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Things We Leave Behind
A shadowy figure glimpsed in the darkness on a deserted beach.
A monstrous presence on the last train home.
A stick-figure puppet which mysteriously appears in the night.
All of these, and more, are to be found within the pages of the new collection from Mark West. With an introduction by Johnny Mains and containing eighteen stories spanning his writing career so far, including two previously unpublished tales, Things We Leave Behind is a haunting compilation in which the ordinary and the supernatural combine to devastating effect.
A monstrous presence on the last train home.
A stick-figure puppet which mysteriously appears in the night.
All of these, and more, are to be found within the pages of the new collection from Mark West. With an introduction by Johnny Mains and containing eighteen stories spanning his writing career so far, including two previously unpublished tales, Things We Leave Behind is a haunting compilation in which the ordinary and the supernatural combine to devastating effect.
335 pages, Kindle Edition
Published July 15, 2017
8 people want to read
About the author
Mark West
67 books173 followersMark West was born in Northamptonshire in 1969. Writing stories since the age of eight, he discovered the small press in 1999 and since then, he’s published more than 90 stories in various publications around the world.
The Book Folks published his debut mainstream thriller DON’T GO BACK in February 2022. It was followed by WATCHING OVER YOU, THE HUNTER'S QUARRY, STILL WATERS RUN, A KILLER AMONGST US and WE WERE SEEN. His latest, TO SEE TOO MUCH, was published in November 2024. He is currently working on his next thriller novel.
His other works include:
Collections: “Strange Tales” (2003) and “Things We Leave Behind” (2017)
Horror Novels: “In The Rain With The Dead” (2005) and “Conjure” (2009)
Horror Chapbooks/Novelettes: “The Mill” (2011), “What Gets Left Behind” (2012), “The Goblin Glass” (2019) and “Mr Stix” (2019)
Horror Novellas: The Lost Film” (2015), “The Factory” (2016) and “The Exercise” (2021).
Dark Thriller Novellas: “Drive” (2014) and “Polly” (2017)
“Anatomy Of Death” (2013) was a Hersham Horror Books anthology edited by West.
Mark lives in Rothwell, with his wife Alison and their son, Matthew, where he is currently working on a new novel. He can be contacted via his website at www.markwest.org.uk
The Book Folks published his debut mainstream thriller DON’T GO BACK in February 2022. It was followed by WATCHING OVER YOU, THE HUNTER'S QUARRY, STILL WATERS RUN, A KILLER AMONGST US and WE WERE SEEN. His latest, TO SEE TOO MUCH, was published in November 2024. He is currently working on his next thriller novel.
His other works include:
Collections: “Strange Tales” (2003) and “Things We Leave Behind” (2017)
Horror Novels: “In The Rain With The Dead” (2005) and “Conjure” (2009)
Horror Chapbooks/Novelettes: “The Mill” (2011), “What Gets Left Behind” (2012), “The Goblin Glass” (2019) and “Mr Stix” (2019)
Horror Novellas: The Lost Film” (2015), “The Factory” (2016) and “The Exercise” (2021).
Dark Thriller Novellas: “Drive” (2014) and “Polly” (2017)
“Anatomy Of Death” (2013) was a Hersham Horror Books anthology edited by West.
Mark lives in Rothwell, with his wife Alison and their son, Matthew, where he is currently working on a new novel. He can be contacted via his website at www.markwest.org.uk
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
November 7, 2017
This is Mark West's second collection of short stories, featuring 18 tales: two new, the rest published in various anthologies over the years. As such, it contains a number of West's stories that I've already read and admired, including 'Come See My House In The Pretty Town' (folk horror plus scary clowns), the genuinely creepy 'Mr Stix' and 'The Witch House', and the surreal 'Time Waits...' Special mention here must go to 'The Bureau Of Lost Children', possibly West's finest tale, a panic-inducing story about a father losing his son in a crowded shopping centre.
