Nightmare Seasons

Oxrun Station #6

by Charles L. Grant

A new season, and the Grim Reaper smiles in anticipation of the harvest to come. No one is safe, no one can be trusted. The lovestruck office boy, the beautiful little girl clutching a posy of violets, the faceless motorcycle gang all seem harmless enough, and yet. Nameless fears stir uneasily, terror bubbles to the surface. and the nightmare is unleashed. Enter the world of Oxrun Station, where evil lurks in unexpected corners, where nerves are stretched to breaking point, where every season brings a nightmare more blood-curdling than the last.


Four novellas, each taking as its theme one of the seasons of the year, recount the weird happenings that take place in the fantasy town of Oxrun Station.

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

ebook

First published January 1, 1982

About the author

Charles Lewis Grant was a novelist and short story writer specializing in what he called "dark fantasy" and "quiet horror." He also wrote under the pseudonyms of Geoffrey Marsh, Lionel Fenn, Simon Lake, Felicia Andrews, and Deborah Lewis.

Grant won a World Fantasy Award for his novella collection Nightmare Seasons, a Nebula Award in 1976 for his short story "A Crowd of Shadows", and another Nebula Award in 1978 for his novella "A Glow of Candles, a Unicorn's Eye," the latter telling of an actor's dilemma in a post-literate future. Grant also edited the award winning Shadows anthology, running eleven volumes from 1978-1991. Contributors include Stephen King, Ramsey Campbell, R.A. Lafferty, Avram Davidson, and Steve Rasnic and Melanie Tem. Grant was a former Executive Secretary and Eastern Regional Director of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and president of the Horror Writers Association.

Reviews

[Jamie Stewart · Rating 3 out of 5]

A brilliantly, creepy collection of novellas by a writer that makes you only want to read more. The first story in this collection, Thou Need Not Fear My Kisses, reminded me of Ray Bradbury at his creepiest. The second reminded of the kind of stories Stephen King used to write in the 80s about small town communities coming under threat from dark forces. Night’s Swift Dragons is a intense tale about people trapped overnight in a post office while demonic bikers wait outside. It’s pace is a unique thing compared to the first two stories, which are all slow builds. This one speeds along to a gruesome, thrilling end bring the reader to the last story in the collection, The Color of Joy. I found it to be too similar to the first story in collection, which is about a women who finds all the men in her life being killed off one by one, to get anything new out of it. All four novellas are bookended by a researching writer who happens to live in the town where all these stories occur being given the four novellas to read from a local librarian. Both bookends work as there own stories and I really enjoyed the way they were written. Charles L. Grant’s use of language and writing style are a joy to delve into.

[DeAnna Knippling · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well written, and similar enough in style that I can only hope to write that well, but...

Why does everything "horror" have to be poisoned with sexism? WHY IS THAT THE STORY THAT HAS TO BE REPEATED. Women flee men because the women are so pretty that it's a curse. Women destroy men...or rather those unwanted excess children of single mothers do. Single mothers, amirite? Men eventually have to throw women away; otherwise they'll be trapped in a marriage forever. Joke! Your dreams died anyway. Women destroy the men that pressure them, so it's their fault anyway. Haha, so original.

The truly creepy part is enjoying some delicious fictional creepiness...only to run into that old tale again, that the only important things about a woman are her beauty and subservience. And when those things aren't used in service to a man, the RIGHT man, she's either killed or turned into a monster. I'm tired of it.

I was SO hyped to read this when I started. It was like a slap in the face.

But well written. Yeah.

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the early 80s classic collections. 4 classic novellas played with a kind of sneaky pete tone, starting slow but getting absolutely page turning. Spooky stuff for every horror fan! Read it with Time of the Season for a background soundtrack. My personal favourite was the summer story!

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am still learning a lot about Charles Grant but one of things I have learnt is that he was the master of the short story and the impending creeping dread. This book is a perfect example of that - as it is basically a series of short episodes (stories if you prefer) that link a larger more subtle story together.

Now I am still undecided about this book as some of the stories are more subtle while others have quite visceral elements to them but they all share the same location and in some cases connections to each other.

It would see that Charles Grant rather like Stephen King had a favourite fictitious location - (in fact several) but in this case the town of Oxrun Station is as much character in these stories are the people who inhabit it. A great read for this season - and finishing the last of the book at 1am certainly added to the experience.

