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Figures in Rain: Weird and Ghostly Tales
CONTENTS:
Preface;
Introduction by Joe R. Lansdale;
Offices;
A Lover's Alibi;
Lares & Penates;
I'll Drown My Book;
Prometheus's Ghost;
Miss Tuck and the Gingerbread Boy;
The Music of the Dark Time;
Return of the Neon Fireball;
The House of Fear;
Blue Notes;
O Come Little Children;
Other Errors, Other Times;
Ex-Library;
Jabbie Welsh;
The Cairnwell Horror;
His Two Wives;
From the Papers of Helmut Hecker;
The Bookman;
A Father's Dream;
Coventry Carol;
A Place where a Head Would Rest;
The Blood-Red Sea;
Excerpts from the Records of the New Zodiac and the Diaries of Henry Watson Fairfax;
A Collector of Magic;
Subtle Knowing;
Figures in Rain;
Sundowners;
Story Notes and Sources.
Preface;
Introduction by Joe R. Lansdale;
Offices;
A Lover's Alibi;
Lares & Penates;
I'll Drown My Book;
Prometheus's Ghost;
Miss Tuck and the Gingerbread Boy;
The Music of the Dark Time;
Return of the Neon Fireball;
The House of Fear;
Blue Notes;
O Come Little Children;
Other Errors, Other Times;
Ex-Library;
Jabbie Welsh;
The Cairnwell Horror;
His Two Wives;
From the Papers of Helmut Hecker;
The Bookman;
A Father's Dream;
Coventry Carol;
A Place where a Head Would Rest;
The Blood-Red Sea;
Excerpts from the Records of the New Zodiac and the Diaries of Henry Watson Fairfax;
A Collector of Magic;
Subtle Knowing;
Figures in Rain;
Sundowners;
Story Notes and Sources.
320 pages, Hardcover
First published July 1, 2002
7 people are currently reading
86 people want to read
About the author
Chet Williamson
187 books122 followersChet Williamson has written horror, science fiction, and suspense since 1981. Among his novels are Second Chance, Hunters, Defenders of the Faith, Ash Wednesday, Reign, Dreamthorp, and the forthcoming Psycho Sanitarium, an authorized sequel to Robert Bloch's classic Psycho. Over a hundred of his short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Playboy, Esquire, The Magazine of F&SF, and many other magazines and anthologies.
He has won the International Horror Guild Award, and has been shortlisted twice for the World Fantasy Award, six times for the HWA Stoker, and once for the MWA's Edgar. Nearly all of his works are available in ebook format.
A stage and film actor, he has recorded over 40 unabridged audiobooks, both of his own work and that of many other writers, available at www.audible.com. Follow him on Twitter (@chetwill) or at www.chetwilliamson.com.
He has won the International Horror Guild Award, and has been shortlisted twice for the World Fantasy Award, six times for the HWA Stoker, and once for the MWA's Edgar. Nearly all of his works are available in ebook format.
A stage and film actor, he has recorded over 40 unabridged audiobooks, both of his own work and that of many other writers, available at www.audible.com. Follow him on Twitter (@chetwill) or at www.chetwilliamson.com.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
October 1, 2022
An absolute triumph for Chet Williamson! After reading his debut novel, "Soulstorm," I felt that the author had more to offer than an entertaining retread of the haunted house motif. So I decided to explore his work in another format--the short story. "Figures in Rain" is the only collection of Williamson's short stories and novelettes I know of to date, containing 27 examples of over twenty years of work since 1981. And wow!
The very first entry, "Offices," had me hooked. A five-star cautionary tale with strong advice to those of us who feel stuck in soulless corporate jobs. This would have been right at home in an industrial music culture magazine from the 80s, and certainly feels topical now in our contemporary times, where the "Backrooms" subgenre has fueled the imagination of independent creators.
Then the very first paragraph of the next story, "A Lover's Alibi," got my attention with a bang. But the shocking opening isn't what elevated this story to be another five-star read. It was an excellent psychological study of how relationships grow toxic.
