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Shallow Creek
This is the tale of a town on the fringes of fear, of ordinary people and everyday objects transformed by terror and madness, a microcosm of the world where nothing is ever quite what it seems. This is a world where the unreal is real, where the familiar and friendly lure and deceive. On the outskirts of civilisation sits this solitary town. Home to the unhinged. Oblivion to outsiders.
Shallow Creek contains twenty-one original horror stories by a chilling cast of contemporary writers, including stories by Sarah Lotz, Richard Thomas, Adrian J Walker, and Aliya Whitely. Told through a series of interconnected narratives, Shallow Creek is an epic anthology that exposes the raw human emotion and heart-pounding thrills at the genre's core.
Welcome to Shallow Creek!
Shallow Creek contains twenty-one original horror stories by a chilling cast of contemporary writers, including stories by Sarah Lotz, Richard Thomas, Adrian J Walker, and Aliya Whitely. Told through a series of interconnected narratives, Shallow Creek is an epic anthology that exposes the raw human emotion and heart-pounding thrills at the genre's core.
Welcome to Shallow Creek!
384 pages, Kindle Edition
First published April 1, 2019
3 people are currently reading
277 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
July 12, 2020
This book is very good, very good indeed...in fact it is a little too good, before I explain my conspiracy theory here is a bit of info about the origins of this book. The publishers, Storgy, ran a competition where each participant was assigned a resident to base the story on, they were given a location in the town and each story was given an item that had to be included in their story. Now this should have been absolute chaos, the characters would probably cause events to happen that would never get mentioned again and those characters would never appear again in the book....but that did not happen. What we get here is a seamless transition between stories, many characters appear in different stories and there are lots of little mentions of events that happened in previous stories. There were 21 writers involved in this book so how were Storgy able to pull off this stunning achievement? I had my breakthrough conspiracy theory when I realised that it was as though all the writers were sharing one voice and that meant one thing....STORGY ARE BORG! They have taken all of these writers into their collective to create this book. You know it makes sense.
This collection of 21 short stories contains proper horror stories, none of this blood and guts stuff, these stories play on your fears and leaves your imagination to freak you out. It covers all the traditional fears, clowns, forests, seaweed, witches and cereal. It has the same feel as Stephen King's early work when he could make anything scare you, the similarity was uncanny and it transported me back to being a teen and falling in love with books. There are no weak stories here but here are a couple of my favourites.
PENTAMETER by David Hartley went from being "I don't like this" to being my favourite. Written in pentameter like that Shakespeare chap it quickly draws you in (unlike that Shakespeare chap) and before you know it you reach the end craving more. Some very clever writing there.
The last story was the wonderfully titled THE CAGED BIRD SINGS IN A DARKNESS OF ITS OWN CREATION by Richard Thomas, there is a lot of pressure on the last story, is it gonna bring some sort of conclusion to the book? It does a brilliant job and once I realised who the character was that Richard was writing about I had a little mind blown moment.
This book is not just about the story, so much care has been put into all aspects of the book. The cover is a piece of art, seems to have come straight from an 80's horror poster, included is a Map of Shallow Creek (which you can see on Storgy's website), a fantastic addition that you can use to follow the characters around town. There is an introduction that could have been written in the voice of Vincent Price. And once the stories have ended the fun doesn't stop there, keep on reading to the dedications where you'll find the creepiest part of the book.
If this review hasn't sold you on this book then head on over to Storgy's WEBSITE and check out the collection of creepy videos created for this book. I have loved every minute spent reading this book, it is not often that a new book manages to break into my top 10 but this has done the job, well done to everybody involved. 100% recommend this book to everybody.
Blog review with pictures and links> https://felcherman.wordpress.com/2020...
This collection of 21 short stories contains proper horror stories, none of this blood and guts stuff, these stories play on your fears and leaves your imagination to freak you out. It covers all the traditional fears, clowns, forests, seaweed, witches and cereal. It has the same feel as Stephen King's early work when he could make anything scare you, the similarity was uncanny and it transported me back to being a teen and falling in love with books. There are no weak stories here but here are a couple of my favourites.
PENTAMETER by David Hartley went from being "I don't like this" to being my favourite. Written in pentameter like that Shakespeare chap it quickly draws you in (unlike that Shakespeare chap) and before you know it you reach the end craving more. Some very clever writing there.
The last story was the wonderfully titled THE CAGED BIRD SINGS IN A DARKNESS OF ITS OWN CREATION by Richard Thomas, there is a lot of pressure on the last story, is it gonna bring some sort of conclusion to the book? It does a brilliant job and once I realised who the character was that Richard was writing about I had a little mind blown moment.
This book is not just about the story, so much care has been put into all aspects of the book. The cover is a piece of art, seems to have come straight from an 80's horror poster, included is a Map of Shallow Creek (which you can see on Storgy's website), a fantastic addition that you can use to follow the characters around town. There is an introduction that could have been written in the voice of Vincent Price. And once the stories have ended the fun doesn't stop there, keep on reading to the dedications where you'll find the creepiest part of the book.
If this review hasn't sold you on this book then head on over to Storgy's WEBSITE and check out the collection of creepy videos created for this book. I have loved every minute spent reading this book, it is not often that a new book manages to break into my top 10 but this has done the job, well done to everybody involved. 100% recommend this book to everybody.
Blog review with pictures and links> https://felcherman.wordpress.com/2020...
Want to read
April 26, 2019Over at Highfeverbooks.com, Matt Brandenburg reviewed Shallow Creek, and it is a good one. Check it out.
https://www.highfeverbooks.com/review...
June 5, 2019
The idea behind this anthology, in which writers were invited to contribute stories based on specially created characters in the fictional town of Shallow Creek, is excellent. I followed its progress from early on, having contributed a story to STORGY's previous anthology, the dystopian-themed Exit Earth. This collection surpassed my expectations, and is arguably even more impressive than the previous one.
The writing in this anthology is uniformly excellent. There are some real gems in here, so many that it's hard to pick out favourites. However, I have to give a shout out to some personal loves: 'Arrowhead' by Daniel Carpenter, 'Backwards' by Adrian J Walker, and 'The Alteration' by Aliya Whiteley.
Despite all the wonderfully imaginative stories and beautiful prose on show here, Shallow Creek is a book that is somehow even greater than the sum of its parts. Perhaps the strongest aspect of this collection is the sense of place. Shallow Creek is a living, breathing (wheezing?) town, populated by a weird, deadbeat, and often disturbing cast of characters, many of whom pop up in several stories, their legend growing with each passing cameo.
There are links between stories, events that are referred to more than once, connections that sew this creepy world together in such a satisfying way. But part of the joy of this collection is the way that not everything does fit together perfectly; this is a jigsaw puzzle that constantly shifts its pieces around the board, or else only shows you glimpses of its many tantalising pictures. There are very few characters who do not have their mental health questioned at one stage or another, and the result of this is that, as a reader, you often don't know who to believe. Unreliable narrator? Shallow Creek seems to breed them. This is not just a horror anthology; it's a psycho circus full of small town low-lives, addicts and down-and-outs, each with their own bizarre stories to tell. Imagine Shutter Island ripped up and stitched back together by Donald Ray Pollock and you might have some idea of what to expect.
