Screams From the Dark

Screams From the Dark (Tor Nightfire) is an anthology curated by renowned editor Ellen Datlow. The compilation is subtitled “29 Tales of Monsters and the Monstrous,” and indeed provides an array of stories that amply fulfill the description. As always, when reading a variety of yarns, there are some that strike one’s fancy more than others. Subjective as it most certainly is, I’ve selected for discussion the stories that most appealed to me, realizing that other readers will have their own favorites.

Two of the tales address Covid in their narrative. In “Wet Red Grin,” written by Gemma Files, the protagonist is a caregiver at a nursing home affected by the pandemic. The staff is stretched and limited, allowing for sinister shenanigans to go largely unnoticed. The patients at the facility, being elderly and infirm, are keenly aware of their mortality. And one of them takes extreme steps to delay the process. Author Files piles on the intensity with passages such as this: “The rest of the skin tears away with ease, like it’s already rotten. Both hands pop back the scalp, shred and shed the upper body from skull to thighs; knees and feet kick free of the bottom half, like a pair of crotch-ripped pants. Organs spill out of the rib cage as the thing inside curls back, clambers into a crouch, crawls to the end of the bed, and sits there waiting, a cat on the lookout for prey.”

With “The Atrocity Exhibitionist” Brian Hodge artfully crafts a narrative exploring how the pandemic made social media even more dangerously influential. A front man for a band finds that even though sequestered, he can exhibit outrageous behavior electronically. The preposterous and scary lengths to which he goes to enhance his social media persona build to a frenzy documented and aided and abetted by his personal assistant. Who also serves as the tale’s narrator. She sums up the social media seduction and her place in it: “He’d already given his soul over to something so much worse, and I wasn’t feeling hopeful about my own. Both of us, willing servants to this malign intelligence that seduced us through our pockets and our desks…this voracious parasite, this incubator of inhumanities that rewarded us for being our most grotesque. It squatted over our lives like some gargantuan toad-god, ravenous for blood and souls, only we were part of it, too, a couple more warts on its pulsating hide.” Brian Hodge is a fine writer who never disappoints.

Damaged women figure prominently in “Here Comes Your Man” by Indrapramit Das and A.C. Wise’s “Crick Crack Rattle Tap.” The Das story centers on a shaky relationship between two lovers and how the proverbial can of worms gets opened by a creepy stranger. The male half of the couple has low self-esteem in terms of his sense of masculinity. His girlfriend, the victim of childhood rape by a relative, has understandable intimacy issues. After encountering a sleazy older man, their respective doubts and fears become externalized: “There is a bang as something slams against the front door. They can hear the heavy lock shudder on the latch. The wooden bed frame snaps again. Megha’s chest aches as she sees a giant spider of shadow against the frosted glass of the window, behind the parted, still curtain. A hand against the window. A faceless darkness as someone pushes their head against the glass.” There is ambiguity regarding Megha’s perceptions that is well executed by writer Das.

Ambiguity is very much present in the A.C. Wise tale, as well. What might be logically perceived as a severe case of postpartum depression gets heightened to terrifying levels of fear.  A single mother’s resentment of her baby’s needs creates an untenable situation. The isolated woman feels as though she is fading away as a person. The infant is the center of the universe, requiring constant attention at all hours; exhaustion contributing to the animosity: “She fumbles on a robe. The wail continues, rising and falling in time with the storm, matching the wind until it suddenly drops out of synch. There’s a moment of unnerving silence, followed by a series of pathetic, broken sobs. To her sleep-deprived brain, they sound fake, spiteful, like the baby is mocking her and proving it is in control.” In such a mental state, it is easy for the mother to employ a supernatural rationale for the overall strangeness. And given Wise’s astute application of ambiguity, who can say that the mother is mistaken? “Crick Crack Rattle Tap” does rattle the mind.

For some much-needed comic relief, there’s Joe R. Lansdale’s “Sweet Potato.” Lansdale has a gift for writing laugh-out-loud similes and creating scenarios that defy expectations. In this yarn, for example, there’s a scene in which two men discuss the behavior of succubi and incubi which is so wonderfully absurd in its raunchy folksiness that it makes me smile just writing about it. The narrative focuses on a newly retired man who decides to farm sweet potatoes. His unusual neighbor becomes a fertile source for inspiration, laying the groundwork for delicious possibilities. A sort of “You say potato, I say patootie.”

But enough levity. The anthology’s last story is a superb way to close the Datlow edited volume and end this review. “Blodsuger” by John Langan reads like a folk tale influenced by Mario Bava. The director’s 1963 anthology film Black Sabbath features three stories. The segment of the trilogy called “I Wurdulak” has a scene that is thematically echoed in Langan’s narrative. It involves the voice of a loved one calling from outside to be let into the house. Whether this is an intentional homage or not, it works beautifully. The plot veers into unexpected territory when a conversation about ice fishing becomes a remembrance of terror. The woman who is recalling the events tells how when she was a young girl, she lived with her grandparents who came to America from Denmark. While ice fishing with the grandfather, she catches a grotesque fish; one that has un-fishlike properties: “In its blue eyes, I saw hatred, malevolence pure and cold as the snow piling up outside. It wasn’t the same sort of intelligence I saw in the dogs, it was…corrupt, wrong in a deep-seated nauseating way.” What makes this tale so memorable is how it weaves the mundane with the supernatural, incorporating history and inventing lore. It vibrates with cultural identity and warms the heart when not chilling the bones.

It was a pleasure to read all the stories in Screams from the Dark and to go deep into the ones that were particularly to my taste. Horror fans will find tales that will satisfy their specific appetites somewhere within the pages.