[Kevin Lucia · Rating 5 out of 5]

**So awesome, as always. Moving on to The Orchard...


Oxrun Station - spookiest town on the face of the Earth, where people go to vanish and never be seen ever again. Grant's prose is like fine, elegant liquor that tingles on the way down and burns when it hits. Oxrun Station and Charles L. Grant - my new literary obsessions. I'm almost depressed to have discovered them both this late in the games....

[Dean · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the second I've read of Grant's work and it's made me an even bigger fan. Four chilling tales of quite horror that correspond with the seasons. Grant's writing is the stuff nightmares are made of. Every sentence is alive with character. There is a reason Stephen King called him one of the premier horror writers of any generation--because it's the truth. You will not be disappointed by Nightmare Seasons.

[Jeremy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Grant was a wizard with description, but the plotting of these stories comes apart, at least to modern expectations. The two stories with women protagonists fall flat with their characterizations.

[Xand50 · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was the first book I've read by Charles L. Grant and I have to say that I loved it. I've read elsewhere that Grant conjures up very nostalgic, melancholic imagery and I found that to be true in this book, particularly as each season began and he described the cold, often lonely landscape.


The basic premise in the prologue is that a man, sitting in the library on a rainy, spring day, is given a strange book about "seasons". The book contains accounts of some strange events that have occurred in Oxrun Station. The man is aware that the people in his book did truly die in Oxrun Station, but were the events really as horrific as his book reports, or have the tales been embellished? This is the device used to introduce the four short novellas. Each story takes place in a separate decade, and separate season within the town of Oxrun Station. These are short, dark stories, each with a twist ending. The feel is similar to that of old horror anthology shows such as Tales From the Darkside.

I'm not going to go too in depth describing the plots of the individual stories. I will however say that I felt the strongest were the second and third. The second story is told from the first person perspective of a bartender. A strange woman and her daughter show up in town and bizarre events follow their arrival. In the third story a group of postal employees encounter a ghostly biker gang. The tension in this one is superb.

Some people may, or may not enjoy the way that Grant ends his stories. In this book each story tends to have a sort of cliffhanger/ambiguous ending. This actually reminds me quite a bit of the way Ray Bradbury ends many of his short stories. These stories won't coddle you and let you down gently after all of the loose ends are wrapped up. They often end abruptly at the height of intensity, leaving the reader to interpret what happens next.

[Jeff McIntosh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Back in the long ago world of the 1980s, Charles L. Grant was famous as a practitioner of what was known as "quiet horror" - a response to splatterpunk and other grisly horrors....Grant wrote in a variety of genres, and had several pen names - Geoffrey Marsh, Lionel Fenn, Simon Lake, Felecia Andrews, and Deborah Lewis....he wrote paperback originals, hardcovers, X Files novelizations.....

And, in perhaps the most well known creation, Oxrun Station..a small town set in New Jersey or perhaps Connecticut - where strange and odd occurrences seemed to happen. Monsters? Oh yes....but not the Frankenstein monster/werewolf/vampire of old.....

"Nightmare Seasons" is set in Oxrun Station, beginning in Spring 1940, with each succeeding story set a decade and a season into the future, ending in Winter 1970.

A young woman, recently returned to Oxrun Station, inadvertently conjures a darkman who slays those who make her unhappy....a postmaster, whose lonely post office is besieged by 7 faceless bikers, looking to recapture one of their own..becomes a kind of grim reaper...

All this and more in the pages pf Nightmare Seasons...

Jeff McIntosh

[Laura Ruetz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Horror is not always in your face blood and guts. Sometimes it is something more subtle; something that is felt but not really seen until it is too late. Four stories are the subject of this book, four stories, one for each season and each one containing something hellish and evil.

The writing is rich with imagery but just enough is left to your imagine that your mind fills in all the blanks. I had forgotten how much I enjoyed reading Charles L. Grant's works and if there is a complaint about this book it is that it is too short...I was left wanting more. The stories are captivating, you do not see what is coming until it is there; always a twist and always something that makes you want to look over your shoulder and turn on that extra light.

[Aric Cushing]

Four stories that are good and encapsulate a time period in the 80's when paperback horror books were plethora. What happened to the pulpy covers? We don't see enough of that today.

[Jason Schmidt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Charles L. Grant’s horror novels, and in this case, novellas, are always well written, but I often feel that the pacing is just a tad off - his stories sometimes feel to me as if they meander a bit, causing me to struggle to really get caught up in the characters and plot, and often, the endings feel a bit undercooked. It took me several attempts, including starting over after reading the first 40 pages and putting my the book down for quite some time and not picking it back up, for me to actually read the story. I felt the same way with these novellas , with some being better than others, but none of them really blowing me away, yet all of them still being well-written, with three out of the four being a more subtle, almost quiet (I believe I have heard Grant’s writing described this way in the past) horror. I also found the framing narrative to be interesting, especially the opening, but the closing was abrupt, being only four pages, feeling rushed and with a a character looking out a window at something that actually didn’t really make sense in the context of the stories. I may give this collection another read in a couple of years, but at the moment, I found these to be a passing diversion with no real staying power for me, and while I was going to give this three stars, because of how well written they were (and, intentionally structured, even if I didn’t necessarily love that structure), I am giving it a four (but, this is a book that really makes me want to be able to give half stars).

[Elle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall, this was a fun type of horror that I don’t see explored very often. Kind of a creeping unease that doesn’t have to be bombastic to really sell the atmosphere. Also! Grant’s prose is exactly how I want my writing to sound (and a realistic goal of how it could sound in the future) so I can see myself revisiting him if only for inspiration.

Main complaint for this book was having to sit through never ending descriptions of the female characters' breasts and hips. The women in this book are just…. so very obviously written by a cishet man LMAO literally no woman escapes the weird gaze creeping around their body and judging their smashability.

Anyway.

Part 1: Wait so… he was like, snake people? (Sneople?) that’s kinda cute ngl a pretty boy who will do house chores, take you to the movies and also eat unwanted suitors? Sounds like a sweet deal Sam was missing out. #Monsterboysupremacy.

Part 2: This one was kinda cool. Fun premise though it followed a similar so and so are disappearing formula as the first one. I liked the first person narration and eldritch little girl.

Part 3: kind of meh compared to the others. 5/10 would join demonic biker gang for kicks.

Part 4: I liked this one. The holiday season setting offset well with the foreboding supernatural aspect. Main girl should put her manifestation skills to use and date the shadow man.

[Timothy G. Huguenin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love small town horror (possibly because most of my life has been lived in small towns). I also like New England a lot, though I've never lived there (family from there, probably has something to do with it; Dad's from CT in fact). So I was predisposed to like this book.

This is a collection of 4 horror novellas all set in the fictional Oxrun Station, CT, during different time periods. The prologue and epilogue are from the first person perspective of the narrator living in Oxrun Station who receives an unmarked book containing the stories. He writes them off as mostly fiction, though he recognizes names and events in them. This kind of framing device is more common to older writers like Poe and Le Fanu, but I love it and feel like it makes Oxrun Station seem more real. Grant's strength is in the town's imagery, though a few times his prose was just a little too repetitive (in those places it is meant to be poetic, but it didn't sit right with me; YMMV).

The stories didn't blow my mind for originality or deep characterization, but I do want to read more of Grant's stuff, especially to learn more from his descriptive talent.

[7thTrooper · Rating 3 out of 5]

Det är en väldigt subtil sorts skräck (om än inte lika som t.ex Aickman), och är väl egentligen att kategorisera mer som en slags spökhistorier mer än regelrätt skräck; med undantaget som är novellen om de som blir belögrade inuti ett postkontor, som för tankarna mer till Clive Barker utan sex, än något annat. Det är inte heller rent ut läskigt men Grant har en bra fingertoppskänsla för atmosfär och kan skriva en stämningsfull scen. Läsvärd som gav mer smak.

[Anand Gautam · Rating 4 out of 5]

The magic of Charles L Grant. The USP of his writing is not the horror in itself, but the atmosphere it creates: quiet and tense at the same time. Nightmare Seasons takes the reader into the season, and the Oxrun station and makes one feel there as a spectator of the events and conversations. Good book for a night read.

[Karolina Pałka · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was my first book of Grant's work. The plots in the book were well-crafted. I particularly liked the winter story. I really enjoyed that the ending was subtle and the story gives just a hint of what could possibly have happened. By leaving things unsaid, the author creates an air of mystery. I definitely want to explore more of his work.

[Scott Oliver · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was, in my opinion one of the better books in the Oxrun series

Split in to four decades and seasons it tells four different stories set in the odd little town involving everything from giant snakes to faceless shadow men

[Bill Borre]

I am sorry to leave a comment here under reviews for a book that I have not read yet but I wanted to assign a date for this book and the date set functionality of the website currently seems to be broken. If they get this working I will use this and delete this review.

09-04-2012

[Bob Box · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read in 1984. A collection of horror novellas.

[C.C. Bruno · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of three or four Oxrun Station books that I’ve read. I love the history and goings on of this town of horror.

[Douglas Hackle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Set in the fictional town of Oxrun Station, Connecticut, Nightmare Seasons is a collection of four novellas that showcase Charles Grant’s ability to weave slow-built suspense, accumulating dread, and psychological-emotional complexity together into effective horror yarns that rely more on mood and atmosphere to provide their chills than shock and gore—all told in a rich prose style that’s lyrical without being overwrought. Shades of Bradbury, Straub, and King. Good stuff.

[Jay Rothermel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nightmare Seasons is an engrossing look at forty years of Oxrun Station history. Grant's ekphrastic skills confidently depict interiors and exteriors of another age. Like water colors by Edward Hopper or Andrew Wyeth, his style does not falsify with prettiness. His fidelity to the region, as a realist and a poet of macabre intrusions, is too hard-won for that.

[Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's been a while since I've read a short story collection that wasn't by Neil Gaiman or Stephen King, but when I realized The Long Night of the Grave was the last Oxrun Station novel, I figured it would be a good time to go ahead and read the Oxrun Station collections. There are four of them, each with four interrelated stories, and Nightmare Seasons is the first of them. In this case, the four stories are each centered on one season, and each story is set ten years apart from the previous one. Surrounding these stories is a vignette to tie them together, though it doesn't carry the importance of the stories themselves.

Thou Need Not Fear My Kisses, Love, the 1930 Spring story, is a supernatural story of obsession and murder. Obsession stories are easy to come by, and usually done a lot better than this (which could partly be due to the brevity of the story; the obsession doesn't really have enough time to get convincing), and the supernatural element is a little cheesy. The story is still full of Grant-isms, but his trademark slow build-up seems to be more a hindrance than a benefit here. Reducing the story to a quarter of its length lessens the impact of an intentional build-up of suspense.

Strangely, this doesn't hold true for Now There Comes a Darker Day, the 1940 Summer story. Here, Grant tells a slow, casual story of a mysterious woman and the death that follows her, and from start to finish, the tension and atmosphere grows until something as innocuous as a rainstorm portends something significant. In the case of this story, the brevity enhances the story, as if it had been drawn out any further, the events would have been strained, and the story forced.

Night's Swift Dragons, the 1950 Autumn story, feels like it was Grant's first attempt at Raven, a book that came later in his career. In it, a group of people is isolated in a restaurant while something begins picking them off; in this novella, a group of people is locked inside a post office while a motorcycle gang with sinister motives waits for them outside. The story was eerie and effective, but then in the last couple of pages, Grant had to go and tack on an ending that came out of nowhere.

The last story, The Color of Joy, the 1960 Winter story, follows in the theme of obsession and stalking, though from a different perspective as the other three stories. Here, instead of the stalker being potentially harmful to the stalkee, the stalker is a threat to those surrounding the stalkee. It's not a new twist by any means, but Grant still tells his tale in such a way as to make it unique.

My appreciation of the individual stories depends on whether or not I was able to read the stories uninterrupted, which suggests that these stories might be better read all in one sitting. I think interrupting the story damages its potential, since the stories slowly creep higher into a sense of dread and inevitability. The whole book doesn't have to be read in one sitting, but it helps to be able to read each story without distraction. Under those circumstances, the stories work very well.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Four interlinked short stories of animal attacks, mysterious deaths and disappearances, and unresolved mysteries, set in a book given to the narrator of the prologue on a rainy night. Four seasons, four decades to explain what goes on in Oxrun Station.

The narrative style of the stories is difficult to follow at first, particularly with the first short story. The past and present are intertwined when the reader is introduced to Sam (Samantha) and her two rival boyfriends. The subsequent stories become easier to comprehend as the reader builds momentum. Some characters who appear in one story will appear in the next, ten or twenty years older. They all know Oxrun. They know strange things happen in Oxrun, but live on in their familiar environment until the strangeness gets them. The strange is normal and inevitable.

[Charles · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent.

[Pam Baddeley · Rating 4 out of 5]

A set of four novellas set in Grant's fictional town of Oxrun Station. Atmospheric and spooky, and well written, with some odd situations that are more novel than a lot of horror fiction.