It's these missing pieces, the rumours, the despairing character histories that are sometimes only hinted at, that make Shallow Creek tick, only serving to entice and entrance the reader even further. With each story you find yourself sucked in and enthralled, and then left wanting more.
I should also mention the incredible artwork by Michael To that precedes each story, adding character and creepiness to an already beautiful book.
It was with regret that I had to leave this marvellously well-crafted little town. Should another bus head that way, I'll be sitting right at the front with Krinkles the Clown.
The writing in this anthology is uniformly excellent. There are some real gems in here, so many that it's hard to pick out favourites. However, I have to give a shout out to some personal loves: 'Arrowhead' by Daniel Carpenter, 'Backwards' by Adrian J Walker, and 'The Alteration' by Aliya Whiteley.
Despite all the wonderfully imaginative stories and beautiful prose on show here, Shallow Creek is a book that is somehow even greater than the sum of its parts. Perhaps the strongest aspect of this collection is the sense of place. Shallow Creek is a living, breathing (wheezing?) town, populated by a weird, deadbeat, and often disturbing cast of characters, many of whom pop up in several stories, their legend growing with each passing cameo.
There are links between stories, events that are referred to more than once, connections that sew this creepy world together in such a satisfying way. But part of the joy of this collection is the way that not everything does fit together perfectly; this is a jigsaw puzzle that constantly shifts its pieces around the board, or else only shows you glimpses of its many tantalising pictures. There are very few characters who do not have their mental health questioned at one stage or another, and the result of this is that, as a reader, you often don't know who to believe. Unreliable narrator? Shallow Creek seems to breed them. This is not just a horror anthology; it's a psycho circus full of small town low-lives, addicts and down-and-outs, each with their own bizarre stories to tell. Imagine Shutter Island ripped up and stitched back together by Donald Ray Pollock and you might have some idea of what to expect.
It's these missing pieces, the rumours, the despairing character histories that are sometimes only hinted at, that make Shallow Creek tick, only serving to entice and entrance the reader even further. With each story you find yourself sucked in and enthralled, and then left wanting more.
I should also mention the incredible artwork by Michael To that precedes each story, adding character and creepiness to an already beautiful book.
It was with regret that I had to leave this marvellously well-crafted little town. Should another bus head that way, I'll be sitting right at the front with Krinkles the Clown.
April 1, 2019
It was Spring in a sleepy little town when I finished reading Storgy’s Shallow Creek. I sat back from the glaring digital screen, hollows where youthful eyes had once been. Youthful. I scorn the word. Younger than I am now. To read this collection is to step outside of time, to travel across something of indeterminable depth, to glimpse things in the crevasses and folds, the cracks and tears; things which are better left unseen.
I wax poetical, but I said that I would set pen to paper and review the collection, this testimony to all Shallow Creek is, was, and might be. Firstly, I should say it is more like a multi-authored novel than a collection, stories carefully placed to tell a single – if treacherous – narrative. The editors Tomek, Ross and Tony are to be commended for their Herculean effort in assembling and editing these tales to make them into a singular yet fragmented tale.
Each story is accompanied by dazzling artwork by Michael To. These pieces are truly exquisite dark illustrations that often bring the images and metaphors at the heart of these stories to life. Michael has a way of synthesising two dispirit images that brings new meaning: a home springing from the curve of anchor, a bleeding rollercoaster, a mouth fountaining liquid…
The stories have been arranged, like the studded gems of a crown, in specific order. Characters waltz into the story, only to vanish and re-appear like ghosts; some commit terrible sins but are never punished; some seem to suffer grandly but never lose their ever-too-wide smile. Each story focuses in on a moment, a shining jewel-like moment, but with the close of each story these moments fade as the focus shifts. It is like surveying the town through a microscope, the lens only able to focus on one microcosm at a time. As it moves, you yearn for it to linger, to spend more time unravelling the delicate story it burningly fixes on, but move on it must, revealing new insights.
Our story starts with Dave Danvers’ Last Foray Into All Things Woo Woo by Stuart Croskell. This brilliant introductory story has been well chosen, opening with a man driving into Shallow Creek, treating us to a panoramic view of its squalid infamy. The story’s premise is at once meta- and original: a paranormal TV show host arrives in Shallow Creek in order to write a story about the town. Over the years, his belief in the supernatural has waned: ‘No bigfoot, no spooks, no little green men. The bastards. Only us. Us. Jesus.’ The twist of horror in the final line, in realising we are only alone with ourselves, and that humans are perhaps the worst monster of all, is deftly and subtly done. Our protagonist, Dave Danver, must go to Devil’s Gorge to write his story. As we follow him on his strange journey to the Devil’s Gorge summit via immaculate prose, the story gains Stoker-esque qualities – introducing us to enigmatic characters galore, bated-breath conspiracy, and the horrifying motif of a forced smile. The ending is nothing short of cathartic and sets the tone for the whole collection as one that aims to not just scare us, but also make us weep with epiphany. It’s here we first meet Krinkles the Klown, but it sure as hell isn’t the last time we see him.
Throughout Shallow Creek, we see nods to the old masters of horror like Bram Stoker and Mary Shelley, and there is something jubilant in that. However, there is also something fresh here. In Behind These Eyes by Alice Noel, we see juxtapositions of old-school horror vibes, an almost Victorian macabre storytelling, with the modern and comical: ‘Gothic is so in this year.’ Shallow Creek is a commentary on how just because we make fun of the oldest horrors in the book, it doesn’t mean they aren’t still scary.
The Soil of Stonier Hearts by Erik Bergstrom is another masterful blend of the old and new. Employing a poetic style throughout much akin to the glorious and rich elegance of Edgar Allan Poe, with brilliantly controlled language, Erik effortlessly invokes the Gothic aesthetic. The story is loaded with intriguing turns of phrase, as twisted as the nature of the town: a ‘phantom drunkenness’ haunting characters, suggesting that the line between supernatural and psychological is thin. With such fine writing, the smallest details become potential portents: “Something’s wrong with our soil, Gordy.” Jed heard the short echo of his voice in Gordon Anderson’s answering machine.’ This story is part The Omen, photos revealing mysteries and prophecies, and part The Happening, with moments of shocking inevitability.
This is also the story, the fourth in the collection, where things begin to interconnect. The events of Devil’s Gorge resonate here with what is going on in St Mary’s Cemetery. But who can say if these things are all happening in the same universe? Even the inhabitants of Shallow Creek are not to be trusted on that front.
Janet’s Vision of Love by Tom Heaton pushes the boundaries of what we will believe, offering us a story that is surreal and Twin Peaks-esque. It’s in every detail down to the inept law enforcement, the slightly off-kilter banter, and the characters that intentionally don’t seem to fit. The story is peppered with threatening and psychedelic imagery: ‘the occasional prophylactic wrapped around a fern like some species of woodland jellyfish’ This tale is truly a vision: of horror, consumerism, with a repeated line that genuinely sent chills along my arms. It transitions from a Lynchian creepy-town mystery to full-fledged Night Shift Stephen King horror. A triumph, to say the least.
Anchor by Marion Coleman offers us something a little different, a strong first person voice that seems meek at first but actually proves to be quite cunning and determined. Throughout this story I could not help but think this entire collection feels like it is building up to Krinkles the Klown. Storgy set up the dominoes oh so long ago with their character sheets and essays of one Mallum Colt, sparking the imagination in writers. They are at once homaging Stephen King’s Pennywise in Krinkles, but also taking him on, showing a modern and complex character that is his own unique brand of horror. This story ends with a brilliant subversion of desire, where our ‘hero’ gets what they want, but not in the way they think.
‘I met myself in Silverpine Forest. And I’ll never forget his grin.’ Some lines grab you by the throat, and this is one of them. It is the opening sentence of Backwards by Adrian J. Walker. This story almost has a True Detective feeling: A quest for a missing girl; A sheriff lost in his own failings; The sense of a secret about the town, and aid found in unlikely places, such as Mallum Colt himself. This line reminded me of a nonsense rhyme that has long haunted my dreams: As I was going up the stair, I met a man who wasn’t there. Backwards proves a convergence point for many stories and people in the world of Shallow Creek: Chelsea, Janet Lopez, the secrets of the forest… It introduces us to a Gothic trope as old as sin and also recently explored in Jordan Peele’s much anticipated Us: that of doppelgängers and parallel worlds.
The whole collection has the feel of a paranormal documentary gone wrong and off the rails, a documentary about the making of a documentary in which the paranormal activity suddenly becomes real and the presenters look sideways at the camera wondering whether a terrible, terrible practical joke has just been played. Some of the horror here hits hard, unflinchingly hard, but it is done not for shock value but to reality-check us to the world. We are told: ‘Her daughter couldn’t sleep… not because of memories or nightmares, but because she couldn’t expel the taste from her mouth.’ All of this culminates in a surprisingly redemptive and hopeful ending. Shallow Creek, bleak as it is, still harbours the human spirit. It is in every page of writing in this tome.
My mind boggles at the complexity of the interwoven plots. It isn’t just ordering the events into a logical continuum. There are subtle thematic and internal threads that are drawn throughout, such as Janet Lopez’s repressed sexuality, and the repeated and weird motif that Sister Augustine has not aged, which at some point starts to become sinister. We slowly unearth more details about Sister Augustine in Heather Cuthbertson’s Secret Ingredient which are alarming to say the least.
Shallow Creek is not just horror. Nor is it mystery. It is a hybrid that slips into whatever genre it feels will best unnerve you. So, with Brian Wilson’s Distraction, it slides into neo-noir. A midnight meeting at a pier with a dark becomes transcendentally significant. There are shades of Christopher Nolan’s cinematic masterpiece Memento here as Brian Wilson elegantly explores the things we do for peace of mind through the motif of a needle and nightdress. He describes a ‘seven eyed beast’ that is actually the light of seven cigarettes in the dark. It becomes like a biblical allusion to the Beast of Revelations. The cigarette butts light the gloom, but they are not hopeful. The narrator counts them again and again as one by one they are extinguished. What are we counting down to? Suspense and terror meet here. We are told by the narrator: ‘I had no intention of putting my family’s life in the hands of a man who professed to hear voices.’ Yet the narrator himself seems semi-delusional, unreliable, not quite honest with himself. We all hear voices, in fact. We’re all insane.
This is as much a commentary on the stories we tell ourselves as it is on religion. Wilson weaves a masterful tapestry here, tying the cigarettes directly into the tragedy at the heart of the story, the ‘filthy habit’. Now, our narrator Maurice has a new filthy habit, his addiction to a syringe filled with a nameless substance. This story is a flawless dovetailing of ideas. Just as the cigarettes remind our Maurice of his flaw, so too do they literally resurrect that which he has lost. The final two cigarettes become the eyes of someone we might just know… As they haunted Maurice, so they will haunt us in the future.
There are so many gems in this collection, I can scarcely catalogue them all. And the World Fades to Black by Adam Lock gives us Groundhog Day but with a sinister twist. It made me realise that so many moments in Shallow Creek are defined by fixations on talismanic objects. Trapped in a moment. Trapped in a grave mistake. This is where horror is so profound, it reflects out self-inflicted psychological punishment.
The Lurid Trance by Gregg Williard, as well as offering us some of the most disturbing artwork in the whole collection, gives us something different. It is about the betrayal of memory. And tardigrades. The premise runs so: someone takes credit for an artist’s work from forty years ago and sends them the envelope. This is a fascinating narrative hook that quickly becomes an esoteric, surreal descent into lost identity. ‘Hard to say how many of the town are descendants of the pseudo psychos.’ Each part of Shallow Creek feels like an attempt to describe exactly what Shallow Creek is. As this story moves towards one of my favourite tropes, that of the ‘lost film’, we are treated to a list of insane movie titles, an exercise in Nate Crowley-esque catalogue, except when I typed the titles in Google, there were actual results. It’s as though Shallow Creek is coming alive. The research Gregg Williard has done to achieve this (or perhaps it is merely a field of study for him and he knows?) is staggering. The faux manifesto for the eponymous movie The Lurid Trance, which lies at the heart of this disturbing meta-story, is exquisitely observed: a satire of film critique as well as a disturbing portent of what’s to come.
Throughout the stories of Shallow Creek we encounter more and more of the mythos of Krinkles, as well as old VHS tapes and unanswered questions. In places the descriptions of Shallow Creek are Melville-esque, unbelievably lavish, such as in Knock, Knock, Knuckle Bone by Allyson Kersel. We are told of one Shallow Creek regular Angus Runt: ‘Runt will have an opinion and, whether informed or fabricated, it’s bound to be interesting.’ In a way, this reflects the entire meaning of Shallow Creek. We cannot verify any of these stories. They shift even as the townspeople shift, as we slip into one multi-verse and out of another. But regardless, it sure as hell is going to be interesting.
In places, Shallow Creek is downright experimental. David Hartley’s masterpiece Pentameter is one such example, the entire thing written in iambic pentameter stanzas rounded off with rhyming couplets. At first, I railed against this form, but the conceit for this device was too well thought out to ignore it. The Lighthouse Keeper thinks in pentameter because he finds comfort in Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets, which have helped him cope with profound loss. This leads to moving moments of poetry amidst prose:
I sprawl back on our steps and think of you.
My Molly, who always knew what to do.
“Arkady,” I say, “yes.” The asylum,
where old Jud was zapped into this shadow.
Jud, the Lighthouse Keeper, believes that Shakespeare is speaking to him through the walkie talkie. As we move towards the conclusion of this tale, we will see more and more evidence that someone may well be manipulating Jud. It all ends with a terrible threat which is Shakespearean in itself, recalling the ending of Twelfth Night, where the shamed Malvolio claims he will be ‘revenged on the whole pack of you’. This was certainly one of the most unexpected and hair-raising stories in the collection.
There is something for everyone here in Shallow Creek, including black humour, which is expertly employed by Sarah Lotz in The Eyes Have It, the title a pun in and of itself. We’re told: ‘The town was the kind of place where you could get away with murder. He’d done it to free himself up to see his girlfriend at the time.’ It makes us laugh, but it’s also frightening, how casual people can be when referring to murder. Our journey through Shallow Creek desensitises us, but Sarah Lotz brings us back around again, ‘waking us up’ to the horror of what we’re seeing. Towards the end of the collection, a new theme emerges, that of forgiveness and whether we even can be forgiven, by human or divine. Lotz takes us on a rollercoaster ride: a bleak quest that is Dexter meets Frankenstein, an exploration of our deepest existential dreads and spiritual fears. It is a paedophile on mission from God, or rather, to cheat God’s will, and in doing so, kill a whole load of sinners in very satisfying ways. Interspersed with some very real theology are observations so darkly witty they make me a little crazy: The notes were signed ‘Dr Ruth Usiskin’, the facility’s psychologist, who clearly wasn’t averse to doodling on her reports. In the margin, next to ‘sexual deviant’, she’d drawn a smiley face.’
