The Last Trumpet

by Stephen Mark Rainey

The night the stars fell, we could hear the that low thump-thump from somewhere in the sky, like the beating of some gigantic heart...In Sylvan County, Virginia, strange sounds often accompany the coming of darkness. They drift among the remote and shadowed hills, mountains, and valleys as if with a purpose...cognizant...alive. Like an ominous fugue, this music emanates from portals unknown, weaving a soundtrack for the night itself...a dirge for those who dare to venture into the mysterious and forbidding spheres beyond sound.

Genres: Horror, Lovecraftian, Weird Fiction

200 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2000

About the author

Stephen Mark Rainey is the author of numerous novels, including BALAK, THE LEBO COVEN, DARK SHADOWS: DREAMS OF THE DARK (with Elizabeth Massie), BLUE DEVIL ISLAND, THE HOUSE AT BLACK TOOTH POND, and others, including several in Elizabeth Massie's Ameri-Scares Series for Young Readers. In addition, Mark's work includes six short story collections; over 200 published works of short fiction; and the scripts for several DARK SHADOWS audio productions, which feature members of the original ABC-TV series cast. For ten years, he edited the multi-award-winning DEATHREALM magazine and, most recently, the best-selling anthology, DEATHREALM: SPIRITS (Shortwave Publishing). He has also edited anthologies for Delirium Press, Chaosium, and Arkham House. Mark lives in Martinsville, VA, with his wife, Kimberly, and a passel of precocious house cats. He is a regular panelist on the weekly Lovecraft eZine Podcast and an active member of the Horror Writers Association.

Reviews

[MB Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

I finished reading The Last Trumpet last week. It’s a collection of 13 Lovecraft inspired horror stories. I enjoy good Lovecraftian horror, but the good stuff is hard to find, and the bad stuff can be pretty awful. Sturgeon’s Law says 90% of everything is crap, but The Last Trumpet is most definitely in the other 10%.

The stories are mostly loosely connected by locale (Sylvan County, West Virginia) and share a common background and history, some of which we know about or learn about and some of which we don’t. For the most part the stories stand on their own; but their shared history does improve the overall collection.

The first two stories, “Threnody” and “The Spheres beyond Sound”, are very closely related. But there is one odd inconsistency: in “Threnody” the narrator notes that a particular book was printed in 1929, but in “The Spheres beyond Sound” it is said to have been “passed down from unknown generations of Asberrys”. Usually I never notice this kind of thing, but for some reason this leapt right out at me.

After finishing the first two, I was somewhat surprised that the rest of the stories (except the last two) were not so connected.

The middle nine stories are nicely done stories of more or less unrelated events in the county. One, “The Fire Dogs of Balustrade”, was a bit more unworldly than the others, and I thought especially good. In a nice example of the shared history improving the collection, one character in this story also appeared in the previous story, “To Be as They”. Although “The Fire Dogs of Balustrade” doesn’t depend on “To Be as They”; the extra background lent additional depth to the story.

The last two stories, “The Herald at Midnight” and “MISFITS, or, A New Arrival at Paradise Lost” are an interesting pair. They are very closely related, but they couldn’t be further apart stylistically. Not only are they not like each other but they’re not really much like the other stories either.

“The Herald at Midnight” is a very quiet & moody piece. While reading it, I was never quite sure what was going to happen, or where the story was going. The narrator is clearly more than he seems at first, but he is almost impossible to get a grip on. Since it’s a horror story, I kept expecting something horrific to happen. Instead the anticipation just keeps growing until the very last page, and then dissipates mostly unfulfilled, the horror is all left unstated (at least in this story). One of my favorite stories in the collection.


“MISFITS” on the other hand I felt was least Lovecraft-like story. It’s a direct sequel to “The Herald at Midnight” but it takes place some indeterminate time later. A lot of the story is people trying to kill monsters with guns and the monsters killing people. The story lacks the atmospheric horror of the rest of the collection, and this is particularly jarring given the juxtaposition with the “The Herald at Midnight” where atmosphere is everything. I thought it the weakest story in the collection; but it does serve as a reasonable wrap up to the book. At least I can’t imagine how to follow it up.

In spite of the last story, I really liked The Last Trumpet; it was very much worth time I spent reading it.

[Nicholas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading any random sampling of his work, you can tell Stephen Mark Rainey has been writing creatively for many moons past and hence has always enjoyed doing so, and it’s to our benefits as fans of horror fiction that he’s penned an impressive body of work over that stretch of time devoted to dark writings. His execution is scholarly, expertly edited and professionally exhibited, and his prose flows with a kicked- back down-home kind of voice which makes you forget how proper and polished it is, and locks you into a dream.
And where would most of us genre writers be without the influence of Lovecraft? Well…..Rainey is one of the few contemporary horror writers who, particularly with this years-long collection of tales he handed to me at Horrorfind ’06, takes Lovecraftian influence and runs with it like a banshee quarterback gliding straightways towards his goal and too creative to be tackled down by nonsense and immature themes. Rainey’s stuff, regarding this work, drips with themes of a man recalling nightmares of youth and past circumstance of unfathomable woe, turns the mountains of southwestern Virginia into something similar to King’s Castle Rock by taking a region of the world and placing his own stamp upon it, creating a mythology all his own.
There’s everything in the collective work of The Last Trumpet a Lovecraft disciple would appreciate, a horror fan would readily consume and lick their chops afterwards rather than use a napkin like in those recent A1 Steak Sauce ads, and long before the “last trumpet” sounds and releases all sorts of bloody hell in the book’s final stories was I hooked on this man’s work.
For instance….
The Fugue Devil is Rainey’s answer to urban myth, and in other tales music doesn’t tame the savage beast but conjures up older, more terrifying ones. The Horrible Legacy of Dr. Jacob Asberry was atmospheric and cataclysmic, but it wasn’t until The Herald at Midnight when Rainey involves the rest of the world into his own Virginian lore, when the stars fall and the sky splits open to the utter mayhem courtesy of the “stalkers” that I thought wow. What a splendid ride for a reader.
The Last Trumpet should be required reading for any college class introducing Lovecraft to students, a sublime example of literary expertise with a direct injection of proper influence, but the storytelling style in itself is uniquely that of a talent whose grasp upon the craft is exemplary…..and Mark has enough of this kind of stuff under his sleeve to make a lifelong fan of any reader longing for vivid terror and consistently damn good screams.

[Paul Darcy · Rating 4 out of 5]

by Stephen Mark Rainey, published in 2000.

The Last Trumpet is a Lovecraftian derivative collection of short stories wonderfully brought to life by author Stephen Mark Rainey. In the quiet wooded lands of Sylvan County, Virginia something has been stirred, through obscene music, from beyond the confines of our known universe, and that something is bringing death and destruction in its wake.

Sound fun? Well, this collection sure is a great addition to any number of Lovecraftian homage materials from the likes of Lumely, Derleth, Howard and many more (including myself . . ) Rainey creates his own piece of the Mythos borrowing on Lovecraft’s creations in some instances (Shub or Shog anyone?), but more often than not creating his own brand of mind-chilling horrors.

I found this a quick read, but a very enjoyable one. The trip to Virginia seems like any backwater setting in which horrors from beyond are just itching to emerge. And of course with the aid of an old book and some meddling humans, the horrors beyond the thin veil of reality are let loose to consume all in their path.

And just how can they be stopped? Or can they?

What I really liked about this collection of stories is the big bad really does come to be. No, elder sign saves the day here - by the end of this collection it’s total Armageddon, and humanity is looking like it’s sucking on the short end of the tentacle.

Great fun to be had here as Rainey delivers the goods. There are heads torn from shoulders, huge half-seen forms slithering at the edges of forests, things in the basement and more. Be sure to check out this collection if you are a fan of Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos - it is sure to please.

Now, go get it via ebook or paper - I dare you. Oh, and be sure to read it alone at home in the dead of night and listen very closely - you may be able to hear those faint buzzing voices and music from beyond.

[Nancy Oakes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although this book is only about 200 pages, its contents pack a major wallop. I started this book yesterday afternoon, picked it up again after dinner, and did not stop until I was finished. At a couple of different points I had to put the book down because I had a major case of the willies -- to me, the mark of a good horror story! If a book can give me the creeps and a case of stomach knots from tension, then it's a good one. And that's exactly what I thought of the Last Trumpet. It is a very very good book of horror -- mostly mental, leaving the reader to conjure up the images the author is producing through words. It totally succeeds. I think that Rainey's strength here lies in the fact that he doesn't end up with a pastiche-type collection of Lovecraftian stories (don't get me wrong...when these are done well, I enjoy them immensely), but he manages to deliver original horrors from the unknown and then plant them squarely in realistic situations. His opening story, he notes, is taken from a dream he had when he was young. The book consists of 13 stories, all pretty much settled in the same rural area of Virginia, but each very unique and different in its own way.

I am looking forward to more from this author, and I highly recommend this one to Lovecraft readers as well as general readers of good, quality horror. If you want something to chill you to the bone, pick up this book!