"Prometheus' Ghost" is the next 5-star hit, and one of the first short stories to legitimately scare me in years. This one really punches you in the gut with that deep fear of what happens to you when you die. Does everything really amount to nothing? Your deep love for your family? All your accomplishments? All the knowledge and wisdom you accumulate over the years? The help you might have given others that at some point saved their lives? Chet Williamson has a strange answer to these big questions through a touching relationship about a blind black homeless man and a upper middle class white businessman. Brilliant.
Most of the stories are of a supernatural nature, or simply weird and unexplained, like an episode of the Twilight Zone. But sometimes they are not. "The House of Fear" is a fabulous example. Though the title suggests otherwise, consider the subtitle which says, "A Study in Comparative Religions." Hmmm. Originally, this story appeared as a chapbook in 1989, and on the surface it is about a family living in a large spooky house with three older tenants who are very set in their ways, reminding me of the non-genre fiction of Bradbury. This multilayered tale is not meant to be scary, but a puzzle meant to be thought about and digested by the reader to obtain the varieties of meaning. It's a wonderful and ingenious study of human psychology that brought me a lot of joy, one I'll probably read to the kids and revisit many times myself.
Speaking of revisiting, I feel this may be an opportune moment to share some thoughts that came to me after reading another 5-star entry called "The Bookman." Book collections are like living things. When a person collects books, that is an entire library of consciousness, not just of the various writers whose minds are captured on the pages, but of the person who chose those books and read them. When an avid reader dies, what happens to their book collection? It gets dispersed, scattered, like the molecules of this mortal coil when the body becomes nothing more than dust to feed the earth. Sold off to other collectors, donated to libraries, auctioned at estate sales, or simply thrown away in the trash. Or in the case of someone's electronic collection, they remain incorporeal blips of data, forever archived in an ether of internet and silicone chips of various defunct devices. There's something inherently tragic to this--or perhaps even liberating? Maybe that is why I like to record my thoughts about the books I read and place them for posterity on this technological platform. The books that have touched me throughout my life are already part of a great diaspora, some having been lost when I've moved to different cities, or destroyed in Hurricane Katrina, or never returned when lent out to other readers. Some of my books I've never owned; they came from libraries or from Scribd or JSTOR or Kindle Unlimited or YouTube or Audible. But no matter where they came from, or where they have gone, my collection remains somewhat whole as a collection of thoughts and reviews that I can share with others and revisit from time to time.
Yeah, "Figures in Rain" is a book that makes you think as well as it thrills you. Of course, some stories will land solid for you and others won't. For me, there were a few of these that promised better things, but ended up being just standard supernatural or slasher fare. But sometimes when the story seems straightforward or pointless, if you look again, you'll catch hidden themes and messages that bring a smile to your face. An excellent example of where this happened to me was in the story "Other Errors, Other Times," a scene of which is pictured in the almost impressionistic artwork of the cover. So overall, I highly enjoyed every last one of them, and I think this collection is worth reading by anyone, even those who do not typically read horror.
Williamson has incredible range as an author. His style varies tremendously from story to story, and yet it works. One entry will be a modern noir about a bebop jazz saxophonist. Another will be a histrionic and macabre tale of love and madness in the style of Poe. He pays tribute to M.R. James and H.P. Lovecraft with incredible skill and love, not just mimicry. "The Blood Red Sea" is a beautiful example of a prose poem, written in the style of the classical Greeks, with a twist that will thrill you literature and history academics out there. But at rest, Williamson's basic style is a mixture of Richard Matheson and Stephen King.
If all of this sounds appealing to you, then this book is a must-read. In fact, I might even go on a limb to suggest that, for some of you, this collection may rank up there with the best. I'm not trying to say that this is high literature like "Turn of the Screw." No academic is going to read these stories and say, "Move over Melville and Dostoevsky! The new boss is in town!" But, I will say this:
If Edgar Allen Poe represented the Romanticism of the mid-19th Century, if M.R. James turned the classic Gothic story on its head following the Victorian era, and if H.P. Lovecraft created a new mythology for the Modernist 20th Century, then Williamson certainly continued the tradition of innovating the ghost story in the Postmodern period.