Shallow Creek is a celebration of genre fiction, but it also proves that the distinctions between ‘literary’ and ‘genre’ are not only arbitrary but unnecessary. In Aliya Whiteley’s The Alteration we see a staggering portrait of what it is like to have a relationship with someone who is a compulsive liar and losing their mind. Madeleine, bound to a wheelchair, confesses to murders which Ruth, her carer, does not believe, but slowly but surely, we sense the terrible coming of ‘the change’. We’re told ‘Books had stories in them, and my mother said all stories were lies.’ – I think this includes the stories we tell ourselves.
So much of Shallow Creek revolves around the act of finding something that should not be found, whether it be as simple as a wedding ring, or as controversial as a licentious VHS tape. Shallow Creek is a library located in some near-unreachable place, some deep place, far from the crowds and sanitising technology. Within this library are forbidden stories. Profane tales. Tales that can scarcely be given credence, yet they ring true. Why are we so fascinated by darkness? It’s a question that keeps being asked in this collection, but never more potently than in Andrea Hardaker’s The Fulmar’s Cry: ‘She relocated to a small town out west, accepted a job in a store, re-built her life. But all that did was trigger a different unexpected issue. Despite everything—she missed the terror.’
While Shallow Creek feels eternal, all stories need an end. The final story, The Caged Bird Sings in a Darkness of Its Own Creation, by Richard Thomas, feels like the culmination of the entire collection. I am biased as a huge fan of Richard’s work, but he genuinely pulls out all the stops in this Lovecraftian tale. In it, he shows us Krinkles as an old man, staring out at us from his ramshackle hut in the heart of the woods, a figure of ague and remorse, of dark hilarity and mirthless terror. There are so many unsettling details here. Why is Krinkles vomiting up balloons, marbles, and other items? Why is he keeping what might be a child’s heart in a jar? Why do six figures – ‘tall shadows’ – pray outside his hut in the dark? And why is the time of his departure near? There is a religious reverence in the way Richard describes the scene, a kind of sacred wonder at the horror of it all. Like Krinkles’ audience, we await the dreaded punchline with what is tantamount to agony.
This tale is about sin too, and about the price we pay to get what we want: ‘Eventually, it was inverted. Not the death of one for the good of many, but the opposite—the death of many for the good of one. Or the few.’
It is a dark creation story, delving into the origin of all myths. Richard peels back the layers, gives us an almost glacial sequence of images that lead to revelation, like the atom-bomb episode of the third season of Twin Peaks, yet he condenses that extended form into something comparatively microscopic – the prose is so controlled. At the end, we are left with a sense of the entirety of what has happened, something bargained, something lost, something dark and terrible learned. He re-writes the entire script of what we think we know about Shallow Creek, and shows us a side of Krinkles we could not have ever anticipated. Richard may not be as prolific as Stephen King, but his work is just as memorable.
X
In all its horror, and all its glory, this collection has captured the spirit of my mucilaginous hometown.
Oh, didn’t I say?
I was born and raised in Shallow Creek. I live in the flat above Croskell’s pornography store. And before then, I lived in the caves that run deep beneath the old bones of the settlement. And before then… well. Not many in the town know me. I am something of a recluse. I have lived in Shallow Creek a long, long time as I’ve said. Too long, by any reckoning. I’ve thought many times about moving on to other cities, those teeming millions just so tempting, like a ripe fruit full of sugary, sweet juices. But if the people here loathe and distrust me, then elsewhere, I stand very little chance of going unnoticed.
But I grow tired of hiding. My kind are a dying kind. I might even be the last one. What would be the use of passing from ageless history unremembered? One last act of glory, then. I will draw them to us as moths to a flame! My light! My blinding true form!
Come then ye curious souls! Follow my light. Pour in your millions down to Shallow Creek. Follow my good friend Mallum Colt, whom I call the Pied Piper, down to the rancid streets and silver trees and stagnant waters – to the stones that smell of secrets – and I promise you shall see wonders like you have never seen before.
I wax poetical, but I said that I would set pen to paper and review the collection, this testimony to all Shallow Creek is, was, and might be. Firstly, I should say it is more like a multi-authored novel than a collection, stories carefully placed to tell a single – if treacherous – narrative. The editors Tomek, Ross and Tony are to be commended for their Herculean effort in assembling and editing these tales to make them into a singular yet fragmented tale.
Each story is accompanied by dazzling artwork by Michael To. These pieces are truly exquisite dark illustrations that often bring the images and metaphors at the heart of these stories to life. Michael has a way of synthesising two dispirit images that brings new meaning: a home springing from the curve of anchor, a bleeding rollercoaster, a mouth fountaining liquid…
The stories have been arranged, like the studded gems of a crown, in specific order. Characters waltz into the story, only to vanish and re-appear like ghosts; some commit terrible sins but are never punished; some seem to suffer grandly but never lose their ever-too-wide smile. Each story focuses in on a moment, a shining jewel-like moment, but with the close of each story these moments fade as the focus shifts. It is like surveying the town through a microscope, the lens only able to focus on one microcosm at a time. As it moves, you yearn for it to linger, to spend more time unravelling the delicate story it burningly fixes on, but move on it must, revealing new insights.
Our story starts with Dave Danvers’ Last Foray Into All Things Woo Woo by Stuart Croskell. This brilliant introductory story has been well chosen, opening with a man driving into Shallow Creek, treating us to a panoramic view of its squalid infamy. The story’s premise is at once meta- and original: a paranormal TV show host arrives in Shallow Creek in order to write a story about the town. Over the years, his belief in the supernatural has waned: ‘No bigfoot, no spooks, no little green men. The bastards. Only us. Us. Jesus.’ The twist of horror in the final line, in realising we are only alone with ourselves, and that humans are perhaps the worst monster of all, is deftly and subtly done. Our protagonist, Dave Danver, must go to Devil’s Gorge to write his story. As we follow him on his strange journey to the Devil’s Gorge summit via immaculate prose, the story gains Stoker-esque qualities – introducing us to enigmatic characters galore, bated-breath conspiracy, and the horrifying motif of a forced smile. The ending is nothing short of cathartic and sets the tone for the whole collection as one that aims to not just scare us, but also make us weep with epiphany. It’s here we first meet Krinkles the Klown, but it sure as hell isn’t the last time we see him.
Throughout Shallow Creek, we see nods to the old masters of horror like Bram Stoker and Mary Shelley, and there is something jubilant in that. However, there is also something fresh here. In Behind These Eyes by Alice Noel, we see juxtapositions of old-school horror vibes, an almost Victorian macabre storytelling, with the modern and comical: ‘Gothic is so in this year.’ Shallow Creek is a commentary on how just because we make fun of the oldest horrors in the book, it doesn’t mean they aren’t still scary.