Lots of the stories in Things We Leave Behind feature father/son relationships, or are about family more generally. The majority of West's protagonists are fathers and husbands, and the supernatural forces they face are scary not just because they are dangerous but because they risk disrupting the family unit. This is particularly clear in the stories 'Last Train Home' and 'Fog On The Old Coast Road'; in both, the protagonist is trying to get home to his family and is stopped from doing so by the horrors of West's fiction. I particularly liked the latter of these two pieces: a creepy ghost story with a fantastic last line.
I was rereading some of Stephen King's early short stories at the same time as reading Things We Leave Behind and there's a clear influence at work, transposed to these shores and made very British. It's there in the everyman/woman protagonists that populate his work; there too in the fact West writes wonderfully well about childhood and being a kid. But there's a seedier, gorier side to his fiction as well, as shown in 'The Taste Of Her' and 'The Zabriskie Grimoire'. These are stories not ashamed to acknowlege horror's seedier roots; indeed in 'The Glamour Girl Murders' to relish in it.
A final theme, like so much horror fiction, is the past and its influence on the present. It informs 'Mr Stix' in which a childhood terror passes from mother to daughter, 'What Gets Left Behind', a superb story about a man returning to the site where his childhood friend died, and my favourite of the stories new to me here: 'What We Do Sometimes, Without Thinking'. This is a superbly realised piece about the past, childhood, and a haunting that feels both Jamesian and contemporary at the same time. Like the book as a whole, it's highly recommended to all horror fans.
Lots of the stories in Things We Leave Behind feature father/son relationships, or are about family more generally. The majority of West's protagonists are fathers and husbands, and the supernatural forces they face are scary not just because they are dangerous but because they risk disrupting the family unit. This is particularly clear in the stories 'Last Train Home' and 'Fog On The Old Coast Road'; in both, the protagonist is trying to get home to his family and is stopped from doing so by the horrors of West's fiction. I particularly liked the latter of these two pieces: a creepy ghost story with a fantastic last line.
I was rereading some of Stephen King's early short stories at the same time as reading Things We Leave Behind and there's a clear influence at work, transposed to these shores and made very British. It's there in the everyman/woman protagonists that populate his work; there too in the fact West writes wonderfully well about childhood and being a kid. But there's a seedier, gorier side to his fiction as well, as shown in 'The Taste Of Her' and 'The Zabriskie Grimoire'. These are stories not ashamed to acknowlege horror's seedier roots; indeed in 'The Glamour Girl Murders' to relish in it.
A final theme, like so much horror fiction, is the past and its influence on the present. It informs 'Mr Stix' in which a childhood terror passes from mother to daughter, 'What Gets Left Behind', a superb story about a man returning to the site where his childhood friend died, and my favourite of the stories new to me here: 'What We Do Sometimes, Without Thinking'. This is a superbly realised piece about the past, childhood, and a haunting that feels both Jamesian and contemporary at the same time. Like the book as a whole, it's highly recommended to all horror fans.
May 21, 2018
(3.5 stars)
Ignoring the old platitude regarding books and covers, one might think West to be, judging by the iconic images of the skull, snuffed candle, and hourglass, a dark romantic with an intentionally antiquated style; on the other hand, if one notices the image of the book itself--located beneath the skull--repeated on the front cover, then perhaps one would expect West to be more of a meta-horror writer. But, of course, the platitude wins this time: this author does not fit into either category; in fact, the eighteen stories contained in this collection, while reasonably varied in concept, reveal Mark West to be a creator of often truly poignant though no less everyman-styled horrors.
With this being said, the darkness pervading these tales is still quite intense and, at times, enthralling. "The Bureau of Lost Children," as full of overt dread as it is tantalizingly oblique in its intimations of a sinister mall security operation, is one of the few pieces of dark fiction that I've read and, afterward, found deserving of, perhaps, a novella-length treatment. "Time Waits..." and "Looking At Me, Seeing You" take the well-worn tropes of, respectively, time and mirrors, and, by virtue of West's emotional investment and some well-placed passages of disorientation and despair, convey a sense of deeply personal distress regarding themes of identity and mutability.