"But Warren, you King of the Creepy-Crawlies," I hear you protest, "if this book is so good, why have we never heard of it before?" Beats me, folks. Perhaps it is because this collection, though much of it written during the paperback-from-hell era, was released quietly in 2002 by a smaller independent publisher with little fanfare, though it did make quite a splash at the time, receiving the International Horror Guild Award in 2003. And because many of these stories were more personal to the author, rather than simply a means to earn a living, perhaps that is why you can see such a difference when compared to the author's more commercial work. Whatever the reason, it certainly made me happy enough that I felt I should share my experience with you so that maybe you might love it too. You know I wouldn't try to steer you wrong.
His contemporary and friend, Joe R. Lansdale, suggests in the foreword that you read this book while the rain taps on your window panes. That's a good idea. But I promise that it won't matter what the weather is like outside, or what atmosphere you create in your reading space. When you are reading this book, you won't notice what's around you, not even the shadow that is peeping at you from the foot of your bed...
The very first entry, "Offices," had me hooked. A five-star cautionary tale with strong advice to those of us who feel stuck in soulless corporate jobs. This would have been right at home in an industrial music culture magazine from the 80s, and certainly feels topical now in our contemporary times, where the "Backrooms" subgenre has fueled the imagination of independent creators.
Then the very first paragraph of the next story, "A Lover's Alibi," got my attention with a bang. But the shocking opening isn't what elevated this story to be another five-star read. It was an excellent psychological study of how relationships grow toxic.
"Prometheus' Ghost" is the next 5-star hit, and one of the first short stories to legitimately scare me in years. This one really punches you in the gut with that deep fear of what happens to you when you die. Does everything really amount to nothing? Your deep love for your family? All your accomplishments? All the knowledge and wisdom you accumulate over the years? The help you might have given others that at some point saved their lives? Chet Williamson has a strange answer to these big questions through a touching relationship about a blind black homeless man and a upper middle class white businessman. Brilliant.
Most of the stories are of a supernatural nature, or simply weird and unexplained, like an episode of the Twilight Zone. But sometimes they are not. "The House of Fear" is a fabulous example. Though the title suggests otherwise, consider the subtitle which says, "A Study in Comparative Religions." Hmmm. Originally, this story appeared as a chapbook in 1989, and on the surface it is about a family living in a large spooky house with three older tenants who are very set in their ways, reminding me of the non-genre fiction of Bradbury. This multilayered tale is not meant to be scary, but a puzzle meant to be thought about and digested by the reader to obtain the varieties of meaning. It's a wonderful and ingenious study of human psychology that brought me a lot of joy, one I'll probably read to the kids and revisit many times myself.
Speaking of revisiting, I feel this may be an opportune moment to share some thoughts that came to me after reading another 5-star entry called "The Bookman." Book collections are like living things. When a person collects books, that is an entire library of consciousness, not just of the various writers whose minds are captured on the pages, but of the person who chose those books and read them. When an avid reader dies, what happens to their book collection? It gets dispersed, scattered, like the molecules of this mortal coil when the body becomes nothing more than dust to feed the earth. Sold off to other collectors, donated to libraries, auctioned at estate sales, or simply thrown away in the trash. Or in the case of someone's electronic collection, they remain incorporeal blips of data, forever archived in an ether of internet and silicone chips of various defunct devices. There's something inherently tragic to this--or perhaps even liberating? Maybe that is why I like to record my thoughts about the books I read and place them for posterity on this technological platform. The books that have touched me throughout my life are already part of a great diaspora, some having been lost when I've moved to different cities, or destroyed in Hurricane Katrina, or never returned when lent out to other readers. Some of my books I've never owned; they came from libraries or from Scribd or JSTOR or Kindle Unlimited or YouTube or Audible. But no matter where they came from, or where they have gone, my collection remains somewhat whole as a collection of thoughts and reviews that I can share with others and revisit from time to time.
Yeah, "Figures in Rain" is a book that makes you think as well as it thrills you. Of course, some stories will land solid for you and others won't. For me, there were a few of these that promised better things, but ended up being just standard supernatural or slasher fare. But sometimes when the story seems straightforward or pointless, if you look again, you'll catch hidden themes and messages that bring a smile to your face. An excellent example of where this happened to me was in the story "Other Errors, Other Times," a scene of which is pictured in the almost impressionistic artwork of the cover. So overall, I highly enjoyed every last one of them, and I think this collection is worth reading by anyone, even those who do not typically read horror.