The Soil of Stonier Hearts by Erik Bergstrom is another masterful blend of the old and new. Employing a poetic style throughout much akin to the glorious and rich elegance of Edgar Allan Poe, with brilliantly controlled language, Erik effortlessly invokes the Gothic aesthetic. The story is loaded with intriguing turns of phrase, as twisted as the nature of the town: a ‘phantom drunkenness’ haunting characters, suggesting that the line between supernatural and psychological is thin. With such fine writing, the smallest details become potential portents: “Something’s wrong with our soil, Gordy.” Jed heard the short echo of his voice in Gordon Anderson’s answering machine.’ This story is part The Omen, photos revealing mysteries and prophecies, and part The Happening, with moments of shocking inevitability.
This is also the story, the fourth in the collection, where things begin to interconnect. The events of Devil’s Gorge resonate here with what is going on in St Mary’s Cemetery. But who can say if these things are all happening in the same universe? Even the inhabitants of Shallow Creek are not to be trusted on that front.
Janet’s Vision of Love by Tom Heaton pushes the boundaries of what we will believe, offering us a story that is surreal and Twin Peaks-esque. It’s in every detail down to the inept law enforcement, the slightly off-kilter banter, and the characters that intentionally don’t seem to fit. The story is peppered with threatening and psychedelic imagery: ‘the occasional prophylactic wrapped around a fern like some species of woodland jellyfish’ This tale is truly a vision: of horror, consumerism, with a repeated line that genuinely sent chills along my arms. It transitions from a Lynchian creepy-town mystery to full-fledged Night Shift Stephen King horror. A triumph, to say the least.
Anchor by Marion Coleman offers us something a little different, a strong first person voice that seems meek at first but actually proves to be quite cunning and determined. Throughout this story I could not help but think this entire collection feels like it is building up to Krinkles the Klown. Storgy set up the dominoes oh so long ago with their character sheets and essays of one Mallum Colt, sparking the imagination in writers. They are at once homaging Stephen King’s Pennywise in Krinkles, but also taking him on, showing a modern and complex character that is his own unique brand of horror. This story ends with a brilliant subversion of desire, where our ‘hero’ gets what they want, but not in the way they think.
‘I met myself in Silverpine Forest. And I’ll never forget his grin.’ Some lines grab you by the throat, and this is one of them. It is the opening sentence of Backwards by Adrian J. Walker. This story almost has a True Detective feeling: A quest for a missing girl; A sheriff lost in his own failings; The sense of a secret about the town, and aid found in unlikely places, such as Mallum Colt himself. This line reminded me of a nonsense rhyme that has long haunted my dreams: As I was going up the stair, I met a man who wasn’t there. Backwards proves a convergence point for many stories and people in the world of Shallow Creek: Chelsea, Janet Lopez, the secrets of the forest… It introduces us to a Gothic trope as old as sin and also recently explored in Jordan Peele’s much anticipated Us: that of doppelgängers and parallel worlds.
The whole collection has the feel of a paranormal documentary gone wrong and off the rails, a documentary about the making of a documentary in which the paranormal activity suddenly becomes real and the presenters look sideways at the camera wondering whether a terrible, terrible practical joke has just been played. Some of the horror here hits hard, unflinchingly hard, but it is done not for shock value but to reality-check us to the world. We are told: ‘Her daughter couldn’t sleep… not because of memories or nightmares, but because she couldn’t expel the taste from her mouth.’ All of this culminates in a surprisingly redemptive and hopeful ending. Shallow Creek, bleak as it is, still harbours the human spirit. It is in every page of writing in this tome.
My mind boggles at the complexity of the interwoven plots. It isn’t just ordering the events into a logical continuum. There are subtle thematic and internal threads that are drawn throughout, such as Janet Lopez’s repressed sexuality, and the repeated and weird motif that Sister Augustine has not aged, which at some point starts to become sinister. We slowly unearth more details about Sister Augustine in Heather Cuthbertson’s Secret Ingredient which are alarming to say the least.
Shallow Creek is not just horror. Nor is it mystery. It is a hybrid that slips into whatever genre it feels will best unnerve you. So, with Brian Wilson’s Distraction, it slides into neo-noir. A midnight meeting at a pier with a dark becomes transcendentally significant. There are shades of Christopher Nolan’s cinematic masterpiece Memento here as Brian Wilson elegantly explores the things we do for peace of mind through the motif of a needle and nightdress. He describes a ‘seven eyed beast’ that is actually the light of seven cigarettes in the dark. It becomes like a biblical allusion to the Beast of Revelations. The cigarette butts light the gloom, but they are not hopeful. The narrator counts them again and again as one by one they are extinguished. What are we counting down to? Suspense and terror meet here. We are told by the narrator: ‘I had no intention of putting my family’s life in the hands of a man who professed to hear voices.’ Yet the narrator himself seems semi-delusional, unreliable, not quite honest with himself. We all hear voices, in fact. We’re all insane.
This is as much a commentary on the stories we tell ourselves as it is on religion. Wilson weaves a masterful tapestry here, tying the cigarettes directly into the tragedy at the heart of the story, the ‘filthy habit’. Now, our narrator Maurice has a new filthy habit, his addiction to a syringe filled with a nameless substance. This story is a flawless dovetailing of ideas. Just as the cigarettes remind our Maurice of his flaw, so too do they literally resurrect that which he has lost. The final two cigarettes become the eyes of someone we might just know… As they haunted Maurice, so they will haunt us in the future.
There are so many gems in this collection, I can scarcely catalogue them all. And the World Fades to Black by Adam Lock gives us Groundhog Day but with a sinister twist. It made me realise that so many moments in Shallow Creek are defined by fixations on talismanic objects. Trapped in a moment. Trapped in a grave mistake. This is where horror is so profound, it reflects out self-inflicted psychological punishment.
The Lurid Trance by Gregg Williard, as well as offering us some of the most disturbing artwork in the whole collection, gives us something different. It is about the betrayal of memory. And tardigrades. The premise runs so: someone takes credit for an artist’s work from forty years ago and sends them the envelope. This is a fascinating narrative hook that quickly becomes an esoteric, surreal descent into lost identity. ‘Hard to say how many of the town are descendants of the pseudo psychos.’ Each part of Shallow Creek feels like an attempt to describe exactly what Shallow Creek is. As this story moves towards one of my favourite tropes, that of the ‘lost film’, we are treated to a list of insane movie titles, an exercise in Nate Crowley-esque catalogue, except when I typed the titles in Google, there were actual results. It’s as though Shallow Creek is coming alive. The research Gregg Williard has done to achieve this (or perhaps it is merely a field of study for him and he knows?) is staggering. The faux manifesto for the eponymous movie The Lurid Trance, which lies at the heart of this disturbing meta-story, is exquisitely observed: a satire of film critique as well as a disturbing portent of what’s to come.
Throughout the stories of Shallow Creek we encounter more and more of the mythos of Krinkles, as well as old VHS tapes and unanswered questions. In places the descriptions of Shallow Creek are Melville-esque, unbelievably lavish, such as in Knock, Knock, Knuckle Bone by Allyson Kersel. We are told of one Shallow Creek regular Angus Runt: ‘Runt will have an opinion and, whether informed or fabricated, it’s bound to be interesting.’ In a way, this reflects the entire meaning of Shallow Creek. We cannot verify any of these stories. They shift even as the townspeople shift, as we slip into one multi-verse and out of another. But regardless, it sure as hell is going to be interesting.
In places, Shallow Creek is downright experimental. David Hartley’s masterpiece Pentameter is one such example, the entire thing written in iambic pentameter stanzas rounded off with rhyming couplets. At first, I railed against this form, but the conceit for this device was too well thought out to ignore it. The Lighthouse Keeper thinks in pentameter because he finds comfort in Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets, which have helped him cope with profound loss. This leads to moving moments of poetry amidst prose:
I sprawl back on our steps and think of you.
My Molly, who always knew what to do.
“Arkady,” I say, “yes.” The asylum,
where old Jud was zapped into this shadow.
Jud, the Lighthouse Keeper, believes that Shakespeare is speaking to him through the walkie talkie. As we move towards the conclusion of this tale, we will see more and more evidence that someone may well be manipulating Jud. It all ends with a terrible threat which is Shakespearean in itself, recalling the ending of Twelfth Night, where the shamed Malvolio claims he will be ‘revenged on the whole pack of you’. This was certainly one of the most unexpected and hair-raising stories in the collection.
There is something for everyone here in Shallow Creek, including black humour, which is expertly employed by Sarah Lotz in The Eyes Have It, the title a pun in and of itself. We’re told: ‘The town was the kind of place where you could get away with murder. He’d done it to free himself up to see his girlfriend at the time.’ It makes us laugh, but it’s also frightening, how casual people can be when referring to murder. Our journey through Shallow Creek desensitises us, but Sarah Lotz brings us back around again, ‘waking us up’ to the horror of what we’re seeing. Towards the end of the collection, a new theme emerges, that of forgiveness and whether we even can be forgiven, by human or divine. Lotz takes us on a rollercoaster ride: a bleak quest that is Dexter meets Frankenstein, an exploration of our deepest existential dreads and spiritual fears. It is a paedophile on mission from God, or rather, to cheat God’s will, and in doing so, kill a whole load of sinners in very satisfying ways. Interspersed with some very real theology are observations so darkly witty they make me a little crazy: The notes were signed ‘Dr Ruth Usiskin’, the facility’s psychologist, who clearly wasn’t averse to doodling on her reports. In the margin, next to ‘sexual deviant’, she’d drawn a smiley face.’
Shallow Creek is a celebration of genre fiction, but it also proves that the distinctions between ‘literary’ and ‘genre’ are not only arbitrary but unnecessary. In Aliya Whiteley’s The Alteration we see a staggering portrait of what it is like to have a relationship with someone who is a compulsive liar and losing their mind. Madeleine, bound to a wheelchair, confesses to murders which Ruth, her carer, does not believe, but slowly but surely, we sense the terrible coming of ‘the change’. We’re told ‘Books had stories in them, and my mother said all stories were lies.’ – I think this includes the stories we tell ourselves.
So much of Shallow Creek revolves around the act of finding something that should not be found, whether it be as simple as a wedding ring, or as controversial as a licentious VHS tape. Shallow Creek is a library located in some near-unreachable place, some deep place, far from the crowds and sanitising technology. Within this library are forbidden stories. Profane tales. Tales that can scarcely be given credence, yet they ring true. Why are we so fascinated by darkness? It’s a question that keeps being asked in this collection, but never more potently than in Andrea Hardaker’s The Fulmar’s Cry: ‘She relocated to a small town out west, accepted a job in a store, re-built her life. But all that did was trigger a different unexpected issue. Despite everything—she missed the terror.’
While Shallow Creek feels eternal, all stories need an end. The final story, The Caged Bird Sings in a Darkness of Its Own Creation, by Richard Thomas, feels like the culmination of the entire collection. I am biased as a huge fan of Richard’s work, but he genuinely pulls out all the stops in this Lovecraftian tale. In it, he shows us Krinkles as an old man, staring out at us from his ramshackle hut in the heart of the woods, a figure of ague and remorse, of dark hilarity and mirthless terror. There are so many unsettling details here. Why is Krinkles vomiting up balloons, marbles, and other items? Why is he keeping what might be a child’s heart in a jar? Why do six figures – ‘tall shadows’ – pray outside his hut in the dark? And why is the time of his departure near? There is a religious reverence in the way Richard describes the scene, a kind of sacred wonder at the horror of it all. Like Krinkles’ audience, we await the dreaded punchline with what is tantamount to agony.
This tale is about sin too, and about the price we pay to get what we want: ‘Eventually, it was inverted. Not the death of one for the good of many, but the opposite—the death of many for the good of one. Or the few.’
It is a dark creation story, delving into the origin of all myths. Richard peels back the layers, gives us an almost glacial sequence of images that lead to revelation, like the atom-bomb episode of the third season of Twin Peaks, yet he condenses that extended form into something comparatively microscopic – the prose is so controlled. At the end, we are left with a sense of the entirety of what has happened, something bargained, something lost, something dark and terrible learned. He re-writes the entire script of what we think we know about Shallow Creek, and shows us a side of Krinkles we could not have ever anticipated. Richard may not be as prolific as Stephen King, but his work is just as memorable.
X
In all its horror, and all its glory, this collection has captured the spirit of my mucilaginous hometown.
Oh, didn’t I say?
I was born and raised in Shallow Creek. I live in the flat above Croskell’s pornography store. And before then, I lived in the caves that run deep beneath the old bones of the settlement. And before then… well. Not many in the town know me. I am something of a recluse. I have lived in Shallow Creek a long, long time as I’ve said. Too long, by any reckoning. I’ve thought many times about moving on to other cities, those teeming millions just so tempting, like a ripe fruit full of sugary, sweet juices. But if the people here loathe and distrust me, then elsewhere, I stand very little chance of going unnoticed.
But I grow tired of hiding. My kind are a dying kind. I might even be the last one. What would be the use of passing from ageless history unremembered? One last act of glory, then. I will draw them to us as moths to a flame! My light! My blinding true form!
Come then ye curious souls! Follow my light. Pour in your millions down to Shallow Creek. Follow my good friend Mallum Colt, whom I call the Pied Piper, down to the rancid streets and silver trees and stagnant waters – to the stones that smell of secrets – and I promise you shall see wonders like you have never seen before.
May 26, 2019
Review to follow on Kendall Reviews.
I'll say that this is an incredibly strong collection with most of the stories hitting their mark.
Characters and locations reappear in stories very cleverly. Certainly doesn't feel like a gimmick. To be honest if the stories didn't all have their own unique voices you'd be forgiven in thinking this was all written by one skilled hand.
This collection is a fantastic introduction to a town and it's inhabitants that I'd love to revisit. Shallow Creek screams potential. More books, even graphic novels would be more than welcome.
Skillfully written characters, scares, weirdness and a lot of heart (which can be found in a jar on a shelf in an old cabin in Silverpine Forest)
I'll say that this is an incredibly strong collection with most of the stories hitting their mark.
Characters and locations reappear in stories very cleverly. Certainly doesn't feel like a gimmick. To be honest if the stories didn't all have their own unique voices you'd be forgiven in thinking this was all written by one skilled hand.
This collection is a fantastic introduction to a town and it's inhabitants that I'd love to revisit. Shallow Creek screams potential. More books, even graphic novels would be more than welcome.
Skillfully written characters, scares, weirdness and a lot of heart (which can be found in a jar on a shelf in an old cabin in Silverpine Forest)
May 20, 2019
Disclaimer: I am one of the writers of Shallow Creek so won't talk about my own story, but as a reader I want to talk about the book in general and some of the eerie and spooky stories that stood out for me.
One character, one location, one item, and one creepy town. That was the brief from Storgy.com and all the chosen writers produced stories of great mood, pathos, and chills. The opening story, DAVE DANVERS’ LAST FORAY INTO ALL THINGS WOO WOO
by J. Stuart Croskell, is one of my favourites, setting the scene perfectly. PENTAMETER
by David Hartley is ambitious and could've gone wrong yet David nails the intertwining iambic pentameter form and story. ARROWHEAD by Daniel Carpenter was another highlight making me not want to go near breakfast cereal toys.
Overall, the range of styles and the way the writers have captured the strange goings on of Shallow Creek is a delight and I am proud to be part of this creepy tome.
One character, one location, one item, and one creepy town. That was the brief from Storgy.com and all the chosen writers produced stories of great mood, pathos, and chills. The opening story, DAVE DANVERS’ LAST FORAY INTO ALL THINGS WOO WOO
by J. Stuart Croskell, is one of my favourites, setting the scene perfectly. PENTAMETER
by David Hartley is ambitious and could've gone wrong yet David nails the intertwining iambic pentameter form and story. ARROWHEAD by Daniel Carpenter was another highlight making me not want to go near breakfast cereal toys.
Overall, the range of styles and the way the writers have captured the strange goings on of Shallow Creek is a delight and I am proud to be part of this creepy tome.
April 19, 2019
Shallow Creek is a collection of 21 creepy and haunting short stories by established novelists and shorts story writers and the best new talent in the genre. It’s a unique creation from a genuinely ingenious concept, the like of which I haven’t previously encountered. I followed the development of the project from its inception, intrigued to see what the result would be and it’s nothing short of stunning in terms of the format, the standard of writing and the physical book itself.
Independent publisher Storgy launched a competition in 2018 whereby the fictional town of Shallow Creek was introduced to the world. A town with a cast of characters and places to inspire the entrants to create tales of mystery and horror within the setting. Think of a more intimate, modern and downright spooky version of the Castle Rock of many of Stephen King’s books.
The host of the competition was Mallum Colt, the owner of the curiosity shop in Shallow Creek. Writers were allocated a resident of the town to base their story on, a location in Shallow Creek for example the fairground, lighthouse, Arkady Asylum or Silverpine Forest and finally an item to feature in the story.
The effect this has on the book is that, despite the different styles and themes to the stories, they connect and knit together because of their common location and characters who feature. The sense of place of this fictional town is quite brilliant and, with the map of Shallow Creek at the start of the book, it feels real which adds to the experience significantly.
The artwork of the front and back covers featuring a bloody clown’s hand (Krinkles the Clown who appears throughout the book) is grotesquely beautiful and the artwork at the beginning of each story is a real presence which only enhances the feel of the book as a whole.
The stories themselves have different tones and pace and they range from good old fashion horror, some with a dark sense of humour, twist in the tale stories and some really dark and haunting pieces.
The competition judge was novelist and short story writer Naomi Booth who chose Distraction by Brian Wilson as the winner which is a haunting tale of grief which lingers long after reading.
All 21 stories capture the imagination and nurture a real sense of place, bringing Shallow Creek to life. Everyone will find something different in these tales and have their favourites depending on their particular taste in the uncanny.
I’m a big fan of The Twilight Zone and Backwards by Adrian J Walker is something special of which Rod Serling himself would have been proud. I love this tale of a cop who finds himself in Silverpine Forest facing his past and the story which ensues is deeply thought provoking. Walker’s prose is perfect, providing mood and weaving different settings and characters from the town together to produce a very original story. My favourite in the collection.
Whilst Walker is an established writer (author of acclaimed novel The End of the World Running Club), there is some brilliant new talent on show and none more so than Blood Moon Bob by Simon Billington and Dave Danvers’ Final Foray Into All Things Woo Woo by Stuart Croskell which was the 3rd place winning story. Both are expertly told tales, holding their own and being significant contributors to the Shallow Creek jigsaw.
Arrowhead by Daniel Carpenter is another favourite. This is the story of Bubba Cody, the owner of the town’s fairground, and his obsession with collecting the old giveaway toys from packs of Krinkles cereal. His search for the rare plastic arrowhead of the title leads the protagonist, Lenny to find out the macabre root of his desires. This has the feel of the early Stephen King tales but Carpenter provides a modern and updated atmosphere which is a delight for lovers of The Master’s short story collections.
Janet’s Vision of Love by Tom Heaton is a real mind bender which has brilliant dialogue in the style of Fargo between Janet and Chief Hamilton who are investigating a murder. Janet’s husband Bobby has disappeared and the mystery behind this develops. Another great story where the characters and locations are interwoven.
The way each story connects is just brilliant considering this was not a collaboration between writers who knew what each other was producing. This is why the concept created by Storgy is so impressive. By providing the contributors with the perfect prompts they have conjured a really special book.
I could sermonise about each of the stories but that would spoil the fun of this book. Shallow Creek is a significant literary landmark and anyone who is a fan of the horror short story genre, past or present, should sit back, read this and enjoy. Just make sure you’re near the light switch.
The Book Spine
Full review at thebookspine.com
Independent publisher Storgy launched a competition in 2018 whereby the fictional town of Shallow Creek was introduced to the world. A town with a cast of characters and places to inspire the entrants to create tales of mystery and horror within the setting. Think of a more intimate, modern and downright spooky version of the Castle Rock of many of Stephen King’s books.
The host of the competition was Mallum Colt, the owner of the curiosity shop in Shallow Creek. Writers were allocated a resident of the town to base their story on, a location in Shallow Creek for example the fairground, lighthouse, Arkady Asylum or Silverpine Forest and finally an item to feature in the story.
The effect this has on the book is that, despite the different styles and themes to the stories, they connect and knit together because of their common location and characters who feature. The sense of place of this fictional town is quite brilliant and, with the map of Shallow Creek at the start of the book, it feels real which adds to the experience significantly.
The artwork of the front and back covers featuring a bloody clown’s hand (Krinkles the Clown who appears throughout the book) is grotesquely beautiful and the artwork at the beginning of each story is a real presence which only enhances the feel of the book as a whole.
The stories themselves have different tones and pace and they range from good old fashion horror, some with a dark sense of humour, twist in the tale stories and some really dark and haunting pieces.
The competition judge was novelist and short story writer Naomi Booth who chose Distraction by Brian Wilson as the winner which is a haunting tale of grief which lingers long after reading.
All 21 stories capture the imagination and nurture a real sense of place, bringing Shallow Creek to life. Everyone will find something different in these tales and have their favourites depending on their particular taste in the uncanny.
I’m a big fan of The Twilight Zone and Backwards by Adrian J Walker is something special of which Rod Serling himself would have been proud. I love this tale of a cop who finds himself in Silverpine Forest facing his past and the story which ensues is deeply thought provoking. Walker’s prose is perfect, providing mood and weaving different settings and characters from the town together to produce a very original story. My favourite in the collection.
Whilst Walker is an established writer (author of acclaimed novel The End of the World Running Club), there is some brilliant new talent on show and none more so than Blood Moon Bob by Simon Billington and Dave Danvers’ Final Foray Into All Things Woo Woo by Stuart Croskell which was the 3rd place winning story. Both are expertly told tales, holding their own and being significant contributors to the Shallow Creek jigsaw.