"What Gets Left Behind" effectively compounds its horrifying effects by centering on the dark history of an unassuming warehouse and the protagonist's attempt to deal with lingering childhood trauma, as well as a local serial killer's seemingly spectral legacy. As demonstrated in the aforementioned "Time Waits...", West knows just the right moment to amplify his usually colloquial prose-styling, and, thereby, depict emotionally-charged scenes whose stimultaneously psychological and supernatural import starkly contrasts with the banality of preceding events.
While West's forte isn't necessarily a surprising sense of inventiveness, he does sometimes make dramatic use of misdirection to stall the inevitable. "The Taste of Her" is particularly exemplary in how it seems to begin with the climax--a homocidal-suicidal pilot threatening his erstwhile friend/wife's lover with an intentional crash--yet the denouement manages to heighten the drama, even if it is still foreseeable. Perhaps the most miraculous feat of this daring tale is how West so convincingly evokes pathos on behalf of the philanderer; again, a frequently palpable sense of emotional investment is one of this author's major strengths.
While this isn't the sort of horror that seeks to restructure--or completely derange--your perception of reality, the mixture of relatability and a commitment to portraying the darker corners of existence makes this collection one of broad appeal. The often conversational tone, along with genuinely disturbing concepts and imagery, brings to mind the works of Douglas Clegg and, as another review has remarked, (early) Stephen King. Like most horror writers who have survived their magazine publication-only days, it seems West has been starting to spend more time producing long-form works but let's hope that won't mean the absence of another short story collection.
Ignoring the old platitude regarding books and covers, one might think West to be, judging by the iconic images of the skull, snuffed candle, and hourglass, a dark romantic with an intentionally antiquated style; on the other hand, if one notices the image of the book itself--located beneath the skull--repeated on the front cover, then perhaps one would expect West to be more of a meta-horror writer. But, of course, the platitude wins this time: this author does not fit into either category; in fact, the eighteen stories contained in this collection, while reasonably varied in concept, reveal Mark West to be a creator of often truly poignant though no less everyman-styled horrors.
With this being said, the darkness pervading these tales is still quite intense and, at times, enthralling. "The Bureau of Lost Children," as full of overt dread as it is tantalizingly oblique in its intimations of a sinister mall security operation, is one of the few pieces of dark fiction that I've read and, afterward, found deserving of, perhaps, a novella-length treatment. "Time Waits..." and "Looking At Me, Seeing You" take the well-worn tropes of, respectively, time and mirrors, and, by virtue of West's emotional investment and some well-placed passages of disorientation and despair, convey a sense of deeply personal distress regarding themes of identity and mutability.
"What Gets Left Behind" effectively compounds its horrifying effects by centering on the dark history of an unassuming warehouse and the protagonist's attempt to deal with lingering childhood trauma, as well as a local serial killer's seemingly spectral legacy. As demonstrated in the aforementioned "Time Waits...", West knows just the right moment to amplify his usually colloquial prose-styling, and, thereby, depict emotionally-charged scenes whose stimultaneously psychological and supernatural import starkly contrasts with the banality of preceding events.
While West's forte isn't necessarily a surprising sense of inventiveness, he does sometimes make dramatic use of misdirection to stall the inevitable. "The Taste of Her" is particularly exemplary in how it seems to begin with the climax--a homocidal-suicidal pilot threatening his erstwhile friend/wife's lover with an intentional crash--yet the denouement manages to heighten the drama, even if it is still foreseeable. Perhaps the most miraculous feat of this daring tale is how West so convincingly evokes pathos on behalf of the philanderer; again, a frequently palpable sense of emotional investment is one of this author's major strengths.
While this isn't the sort of horror that seeks to restructure--or completely derange--your perception of reality, the mixture of relatability and a commitment to portraying the darker corners of existence makes this collection one of broad appeal. The often conversational tone, along with genuinely disturbing concepts and imagery, brings to mind the works of Douglas Clegg and, as another review has remarked, (early) Stephen King. Like most horror writers who have survived their magazine publication-only days, it seems West has been starting to spend more time producing long-form works but let's hope that won't mean the absence of another short story collection.