Williamson has incredible range as an author. His style varies tremendously from story to story, and yet it works. One entry will be a modern noir about a bebop jazz saxophonist. Another will be a histrionic and macabre tale of love and madness in the style of Poe. He pays tribute to M.R. James and H.P. Lovecraft with incredible skill and love, not just mimicry. "The Blood Red Sea" is a beautiful example of a prose poem, written in the style of the classical Greeks, with a twist that will thrill you literature and history academics out there. But at rest, Williamson's basic style is a mixture of Richard Matheson and Stephen King.
If all of this sounds appealing to you, then this book is a must-read. In fact, I might even go on a limb to suggest that, for some of you, this collection may rank up there with the best. I'm not trying to say that this is high literature like "Turn of the Screw." No academic is going to read these stories and say, "Move over Melville and Dostoevsky! The new boss is in town!" But, I will say this:
If Edgar Allen Poe represented the Romanticism of the mid-19th Century, if M.R. James turned the classic Gothic story on its head following the Victorian era, and if H.P. Lovecraft created a new mythology for the Modernist 20th Century, then Williamson certainly continued the tradition of innovating the ghost story in the Postmodern period.
"But Warren, you King of the Creepy-Crawlies," I hear you protest, "if this book is so good, why have we never heard of it before?" Beats me, folks. Perhaps it is because this collection, though much of it written during the paperback-from-hell era, was released quietly in 2002 by a smaller independent publisher with little fanfare, though it did make quite a splash at the time, receiving the International Horror Guild Award in 2003. And because many of these stories were more personal to the author, rather than simply a means to earn a living, perhaps that is why you can see such a difference when compared to the author's more commercial work. Whatever the reason, it certainly made me happy enough that I felt I should share my experience with you so that maybe you might love it too. You know I wouldn't try to steer you wrong.
His contemporary and friend, Joe R. Lansdale, suggests in the foreword that you read this book while the rain taps on your window panes. That's a good idea. But I promise that it won't matter what the weather is like outside, or what atmosphere you create in your reading space. When you are reading this book, you won't notice what's around you, not even the shadow that is peeping at you from the foot of your bed...
March 31, 2019
What a nice book this one.was!
Please don't get me wrong. Most of these stories had their foundations built on pain, misery, loneliness and loss. But these twenty seven stories were exquisite pieces of work. With their gentle, nuanced, articulated and vivid descriptions, the stories had succeeded in immersing me into whatever hell or hole the protagonists had found themselves in.
But the effect didn’t leave me hollow. Instead, with the revelations in black had come genuine pleasure of reading. Also, the darkly humorous tone combined with palpable atmosphere of menace had given the stories an unusual shine.
I can't say about you. But I would probably remember "Prometheus's Ghost", "The Music of the Dark Time", "The Cairnwell Horror", "His Two Wives", "From the Papers of Helmut Hecker", "Excerpts from the Records of the New Zodiac and the Diaries of Henry Watson Fairfax", "A Collector of Magic" and "Figures in Rain" forever!
I express profound gratitude towards Ash Tree Press for this volume.
Highly Recommended.
Please don't get me wrong. Most of these stories had their foundations built on pain, misery, loneliness and loss. But these twenty seven stories were exquisite pieces of work. With their gentle, nuanced, articulated and vivid descriptions, the stories had succeeded in immersing me into whatever hell or hole the protagonists had found themselves in.
But the effect didn’t leave me hollow. Instead, with the revelations in black had come genuine pleasure of reading. Also, the darkly humorous tone combined with palpable atmosphere of menace had given the stories an unusual shine.
I can't say about you. But I would probably remember "Prometheus's Ghost", "The Music of the Dark Time", "The Cairnwell Horror", "His Two Wives", "From the Papers of Helmut Hecker", "Excerpts from the Records of the New Zodiac and the Diaries of Henry Watson Fairfax", "A Collector of Magic" and "Figures in Rain" forever!
I express profound gratitude towards Ash Tree Press for this volume.
Highly Recommended.
November 14, 2023
My entry for Coventry Carol.
Goodreads does not make it easy to add books
As found in Otto Prenzler's The Big Book of Ghost Stories
Goodreads does not make it easy to add books
As found in Otto Prenzler's The Big Book of Ghost Stories
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews