland does a great job with action and his description of that action. The fast parts of the story feel fast and exciting and I think his background in film allows him to give his writing a very cinematic feel. Whatever it is, it works well.
“R-Day for Mr. D” and “R-Day for Mrs. D” was a cool pair of stories that actually serve nicely as one larger piece. He does this as well in another pair of tales centered around a detective. In these tales, we see a husband and wife pairing off against a monstrous and powerful entity. Both stories stand on their own and also lend each other weight. It’s perfectly handled and paced out.
The last story from the collection, “Beluga” was fantastically bonkers. And yet somehow, Loveland manages to take a concept that is fully around the bend and put you in a place where it seems completely rational and probable. It starts out with the character in quite possibly the most terrifying position imaginable. It’s the stuff that the deepest of nightmares spring from and it all grows into a frantic tale of survival that I couldn’t turn away from.
This collection is incredibly unique and special. Do yourself a favor, support a fantastic human being of an author and make your way over to your favorite book peddler. You won’t regret it.
Chad A. Clark is an author of dark-leaning fiction, born and raised in the middle of the United States. His road began in Illinois, along the banks of the Mississippi and from there he moved to Iowa, where he has lived ever since. From an early age, he was brined in the glory that is science fiction and horror, from the fantastical of George Lucas, Gene Roddenberry and Steven Spielberg to the dark and gritty tales of Stephen King and George Romero. The way from there to here has been littered with no shortage of books and movies, all of which have and continue to inform his narrative style to this day. Chad has written horror, science fiction and non-fiction. He has been published by Crystal Lake Publishing, Dark Minds Press, Shadow Work Publishing, Sirens Call Publications and EyeCue Productions and his books have received critical praise from the Ginger Nuts of Horror, Ink Heist, Confessions of a Reviewer, Horror DNA and This is Horror. For more information on his literary universe, check out his official website or take a peek at his Amazon author page
Fright Fest 2019: Dark City (1998)
Dark City is a film that manages to get just a little more complex and interesting with each time I watch it. It’s one of the more unique and engaging sci-fi films to come out of my early adult years and is one that I am happy to have had the chance to enjoy.
The premise of the film is one that has been done in some form again and again over the years. A man (John Murdoch) wakes up in a bathtub with no memory of who he is or how he got there. There is a dead body in the room and he has blood on him. Everything that follows is a gradual unraveling of this mystery we have been presented with. And as with any mystery, the key is obviously how well done and satisfying the payoff is at the end. Do we walk away satisfied or disappointed?
The idea behind the film is that a giant experiment is taking place, with some kind of species holding mankind hostage. Each night, they cause things in the world to come crashing to a halt and in this seemingly infinite length of unaware inactivity, they begin changing things. Buildings sprout up that weren’t there before. People are moved around like chess pieces, to different houses and different families. A poor couple discussing their day over dinner may blink away and come back to consciousness now in an opulent home, having the same conversation but now in the lifestyle of the rich. How people react to these changes is what our overseers are most interested in, evidently.
Some may feel the urge to compare this to The Matrix and while I can see a connection on a superficial level, it really is comparing apples and oranges. Dark City may have the basic notion of people leading false lives, against their will and without their knowledge, but the concept is so much more rich and interesting than just that.
As Murdoch proves immune to the technology of these aliens, we are left to watch him stumbling about the landscape, trying to remember his past in a world of people who can’t remember anything. I felt the tragic notes of the story much more acutely this time around. That I find myself as well at a point in my life where all I want to do is seek out and take hold of all the things that are now behind me.
William Hurt has grown to become one of my all time favorite actors. He just has this soft-spoken ability to fully inhabit the skin of a character and bring them to life in a way many are unable to. In this 
film, we see him as a police detective, trying futilely to solve a series of homicides, which John Murdoch might be guilty of, clearly having only a limited picture of what is happening in the city around him. He’s also trying to unravel the crazed rantings of his former partner, trying in vain to get a grip on the mindset of someone who has no grip on anything. He can sense that something is wrong in the city. But how can you explore an answer when you don’t yet really have a question? In a way, he is searching for deeper answers on an unconscious level, just as much as John Murdoch is consciously seeking them out.
There’s this odd contrast. Visually, the movie is stunning to watch. All the beautiful city skylines and landscapes and the fact that nearly the entire movie is at night makes it feel almost like a black and white picture. But the lighting and visuals and performances from the cast also lends an incredible melancholy feel. You find yourself observing these people trying to live out their lives, but who are unable to do so, as they end each day being reset by some higher power they are unaware of and don’t understand. They have no concept of what is happening to them and instead seem to exist in this perpetual fog of a semi-depressive state, as the same scenes in their lives are played out, again and again.
One of the most poignant moments in the film for me was when Murdoch tracks down his uncle, who raised him from a child. One question Murdoch seems obsessed with is in finding out how to get to Shell Beach. He is overloaded with memories of a childhood there but despite seeming to know what Shell Beach is, no one he asks is able to tall him how to actually get there. His uncle tries to help Murdoch with his memory issues by showing him some slides from his childhood. But when Murdoch starts to ask his uncle some basic questions, everything just falls apart.
He tries to get at his uncle’s specific memories but finds that those specifics have been long since replaced by generalities, like an intricate ink sketch had been replaced with a basic painting of broad brush strokes. For me, it was a poignant metaphor for getting older, something I think I appreciate more than I did when I was twenty. Our pasts are robbed from us, a little more each day. The person I was twenty years ago has essentially ceased to exist and there’s nothing I can do to bring him back. It was this feeling that struck me most acutely as I re-watched Dark City. Every day, the people of this city are robbed of their lives, wiped clean and then shoved back into those lives, still having to function as if 
nothing had happened. And while on a conscious level, nobody seems aware of their experiences, it seems like behind the vacant gazes of so many characters, they’re all somehow existentially aware of everything they are going through. And the tragedy of this is brought into full form under the constant blanket of cold, dark skies.
Dark City is a special film, full of phenomenal performances. This is one of my favorite pre-Jack Bauer roles from Kiefer Sutherland. I’ve already mentioned William Hurt. Rufus Sewell is spot on as the lead role and the criminally under-recognized Jennifer Connelly puts in a phenomenal performance. And yes, the portrayal of the aliens can be a little on the cheesy side, especially with their names like Mr. Book or Mr. Hand, Mr. Wall and so forth. But the costume and makeup of the creatures was so well done that I’m willing to overlook that aspect.
So many movies anymore are entertaining but they don’t stay with you. There has been a certain amount of drama recently over remarks Martin Scorcese made about not liking superhero films. And while I do find the Marvel movies entertaining, I have to admit that I don’t think he’s wrong. I go to an Avengers film, have a great time and then barely ever think about the movie again after leaving the theater. I rarely have any desire to watch them again. With movies like Dark City, I find it gets into my head. And despite having seen it again and again, I can still find reasons to enjoy it, even though it’s the 
fifth or sixth time I’ve seen it. It’s a style of movie-making that I wish would become more financially viable anymore. Let movies become the landscapes of dreams again and not just plugging in a basic visual formula.
But I digress.
Dark City for me is a story about a man trying to find himself in a society where there is nothing left to be found. It’s about how powerful our innate drive to discover truth can be, no matter how heavily it might be shrouded and inaccessible to us. It’s a reminder that we might be lost to each other, we might be lost to ourselves, but sometimes there still remains that tiniest of tethers, that cord of truth and experience that can return us to what once was. We just need to learn how to operate the mechanisms within ourselves.
To find our own Shell Beach.
Who knows who might be waiting for you there?
Chad A. Clark is an author of dark-leaning fiction, born and raised in the middle of the United States. His road began in Illinois, along the banks of the Mississippi and from there he moved to Iowa, where he has lived ever since. From an early age, he was brined in the glory that is science fiction and horror, from the fantastical of George Lucas, Gene Roddenberry and Steven Spielberg to the dark and gritty tales of Stephen King and George Romero. The way from there to here has been littered with no shortage of books and movies, all of which have and continue to inform his narrative style to this day. Chad has written horror, science fiction and non-fiction. He has been published by Crystal Lake Publishing, Dark Minds Press, Shadow Work Publishing, Sirens Call Publications and EyeCue Productions and his books have received critical praise from the Ginger Nuts of Horror, Ink Heist, Confessions of a Reviewer, Horror DNA and This is Horror. For more information on his literary universe, check out his official website or take a peek at his Amazon author page
Fright Fest 2019: Cloverfield (2008)
Cloverfield is a title that seems to be quite divisive among film lovers. You either love it or you join up with the masses that have elected to turn it into an object of scorn and mockery. Despite the success of films like this and the Blair Witch Project, found footage films has become a genre that I’ve seen frequently falling into the crosshairs of critics. Either for the vomit-inducing lack of a good steady shot or for the absurdity in the logic of the premise, that a person fleeing for their life would none-the-less do so while carrying a camera and dropping one-liners the entire time.
I really do get it. I can see how people could see found footage as little more than a gimmick to publicize the film. That the credibility you think you’re gaining with a low budget film such as this can sometimes be seen as an excuse for not investing time in the writing and production quality of the product.
That’s all fine and I can’t say that I have any logical grounds to counter the argument. Although I do suspect that making a movie appear so casual and haphazard takes more effort than the average person would be willing to admit. Still, I get it. It doesn’t make sense that anyone would be clutching to a camera, filming every horrid thing they’re going through. Anyone with an ounce of sense in their head would toss the camera to the side and buy themselves that much more speed to maybe get away with their life.
The thing is, these movies, even more than the rest, aren’t about capturing the height of realism and credibility. Movies are all about the illusion of the storytelling. It’s a lesson we should have learned long ago in the earliest days of our childhood, going to the theater to see jedis clashing lightsabers or to see talking cars or pirates in outer space. Enjoying movies is about enjoying that magic.
Now I’m not saying that at the crusty old age I’ve gotten to, I’m still sitting in the theater, glowing in the magic of the cinema. But I think I’m still capable of leaving a certain amount of my disbelief at the door and allowing myself to sit back, relax and just enjoy a story, even though it might not be realistic. Not for nothing, but if you’re looking for realism in a movie about a skyscraper-sized monster rising from the depths of the ocean, you might be in the wrong store.
Cloverfield is a fun movie. And while that may make the more refined of us turn their nose up at the notion, for 
me, finding that thrill of excitement while watching a movie is all about chasing down those childhood experiences.
I’ve loved monster movies for a long time and what I love about this film is that it shows us what the story might look like if it was from the perspective of one of those countless screaming victims, running through the streets, looking for safety. There isn’t a booming narrative voice in this and there was only one recognizable face in the cast, although you had to be paying attention to catch him.
What the camera serves in this movie is to put us into the story as a character, sprinting in this insane race to try and survive in the face of total destruction. It was a nicely conceived and executed notion. And while very little is explained, I felt that for the kind of movie it was, this worked perfectly. We knew no more than the characters being hunted down and for me it made the experience all the more frightening and fast-paced.
I also liked the device of the occasional interludes inserted in the movie, (ostensibly bits of recordings on the tape) of two of the main characters sharing an afternoon together.
The way this is introduced is as follows. At a party, one of the characters is handed a camera and asked to film people at the event. Assuming he is supposed to use the tape already in the machine, he does so, not realizing that he is taping over the old content. So after long stretches of death and destruction, the film will cut back to what was on it originally, an afternoon at Coney Island with two people in love. And again, it makes no sense that the footage would be there. It should all be erased and gone. But for the purposes of the film, it provides some moments of levity between the characters and highlights the tragedy of events unfolding.
Cloverfield was a stunning movie experience. It was loud and fast and took no prisoners. The experiences of these characters is terrifying and the frantic nature of this chain of events is expertly laid out for you. If you can turn down the volume on your adult side and just sit back, you could really enjoy this. Let the visuals wash over you and buckle up for a bumpy ride.