August 9, 2017
Things We Leave Behind spans Mark West's career, from 1999 to the present, and as you might expect this makes for a wonderfully varied collection in tone and theme. There's an absolute wealth of tales within, and the sheer variety is worth the price of admission alone. Favourites include the atmospheric and incredibly creepy A Cottage By The Sea, in which a seaside holiday turns horribly supernatural after the protagonist spies a strange shadow swimming beneath him in the water. Looking At Me, Seeing You is pure existential horror, the jarring and uncomfortable sensation of losing one's grip on life and being unable to change it. Fog On The Old Coast Road and The Bureau of Lost Children are two very different takes on a similar subject - losing sight of your child and the subsequent panic as you try to find them before something terrible happens. The former tale is especially evocative, expertly painting a dreary seashore beset by fog and the sense of something strange hiding just out of sight. Though I've never been a parent, the panic and tension were so well described that I almost felt as though I could understand that degree of fear.
My favourite stories in the collection deal with bullying, either directly or obscurely, and the sense of not truly belonging. The mundane viciousness of schoolyard hierarchy are brought starkly into life, and though a vein of the supernatural runs beneath both stories the horror is rooted firmly in reality. Issues of Disruption is told from the point of view of a teacher, while What We Do Sometimes, Without Thinking is almost a retrospective - a man reminiscing about the death of a schoolfriend. Both tales achieve an acute discomfort in the way they depict terrible things that could conceivably happen - to you or to someone you know - things that you are almost certain have happened somewhere in the world.
Mark's writing is always crisp and to the point, and his stories never outstay their welcome. This is a high quality collection and I have no hesitation in recommending it to lovers of scary stories and weird little tales.
My favourite stories in the collection deal with bullying, either directly or obscurely, and the sense of not truly belonging. The mundane viciousness of schoolyard hierarchy are brought starkly into life, and though a vein of the supernatural runs beneath both stories the horror is rooted firmly in reality. Issues of Disruption is told from the point of view of a teacher, while What We Do Sometimes, Without Thinking is almost a retrospective - a man reminiscing about the death of a schoolfriend. Both tales achieve an acute discomfort in the way they depict terrible things that could conceivably happen - to you or to someone you know - things that you are almost certain have happened somewhere in the world.
Mark's writing is always crisp and to the point, and his stories never outstay their welcome. This is a high quality collection and I have no hesitation in recommending it to lovers of scary stories and weird little tales.
August 21, 2017
Mark West has a phenomenal style of writing and it was a pleasure to see this collection of work spread out over such a large patch of his career. His prose is great and the characters are deeply drawn and sympathetic. I also don't know if I've read anyone who can provoke a sense of discomfort and dread from their words in the same way as West. It isn't easy to actually provoke fear in a reader and his work has been a rare example of this for me.
I think the title for this collection is perfect and does a great job of unifying a lot of the stories. There are quite a few pieces here that seem to deal with coming to terms with or a reckoning with something that has happened in the past. But beyond that, I also loved the frequent pop culture references from my childhood, taking me back to the things I've left behind as well.
The Taste Of Her was definitely my favorite of the collection, a revenge tale that starts off with a great line and just gets better from there. A Quick Weekend Away was full of great, creepy moments that I thought did a great job establishing the tone and mood for the rest of the book. And I thought Mr. Huxton Goes Camping really infused suspense into what should have been a typical situation. It was also incredibly original and unique, leading up to an unexpected and great ending.
Just a few from a book of tales that I really enjoyed. Check this one out!
I think the title for this collection is perfect and does a great job of unifying a lot of the stories. There are quite a few pieces here that seem to deal with coming to terms with or a reckoning with something that has happened in the past. But beyond that, I also loved the frequent pop culture references from my childhood, taking me back to the things I've left behind as well.
The Taste Of Her was definitely my favorite of the collection, a revenge tale that starts off with a great line and just gets better from there. A Quick Weekend Away was full of great, creepy moments that I thought did a great job establishing the tone and mood for the rest of the book. And I thought Mr. Huxton Goes Camping really infused suspense into what should have been a typical situation. It was also incredibly original and unique, leading up to an unexpected and great ending.
Just a few from a book of tales that I really enjoyed. Check this one out!
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews