Figures Unseen: Selected Stories

by Steve Rasnic Tem

In the worlds of Steve Rasnic Tem a father takes his son “fishing” in the deepest part of downtown, flayed rabbits visit a suburban back yard, a man is haunted by a surrealistic nightmare of crutches, a father is unable to rescue his son from a nightmare of trees, a bereaved man transforms memories of his wife into performance art, great moving cliffs of detritus randomly prowl the world, a seemingly pointless life finds final expression in bits of folded paper, a nuclear holocaust brings about a new mythology, an isolated man discovers he’s part of a terrifying community, a photographer discovers the unexpected in the faces of dead children, and a couple’s aging dismantles reality.

Winner of the World Fantasy, British Fantasy and Bram Stoker Awards, Tem has earned a reputation as one of the finest and most original short fiction writers of our time, blending elements of horror, dark fantasy, science fiction and surreal nightmare into a genre uniquely his own. This new volume collects for the first time thirty-five of Tem’s best tales, selected by the author, and includes an introduction by Simon Strantzas.

“One of the finest and most productive writers of imaginative literature in North America.” - Dan Simmons

“Steve Rasnic Tem is a school of writing unto himself.” - Joe R. Lansdale

“He’s one of the true masters.” - Ed Gorman

Genres: Horror, Short Stories, Audiobook, Fiction

340 pages, Hardcover

First published April 17, 2018

About the author

Steve Rasnic Tem was born in Lee County Virginia in the heart of Appalachia. He is the author of over 350 published short stories and is a past winner of the Bram Stoker, International Horror Guild, British Fantasy, and World Fantasy Awards. His story collections include City Fishing, The Far Side of the Lake, In Concert (with wife Melanie Tem), Ugly Behavior, Celestial Inventories, and Onion Songs. An audio collection, Invisible, is also available. His novels include Excavation, The Book of Days, Daughters, The Man In The Ceiling (with Melanie Tem), and the recent Deadfall Hotel.

Reviews

[Char · Rating 5 out of 5]

FIGURES UNSEEN: SELECTED STORIES by Steve Rasnic Tem is an exceptional example of short fiction. I've been reading Mr. Tem's work for years, but never have I seen so many of his short stories collected into one volume- and what an outstanding collection it is!

There are far too many tales to go into each one individually, but my favorites were:

JESSE: A very disturbing story that tricked this reader-I picked the wrong bad guy.

CITY FISHING: Other than the word "unsettling," I have no idea how to describe this. It was the first tale in this collection and it hasn't completely left my mind since I finished it.

HUNGRY was just...sad. "It's like the love goes inside me and gets lost. And then it just isn't there anymore-like I eat the love, momma. And then I'm still hungry."

RED RABBIT: Yet another disturbing tale which starts out being about one thing but by the end it was about something else entirely.

LEAKS: This one gave me a bad case of the creeps. Something was wrong with this horrible, damp, wet house. I shudder in disgust just thinking about it.

MIRI: is a special kind of stalker.

INVISIBLE: Who in their life has not felt invisible at times? Those points where it feels like no one in the world even knows or cares you're there? This one touched a chord deep inside.

THE MEN AND WOMEN OF RIVENDALE: There are a lot of stories in this volume about grief. I felt this was one of them. Grief is powerful, but extended family can be a big help when they're there for support, right? Right?

GRANDFATHER WOLF actually made me grin, though I'm not sure it was supposed to. It makes me wonder what lengths a family would go to to keep a family member close, even if that family member is dangerous.

VINTAGE DOMESTIC: This one turned my stomach. Then I laughed with delight.

PREPARATIONS FOR THE GAME is a tale that started out one way and then slowly morphed into something else entirely. Better get dressed now, it's almost time to go.

I guess I'll stop here. Not every story in this collection worked for me, but most of them did, and they worked WELL. I know these tales won't be for everyone, but for me this was a perfect collection of stories. They all complemented each other and flowed like a freshwater spring from one to the next. In short, (too late!), they left this reader blown away.

I listened to this book on audio, narrated by Matt Godfrey, whose laid back style is perfect for this collection. The combination of Steve Rasnic Tem, Matt Godfrey, and Valancourt Books is like some unholy trilogy of excellence and FIGURES UNSEEN: SELECTED STORIES is the result of their union. Don't let it pass you by.

My highest recommendation!

*I received this audiobook free, in exchange for my honest review. This is it.*

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy · Rating 5 out of 5]

37 stories that will stun, beguile, haunt and, if you read them at all with any real attention, make you in some way a little larger of heart, a little broader of thought. I can't recommend this collection by Steve Rasnic Tem highly enough. I have been dipping into it most of this year and have finally read the final story, my reluctance to finish this wonderful book tempered by the knowledge of a large back (and front) catalogue to explore. Tem not only takes cues from the likes of Campbell, Etchison and Aickman about the way horror can be made about life and people and matters of the heart but also focuses on families, on marriages, on aging and on this whole business of living in ways that few others in the genre or out of it do.

[Terry · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received a free copy of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

I’m just two years late on my part.

I listened to this book in 2018. Parts were chillingly effective. Parts were unsettling. Parts left me cold.

But really it’s the sadness that stayed with me.

I re-listened to it in 2020 and, having experienced it twice, will attempt to hold up my part of the bargain.

Steve Rasnic Tem’s collection of stories can most easily categorized as weird fiction. It’s a catch-all adjacent to horror — and there’s a lot here we can recognize as horror, at least two breeds of vampire, one werewolf, and several obvious monsters. And what to make of the unsettling outing in “City Fishing” — a dark tale where two men take their sons on a self-destructive hunting trip into a city?

But the universal theme is the sadness.

Tem introduces us to a house that can’t stop leaking, a train that passes near enough to witness the world’s horror but too fast and too far to intervene, and to a world where a nightmarish landscape is excused as weather. But again and again, there’s the same sadness.

A man who doesn’t recognize his face in the mirror. A man who doesn’t recognize his spouse. His house. His life. Regret for the road not taken. Fear for his children. Of his children. Desperate loneliness. An inability to be seen so strong you simply fade away. The inability to protect the ones you love or remember them or be remembered by them.

It’s too much. And it’s too true.

And it’s the sadness that stays with you.

[Des Lewis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Based on growing evidence, I think Tem deserves a legacy of acclaim equally from the literary world (i.e. by those who recognise such a term), and, as he already has, from the genre world.
Genre has always been literary, mind you. And often vice versa.

The detailed review of this book posted elsewhere under my name is too long to post here.
Above is its conclusion.

[GD]

I'm purposely not giving this a star rating because I don't think it would be fair to the writer considering how much I disliked some of this book, but not because it boring or not written well, I think I'm just the wrong audience for most of what he writes.

Steve Rasnic Tem seems to have a very strong, unique, very blackly comic, folksy view of the world that I imagine in real life is very understated, and I think someone would have to know him very well to understand him, like a wife, or a long-time best friend, or maybe kids, maybe not kids. I think he would be a really interesting person to know well.

These stories, and there were a bunch of them here, ranged for me from 5 star to 1 star, most of them around the 2 level, simply because he's not direct enough, and I just want him to spit it out and quit hinting around sometimes, but most of these stories are just the hints, nonsense nightmare logic, and a whole lot of depression. There were really cool ideas in this book that are hard for me to even describe (the story with all the crutches, anyone?), much like the other book I read by him, the "novel" Deadfall Hotel. In the past I've seen 1 and 5 star stories both from Tem in horror anthologies, and one of the 5 stars, "Between the Pilings," is in this book, I was happy to see.

My favorites here are "Between the Pilings," which I'd put in my top ten favorite horror stories ever, "City Fishing," which I read twice because it is just so crazy, "Leaks," a very creepy, very powerful story that made me feel gross and uncomfortable which wasn't pleasant but still very impressive that it could give me such a visceral reaction, and "Hungry," where the title's hungry person is described in such a way I felt like I could see him in front of me, and he was horrific.

I have no doubt that Steve Rasnic Tem is an utterly creative, powerful writer, but I feel that I'm not the right audience for him. If you think you'd like to read something like horror stories written by a really depressed, rural David Lynch, this is probably for you.

[Samantha · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can't believe how long it took me to learn about Steve Rasnic Tem. I am utterly blown away by his works collected in this book. The Night Worms team strikes again with an incredible book pick for their clientele in their May "Classic Horror in collaboration with Paul Tremblay" package. A shout-out to Paul Tremblay too for the assist with bringing this to light for them!

I felt that something was brushing my skin after the first story and by the end it had completely dug in, laid eggs, and infested me with an uncanny horror and most relatable sorrow. I don't believe I can recommend this book enough, but be prepared to hurt. And feel. A lot. There are so many depths to each story; so much existentialism woven into each tale. There is magic and illusion mixed into the reality that is the world we share.

I believe one of his talents is to surprise with each story. You just have no idea where it's going to lead or what is going to be the thing that totally unnerves you and jars you out of your comfort zone. It comes out of the woodwork and surprises you, sometimes abruptly, in a very unique way.

My favourite stories were:
City Fishing - absolutely topical in today's social climate.
Angel Combs - unlike anything I've ever imagined or dreamed up, vivid and will stay with me a long time.
Escape on a Train - also topical and current, pertaining to seeing bad things happening and ignoring them instead of helping; the nonchalance and indifference we have towards others.
Out Late in the Park - captures the thoughts and feelings of being forgotten and unseen as an elderly person.
An Ending - absolutely terrifying concept of being near death and unable to care for yourself, and then your caretaker passing away with no one to take their place.
The Company You Keep - reminded me of the 'incels' that have popped up, and that ending... shocking.
Jesse - child sociopath horror, need I say more?
Grandfather Wolf - this was almost like a magical fairy tale and I loved it.
The Bereavement Photographer - this guy literally photographs people with their dead children. Already an unsettling concept, Tem does not grant you reprieve at just that, there is always a darker and harder layer to swallow.

I recommend this book so very much. It's incredible. The writing is so good. The settings sometimes seem so simple and mundane that it makes it all the more disturbing when you get slapped with the distressing underlying grimness. Sometimes it creeps, and sometimes it attacks outright... but it's always there, waiting.

[Raymond Rugg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Figures Unseen: Selected Stories
By Steve Rasnic Tem (Valancourt Books, 2018, 338p, £12.99)
Reviewed by Raymond K. Rugg

Figures Unseen by Steve Rasnic Tem is a collection of horror tales for grownups. If a reader
seeks hard enough, there are ghosts and werewolves and corpses and other staples of the
commercialized side of the genre to be found. But there is also a boy on a fishing trip in an
impossible city with nary a stream in sight. There is a poverty-stricken family whose emptiness
somehow becomes filled with mysterious combs. The horror that lies at the hearts of these
stories, even in the stories with ghosts or monsters, is not derived from some external
supernatural threat that is set up to be be defeated or overcome (or not) by a hero or protagonist.
Instead, what is terrifying is the more visceral sense of unease that comes from within, a feeling
most commonly experienced in bad dreams. It is the recognition of a wrongness, a realization
that things in the world are not quite as they should be, yet we, along with all of the people
around us, behave as if everything is normal. Our life is constrained to track where things don’t
make sense (figuratively, or in the case of the story ‘Escape on a Train’, literally). There is no
authority figure, no one to impose a sense of order, and we have to wonder, is this wrongness a
product of our own perceptions or is it the outside world around us that has gone terribly askew?
Although we don’t really and honestly believe it, we must conclude that it is we ourselves, and
not the world, that is somehow wrong. Otherwise, why and how could everyone around us act as
if all is right and normal? Why do we ourselves act as if all is right and normal?

This collection, selected by the author, contains just short of three dozen stories. The shortest is
four sentences. That’s just one paragraph, not even a quarter of a page. The longest clocks in at
only 18 pages. The low word counts may tempt the reader to consume several stories in one
sitting, but this would be a mistake. Each story is an intense experience in and of itself, and is
best to be fully digested before one moves on to the next. Even the one-paragraph tale, ‘2 P.M.:
The Real Estate Agent Arrives’, deserves rumination and contemplation. The full implication of
what is communicated in fewer than 60 words is in equal measure terrifying and, unfortunately,
plausible.

The book begins with ‘City Fishing’, the titular story from a previous collection of Tem’s work
from the year 2000, which was a collection of more than 30 new and reprinted tales. ‘City
Fishing’ is a good choice with which to start the book because in addition to being one of his
strongest pieces, it establishes the mood for his style of storytelling. The main character, and
through this character, the reader, understands that life has somehow gone badly sideways, but
few of the other people involved appear to feel quite the same way. Indeed, they almost seem to
revel in the wrongness of the world, all the while ignoring it. It’s a theme repeated throughout
the collection and one that makes these stories so masterfully distressing.

Next up is ‘Angel Combs’, another story that begins in a setting of normal and familiar, if
depressing, reality and then takes the reader afield and on into the weird. ‘Angel Combs’ is
perhaps not so unsettling as Tem’s other stories in that the strange events are, for the most part,
recognized by the characters as being something that is out of the ordinary, but the tale deserves

particular attention in that this story is referenced in the book cover illustration, a whimsically
disturbing text-based piece by the ever-talented Henry Petrides.

Much of the collection has to do with family and the duties and obligations owed to parents,
siblings, spouses and children. This theme is another characteristic of Tem’s work that allows his
stories to burrow right to the core of the reader’s emotions. A killer clown in the sewer, to cite a
more mainstream example from the genre at large, is something that can be brushed aside as
fantastical. But for a person to feel a failure at work and thus condemn one’s family to life in a
nasty, tumbledown house, this is the meat of true-life dread. To scrimp and save in order to take
one’s child to buy them just one nice thing, only to be humiliated when it turns out that the
savings are not nearly enough, this is the potatoes of real-world despair. Different narratives
nonetheless contain common threads among the stories: ‘I didn’t pay close enough attention to
my sister and she was taken.’ ‘I was late to pick up my son from school and he was run down by
an unfathomable quirk of nature.’ ‘It was because of my life choices that my mother was injured
and her health failed.’ These are the types of things that can make grown, mature adults lie
awake in bed at night in a state of unease, and these are the types of situations with which Tem
builds his fiction.

All of the stories from Figures Unseen have been previously published. All can be found in other
collections or publications released in the past two decades and all but two (the final two stories
the book) have appeared in other collections of Tem’s work. The order in which they are placed
in this collection is roughly, yet not exactly, the same as the groupings in which they appeared
together in their previous publications. Whether by design or chance (and given Tem’s

workmanship, it is difficult to believe that any aspect of his writing has been left to chance), the
order of presentation works well in that Figures Unseen places some of the strongest pieces at
the very beginning of the book, helping the reader to understand what can be expected of the
tone and pacing of the collection. ‘Firestorm’ is an exceptionally solid work that anchors the
center of the collection, and stories such as ‘Grandfather Wolf’ and ‘The Bereavement
Photographer’ take the reader down the home stretch toward the final story, ‘Red Rabbit’, which
closes the book out in such a manner that leaves absolutely no doubt as to Tem’s voice and his
mastery of the craft.

The introduction is by Simon Strantzas, himself a respected writer and editor of short weird and
horror fiction. Even for readers already familiar with Tem’s work, Strantza’s piece is well worth
reading before moving on to the main event. And for anyone who has not previously encountered
the stories of Steve Rasnic Tem, Strantza’s background information and commentary should be
required reading, not because Tem’s fiction doesn’t stand on its own, but because there is so
much more to be experienced from it when the reader is in the proper frame of mind. Strantza
sets the stage for a more complete enjoyment of the work.

This review first appeared on the website fantasy-faction.com in Jan 2020.

[Ben · Rating 5 out of 5]

Steve Rasnic Tem’s “City Fishing” has long been one of my favorite weird tales, but I hadn’t read much of his work beyond it until now. Figures Unseen, which collects stories he wrote throughout the last 40 years, proved a wonderful remedy.

Among my favorite stories:

City Fishing
A House by the Ocean
Crutches
Escape on a Train
In the Trees
Twember
Hungry

[Benjamin DeHaan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A mega awesome collection of dark tales by a master storyteller. My favorites were:

Escape on a Train
When We Moved On
Preparations for the Game
Grandfather Wolf

[Douglas Hackle · Rating 5 out of 5]

The stories in Figures Unseen: Selected Stories—a sort of greatest hits of Tem’s dark, distinctively surreal, dreamlike fiction—are at turns unsettling, haunting, terrifying, and sad. While you’ll encounter a werewolf and a vampire (or two) in this stunning collection, more often the characters in these stories are pitted against the more natural real-life foes of loss, grief, aging, solitude, invisibility, entropy, or some occurrence of individual, spousal, familial, or societal dissolution. Often the elemental itself creeps into these stories to worry at the delicate, unstable and ephemeral complexity that is human life. In fact, in three separate tales, the forces of water, dirt, and sand insinuate themselves to unmake the main characters in the end. As is the case with much great writing, despite the somber nature of the themes that permeate this collection, there’s a certain joy and catharsis that comes from engaging directly with such themes when the delivery takes the form of the strikingly chimerical, beautifully wrought prose of a writer like Tem.

[Angie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can't believe I finally found and finished it! This is a solid collection of short stories that it only took me a million years to finish because I misplaced it post-house fire and only just found it again. These stories are deep and dreamlike - sometimes a little challenging to grasp, but ultimately wonderful.

[Rich Rosell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Man, there is a whole lot of big-time creepy stuff in this book crammed with some of Steve Rasnic Tem's short stories. Sometimes weird, sometimes wonderful, sometimes fucking dark. Dark. Dark. Dark.

Recommended. Very recommended.

[Aaron · Rating 2 out of 5]

Tem is a talented stylist, but his tendency to create tension through random warpings of reality with no tethering to a cause left me frustrated instead of intrigued.

[Amber Mayle · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a very strong but very dense collection of stories. These stories leaned towards darkness with a rare touch of whimsy. I would have given 5 stars but I did find myself getting bored at times while being enthralled by other selections. The language is beautiful in all of the stories, however and I added many highlights throughout.