Feesters in the Lake & Other Stories

by Bob Leeman

A Window into the Fiction of Bob Leman - Introduction [Jim Rockhill]
Preface
Window
The Tehama
Industrial Complex
The Pilgrimage of Clifford M.
Change of Address
Skirmish on Bastable Street
Olida
How Dobbstown Was Saved
The Time of the Worm
Bait
Loob
Unlawful Possession
Come Where My Love Lies Dreaming
Instructions
Feesters in the Lake

Cover Illustration by Allen Koszowski

Genres: Horror, Short Stories, Weird Fiction, Fiction, Science Fiction, Collections, Fantasy

330 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 2002

Reviews

[Riju Ganguly · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has a cult status among the very select few who could get hold of the book when it had been first published, or were lucky enough to grab a "touched" copy when that came up online (including yours truly). If I rave about the stories in this volume and then state that according to Amazon one book would put you down by US $ 255, then perhaps you would find it unfair. So let me state it before I begin, that unless you have a serious probability of getting to read this book from some source, stop right now, because otherwise you would feel too bad, and I would feel too guilty about my possession! And now, the review!

(*) Introduction by Jim Rockhill: a compact and informative preface that informs us about this Bradman-esque author (I can't help but lift from Cricket, how else can you describe an author whose entire output can be found between these covers, and yet whose works are of such good quality on a constant basis?).

1) WINDOW: one of the most anthologised stories, and is the most spine-chilling science fiction (is it? or maybe it's fantasy..., or maybe just horror) piece that I have EVER read.

2) THE TEHAMA: a classic example of mixing the Indian legends with mundane money-minded criminals, and presenting the whole thing as a deliciously horrific story.

3) INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX: if you had thought that Richard Matheson and Philip K. Dick were the last things in describing a paranoid mind, read this one, and be stunned!

4) THE PILGRIMAGE OF CLIFFORD M.: can you write a vampire-story without taking recourse to a single cliche, and yet create a staggeringly superior piece of fiction that should have revolutionised fiction as far as that genre is concerned? You can, if you are Bob Leman.

5) CHANGE OF ADDRESS: a tragi-comic, and eventually poignant look at the question of identity, using science-fictional devices as a cloak.

6) SKIRMISH ON BASTABLE STREET: an immensely enjoyable demoniac bargain story that lifts the mood of the book with its comic touches.

7) OLIDA: Innsmouth-related ideas and all other Lovecraftian hashes have been reinvented in this story in a surprisingly fresh language, with tight plotting, and believable characters.

8) HOW DOBBSTOWN WAS SAVED: this previously unpublished story is a take on every possible B-Movie and types, and is very enjoyable in its mixing of horror & humour. BUT, it is not superior to "The Sins of Hyacinth Pouch", and that is a fact.

9) THE TIME OF THE WORM: one of the bleakest and dystopic stories that I have read, but it is immensely successful as a means to convey horror.

10) BAIT: WHAT a story to BEGIN the in-print career (I am sure that many authors would die to see their final story attain this level of accomplishment)!

11) LOOB: a sad story of abuse, despair, destruction, and change in history caused by the emotional trauma of a recluse.

12) UNLAWFUL POSSESSION: a brilliant, gothic, humorous and scary story of ghosts, ghouls, demons, devil and (obviously) a mad man.

13) COME WHERE MY LOVE LIES DREAMING: can all-pervasive love be a bad thing? Read this, and know that it can be the most horrific thing that you have ever encountered.

14) INSTRUCTIONS: an unclassifiable and unforgettable story.

15) FEESTERS IN THE LAKE: another "take" on Lovecraftian monsters related to the Innsmouth-legends, but without any of the cliches, and yet sufficiently terror-inducing to make you extra careful about car-parks and other places that are closer to any water-body.

An outstanding book. There have been talks about getting this book re-issued by the Centipede Press, and is that indeed happens, allowing many more readers to enjoy these stories, NOTHING like it!

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great stories written by a man who told me stories all my life!
I have started a blog where fans of Bob Leman will have a chance to read some of his old fanzines, see previously unpublished doodles, puns, and opinions. I will also post updates on new projects. Thevinegarworm.blogspot.com.

[W.T.H. · Rating 5 out of 5]

The stories in Feesters In The Lake held me absolutely mesmerized from cover to cover. The originality, the prose, the stunning detail. At least four stories have entered my all time favorite reading experiences: "Loob", "Change Of Address", "Window", and "Feesters In The Lake".

Definitely for fans of John Langan and T.E.D Klein, it's a shame there isn't a more widely available, more affordable edition. With nearly 600 pages of material, I'm enthusiastically happy my time spent both here and in Sturkeyville.

[Jon Carroll Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bob Leman randomly published only a handful of stories over a thirty year period and they are, for the largest part, great. They are all conveniently collected here in this tidy volume that you are not permitted to read - unless you are either lucky enough to find one cheap or wealthy enough to drop $300 on a whim. Sorry about that.

Leman was not a writer by profession and that might have permitted him to write whatever the hell he wanted. What came out was closest to horror, but the variety he displayed within the genre is amazingly broad. His stories are alternately creepy, hilarious, sad and always inventive and entertaining.

somebody please reissue this.

In the meantime, if you live in Pittsburgh, you can get a recently donated copy from the Carnegie Library.

If I decide to return it.

[John H · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't write reviews of books too often on here, partly due to the repetitive nature of me trying to describe how good something is in varied but limited ways, mostly due to my indolenence, and a bit because there are plenty of reviews for a lot of the books I've read. Bob Leman's Feesters in the Lake has surprisingly few reviews though for a writer who's oeuvre of short fiction, though small, is consistently amazing. With my excuse for this "review" out of the way I can safely say that Feesters In the Lake deserves both the praise and cult status attributed to it.

There's another review that gives a good description of each of the stories within this collection, so I'll briefly describe why I liked it and some of my favorites. Without knowing the writing style used in this collection you might be taken aback by the older style of the prose. I haven't read too much classic horror but luckily, I read up a bit on it before dropping a fair amount on the book so I knew what to expect. The diction and style used leans towards the simple side, nothing overly flowery or needlessly complex. Plain good writing.

The genre and tone used throughout the fifteen stories within this book is nice and varied, the author himself states that he'd lump them into fantasy. A few of the genre in this book are: sci-fi horror, which I'm a sucker for, of Window, The Time of the Worm, and Industrial Complex; straight horror of The Tehama, and Olida; and several humorous pieces like How Dobbstown was Saved, and Skirmish on Bastable Street. For such a small body of works the variety is surprising, it's also pretty cool because many of the tales take place in the wonderful settings of Foster County and Sturkeyville. Not one weak story in the collection.

A few of my favorites are Window, Industrial Complex, The Pilgrimage of Clifford M., The Time of the Worm, and Come Where My Love Lies Dreaming. The second and latter two showcase Leman's perspicacious eye for human nature and emotion. I'd confidently count the last two among my favorite stories, such bleak but beautiful stories.

Hopefully this short review adequately describes the brilliance of this collection, and why Bob Leman deserves a wider audience. A master of the short story form, who can stand next to some of my favorites like King, CAS, Lafferty, Wolfe, O'Connor, Tiptree, and Ligotti. Well worth the cost, especially if you can find a good deal for a copy. One of the highlights of my growing collection of books.

[Octavia Cade · Rating 5 out of 5]

Okay. This was pretty damn amazing. Not perfect - there are a couple of stories in here that are unconvincing, or that border on the clichéd - but when the horror hits it really hits hard. Moreover, the bulk of the stories here are creature horror, which I love, with repulsive and terrifying creatures coming up out of foundations and underground caverns and lakes. It's a little bit Lovecraftian, but without the racism and awful overwrought prose.

There are three really outstanding stories here, I think. "Feesters in the Lake", the title story, in which really disgusting wormlike creatures infest an old house and its nearby lake (and when I say "disgusting" I mean it; Leman's creatures can produce genuine revulsion). There's also "Come Where My Love Lies Dreaming", which is a chilling but deeply sad story about a man who loses his wife and is subsequently haunted by her... or something which appears to be her. It's a really interesting take on the haunted house genre, anyway. But the best in this collection, bar none, is "Window". A portal appears in the everyday world, showing on the other side a happy family, living in their beautiful home. I won't spoil it, but I was creeped out for a long, long time after reading that story. The end is just terrifying... in a wonderful way, of course, but still.

[Canavan · Rating 4 out of 5]

✭✭✭½

“Window” (1980) ✭✭✭✭✭
“The Tehama” (1981) ✭✭✭½
“Industrial Complex” (1977) ✭✭✭½
“The Pilgrimage of Clifford M.” (1984) ✭✭✭✭½
“Change of Address” (1979) ✭✭✭
“Skirmish on Bastable Street” (1981) ✭✭½
“Olida” (1987) ✭✭✭✭
“How Dobbstown Was Saved” (2002) ✭✭✭½
“The Time of the Worm” (1988) ✭✭✭½
“Bait” (1967) ✭✭½
“Loob” (1979) ✭✭✭
“Unlawful Possession” (1983) ✭✭✭
“Come Where My Love Lies Dreaming” (1987) ✭✭✭½
“Instructions” (1984) ✭✭✭½
“Feesters in the Lake” (1980) ✭✭✭✭✭

[Michael Joseph Schumann · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the greatest horror short stories I’ve ever read also adapted into an episode of a late 80s short lived television anthology series shown on Fox who’s name eludes me for the moment but I highly suggest you read the story first that originally appeared in the Magazine Of Fantasy & Science Fiction and reprinted in other hc and pb horror anthology collections since then...

[Jim]

Please note that the expanded edition of FEESTERS IN THE LAKE is now available from Centipede Press. As editor, I am not able to offer an unbiased rating.

[Damon · Rating 5 out of 5]

My initial impulse would be to rate this book a bit lower, but I'm not sure if that's because I didn't like it that much or because I had set my expectations inappropriately.

"Instructions" was one of the stories I remember most from my youthful reading. 25 years later I decided to track down more by the same author and discovered that he had lived just a few miles away from me until his death in 2006, there was a single book that collected his entire body of work, and it was out of print. Through a roundabout process I contacted the writer's daughter online, she donated a copy of the book to the Bethel Park library, and I was finally able to read it.

After all this I was terribly excited. But once I started reading these old-timey stories, with their overall very detached tone and careful pacing, my initial enthusiasm waned. I realized that this was in no way the fault of the book itself, but it was hard to recover that sense of excitement.

Still, all that said, evaluating this on its own actual merit it's interesting stuff. One would never get the impression that these stories were for the most part written in the 1980s - they have such a strong early-20th-century vibe, and a feel that reminds me of Robert Aickman or Lovecraft (with maybe a little more irony). "Instructions" and "Window" were still my favorites, but quite a few of the others offer a different take on horror standards like vampires or demons that set them apart from the pile of generic horror fiction out there.

Overall it's a shame that so few people will have the opportunity to read this book - only 460 copies exist, and they go for $250+ on the collector's market, which I wouldn't recommend paying for anything.

[Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this in the anthology 'The Weird', edited by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer.

Great story about an anomaly of a discovered portal 'Window' that is ninety feet high and only open for five seconds/day. On the other side it shows a seemingly bucolic Victorian bygone era. But as a breach is made through this Window everything spirals into full on grotesque terror. A fantastic conjoining of Science Fiction, magicks, and horror from Leman.

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

Leman’s fiction is as close to sui generis as you can get within the realm of NA genre fiction magazines in the second half of last century. It is also incredibly varied and diverse it theme and tone, which can be explained by oft long stretches of time that interceded between the writing of each individual story. There are familiar motifs here, and repeating of the same motifs, but Leman’s spin is always unique and unpredictable. Both the opening story, “Bait“, and famous (and one of few oft reprinted stories of his) “Window“, for example touch on such topics as parallel dimensions and cannibalism. Tho, neither is used in a way that one can expect, and two stories couldn't be more different. Whether they are touching on familiar trope, like vampires or Native American magic or demonic bargains, or being based on really unique concepts (fragment of a god from another dimension lodging itself in human brain), they are always ingenious and unpredictable. Some are openly humorous (if with an edge, like in "Change of Address“), some tragic ("Loob“), other utterly bleak ("Time of the Worm“), others present humanity as plaything of alien forces („Instructions“)… Leman is that kind of writer, like say Bradbury or Beaumont, where you can imagine him starting with a cool idea and then growing that seed into something no other writer could manage.
Now, creme of the crop here are his Gooster County tales, set around that titular fiction patch of US. This is Leman at his best and most literary, painting vivid picture of people and place combined with ingenious twist on familiar tropes, from vampires to mind controlling monstrosities. Quite a few of them contain nods to Lovecraft. Be that obvious parallel to @A Shadow out of Innsmouth“ in titular @Feesters in the Lake“ (and a clever insertion of Lovecraft‘s name in local geography!) or similarities with a number of Lovecraft‘s themes in “Olida“. But, again, Leman‘s take is Leman’s take. @Feesters in the Lake“ may as well be a tale about the decline of small town gentry, with what little horror there is remaining in the background and with this story remaining pretty ambiguous about its nature. One finds great attention to detail, wit, and insight into humanity here.

Anyway, Leman really deserves to be more well known. I would only be reluctant to recommend this due to its limited availability and exuberant price. Curse of small press limited runs and greedy speculators strikes again! If you can grab a copy, do it. This is literary genre fiction of highest caliber. If you cannot then pray, beg, demand a reprint. Both you and this late master deserve it.

[Alex Budris · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is frustrating. The first 5-star read of the year and I can't recommend it to anyone! By my calculation only there are only about 900 copies of Mr. Leman's book in existence. Approx. 400 of the first edition from John Pelan's Midnight House imprint in 2002, and 500 from Centipede Press this year (2022.) I guess if one wanted to they could start collecting back issues of "The Magazine of F & SF" from the 60s thru the 80s - but I have a feeling I'm one of the few people who thinks that might be fun.

But... If you get a chance: read this book! The stories are surprising, scary, and often quite funny. While reading, I was trying to imagine what sub-genre these stories might fall under. They defy categorization. You'll have to read them and find out. (But you can't.)

[Jane · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a delightful discovery! I recently read The Time Traveler's Almanac and one of my favorite stories in that anthology was Bob Lemen's, "Loob." I went on a search to see what else he'd published and found that this book collected most of his stories. It is sadly out of print but I found a pdf on Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/boblemanf...). Can't recommend it enough. He is so clever, capable of creating so much humor and dread and horror. Check out "How Dobbstown Was Saved" for one of the best homages to/deconstructions of the horror genre. Can't recommend enough.

[Barry Haworth · Rating 5 out of 5]

I came across Bob Leman by way of a discussion on Reddit which referenced his short story "Instructions". Searching online I found that it was part of this collection, and searching further I found that it was available on the Internet Archive.
This collection is marvellous collection of horror stories. Subjects vary. There are vampires, Lovecraftian horrors, ghosts, aliens and psychic twisters of the time stream. All the stories are very well written and thought out.
Highly recommended for anyone who enjoys a well told horror tale.

[Bill · Rating 4 out of 5]

I do not have this book, but I have access to back issues of the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction where the stories first appeared. I've read "Feesters" and the "The Window" thus far and I have to say that Leman should be much better known. I would call these stories straight up horror, and they are very well done.

[Abby · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic. I loved it so much. It’s such a shame that his name isn’t known at all, and there have only been 2 limited releases of 500 volumes each.

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very fascinating stories by an unknown author. This book contains all of Bob Leman's short stories(as far as I know). Someone should publish a mass market version so that more readers can enjoy his work. The very limited and expensive edition by Midnight House is selling for over $200 now. If you can find it, it is definitely worth it though.