If you want to watch a movie where the army guy and the scientist brilliantly save the day and vanquish the monster, you should give this one a pass. But if you might enjoy seeing a group of characters dumped into a situation where they are suddenly fighting for their lives with little chance of seeing the dawn, this movie might just be the one for you.
Chad A. Clark is an author of dark-leaning fiction, born and raised in the middle of the United States. His road began in Illinois, along the banks of the Mississippi and from there he moved to Iowa, where he has lived ever since. From an early age, he was brined in the glory that is science fiction and horror, from the fantastical of George Lucas, Gene Roddenberry and Steven Spielberg to the dark and gritty tales of Stephen King and George Romero. The way from there to here has been littered with no shortage of books and movies, all of which have and continue to inform his narrative style to this day. Chad has written horror, science fiction and non-fiction. He has been published by Crystal Lake Publishing, Dark Minds Press, Shadow Work Publishing, Sirens Call Publications and EyeCue Productions and his books have received critical praise from the Ginger Nuts of Horror, Ink Heist, Confessions of a Reviewer, Horror DNA and This is Horror. For more information on his literary universe, check out his official website or take a peek at his Amazon author page
Fright Fest 2019: Event Horizon (1997)
This is not the first time I have reviewed this movie. In fact, it isn’t the first time I have reviewed this movie for this site. But it happened to come up as relevant to the theme for this month and all I could think was, “I couldn’t just recycle the old review, could I? That wouldn’t be right.”
There are certain plot formulas that will win me over, just for coming into the room and saying, “hello”. And one such formula is that of the ghost ship, especially if you add in a kind of cautionary angle. The ship had gone off on some kind of exploratory mission, was never heard from again and then, decades later just shows up, abandoned. I love the inherent darkness and peril that hovers just outside the borders of those stories and the first time you read or watch something like that, you spend most of your time clenching, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Now if you were to make that concept into a sci-fi movie, there’s going to be little chance I won’t like it. You’d have to try pretty hard to turn me away.
Enter into the conversation, Event Horizon.
So maybe you shouldn’t give this review any weight because the person writing it isn’t coming from an impartial point of view. Maybe I should adopt a more discerning eye for the more important flaws of a movie and be willing to put my feelings aside in the essential dissection of the mechanics of a film in review.
Maybe there’s some value to that point but I’m not doing it. Sorry.
I mean, not really but you know what I mean.
The premise of the movie is (as ideal for horror) simple and effective. Sam Neil plays Dr. William Weir, a man who is in mourning for the death of his wife and in the midst of this is called to duty in the investigation of an exploratory vessel he helped design, years ago. The Event Horizon, created for deep space exploration, has suddenly reappeared after vanishing without a trace and with no explanation.
A salvage crew led by Captain Miller (played by the outstanding Laurence Fishburne) has been scrambled to go to the ship and Weir has been tasked to accompany them, as an expert on its technology.
What happened to the Event Horizon? Where has it been all this time? Why has it come back? What happened to the crew? All questions that will need to be answered in the course of their mission. And after a quick introduction to our cast of characters, the story is moving full speed. What I think the film uses most effectively is that of isolation and foreboding. As soon as the ship catches up to the Event Horizon and boards her, you have a sense of something dark about the ship and that Weir knows something that he isn’t sharing with the rest of the crew. All of this unfolds nicely as most everyone starts to come unhinged and eventually they are trapped on the Event Horizon.
As the ship’s creator, Weir seems to be especially affected by the ship as his recent emotional traumas are exploited to bring him around to a rapidly descending path into madness.
For me, Event Horizon is all about the claustrophobia you manage to feel within the immense vastness of space. Every scene is oozing tension with the mystery of what might be lurking around the corner and what entity may have returned as a part of this cursed ship. You spend most of the film bracing yourself for coming upon the brutal end that you know most of these characters are destined for.
There is a certain mythology around this film on the subject of the infamous director’s cut. Evidently there was quite a bit of footage in the film that was removed as it was thought too disturbing and considering what did end 
up in the final product, I can only imagine what that would entail. However, while footage like this would normally be reserved for an eventual re-release as a blu-ray collector’s edition, that footage has sadly been lost forever as it was evidently exposed as a result of being improperly archived. For some reason, for me this gives the film a little extra bit of aura, somewhat along the lines of all the mysterious problems that existed on the set of The Exorcist. After being simply missing for years, the lost footage from Event Horizon was found in a Transylvanian salt mine. That in and of itself is begging to have a book written about it.
Event Horizon is a beautifully shot film with fantastic atmosphere and tension. I love all the scenes on the ship with thunder rumbling outside even though it makes no fracking sense that they would be able to hear thunder while in orbit. After all, in space no one can hear…well you get the point. Still, I love it. Maybe I’m being suckered into the fly trap of the film’s superficiality but I don’t care. It’s a movie I love to watch and I would place it on a level as being a later generation’s version of Hellraiser, another favorite of mine.
Sometimes things that we think are lost come back. And sometimes they bring friends. Check this film out and you can see a pretty good example of this.
Chad A. Clark is an author of dark-leaning fiction, born and raised in the middle of the United States. His road began in Illinois, along the banks of the Mississippi and from there he moved to Iowa, where he has lived ever since. From an early age, he was brined in the glory that is science fiction and horror, from the fantastical of George Lucas, Gene Roddenberry and Steven Spielberg to the dark and gritty tales of Stephen King and George Romero. The way from there to here has been littered with no shortage of books and movies, all of which have and continue to inform his narrative style to this day. Chad has written horror, science fiction and non-fiction. He has been published by Crystal Lake Publishing, Dark Minds Press, Shadow Work Publishing, Sirens Call Publications and EyeCue Productions and his books have received critical praise from the Ginger Nuts of Horror, Ink Heist, Confessions of a Reviewer, Horror DNA and This is Horror. For more information on his literary universe, check out his official website or take a peek at his Amazon author page
Reviews In The Machine : City of the Flesh Eaters (2019)
Growing up, zombie movies were something that really fueled my love for the horror genre. They scared all holy hell out of me and I think the main reason was the implacability and inevitable nihilistic doom to which the movies all seemed to portend. A zombie by itself might pose no threat. But bring on a herd of the shambling monsters and your odds were a lot worse. Add the fact that as the movie goes on, there just seems to be more and more of the things and the outlook is bleak, indeed.
This was the benchmark I used as I began to develop my own sensibilities in crafting horror and it is something I will always be grateful for.
So reading this series from Thomas Flowers I find myself appreciative on several levels. First, it returns the zombie genre back to those days I remember from so long ago but as a bonus, he has also grounded these stories heavily in the eighties. Doing so only helps me feel an even stronger connection as the books have now become tied up in my own fuzzy, happy memories of times gone by.
This series, currently standing at two books, began with Island of the Flesh Eaters. And as the VHS video tape-style cover and title would suggest, this is one story that goes after you from page one, taking little time for fluff or ceremony. You are thrust into the story along with all the gore and glory you would expect. It’s a quick read and well worth your time.
Just last month, we got the next book in the series, City of the Flesh Eaters. And what I think works most effectively here, besides the writing, is the fact that while it exists as a sequel, it runs more concurrently to the events from book one and as a result, the two books could be theoretically read in any order. It’s something that can be hard to pull off but Flowers has done a good job in this effort.
The book follows a format of moving the camera around between a group of characters, giving individual chapters to specific people. The story-lines don’t all occur necessarily at the same time and while it can be jarring to jump from one character to the next and back again, I think this feeling is actually important to the experience of the book. After all, isn’t disorientation exactly what the characters are experiencing themselves?
As would be expected, this story moves along quickly and as the reader, I was waiting for everyone to be brought together and the point where the book would become unified and moving in the same direction. And then, in one brilliant, extended chapter, Flowers takes hold of the different threads of the plot, brings them all together and makes them one with a heavy piece of twine wrapped tightly around everything. It is a plot that is deceptively complex, fooling you with how simple it seems. It is a project that requires organization, even being of shorter length and again, Flowers has proven up to the task of keeping a lot of narrative organized and up in the air.
If you cut your teeth on the glory of eighties horror, this is a book that you should check out. While store-bought nostalgia has become more of the norm anymore, this one feels quite different, coming from the creative mind of someone who has a clear love for that time and for the culture which came out of it. Reading this as well as his Planet of the Dead series gives me little glimpses into what it is I love about zombie movies in the first place. Do yourself a favor and dive in today.
Chad A. Clark is an author of dark-leaning fiction, born and raised in the middle of the United States. His road began in Illinois, along the banks of the Mississippi and from there he moved to Iowa, where he has lived ever since. From an early age, he was brined in the glory that is science fiction and horror, from the fantastical of George Lucas, Gene Roddenberry and Steven Spielberg to the dark and gritty tales of Stephen King and George Romero. The way from there to here has been littered with no shortage of books and movies, all of which have and continue to inform his narrative style to this day. Chad has written horror, science fiction and non-fiction. He has been published by Crystal Lake Publishing, Dark Minds Press, Shadow Work Publishing, Sirens Call Publications and EyeCue Productions and his books have received critical praise from the Ginger Nuts of Horror, Ink Heist, Confessions of a Reviewer, Horror DNA and This is Horror. For more information on his literary universe, check out his official website or take a peek at his Amazon author page
Walking In Memory, by Chad A. Clark
The plane set down in New Orleans in a pouring rain. He stepped out of the terminal, his bright red alligator boots crunching down on broken glass. He raised up a hand, clutching a pack of cigarettes, as he waved for the next cab.
He walked down Bourbon Street, glancing up at the balconies, and remembering how her hair had flowed in the breeze as they pelted the Mardi Gras crowds with peanuts. He took long drags from the cigarette, the smoke rising up to mingle with the banners and elaborate flower arrangements that lined the street.
The coffee shop where he had met her was still there, now sandwiched between trendy chain restaurants. The ragged poster of Louis Armstrong still stood guard over the patrons, partaking in burnt espresso and stale sandwiches. He had never cared for the place, but the essence of her still lingered there and who was he to fight the pull of tradition?
On the next corner, as he tried to fight the taste of caffeinated memories, the smell of catfish frying wafted down from the balcony above, and he could make out the sound of someone inside, banging on an old piano. It was the same corner he had walked past with her, the preacher standing on his apple crate, reaching out to the crowd, reaching out for him.
She had always loved the city, the people and the music, the food and festivals. Loved the smell of spice in the air, and nights spent trudging through the worst parts of town to find restaurants hidden behind heavy metal doors. He was often surprised that they hadn’t needed a password, just to get in.
She had always been there next to him on these trips, here in the city and beyond. She was supposed to stay there, always at his side. Now the only presence he felt around him was the weight of absence.
So, hours after his informal walking tour, he blinked and found himself on the bed of a hotel room. He reached across to return the now empty bottle of gin next to the empty bottle of scotch. Satisfied that he had finished both, he reached to the table on the other side of the bed, took hold of the tiny prescription bottle and laid back, steeling himself against the imminent comfort of the outstretched shades of eternity.
Read more short stories like this in Chad A. Clark’s collections, A Shade For Every Season and Two Bells At Dawn.
Chad A. Clark is an author of horror and science fiction. For more information on his literary universe, check out his official website or take a peek at his Amazon author page
Reviews in the Machine : The Cold, by Rich Hawkins
It’s been a long held fact that you can’t judge a book from its cover. I would disagree with this notion from time to time but the relevance to this discussion is the incredible cover art that perfectly sets the mood for this book. This cover looks like the book was published, ready for John Carpenter to come swooping in to do the film adaptation. And in all seriousness, if this book makes it into the right hands, I can only hope that that adaptation becomes a reality.
I have been a fan of Rich Hawkins from the early days of the Last Plague. He has taken his books in any number of different directions but what I constantly find myself drawn to as a unifying factor in his books is a profoundly ingrained and yet beautiful sense of bleak darkness. There’s an almost nihilistic drive to the writing that, while sad on the surface is also compelling enough to keep me turning the pages and pulling me through the story.
The Cold starts abruptly and while many would call for more information and context, I think this works better. Rich is superb at putting the reader into the story, along with the characters. The book opens on a train and we have about that much time to acclimate before things kick off. It begins to snow and the train stops, stranding the passengers. And hidden within the misty snow and driving wind are creatures that are powerful and terrifying.
I hate retreating back to the tried and true catch phrases like, “Truly no one is safe in…” But in this case, I can say with total accuracy that no one is safe in a Rich Hawkins book. As our characters do what they can to make their way across this nightmarish landscape, new people are quickly introduced. And just as quickly, they are obliterated out of the story in spectacular fashion.
And while you aren’t given a ton of back-story up front, I felt like the protagonist managed to grow in my mind as the book wound its way to the gripping finale. Rich does a great job keeping with what you know and mixing all of that into a great tale, even when there’s more still yet to come.
Rich has some of the most vivid and visually creative descriptions I think I’ve read in some time. So while the book could be seen as maybe a touch plot-heavy, I find that the plot is so great I just don’t care that much. The book could have been twice as long and I would have happily gone along for the entire ride. A meal as good as this one, you don’t never want it to end.
We live in a world in which every day, people seem to be a little bit angrier. For whatever reason, so many people seem all the more invested in finding reasons to take issue with each other. And I’m not putting down the more politically inclined of our society or those who speak up in favor of those who can’t speak for themselves. But there’s no reason why that has to completely take over our lives. It’s also refreshing to be able to pick up a book and take in a really great story. This is a frightening tale that is paced brilliantly and leaves you wanting to immediately know when the next Rich Hawkins book is going to finally hit the shelves.
Or at least wondering when John Carpenter is going to get around to doing an adaptation of this book.
Chad A. Clark is an author of horror and science fiction. For more information on his literary universe, check out his official website or take a peek at his Amazon author page
Paranormal & Supernatural In Review : Drag Me To Hell (2009)
Drag Me To Hell is a film that I enjoyed when it first came out but with so much time having passed since, for the purposes of this review I thought I should re-watch it. And what I found was that I wasn’t enjoying it as much the second time around. And this could be a simple case of a movie not holding up as well for multiple viewings but I tried to mull it over and decide what exactly about it bothered me this time, as opposed to when I first saw it.
And in the end, I think what I can come up with is that this is the kind of movie that is going to depend a lot on what you’re expecting to see as you walk through the door. What style of horror are you expecting and how well does it hold up under those expectations?
Looking at this as a straight horror film, I felt like it came up quite short in the end. And it’s more than just the acting not being great or the cringe-worthy lines of dialog, the likes of, “I beat you, you old bitch” or “That’s the last of my hair you ever get!” For me, it goes down to how the premise of the movie itself is executed, pardon the pun.
Now don’t misunderstand me, I love a good story involving a curse. But in this case, I kind of felt like the movie just goes through the motions of establishing said curse.
The movie opens on a young couple rushing to the aid of a medium. Their son has been marked and made the target for a powerful demon. He has been hearing voices following an incident in which he stole a necklace from a group of gypsies. Always gypsies, right? The parents tried to return the necklace but to no avail. And in the course 
of the attempted séance, a demon attacks and takes the boy, dooming him to an apparent eternity of suffering.
Right off the bat, I have a problem.
Give me a moment and I’ll come back to explain.
Flash forward some thirty years later and we are with our protagonist, Christine. Christine is a loan officer at a bank who is competing with a sniveling coworker for a promotion and things aren’t looking good for her. On this day, an elderly woman comes to the bank because her home is about to be repossessed. She pleads for leniency, despite already having gotten multiple extensions. Christine goes to her boss who implies pretty strongly that if she hopes for this promotion, she should turn this woman away. But of course it’s her choice.
Christine rejects the woman’s plea for help and in the course of her desperation, she makes somewhat of a scene in the bank, begging on her knees and in the course of a mildly physical confrontation where they kind of get tangled up in each other, Christine calls security, having the woman kicked out. She leaves, scolding Christine for shaming her and I’m pretty sure you can guess where the story goes from there.
My problem is at the point where it seems like these people drop a curse on someone in the blink of an eye. And while I get that the point is to generate sympathy for the characters, it goes so far as to make the gypsies in the movie just seem like unreasonable assholes. Look at something like Stephen King’s Thinner. In this story, you have a main character who is in an equally sympathetic situation but at least there’s the other side of the coin where you realize he could have been responsible for a death. He is being punished for an act that most of us would consider equally horrible. There’s a balance.
In this? A child is dammed to eternal suffering in hell? For stealing a necklace? That they tried to give back? Could Christine have given the woman a break and given her another extension? Sure. But is it really her fault that the loan is so far behind? Should she be cursed to her own eternity in hell for something like this?
The responses seem all out of proportion with the crime. At some point, you would think that the demon these people are calling up would be like, “Hey, could you stop summoning me every time the checkout clerk at Costco is mean to you?”
I know, I’m taking this aspect of the plot too seriously as obviously this is just intended as a mechanism to put the protagonist into a situation of peril. I just thought they could have done a better job making the main character a bit less sympathetic while still preserving the overall tragedy of the notion of a curse.
All of that aside, I do have to acknowledge some of the better parts of the movie and there are some fantastic moments of gross gore in all of its horrific glory. There are any number of scenes involving the main character and dead bodies and fluids expelling that are pure gold for their entertainment value.
And that brings me to the other side of this coin and what I think settles my mind in terms of seeing the reaction to this movie as being so linked with the attitude you have going in.
I mean, who is this that we are talking about, anyway? Sam Raimi has certainly established himself as a name when it comes to epic, splatter-tastic cult horror films. I mean, that’s what he’s known for AFTER consideration of his epic cameo appearance in Spies Like Us. From the opening moments of Drag Me To Hell when the retro logo for Universal crawls onto the screen, I should have been expecting a throwback to a fantastic era of horror when the experience was just as much about calling friends over right before you ordered the pizza and began stacking up the VHS tapes.
These were not high-brow movies, meant to be taken seriously. This isn’t an experience that is necessarily going to 
leave you enlightened and more mature. None of it is really meant to be taken on an intellectual level.
Looking through that lens allows me to relax a bit and take in the absurdities of the film as just part of the ride.
The moment of the movie where I think it all crystallized for me had to be the goat sequence. If you aren’t familiar, basically the plan that is hatched by the medium that Christine goes to for help is to summon this demon, trap it within the body of a goat and then kill the goat. Sure, nothing could go wrong. Anyway, the moment when the animatronic goat becomes possessed is one of the more hysterical sequences I think I have seen in any kind of a film, be it horror or comedy or whatever else. How can you not love a movie that has the guts to create a scene as over the top as that?
So I guess my overall diagnosis of the film and how I reacted to it is that I think maybe Raimi was hedging his bets a little too much. The film kind of dips its toes into both sides of the fence but doesn’t seem to commit to one or the other. I think this either needed to be a serious horror film or he had to flip all caution into the wind and go totally over the top. A lot of the movie feels like it’s kind of stutter-stepping in that direction without having the conviction to just do it.
What I’m saying is that if we had slapped on a little more cheese, we might be talking about this film, right alongside the likes of The Evil Dead.
Chad A. Clark is an author of horror and science fiction. For more information on his literary universe, check out his official website or take a peek at his Amazon author page
First Meetings, by Chad A. Clark
Before the crew had even finished the landing sequence, the delegation of Khaln’aari had emerged from the forest to greet them. Captain Altranor led them down the ramp to meet the party with the crew already in full dress uniform. Theirs was one of the first crews to come to the planet, and it lifted their spirits to find such a warm reception.
The digital network that was streamed through their comm badges was able, albeit slowly, to translate what the Khaln’aari were saying. Before long, the formalities of the reception had lessened somewhat to a more comfortable familiarity. They exchanged gifts, the Captain giving the Khaln’aari a glass figurine of Thoth, the Egyptian god of wisdom. The Khaln’aari had given each of the crew necklaces of tiny, but intricately sculpted pieces of brawn’dak stone.
The two groups entertained each other at the reception site with traditional myths native to each others’ cultures. They traded the stories, back and forth, until the sun was starting to set beyond the southern horizon.
The food was by far, the highlight of the evening.
Being nighttime hunters, the Khaln’aari allowed several members of the crew, including the Captain to join them on that evening’s excursion. The crew had been able to achieve several kills, even though all they saw of the animals were dark shapes running through the trees. The Khaln’aari had several dozen kills, and they sent the younger hunters of the tribe to collect the bodies and clean them for the feast.
Hours later at dinner, the servers brought out pots, steaming from within. The stews, all different, were served to everyone, dark and rich, with the most moist, and flavorful meat any of them had ever eaten. The over-sized glasses of blood-red wine went straight through them, and soon, most were seeing the table through an unsteady haze of pre-intoxication.
The Captain stood to toast the hospitality of their hosts and to thank the Khaln’aari for the feast.
There was a tittering of laughter in response to the toast and for the first time, the Captain looked uncertain. The leader of the Khaln’aari rose and spoke loudly for quite some time, the rest of his delegation chuckling as he went on. It took a minute before the neural network was able to fully translate what was being said, and another minute before the implication of his statement set in.
“That is precisely what the last group of humans who visited here said. I know that you believe you were the first to set foot here, as did they. You were incorrect in that assumption, as were they. They enjoyed their meals as well, that is, before they knew what they were eating, or rather, who they were eating. As great as their anger was at being tricked into hunting their own kind, the humans who had visited here before them, it paled in comparison to the revelation that it was those fellow travelers who they had been dining on.”
The crew all pushed back from the table, meaning to stand, reaching for weapons that the Captain had not let them bring for fear of offending the Khaln’aari. Before they could even rise to their feet, guards stepped forward out of the shadows and held them down in their chairs. The Captain stood frozen in place, unable to move or react. The leader spoke one last time, “I wonder,” he said as he lifted a glass, “how the next crew will feel about hunting you. Do you think they will enjoy the food?”
Read more short stories like this in Chad A. Clark’s collections, A Shade For Every Season and Two Bells At Dawn.
Chad A. Clark is an author of horror and science fiction. For more information on his literary universe, check out his official website or take a peek at his Amazon author page
Reviews In The Machine : Compliance (2012)
Compliance is a movie that I watched ages ago, back in the days of old of Netflix and bright red envelopes. But the movie recently popped up again on my Amazon prime list so I thought it would be worth paying it a revisit.
Compliance isn’t a horror movie necessarily. It doesn’t have monsters or the supernatural or any kind of ghoulish threat to our main characters. However, the experience of the protagonist in this movie definitely crosses over the border into what anyone in their right mind would consider to be horrific. It’s the kind of story that shines a disturbing light on how easy it can be to get people of strong moral character to do the most depraved and horrible things.
The film is based on actual events which maddeningly could be accurately be described as a series of phone pranks. For the most part the basic details were the same. An individual calls in to a restaurant claiming to be a police officer. He tells the manager that he has just taken a complaint from a customer who claims that a cashier from the restaurant has stolen money from her purse. And because there isn’t an officer available to come to the restaurant, he needs the manager to pull the employee aside, detain her and go through her belongings to try and find this money. Continue Reading
Ambition, by Chad A. Clark
Morris ducked through the archway into the cemetery, trying to stay out of sight. That intern had been at the movie and clearly was interested in conversation that Morris wanted no part of. As soon as the credits started to roll, he jumped up out of his seat and darted out through the rear emergency exit. He thought he had made a clean getaway but still, he heard the sound of dragging footsteps, coming from somewhere behind him. The kid was nothing if not relentless.
A certain amount of hero worship was to be expected when you were a vice president of foreign acquisitions. He was used to that, but the unending barrage of questions and requests was almost enough for him to consider early retirement. He had neither the interest nor the time to be just some renewable resource. Not unless he was getting paid.
Besides, it wasn’t as if there was a career path that he could recommend, based on his vast experience. Granted, climbing the corporate ladder had always been easy for him. What he could never say was that the reason was that people ahead of him on the food chain always seemed to fall victim to convenient accidents. How could he phrase that in the form of a mission statement? Kid, just make sure you’re always in position to step up, if and when someone kicks the bucket. Better yet, make sure you provide the bucket. Continue Reading
Saugus Falls, an excerpt, by Chad A. Clark
A few months ago, I began writing what I thought was going to be a short story. As I got into it, however, I realized that this was likely going to end up being a full novel. For posterity and maybe to motivate myself, I am sharing the first chapter with you now, in all it’s rough-draftiness-glory. I’ve done very little to this, keeping it pretty close to how it sprang out of my mind. I’ve given it a quick read to make it (hopefully) not completely embarrassing. Still, it’s a project that I’ve been intrigued to see what direction it’s going in. Check it out, I hope you enjoy it. It will be some time before this project sees the light of day but it’s from here that it begins.
Nolan picked up the battered Zippo from the gravel. He took note of his fingers trembling as he wiped the greasy leavings of blood from the tarnished metal. The thing was frail-looking, despite the breadth of time and destruction that it had borne witness to. He wondered at how many fire-fights it had gone through, tucked away in his grandfather’s uniform as he struggled to find warmth in the Ardennes Forest. A battered landscape long since given itself up to the cold of empty death.
Now the thing was no better than a token for drunk rednecks to go bare-knuckles over in the parking lot of a bar that looked like it only served as the last stop before the end of the line. He hawked up the gunk in his throat and spit, feeling something dislodge in the process and watched detachedly as a tooth skittered off towards the sewer. Considering how much the side of his face still burned from where the guy had put the pool que, one tooth was probably getting off easy.
Maybe it was time to call it quits on this town. Put boots to that dusty Iowa road and depart for yet one more point B. It was a bit far to the next town but he could always get a good start now, thumbing his way for the rest. Someone would be willing to pick him up and toss him a ride. Even if it was in the flatbed of a pickup that wheezed and groaned, like it was on the verge of giving up the ghosts. He just had to be patient and put himself in the right position to catch a ride. Continue Reading
Reviews in the Machine : Frankenstein Theory, by Jack Wallen
At some point, author Jack Wallen made the decision to climb the literary mountain and write his own interpretation of one of the classics, Mary Shelley‘s Frankenstein. And as we currently sit in the era of the reboot and the remake, I think it would be totally understandable if the reflexive reaction to something like this would be to dismiss. To bemoan the general lack of originality and new ideas that are popular culture seems unable to produce anymore.And Don’t get me wrong, the language of Mary Shelley is beautiful and it is a book I enjoy a great deal. It’s just that, generationally we are so far removed from that period of time and that language. It’s overly simplistic to accuse a lack of intellect when people have a hard time engaging with classic literature. It’s simply that for many, the process of engaging with a voice so far removed from us just isn’t worth the pay-off of what we get in the narrative. And for as simple as I’m sure many would dismiss books of our current era, I have to think that a hundred years from now, readers would have just as much trouble trying to get at the heart of what was being written. The key I see to my enjoyment of this book is how it manages to dust off the power of Shelly’s work and make it feel less like a literary artifact.
Chad A. Clark is an author of horror and science fiction. For more information on his literary universe, check out his official website or take a peek at his Amazon author page
Interviews in the Machine : Jack Wallen
Tune in tomorrow for our review of Jack Wallen’s latest book, Frankenstein Theory. For now, check out this interview we conducted with him as well.
MM : Tell us a little about yourself and what put you on the road to being an author.
JW :I spent the first 30 years of my adult life as a professional actor. I was on the road, traveling across the country, from gig to gig, and finally landed at my current home state, where I performed for one of the largest theater for young audiences in America. During my ten years as a resident actor there, I realized that Actor’s Equity Association’s retirement plan was, in a word, sad. When that hit home, I knew I had to find something that could serve as a retirement.
Flash backward to graduate school (go, Purdue!) and I had a very tight-knit group of friends who played a lot of role playing games. We spent an entire year playing Vampire: The Masquerade. I became so connected with the character I played, I decided I wanted to continue his story. After leaving Purdue, I had no one around me to play with (sad panda), so I decided the best way to keep that character in my mind was to write out his story.
Turns out, I actually had a knack for verbiage. That story never saw the light of day (although I do still have the manuscript), but it kicked off my love for writing.
MM: How would you characterize your writing? Genre? Ideal audience?
JW: To sum up my writing is tough, because I write in so many genres. I tend to allow the Universe to instruct me what to write next, so I never know what genre I’ll be playing in. Outside of that, my writing tends to be intellectual and lyrical. I’ve always felt, as a writer, words are my tool to convey plot, character, relationship, ambiance, mood, style, rhythm … and so much more. And so, I use those words as a composer uses notes, a painter uses paint, or a sculptor uses a chisel and clay. To me, it’s artistic expression on a high level.
MM: A number of your books have connections with music. The Kitty in a Casket series as well as Punk Ass Punk. Music certainly plays a central role in Frankenstein Theory. How does your background as a musician and an actor inform your writing?
JW: It’s one of the things I hold most dear, as it helps me to understand things like point/counterpoint and rhythm. As an artist, one of the things I talk about a lot (when I teach) is a bit of music theory call non-harmonic tones. These are tones which color melody as it passes from phrase to phrase. It’s a bit of a stretch to use it with the written word, but there are ways – as in transitions from beat to beat, or scene to scene. Being able to blend those moments together with tension or resolution really brings the writing to a new level. Those “passing tones” help the characters to navigate the waters of plot with grace, precision, empathy, pain, wit … you name it. Outside of that rather esoteric notion, the use of rhythm is incredibly important to my writing. When I see paragraph after paragraph written as big blocks of text, I immediately see a writer who has no sense or understanding of the role rhythm in the written word. Most humans don’t speak or think in that manner … they think in spurts and sputters, intermixed with long, drawn-out thoughts. Writing should reflect that type of rhythm.
MM: I’m old enough that I can still just remember the end of the era when going to the movies was more of an event, almost on level with going to the theater. I see the Universal Monster Franchise as a great symbol of that era. What drew you to these stories?
JW: First of all, I adore those old black and white films. When I was a child, my favorite memories are watching the horror films of old. I couldn’t get enough of B-Horror and B-Scifi. I think there’s this layer of innocence to those films that allowed people to be so much more frightened of the unknown. These films brought to the celluloid table something no one had ever before seen, so even the original Frankenstein was able to frighten them to nearly fainting. Today, we’ve pretty much witnessed every possible horror and calamity that there is to behold, so there is no longer such thing as innocence in the cinema. The same thing holds true with books.
MM: How did Frankenstein Theory come to be, specifically?
JW: It actually started out as a short story. A gent reached out to me, saying he was going to be doing an anthology of short stories, based on the Universal Monsters. He gave me Frankenstein, and I decided to do a sort of prequel to the film … a sort of “What happened to lead up to Victor reanimating a human?” After submitting the short story, the gent had to abandon the project (for reasons unknown). I loved the story so much, I decided it needed to be fleshed out. That led to me taking on the story with the twist found in Frankenstein Theory.
MM: You seem to engage much more directly the contrast between Dr. Frankenstein and his monster. How the morality of the Doctor seems to decrease as the morality of his creation seems to increase. Is this something that was on your mind as you wrote?
JW: Yes. One of the biggest themes in all of my horror writing is turning the mirror back on humankind, to illustrate how, left unchecked, we are the most horrific monster of all time. So I spend a lot of time in much of my work on that theme. Why? It serves as a way to help remind readers that we are only a twitch away from the monstrous … so keep yourself in check. Without keeping tabs on our morality, the human condition wants to spiral down into a rather dark abyss. It is that dance, I find, where so much horror gold can be mined.
MM: There is such a disconnect between Mary Shelly’s book and the way the monster is represented in the films that followed. Have you ever wondered how point A led to point B in this case?
JW: At the time, Hollywood believed Shelly’s book to be too intellectual for the standard audience. They couldn’t offer up a “monster” who was not only intelligent, but worthy of sympathy. The “monster” in the book speaks with an eloquence we don’t find in most villains (save for the likes of Hannibal Lecter). There is no way Hollywood could have placed the burden of sympathy on a character like the “monster” and turn the protagonist into a villain. In the book, the monster says “I am content to reason with you. I am malicious because I am miserable. Am I not shunned and hated by all mankind? You, my creator, would tear me to pieces and triumph; remember that, and tell me why I should pity man more than he pities me?” That is far too moralistically confusing for audiences of the period. Because of that, Hollywood opted to strip the monster of eloquence and make him hideous.
MM: Can we expect more from you in this series?
JW: Yes. I am about to release “Dracula Theory”, which does the same thing (for similar reasons) that I did with “Frankenstein Theory”. I also plan on continuing the series with the rest of the Universal Monsters and beyond. I love writing these types of period horror, because their tapestries are so rich and lush.
MM: The landscape out there for authors seems to experience constant tectonic shifts. What advice would you have for authors who are trying to get noticed?
JW: Patience, patience, patience. Back in 2014, it was reported that a new book went live on Amazon every five minutes. I would imagine that number to be exponentially higher now (more like 100+ every five minutes). That translates to a very large number of new books every day, which (in turn) translates to it being harder and harder (with each passing day) for authors to be seen. That means you have to work … hard. At what? Your craft. Make it your goal that the book you’re working on now is better than the book you previously finished. Never. Stop. Pushing. Yourself. Also, don’t adhere to someone’s advice as though it were gospel. Why? Just because it worked for them, doesn’t mean it will work for you. I have witnessed so many authors fail, simply because they were trying to recreate what succeeded for another. Pave your own way. Know the rules, break the rules, make your own rules. I’ve pretty much lived and died by that mantra, and it pays off.
The beat I march to is my own. Find yours and make it something glorious.
MM: Is there anything coming up for you on the horizon that you would like to share?
JW: As I mentioned, I have “Dracula Theory”, which is my take on Bram Stoker’s fabulous tale. My version is in the same period, but flips the whole narrative on its head. Besides that, I’m working on my first romance novel, called “Beautiful Complication”. This is far from a standard romance, so expect the unexpected. Beyond those two pieces, I have a “to be written” file that’s massive, so there’s never a lack for ideas.
Paranormal & Supernatural In Review : The Exorcist (1973)
Linda Blair. For as much drive as there must be to find roles for your working-actor child, I have to think there must have been a great deal of hesitation and stress over their daughter being in this film. And also credit to the production team as well as director William Friedkin for coming up with ways to do the heavier scenes without having to involve Blair but also for bringing the material to a more simple level that she could understand and engage with. It’s difficult to get the frightening performance out of a child that you need without at the same time setting that kid up for some future therapy bills.I do believe this film is an example, not unlike Apocalypse Now, of a director becoming consumed by a project. I have no idea if Friedkin had a Coppola level breakdown, but from what the cast has had to say, he became quite invested in the success of the film. In one heightened incident, after extensive takes of not getting the emotional performance he wanted from an actor, he proceeded to slap him before a take. In the scene, as the priest delivers the last rites, you can see his hand shaking. This wasn’t a result of just his acting craft.
Say what you will about Friedkin’s tactics and behavior, but he managed to take this book and turn it into one of the greatest horror movies of all time. It is a tour de force that employs brilliant suggestion and foreshadowing that leads up to a terrifying confrontation.
I think what I love the most about the Exorcist is that it refuses to comply with easy explanations and it doesn’t simply feed you backstory or information. Somehow, this young girl finds herself possessed by some kind of an entity and over the course of the film, the heroes wage a battle against it on several different philosophical fronts. Why does it happen? What does it want? We don’t know. The movie lends itself to your speculation. I am in total agreement with Friedkin that the Exorcist is the kind of film where you take from it what you bring in. If you believe that the world is a dark and evil place, then you’ll get confirmation of this. But the movie also supports the notion that there are forces for good that struggle on our behalf. It’s a movie that, despite all the horrific things that happen, there is also some good for you to take hold of.
I read Blatty’s novel recently and found it excellent as well. There isn’t a ton that strays from the film and I think it pays testament to how effective of an adaptation Friedkin managed to put together. The Exorcist fires on all levels and if by some chance you haven’t seen it, you should make all efforts to rectify that oversight as soon as possible.
Chad A. Clark is an author of horror and science fiction. For more information on his literary universe, check out his official website or take a peek at his Amazon author page
For Walls Do Crumble, by Chad A. Clark : Chapter One
In one week, the final chapter in Chad A. Clark’s apocalyptic trilogy will be released. It’s now available for pre-order. Are you curious? Interested in checking it out and don’t want to wait? Machine Mean has for you an exclusive look at the first chapter. Enjoy, and please considering pre-ordering, via the link at the end of this piece.
-1-
The dime was what first caught her attention.
As she walked along the street, Roxie caught a flash from the corner of her eye, glancing to her right to see sunlight reflecting off the small piece of metal on the ground. She slowed and veered towards the coin, bending down to pick it up. As she did so, her feet absurdly tangled and her balance began to slip. With a mocking laugh from within, she realized that there would be no way to prevent this as she held out her hands to try and brace herself, with nothing but open air to stop her. Two pedestrians offered their help in the form of deftly stepping out of the way when she fell, grunting as her shoulder hit the ground and possibly in an unconscious attempt to escape from reality, she allowed her momentum to carry her on as she rolled between two newspaper machines.
The world erupted in bright white light.
Roxie squeezed her eyes shut, putting her arms up over her head as a blast of heat flowed over her. There seemed to be a collective outcry as the ground shook, glass breaking all around. Car horns seemed to go off all at once, only to be immediately silenced as if from some higher power and above, tendrils of darkness stretched out into the sky.
“What the fuck?” She looked at the blood on the pavement, rubbing the side of her head at the unexpected warmth. It was like an oven door had been opened next to her head.
It took a moment for her to register the screams.
Ten feet away, two people were on the ground, kneeling and shrieking in clear agony. One woman had clamped hands to her face, blood seeping through clutching fingers. The other was trying to rise to his feet, blinking with bloodshot eyes, looking like they couldn’t draw a focus, screaming as he did so.
“I can’t see! Someone please help me, I can’t see!”
And as she looked up and down the street, there was more of the same. Either prone bodies littered across the ground or people doubled over in pain and confusion. She looked up to City Hall when her breath caught at the sight of the clouds roiling up into the rapidly darkening sky. There was no denying the sight of the mushroom cloud, something she had only previously seen in documentary footage.
“Fuck.”
The muttered protest was all she could think to do as she averted her gaze from the explosion, thinking of all the people around her who had evidently lost their vision. They writhed on the ground everywhere, plunged into their own pain and confusion. An odor of something burning was in the air and all she could wonder at was how she had managed to avoid being hurt herself. How she had the luck to not be looking into the sky when the detonation had happened. There were more vibrations under her feet and part of her wondered how long it would be before the ground itself split open.
“Hey!” The voice came from behind her as a hand landed firmly on her shoulder to drag her to the ground.
“What…what the hell are you—”
“Shut up and follow me. There isn’t time!” The tall, reedy man darted off through the crowd and as she struggled to keep up, she pulled up at the sight of him pulling on a manhole cover, stepping onto the ladder below. She detected a foul odor as she stepped closer, watching him descend. He snapped at her again, his tone leaving no room for debate. “Come on, we don’t have a lot of time!”
She shook her head at the insanity that somehow, climbing into the sewer with this stranger was almost more crazy than what she had just witnessed. The crashing report of a car colliding with a signpost across the street snapped her back to reality and she stepped onto the ladder.
“Who are you, do you know what’s—” Her question died on her lips as she stepped off the ladder and found her new friend stripping off his clothes and dropping them onto the concrete next to them. “What…the hell are you doing?” she asked him.
He shrugged as he continued to undress. “You know what that was, right? That was a nuclear explosion. That means your clothes are contaminated. You got to get them off. Careful not to get them in the water, though.”
Roxie glanced at the wide, man-made stream flowing past in the trench. She wanted to protest as every instinct screamed how insane it was to simply strip in the presence of this man. Still, if what he said was true, she had to do it. Pulling her clothes off, she looked over as he stood there, down to his bare ass and glancing off to the side as if he was trying not to watch.
“All of it,” he said, almost sounding apologetic. Roxie slipped out of her underwear and added it to the pile. Reaching down, he added her clothes to his but as he turned she had a sudden thought.
“Wait!” she cried out. He paused and turned back, clearly agitated, one foot already on the ladder. “Wait, my keys are in my pants pocket.”
He snorted and shook his head. “Kid, you aren’t going to be driving anywhere anytime soon.”
“No, you don’t understand, the key-chain!”
He reached into the pockets until he found the keys and held them up, looking but clearly not understanding.
“The key-chain!” she repeated. “That’s a picture of me and my brother. Please, I can’t lose that. Please give them back.”
He let out a slow breath before nodding and tossing them to her. She had a brief, terrified vision of missing and watching them slide into the water but she managed to catch them cleanly, clutching them to her chest while he scampered up the ladder. He threw the clothes up and out, coming back down after he had disposed of them.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ve got clothes where we’re going.”
“Christ,” Roxie muttered to herself. The guy acted like he hadn’t heard, leading her down the walkway along the water. At some point, he bent down and picked an object up off the ground. She heard a clicking sound and light emerged from the flashlight he now held. After what seemed like an eternity and as the echoing sounds of explosions above began to fade, he stopped abruptly and reached for a ladder. Her mouth gaped open as he stepped down and began towards the water.
“Don’t worry, it’s only about four feet deep and the current isn’t that strong. Just keep close to the side.”
“You want me to—”
“Come on! I promise we can talk all this over but we need to get to a safer place. Please just shut up and—”
“Okay! I’m coming, for fuck’s sake. Just hold on.”
The water was surprisingly cold as she eased into it. It came nearly up to her armpits but the foothold underneath was more secure than she had been expecting and it was relatively easy to move along the wall without losing control. From above, there were occasional tremors, followed by a shower of dust. All she could cling to was the hope that at any moment she would wake up, having had the most surreal dream.
“Come on. In here.” He stopped and turned into what looked like a small alcove. She could see the top of what looked like an arch of some kind but it seemed to be a solid wall, inset somewhat from the main tunnel.
“Okay,” he said, turning to her. “This is the point you’re going to have the hardest time with and I need you to trust me. Take my hand. Now what we’re going to be doing is going underwater and swimming straight ahead. I know it sounds crazy but just close your eyes, take in a deep breath and stay with me, all right?”
Roxie barely had time to nod before the light clicked off and they were going down. The water swirled up above her as they submerged and the world took on a tinny, hollow echo. They swam forward but the wall she had expected to find before them wasn’t there. Instead, they swam through a secondary tunnel that had been obscured by the water level. She had the vague thought that she wished he had told her how far it was going to be but they were already angling up.
As they broke the surface, she coughed out the moisture that had managed to seep in, looking up into the chamber they had just entered. The water went another ten feet before reaching a dead end. The room itself was shaped like an over-sized horseshoe, with the water at the center. At the very end, another ladder took them up to the platform, at least ten feet above.
“Wait for a minute,” he said as he climbed out of the water. He moved away, out of sight for a moment before returning with a towel, holding it up for her as she climbed. He averted his gaze as she wrapped it around herself and pointed off towards one of the walls. “There’s some clothes over there you can choose from. Sorry I don’t have more but it’s better than nothing.”
Roxie wasn’t interested in clothes, though. She looked around the chamber, seeing that there was no way in or out, other than the submerged tunnel they had just swam in through.
“What is this place?” she asked.
He shrugged in response. “I don’t really know. I found it about a year ago.”
“And you…you’ve been living down here?”
He smiled for the first time. “Beats the alternative at the moment, doesn’t it?”
“So…what the hell just happened? What are we going to do down here? Where are we…” She trailed off as she began to feel her breath running short. The questions flew into her head too quickly to articulate them.
“Let’s take that slowly and start simple, okay? I’m Jeff. What’s your name?”
“Roxie. I…why did you help me?”
It was the only question she could phrase from the stew of confusion brewing within her.
“Honestly, I don’t really know. Everything happened so fast but you had been lucky enough to not be looking into the blast and I…whoa, easy there!”
Before she could speak, she threw up what was left in her stomach, feeling her eyes dropping shut and the last sensation she could mark before darkness rushed in was pitching forward into his outstretched arms.
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Reviews In The Machine : The House With A Clock In It’s Walls (1973)
Way back in the day, when I was starting to get legs as a reader, while I had yet to find my way into the universes of Stephen King, my early sensibilities towards horror were already beginning to manifest in my love for one book in particular.
The House With a Clock in its Walls.
I think I was drawn initially to the fact that the hero of the story was a child, of roughly my age. But more than that, this was a child who felt out of place, like me. Like Lewis, I often found it easier to retreat to the comfort of books than to expose myself to the stress of trying to make and hold on to friends. I had recently moved to a new town as well and much of my life at that point was spent feeling out of place. I knew all too well the drive and desire to want to impress people and to set myself apart from the pack.
I was immediately drawn to the characters of Uncle Jonathon and Mrs. Zimmerman. They were great but beyond that I was also still at a point in my life when I looked up to adults and again, because I generally didn’t feel like my peers ever accepted me, I felt much more comfortable around adults.
I also loved magic. And magic was something this story was steeped in. But not the magic of Tolkien or CS Lewis. I think this was the first time I considered the possibility of magic in the context of a contemporary setting. I had never entertained the notion that a wizard need not come cloaked in robes and a tall hat. And that witches didn’t need to be accompanied by a cat, a cauldron and crystal ball. In this story, the witches and warlocks were also just the neighbors that lived up the hill from you.
John Bellairs did a great job making his books exciting and spooky, but never so high on the scare scale that I couldn’t handle it. His books had ghosts, dark magic as well as apocalyptic leanings but it was still in a format ideally to be consumed by an emerging reader. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if his books had been some of the earlier influences taken in by a young JK Rowling.
As an adult, I found that the books had slipped from my recollection. I couldn’t remember the titles or the name of the author. All I could really remember was something about a young character moving in with an uncle. And magic. For years, this book held an almost mythical status in my imagination. The notion of it would rise up into my mind but with no way of really satisfying the urge. It was finally thanks to the internet that I was finally able to put the pieces together as someone on Facebook was able to steer my in the right direction.
John Bellairs and this book in particular were a part of my life again.
And the book has again risen to the national consciousness with the recent film adaptation. And while I was definitely skeptical of the notion of it being another Jack Black vehicle, I ended up enjoying it, quite a bit. There were some departures for sure, but that should always be expected. There were aspects to the film I would have liked to have seen done differently but I definitely felt the spirit of the book. Even Jack Black proved to be great as the enigmatic Uncle Jonathan and of course, Cate Blanchett was spectacular as Mrs. Zimmerman.
In all, a highly entertaining book, one that I am glad was a part of my development as a writer. It may be a bit on the mild side, especially with the older readers but it’s still a fine example of fun and spooky entertainment.
Chad A. Clark is an author of horror and science fiction. For more information on his literary universe, check out his official website or take a peek at his Amazon author page
Reviews In The Machine : The Evil Dead (1981)
I decided to take a trip down amnesia lane and revisit an old classic with the Evil Dead, the movie that would launch both a franchise as well as (arguably) the career of Bruce Campbell.
I’ve always loved the punk rock, cult atmosphere around these films, for as much more attention as they have gotten in recent years with first the remake and then Ash vs Evil Dead. These films exuded what I have argued is crucial to the heart of great horror movies.
Practical special effects.
The thing that I consistently love the most about this movie is how it feels like it’s occupying an actual physical space. And despite the fact that the budget was so low, they did a phenomenal job making that practical space seem terrifying. Despite having very little backstory, preamble, prologue or exposition, I immediately felt the unease and discomfort around this cabin. Everything has an aged, worn- down look to it, as if the thing is rejecting life itself.
The people who were responsible for dressing the set were geniuses. Everything from the groaning and creaking of the wood, to the look and feel of the faded book which our heroes find, to the sound of rain dripping down through the ceiling and onto the floors. The basement was incredible, with buckets and tools clanking against each other, the sound of it all really brought you into this frightening place, more so than many other movies I’ve ever watched.
I think another area where the film excels is in that it proves that you don’t need make the development of a concept overly complicated. These aren’t difficult machines that we are putting together. It is entirely possible to scare people and engage with the viewer while at the same time laying down some fairly basic brushstrokes. We know nothing about this cabin or how this group of friends came to renting it. We don’t know what’s going on in those words or what the history of that location is. But with a few simple and basic scenes, the film manages to infuse a huge level of dread and foreboding in every
set piece that comes onto screen.
All it takes is for our heroes to find a creepy looking book along with some tape recordings from who I assume used to live at the cabin. We have all the basics we need to figure out pretty much exactly what ends up going on for the rest of the film. And while we have an intellectual understanding of what’s happening, the fact that we don’t really have any clue what the hell is going on makes the story that much more captivating and scary.
This is certainly not without its flaws. I’m not going to stand here and try and trumpet some ridiculous song about how this is the pinnacle of modern cinema. The acting isn’t great, pretty much all around. And I realize that Bruce Campbell has achieved a certain level of adoration from his fans. Hell, I’m a fan of his as well, but it’s not like his acting is that dynamic. He plays a character and he’s great at it. His reputation and popularity is well deserved. But I don’t think anyone would mistake this movie for high-level craft. And I don’t think that was what they were going for. This is not meant to be a deep or insightful film. It’s supposed to be fun. It’s supposed to gross you out and scare you.
This is about the ride.
Evil Dead is the epitome of fun horror. The premise and the atmosphere are scary. The monster is implacable and disturbing and there are some beautifully cringe-worthy moments. It’s the kind of film that can stand on its own or can function as a part of a series. It’s not the peak of cinema but it’s the perfect movie to order a pizza and include as a part of a horror flick marathon.
For as low budget as this was, the film still works surprisingly well, even after all these years. It’s a movie of heart and soul and writhing guts that I often find to be a defining product of this time period, the likes of which I have rarely seen again, before or after.
Chad A. Clark is an author of horror and science fiction. For more information on his literary universe, check out his official website or take a peek at his Amazon author page
Reviews in the Machine: The Black Room Manuscripts, volume four
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The Sinister Horror Company has long since established itself as a source for outstanding fiction. I have been introduced to a number of fantastic authors, courtesy of their releases and they are one publisher in particular that I always keep a close eye on to see what might be coming next. The handling of the books has consistently been of the utmost care and respect and I always feel confident that my purchasing dollars are going to a good place whenever I support their authors.
One major centerpiece of the Sinister tabletop has been the anthology series, the Black Room Manuscripts. Having run over multiple editions and years, more amazing fiction than I could keep track of has graced the pages of these books, with a hefty amount of money going to charity on the back of the work of so many spectacular authors.
This year, the Black Room series has come to an end with volume four, the final installment. And Sinister Horror laid down a collection of great stories to go out in fine form. Overall, I found them to range from entertaining to staggering and it reminded me of what I have loved about the series (that I have read), that the stories contained in these collections make a point of straying from the convention and striking out into narrative territory that is maybe a bit less tackled by other authors and publishers. I have always held that there isn’t really that much new to be done out there and that the important issue is the talent of the writer. Despite my holding to this conviction, this book still manages to feel at moments like writing I have never seen before.
If I had any critical comments to make about the book, it would be that some of the stories felt a bit on the ambitious side for the length they had to work with. There were a number of stories where, when I reached the end I was kind of surprised and disappointed to find that there weren’t a few more pages to contexualize everything. But even taking this issue into consideration, even those stories where I wished the ground felt a little firmer underneath me, I still found plenty in the prose to enjoy. The journey of words in all of these stories were enjoyable to experience. I think it’s normal and should be expected with any anthology that some stories aren’t going to work as well for you as others. It’s just the nature of the beast. A story that I might not respond to could be the one that splits the skies open for someone else. You never know.
So with those prefacing statements, I felt it would be appropriate in recognition of this great achievement from Sinister that I go through the book and offer up my thoughts on each individual story. And I want to make sure it is clear how much I would like to pass along my compliments to all the individual contributors to this book. You are of a quality we all should aspire to and the work you contributed here is well deserving of all praise and honor.
THAT THING I DID, by TRACY FAHEY
This was about as powerful an opening to an anthology as I may have seen. It’s the kind of story where you aren’t really sure where things are going until the last few moments when all you can do is bask in the heightened tragedy of the whole thing. It’s a perfect example of how you don’t have to have stereotypical horror elements to make a story terrifying. You don’t need monsters or ghosts.
Sometimes the horror is found in the circumstances.
This story is short but it uses the small space to build a ton of character history and emotional punch. The pacing is perfect and there are just enough crumbs to indicate what’s about to happen. And there is a perfect moment where you almost unconsciously say to yourself, “No, this isn’t going there, is it?”
Of course it’s going there.
EATING THE DREAM, by K.A. LAITY
This one was more of a mixed bag for me. On one hand, I thought the concept of the story was interesting and that a lot of history was packed into a small amount of space. On the other hand, though, I also had a harder time engaging in the story and I kind of wish certain narrative parameters had been more clearly established, earlier on.
The language of this piece is incredibly gorgeous. The tactile imagery and sensations in the story were about as intense and effective as I have seen in a book in a long time. Passages like “The lights of a small town are just right, a bouquet of neon, headlights, and flickering fluorescence. Makes me feel pretty” or “The main transaction is between loneliness and cash”. Lines like that just take me off my feet and remind me about what language can be and why I love doing this in the first place. So many turns of phrase that are just awesome and the poetry of the setting is so powerful, I might just be happy reading it off into the horizon, like the longest Tom Waits song ever written.
All that aside, I did find it harder to pick up on what was going on in the story and where things were going. And please don’t let this arbitrary note deter you from reading this because it’s entirely possible that the problem is with my dumb brain. All I can say is that I think the story could have been stronger if we had known a little more concrete information about not just this universe but also the narrator. It’s a tough challenge here because while using the first person cuts us off from a lot of potentially useful information that a third-person narrative voice could provide, being able to hear the character’s train of thought is really important. Perhaps a hybrid between the two would have worked.
In all, an interesting story that I found compelling for what it seemed to be offering. I just would have liked it to have been executed slightly differently.
A CLEAR DAY IN A SEASON OF STORMS, by SIMON AVERY
This was a cool story with a premise that really rattled around in my brain pan for some time after reading it. And sadly, there is very little I can say about it without spoiling the details of the plot. I shall do the best I can.
The story is centered around a married couple who have clearly seen better times in terms of their relationship. As we open, we see them having seemingly reached the realization that even their fairly extreme ideas to try and improve their marriage have failed and as the reader, my immediate assumption was that they were likely finished with each other.
The table is upturned by the introduction of a stranger (I know, cue Ms. Agatha Christie with the sudden thunderstorm and a dark visitor in the rain slicker). If you can look past the superficial, you will find a story that is unique in its scope and execution. I was fascinated by this new character and with how quickly he took on a tone of familiarity with this couple. I’m a sucker for any kinds of stories about the sea and as with the previous tale in this volume, the atmosphere and setting of this is phenomenal.
Great characterization, plot and description. And a great reminder that just because a story has supernatural elements, it doesn’t necessarily have to be horrific.
THE HANGING BOY, by GARY MCMAHON
This was a fun story. I really enjoy it when an author allows a narrative to thrive on a surrealistic landscape and doesn’t make a ton of effort to explain away or justify it. This tale is definitely an example of that, a normal, average day that quickly transitions to anything but. It was a situation for a character of which I had no understanding but was definitely engaged in wanting to know more. Some of the language and dialogue really reinforced the idea with me that this was a kind of modern day fable.
I think it casts an interesting light on the subject of perspective and how our mind can sometimes allow us to see the world in times of stress. In other words, maybe we can’t always trust our own senses if, on a subconscious level we are trying to shield ourselves from what’s really happening.
Plenty of stories will take the tactic of shifting and changing your perspective on everything but I found this one to be particularly clever about it. An interesting and enjoyable read.
MAM’S GIRL, by J.L. GEORGE
I’ll be completely honest and admit that this one went past me a little. But I definitely enjoyed the intrigue of the tale and in trying to unravel what was going on. And perhaps more importantly, the story got me thinking.
It made me ponder the experience of getting old and how we can end up retreating into our own consciousness, to the point where maybe we interact with our own memories. Could those memories actually be self-aware as they swirl around us in the ether? Is it possible that the moment of our death is that in which all those disparate elements are finally brought back together?
Not to do with the story. But it’s the mental journey I was sent on.
TEARS OF HONEY, by JOHN MCNEE
With an opening line like, “For what is pleasure, but an evolution of pain?”, it’s hard for me to not go in with my brain in a Clive Barker kind of mindset. And this is a completely unfair standard to set for a story but unfortunately, that was what was colored expectations from the start.
I was thrilled to find that the story completely delivers on this implied expectation that I had created for myself. l loved the notion of this group of individuals coming together for the purposes of exploring paranormal phenomenon. It isn’t clear at first what they are going to be doing but the tone of the piece kept me engaged throughout.
And for me, what sets Clive Barker aside is how he weaves his dramatic visual canvas on which to draw. This carries over nicely as McNee delivers some imagery that is profoundly disturbing.
if I had any critical note, I would say that the story at the start steps aside from the main narrative to offer up backstory. It provides some insight into the characters that I didn’t think was necessary. I wasn’t really sure where things were going at that point and I thought that section could have been condensed quite a bit.
DECIPHER, by DANIEL MARC CHANT
I think what I found really cool about this was the shifting in time and perspective and how, while narrative modes like this could have created more confusion around the mystery of the plot, Chant manages to layer everything perfectly. I loved the interaction between this couple and seeing how the relationship became so fractured.
Chant does a good job getting into the minds of the characters and using them to craft an engaging story. He did a good job showing the increasing obsession of the wife and demonstrating how this leads to her revelation about her husband that drives the drama underlying in the piece. It all works up to a brilliant ending, one of the stronger ones in the collection, in my opinion. The questions aren’t all necessarily answered and maybe we aren’t left really knowing which one of the couple is more of the monster but I kind of like how that is left open-ended. While some stories leave making me feel like there needs to be more filler to the core of the plot, this moves quickly and is compelling enough to make me really love it in the form it is in.
TAP, TAP, by MARIE O’REGAN
This one had a beautifully creepy atmosphere to it. While dolls aren’t exactly new when it comes to the content of horror fiction, there always exists the possibility of taking something routine and making it great. I think that is what O’Regan has done here, in brilliant form.
The pacing of was near perfect as I had no desire to put it down at any point while I read it. The tension is real and palpable as the story moves along, which isn’t easy in any kind of story length. I don’t want to give too much away but the experiences of this woman and her mother quickly escalate from curious to simply terrifying. I’m not generally bothered by horror fiction but some of the imagery in my head at the end of this piece definitely had me feeling unsettled. It’s a perfect example of a creative drive that we should all aspire to. It’s a fantastic idea, delivered with tremendously talented writing. This was one of my favorites from the collection.
BLACK SILK, by BENEDICT J. JONES
Benedict Jones has long since demonstrated his abilities as a great storyteller and he brought his full game to bear in this finale for the Black Room Manuscripts. After a quick start, Jones does a superb job developing tension in this with a great sense of movement to the plot, foreshadowing something terrible yet to come.
I loved the mystery behind this character as she learns more about herself and her past. And the situation she has to live with is pretty sympathetic, a sympathy which Jones will challenge as the story goes on. Everything winds down to a turn at the end that I didn’t see coming and I thought worked extremely well.
This story is a perfect example of how things aren’t always what they seem and before you pass judgment on anyone, it’s important to work your way through, all the way to the end.
DRAGGED DOWN, by RAMSEY CAMPBELL
This was a cool little tale that seemed to be going for a number of different angles at the same time. On one hand, I liked the creepy vibe around the nature of a local tunnel and the various stories that the characters come up with, surrounding it. Is this just a case of characters being asked to mine their own imaginations and making something more than it really is? Or does the tunnel in question actually bear some darker aspects that we can’t really understand?
I have seen a number of stories over the years about the phenomenon of tunnels that have the power where you can be affected somehow if you dare to venture through to the other side. Doing great horror is often about taking something mundane and making it into something unsettling and I think Campbell does this well.
I also appreciated how the dynamics between classmates was represented here. I think it takes a bit more work and guts to portray children as the bullies they can be and demonstrating how a hostile environment can swell into something horrifically worse.
In all, very entertaining and I’m glad I got the chance to read this.
PLACE OF THE DAMNED, by C.L. RAVEN
This was a fun story that managed to pack a lot of action into a short amount of time and space. The premise of exploring a long vacant castle is certainly nothing new, responsible for so much of the gothic imagery we associate with horror anymore. The vibe I felt in this was really similar to what I got from Dusk ‘til Dawn in which there is a definitive line that separates two starkly different aspects of the story. To start out, we have a fairly light-hearted sort of ghost story but this quickly descends into something much more serious. Once the action kicks in, it doesn’t let go.
If I had any complaint it would probably be that I didn’t think the whole ghost hunters angle was needed for the story. It didn’t really add anything crucial to the overall vibe of the piece and if anything, it felt slightly more like ground I have walked a few too many times. Still, while these aspects may have been present, I still found the execution of the story to be top rate, a good, fun read.
BROOKS POND, by MARK WEST
I’m always grateful for anthologies like this for opening my experience to new authors but obviously I also like seeing what work the names I’m familiar with have laid down. I have been a fan of Mark West for several years now and I think he excels at crafting beautiful atmosphere and characters. His work on Brooks Pond is no exception.
We have come to expect it anymore that in stories like this, our expectations will be played on a little and that by the end of the story, we get to see how misled we had been throughout. West does a great job in spinning the tables around and giving all the characters a grim turn in terms of how we see them. And after all of that, he manages somehow to give one character in particular an even darker turn than he had already. Not really a double twist but certainly a clarification of just how dark and depraved some characters can be.
PLANNING PERMISSION, by HANNAH KATE
Write a horror story involving urban planning.
I feel a bit ridiculous even writing that out but somehow this is what Hannah Kate managed to accomplish with this one. And I think it’s a great example of how you can take narrative devices that have been used often and freshen them by putting them into a new context.
Despite being fairly heavy-handed with the exposition at times, I found the mystery to be engaging and interesting. And even though I had an inkling of where things were going, the quality of the prose and skill in the crafting kept me hanging on to the last paragraph.
SHRIVELED TONGUES OF DEAD HORSES, by ERIK HOFSTATTER
I really loved this one, despite the fact that for the first half or so I hadn’t a clue what the hell was going on. Still, the imagery was incredibly vivid so I hung tight. Then, about halfway through, the story came together and began to actually make sense. And then with the final line, we get the rug pulled out and we are once again floundering without a tether. I suspect I could read this six times and come away with six different interpretations.
DEATH WISH, by MARGARÉT HELGADÓTTIR
Mixed feelings somewhat on this. On one hand, I love that we are dropped right into the middle of things and the heart of the story is almost immediately present. On the other, I also would have liked to have had a little more information on the universe this takes place in, of traumas experienced by the protagonist that seem to weigh heavily but are maybe sketched a bit lightly.
Beyond this minor issue, the execution of the story works really well. I liked the sense of confused familiarity between the narrator and the girl he chooses to help. From the start you have a sense that something beyond the obvious is going on and the story does a good job layering the plot out ahead of you.
I kind of wanted more at the end but it closes with a solid last line and some creepy imagery to go along with it.
SIZE ISNT EVERYTHING, by JAMES EVERINGTON
I enjoyed this story, mostly for the atmosphere and the description. I felt like I was sitting in that car for most of the time, the writing was so vivid and evocative. I also would have liked a little more clarity at the ending, just tilting the narrative cards down a little bit more so we can get a better look at them.
That aside, the atmosphere and creeping dread that is present throughout the story is brilliantly done. There’s an intriguing pace to the story as the protagonist finds himself exploring the confines of an abandoned apartment.
Tons of dark foreshadowing, which I am a fan of. And also an incredibly inventive monster, if you want to call it that. Quite Lovecraftian in its design but with maybe even more sci-fi kind of aspects.
PAIN HAS A VOICE, by STEPHEN BACON
Really brilliant. A great examination of the emotional struggles of a child who has to come to terms with the death of a parent as well as the introduction of a new parental figure who may be quite a bit less suited as a parent.
As a writer and a lover of books who also has kids, I appreciated the notion of books being used as a conduit that can connect kids to their parents.
And although the story is pretty grim in the details of the plot, I also found it a nice way of demonstrating a child’s development of inner strength, possibly to the point of standing up to his abusive step-father. Of course, it’s also possible that we are seeing the origin story for a psychopath. And the ultimate irony here is that both of those statements could easily be true.
The reality of great fiction is that just because a character is sympathetic, it doesn’t inherently make them a good person. This story really hammered home that point for me.
SWIMMING OUT TO SEA, by PENNY JONES
This one spoke to me as it took place in an environment that felt comfortable to me. It reminded me of summers at Lake Michigan and wading out into deeper waters than we probably should have been allowed. I’ve felt the uncertain pressure under my feet and around my ankles as they are sucked into the sand, always wondering about the fabled rip-tide that could drag you out to sea.
This story is pretty bonkers as it unfolds and it’s a brilliant examination of a persons state of mind and how perceptions can be warped or misled. Jones does a great job leading the reader along, right there with the protagonist, only to have the floor yanked out in due course.
This was a cool sequence of events as this character’s peril just seems to increase with each passing moment. And it leaves you in a powerful moment at the ending.
REANIMATION CHANNEL, by MARK CASSEL
Probably another one of my favorites from the book. The premise of this is incredibly inventive and crafted out to a high degree. And just when I thought I couldn’t get more impressed with the concept behind the plot, it just went and got even crazier and more creative. Somehow, he has managed to take a fairly grizzly monster story and fused it with a kind of tech-y, almost science-fiction feel to it. The mystery is effective and the plot is laid out perfectly to create just the right level of action, mystery and suspense.
It all builds up to an ending that is probably one of the more emotionally satisfying ending points I’ve seen in a story. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall as the concept for this was worked out because I was really impressed with the level of skill that went into crafting a story such as this. Give it a read. And keep it in the back of your mind the next time you go online to do some serious gaming.
CRAFT AIL, by DUNCAN BRADSHAW
This was an incredibly fun and entertaining story. I have read a number of Bradshaw’s works, from his books to his shorter stories and I am always impressed with the breadth of content in his writing. By no means is this a writer who takes on the same subject matter time and time again. And yet, despite the difference in subject, the style always seems to be uniquely his. It’s hard to strike a totally unique tone in your writing but I think Duncan Bradshaw has done quite a bit in this regard.
This story is bonkers, right out of the gate and with very little exclamation you are dumped into the middle of the craziest situation you could probably imagine in a story. And somehow, without giving a ton of backstory, he still manages to make all of this craziness seemed completely normal. I had a lot of fun trying to disentangle what was going on and what direction the story was going in.
Bradshaw exercises a deft slide in perspective in this, moving from one character to a completely new one at about the midpoint of the story. And while, by all rights this shouldn’t have worked, it serves to function in the story perfectly. The dark and violent notes of the opening are only smoothed over by the humor and absurdity of the second half.
Definitely one of the high points of the collection for me.
ZWIGLI’S LAST PAPER, by ELIZABETH DAVIS
I’m feeling a fair amount of guilt when it comes to this one and it is for this story that I think I have had the most difficult time phrasing how I feel about it. Because I think it’s clear how much time and attention and craft that went into the construction of this story. This is not some paper-thin narrative that someone threw together and patched up with some packing tape. I can only imagine the Herculean effort it would have taken to both conceive of and execute this
It just isn’t for me.
Ultimately, I just feel like there isn’t enough context for the story, told in a mostly epistolary fashion. The mode of the narrative made me think quite a bit about Lovecraft’s At The Mountain Of Madness, or even Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein. The problem for me was that I didn’t understand what was happening around the existence of these writings. I didn’t really know why I was reading it or what this person had done to warrant the collection of her writings. Ultimately, there was just too much work for me to engage with this and I was not successful. And I take full responsibility for this. The failing here is mine, not the author.
I would strongly encourage you to give the story a go. Plenty of people will be able to find a connection here that I have not.
LAUREL, by TERRY GRIMWOOD
This was a well paced and written piece of historical fiction. It’s a skill set I have never had and I’m always impressed with writers who can do such a good job putting a narrative so authentically into an era lost to all of us. It’s easy to just say that a story is set in the past, it’s another entirely to avoid the anachronistic and make a piece feel like it’s oozing the time period it’s set in. It was an exciting read.
It’s also an example of what I have said of the book overall, that this was one that I would have liked to have seen with a slightly more firm ending to it. The frame story in this felt less successful to me and I’m not really sure why, other than it seemed to not function as well as a part of a coalesced work of fiction.
Still, a fantastically layered story. Kind of a mashup of Lovecraft and the Great Escape.
TIDE WILL TELL, by V.H. LESLIE
This is a beautifully written piece with a lot of great descriptions. I felt like the tactile descriptions of the environment of the story was done to near perfection and this river sounded like one that I might be walking or jogging along. I also liked the glimpses we got at the relationship of the married couple in this story as I know first-hand how stressful it can become in a relationship when going through the process of trying to have a child. I don’t know if this was something intended by the author. I kind of doubt it but this is one aspect I took away from it.
Centered around a man who comes across a sack floating in the river, sure for a moment that he sees something moving in there. Or did he? I’m not really sure. I would have liked to have seen a little more context for these characters. But even though I suspect the heart of the story went over my head a little, the reading was quite pleasurable, in a fictional landscape that felt familiar and comfortable.
THE LAST HORROR, by JR PARK
Great tale to close out the collection. The layering of the story was a joy to try and read through, with perspectives shifting and dropping out brilliantly. In this, we have a writer trying to figure out a story about a writer who is also trying to write a story. And while on the surface, this may seem destined for disaster, the vibe of the story is brilliant. At times I found myself wondering if any of this was real or if the narratives I was seeing merely existed in the middle layers of a sort of literary nesting doll. How many more layers are there, both above and below? To take that even further into the rabbit hole, in some higher level universe is there someone reading a book about me reading a book about a writer writing about a writer?
Like a great Lynch film, this is a story best experienced driving through without a roadmap. Setting your preconceptions too firmly would likely only serve to detract from the experience. It was a narrative that had me thinking for long after I got to the final lines and for much longer after.
And that’s a wrap on both this review as well as this series of fantastic anthologies. I would like to extend my thanks to the folks at Sinister Horror for the outstanding work they continue to put out and for being a bright and tragically underappreciated light in this industry. This has been a great series and the world of horror fiction has only served to benefit from them, all four volumes.
Do yourself a favor and give some of your time for a deep and heavy book that will entertain and open your mind to narrative possibilities you may have never considered before.
Chad A. Clark is an author of horror and science fiction. For more information on his literary universe, check out his official website or take a peek at his Amazon author page
Reviews in the Machine: Usher’s Passing by Robert McCammon
This past year seems to have a common theme of me finally getting around to Robert McCammon books that I should have read in high school. Last year I finally cracked the cover on Swan Song and loved it. Now, this year the choice appears to have been Usher’s Passing. And again the result is me wanting to reach back through time and give the teenage version of myself a good slap.
To start, I’ll admit that I haven’t read Poe’s story, The Fall of the House of Usher, another error I should probably correct. My point in bringing it up is that I can’t really speak to the relevance of McCammon’s book to Poe’s work.
This is a stunning book. There is so much history and depth to the narrative, much more than anything I have read in a long time. I would probably place this up there with some of the massive tomes like Swan Song, The Stand, IT, stories that just seem to keep getting larger and at no point do you feel like any of it is excessive. McCammon makes this massive book feel digestible by making the characters completely dynamic and compelling. These are people who I am interested to learn more about and to see where the currents of the story will take them. This is a real family with real history and all I wanted was just more pages.
What’s more, McCammon brilliantly lays out the tension between his main character and his family, after turning his back on their legacy of arms development. A decision that has cost him the massive amounts of money he would likely inherit otherwise, had he not been a cog in the wheel. I loved the emotionally antagonistic father who finds himself in the position of having to reach out for help from a son who has turned on him. Also, the sniveling brother who clearly thinks highly of himself, much more than most of the family. Add a further complication with a sister who is frequently traveling abroad and you have a recipe for perfect levels of conflict that can fester in a family.
Description and atmosphere are also outstanding in this book. Reading this is like sitting down to a really great meal that you don’t want to end. The chef might be going off in all different directions that interest them but every turn seems like the perfect decision.
There’s a lot going on at the same time but McCammon doesn’t seem to have any difficulty keeping so much in the air. He executes the story on many different levels and he clearly put in the necessary groundwork that was needed to write this. There is the history of the family but also the history of the area and the people who live on the mountain around the family estate. It’s a massive amount of work that he managed to make accessible and organized.
The drama is done well and not at all cliché. The tension is real and the elements of horror that work their way into the book are disturbing. There are some frightening monsters in this as well as an abandoned house that raises some chills as well. There were some brilliantly creepy moments throughout, all delivered with the McCammon level of intensity and power.
And I suppose the best possible compliment I can give to a book is that it made me feel inspired to go read another book. I should probably stop hedging and follow through on my so-called “interest” in reading Poe’s story. If nothing else, it could only serve to enhance the context of McCammon’s book. And then, of course, once I read Poe’s story it would give me a convenient excuse to go back once more through the doors of the house of Usher.
Chad A. Clark is an author of horror and science fiction. For more information on his literary universe, check out his official website or take a peek at his Amazon author page
Reviews in the Machine: The Traveling Vampire Show, by Richard Laymon
One of my favorite books growing up was Boy’s Life by Robert McCammon. And it was a book that I didn’t immediately engage with. I had been a fan of several of McCammon’s books already but Boy’s Life was quite a departure from what I was expecting. There was seemingly none of the horrific elements that his books seemed to deliver. I bailed out, shortly after beginning my first attempt but before long, I was able to buckle down and force myself through. It wasn’t long after that before I realized how much I had missed out by not sticking with the book the first time through.
The book isn’t horror. I wasn’t wrong in that initial assessment. Sure, there are some moments where the narrative seems to brush up against the supernatural but in no way was this horror. Still, I loved it. The characters were compelling and I quickly bought into them as a reader. I couldn’t put the book down and the thing that really threw me was how, for most of the book, it wasn’t really clear what the story was driving towards. I’m normally not a huge fan of books that are so plot-driven but in this case, the plot was so great, it was all I wanted.
It was this feeling that I returned to when I came across The Travelling Vampire Show. I have not had the pleasure of reading anything by Richard Laymon before and I suspect that this will not be the last. The setup for the book is pretty straightforward. A group of three friends come across a flier for a travelling act that is coming to town. The poster claims that the town can come out to see one of the last surviving vampires, alive. An intense show is promised, one that won’t be soon forgotten.
The friends, after much debate, decide that they need to figure out how to sneak out that night in order to get in and see this vampire, real or not.
From this point on, the book mostly goes into a detailed sequence of events, what transpires for these three friends. It’s a notion that in the hands of another author probably could have ended up being a complete disaster. And for me, this is where the comparison to Boy’s Life really comes into play. As with Boy’s Life, I frequently found myself looking up from this book and realizing that I really couldn’t say what the book was about, or what kind of arc these characters were on. And while many would bemoan the absence of these things, for me, the story was so compelling, I was finding that I just didn’t care. This was a rich universe that was an absolute pleasure to dip in to. It’s a story about friendship and loyalty and about growing up and how our relationships can change as that process moves forward. The plot has an almost episodic feel to it as our characters move from one emotional challenge to the next and I loved it.
The characters were what really rocketed this book into the stratosphere. Everyone felt like they had an immense history and texture to them and it was a big part of what made me overlook my feelings about the story seeming like one endless stream of point A to point B to point C and so forth. The importance of where the book was going took a comfortable back seat to my desire to simply see what the characters were going to do next.
There were a few points where I thought the book could have been better. There are a number of flashbacks throughout and for some reason, one of the characters always seems to have a different nickname during each one. It’s never really explained why she changes her nickname all the time and the first time it happened there were several minutes of confusion on my part, wondering who this new character was.
My other issue was with the ending. While it was dramatic and satisfying, there were certain aspects that I found a bit overdone. There were several moments that I thought were getting a little masturbatory, with multiple female characters fighting and of course losing their clothes in the process.
These were both minor issues however, and my enjoyment of the book remained strong. The romance between two of the characters is certainly to be expected by most readers so it isn’t exactly a stunning twist but the way that aspect of the story develops is actually quite sweet and I felt like I was seeing something genuine developing, not just an author arbitrarily pushing two characters together. And I’ll give Laymon credit for resisting the urge at a key moment to launch into an obligatory sex scene and instead throwing in a head-fake that made me actually laugh as I was reading, something that doesn’t happen very often.
This isn’t a horror story. It does however build up to some closing moments that are grim and intense in their violence and in how disturbing they are. Overall, this was a fantastic book and the genius of it is in how it takes moments that should drag the book down and uses them as the essential building blocks to construct a book that I didn’t want to put down.
Chad A. Clark is an author of horror and science fiction. For more information on his literary universe, check out his official website or take a peek at his Amazon author page
Reviews in the Machine: Salvage, by Duncan Ralston
Salvage is a story built on a solid and creepy premise. It’s a book that somehow manages to feel claustrophobic within mostly open spaces and isolated it’s characters in ways that I don’t think I have seen done similarly in anything else I have read.
I love stories that deal with the sea and especially underwater. One of my favorite movies growing up was The Abyss, along with the fantastic novelization, written by Orson Scott Card. I loved the sense of terror that is exuded from being underwater, even at shallow depths. It’s the one place where, despite our often feeling like masters of our domain, once we are plunged into the depths we begin to realize how weak and unwanted we can be on an alien landscape. The sound and temperature is distorted. You have no sense of touch or smell. What you see can only be illuminated by what natural light filters down or by your dive lights. Diving underwater is something that begs to have a horror story written about it.
The concept for this book is of a lost town, flooded intentionally as a part of rerouting a river. It’s something I was surprised to see has happened before. Google it if you want to see some interesting material. Essentially the population must abandon the town and ever since, it has been lost at the bottom of a man-made lake, save for the top peak of the local chapel. The book is centered around the disappearance of the local Reverend as well as some of the parishioners.
All this makes for some outstanding atmosphere and tension. It’s spooky enough to explore an abandoned town but add to that the aspect of doing it underwater makes for a beautiful sense of claustrophobia and anxiety.
It’s a fine line to strike but technical detail is something I like, so long as it is being used to augment the story, not replace it. I call this the Dan Brown syndrome from his tendency to bring an entire narrative to a shrieking halt while some concept is explained. Maybe we even get a flashback of Robert Langdon beating some concept into the ground for one of his classes. This phenomenon happens when you have a writer who puts a ton of time at the library or online, researching some aspects of the story and when it comes time to write, you can tell they are somewhat shoehorning to make room for all the knowledge they discovered. Wouldn’t want that time to get wasted, would we?
And I get it. I’ve been in a similar position. And often we find ourselves really interested
in a subject and want to write about it. The problem is that it bogs down the narrative. So I was happy to discover that in this, Ralston deftly incorporates the necessary technical aspects of diving while at the same time making it feel natural and logical. He also has enough respect for us to keep from overexplaining, making his descriptions clear, while expecting us to keep up with him as well. I felt like I actually learned a lot about diving and of the common dangers that I don’t think I was ever really aware of. It created a beautiful balance of danger for the characters, presented by the real world sources as well as possibly other-worldly as well.
And of course added to all of this is the well-layered tension and mystery around the protagonist’s history as well as that of the town. There is a certain amount of intrigue to the story as he works through the locals, trying to obtain more information. It’s a dynamic between characters that isn’t necessarily new but Ralston delivers the classic narrative in fine form.
The novel is paced well and the characters are carefully crafted. But for me the atmosphere was what really made this story take off. Supernatural horror has always been one of my favorites and the addition of the diving aspect really made it work well. If, by chance you aren’t as familiar with the works of Duncan Ralston, Salvage would be a great starting point.
Chad A. Clark is an author of horror and science fiction. For more information on his literary universe, check out his official website or take a peek at his Amazon author page
Reviews in the Machine: Day of the Dead (1985)
In light of the recent passing of actor Joseph Pilato, I thought it would be a good time to share some of my thoughts on one of my favorite all-time zombie films. The original trilogy of films which George Romero presented has stood the test of time as great representations of the zombie genre. While zombies have taken off in modern popular culture, all things must have their origins. And while I love all three of the films, Day of the Dead has always been my favorite. Dawn of the Dead is a great film but at times it does tend to drag a bit for me. And while Night of the Living Dead is an undeniable classic, at times it comes off as a bit on the quaint side for me, more of a rough sketch of the greatness that zombie films could become, further down the road. Continue Reading
Paranormal & Supernatural In Review: Jacob’s Ladder (1990)
I say without exaggeration that Jacob’s Ladder was one of the most visually disturbing movies I’ve ever seen. The surreal landscape of the story is terrifying and in my opinion has never been equaled by anything after.
And before I get into this, let me say that there will be spoilers. Sorry, but I want this to he a complete discussion of the film so if you haven’t seen it, stop reading, right now, and correct that oversight.
This is the kind of movie you really need to watch at least twice before you can really appreciate it. This isn’t a film that you coast through. This is a movie that you white-knuckle it for two hours before saying, wait what? What the hell just happened? Re-watching the movie, after already fully immersing yourself in it helps you fully appreciate the journey taken by this character. Continue Reading
Machine Mean 