Arrowhead by Daniel Carpenter is another favourite. This is the story of Bubba Cody, the owner of the town’s fairground, and his obsession with collecting the old giveaway toys from packs of Krinkles cereal. His search for the rare plastic arrowhead of the title leads the protagonist, Lenny to find out the macabre root of his desires. This has the feel of the early Stephen King tales but Carpenter provides a modern and updated atmosphere which is a delight for lovers of The Master’s short story collections.
Janet’s Vision of Love by Tom Heaton is a real mind bender which has brilliant dialogue in the style of Fargo between Janet and Chief Hamilton who are investigating a murder. Janet’s husband Bobby has disappeared and the mystery behind this develops. Another great story where the characters and locations are interwoven.
The way each story connects is just brilliant considering this was not a collaboration between writers who knew what each other was producing. This is why the concept created by Storgy is so impressive. By providing the contributors with the perfect prompts they have conjured a really special book.
I could sermonise about each of the stories but that would spoil the fun of this book. Shallow Creek is a significant literary landmark and anyone who is a fan of the horror short story genre, past or present, should sit back, read this and enjoy. Just make sure you’re near the light switch.
The Book Spine
Full review at thebookspine.com
June 19, 2019
The small coastal town of Shallow Creek as told through the everyday lives of its inhabitants, through a series of dark tales. But this is no Llareggub, the horrific stories do not take place over one day as this is not Under Milk Wood. The collection gives a sense that there has been something deeply amiss in Shallow Creek for some time. What is wonderful is the way the story telling methods with differing central characters are brought together under the one umbrella to give a sense of Shallow Creek as a place.
It is a credit to the editors that Shallow Creek has enabled writers weave in the towns people and locations with several appearing in more than one story without any sense of jarring. Of the twenty-one stories there were several that stood out, “Behind These Eyes” by Alice Noel centres around the difficult circumstance of a daughter looking after a father with dementia, Noel portrays well the tension that builds up between the two. “Anchor” by Marion Colman a daughter seeking her mother in the terrible Arkady Assylum there is something unnerving and wrong about this place from the moment she enters. “Distraction” by Brian Wilson is a very tense story played out in a paranoid mind of a husband anxiously watching the smokers on the pier, waiting in the shadows for the boatman and the addictive medicinal drugs. “The Alteration” by Aliya Whitely is gorgeously constructed creepy tale of deaths, delusion and mis-direction by a wheelchair bound inmate of Arkady Asylum. “The Fulmars Cry” by Andrea Hardaker that ties in Shallow Creek folk-lore, and a mother’s return thirty years after her daughter went missing. A heart-breaking story as the distressful events of the past are revealed. “Strange Brew” by Elanor Hickey a confessional letter from Gerty to her childhood friend John. She had been for many years a victim of abuse at the hands of her father that the Sherriff as a symbol of society ignores and turns away, it is the spirit of Sliverpine Forest helps Gerty and other victims of domestic abuse have revenge. The story changes as the women are taken one by one to Arkady Asylum. I felt conflicted after finishing this story, an ending that left made the world that little bit darker.
Shallow Creek is a brilliant concept of a town with a dark and sinister underbelly, this is a very well put together collection of horror. Take a trip!
It is a credit to the editors that Shallow Creek has enabled writers weave in the towns people and locations with several appearing in more than one story without any sense of jarring. Of the twenty-one stories there were several that stood out, “Behind These Eyes” by Alice Noel centres around the difficult circumstance of a daughter looking after a father with dementia, Noel portrays well the tension that builds up between the two. “Anchor” by Marion Colman a daughter seeking her mother in the terrible Arkady Assylum there is something unnerving and wrong about this place from the moment she enters. “Distraction” by Brian Wilson is a very tense story played out in a paranoid mind of a husband anxiously watching the smokers on the pier, waiting in the shadows for the boatman and the addictive medicinal drugs. “The Alteration” by Aliya Whitely is gorgeously constructed creepy tale of deaths, delusion and mis-direction by a wheelchair bound inmate of Arkady Asylum. “The Fulmars Cry” by Andrea Hardaker that ties in Shallow Creek folk-lore, and a mother’s return thirty years after her daughter went missing. A heart-breaking story as the distressful events of the past are revealed. “Strange Brew” by Elanor Hickey a confessional letter from Gerty to her childhood friend John. She had been for many years a victim of abuse at the hands of her father that the Sherriff as a symbol of society ignores and turns away, it is the spirit of Sliverpine Forest helps Gerty and other victims of domestic abuse have revenge. The story changes as the women are taken one by one to Arkady Asylum. I felt conflicted after finishing this story, an ending that left made the world that little bit darker.
Shallow Creek is a brilliant concept of a town with a dark and sinister underbelly, this is a very well put together collection of horror. Take a trip!
April 25, 2019
I will be reviewing this for High Fever Books, but I can at least give you a bit of a taste...
Naomi Booth and publisher Storgy were contacted by Mallum Colt, the proprietor of Shallow Creek’s local curiosity shop, to collect all of the strange accounts in his town. What they delivered was Shallow Creek, an anthology featuring 21 stories covering all aspects of life in this creepy coastal community. It’s one of the most ambitious anthologies I’ve seen in a very long time, and while there were a few hiccups along the way, the end product is something magical to behold.
Storgy held a competition in 2018, with Naomi Booth as judge, for authors to take a crack at building the mythology of the fictional town Shallow Creek. Authors were given a map, some information on the citizens and locations of the town, then let loose. Stories range from character studies, to bizarre events, to legends, to cosmic tales. While each story isn’t connected, what we get is this very complete story of Shallow Creek, with Booth and Storgy as the architects, weaving characters and locations through the 21 different authors’ stories. You could almost think of it as a single author’s book simply due to the continuity of all the players, yet the truth is everyone wrote what they wanted to tell and the overall story is that much richer. It’s an amazing feat that I was constantly awed by.
Naomi Booth and publisher Storgy were contacted by Mallum Colt, the proprietor of Shallow Creek’s local curiosity shop, to collect all of the strange accounts in his town. What they delivered was Shallow Creek, an anthology featuring 21 stories covering all aspects of life in this creepy coastal community. It’s one of the most ambitious anthologies I’ve seen in a very long time, and while there were a few hiccups along the way, the end product is something magical to behold.
Storgy held a competition in 2018, with Naomi Booth as judge, for authors to take a crack at building the mythology of the fictional town Shallow Creek. Authors were given a map, some information on the citizens and locations of the town, then let loose. Stories range from character studies, to bizarre events, to legends, to cosmic tales. While each story isn’t connected, what we get is this very complete story of Shallow Creek, with Booth and Storgy as the architects, weaving characters and locations through the 21 different authors’ stories. You could almost think of it as a single author’s book simply due to the continuity of all the players, yet the truth is everyone wrote what they wanted to tell and the overall story is that much richer. It’s an amazing feat that I was constantly awed by.
May 28, 2019
Brilliant coming together of short horror stories based in the fictional Shallow Creek. While I'm still struggling to understand several of them, I loved how each one is broadly consistent with the others and how they all paint such a mysterious and creepy picture of the town. Each one adds its own dimension and I thought the last short story brought a number of them together nicely. Stuart Croskell's all things Woo Woo and those based around the Arkady Asylum stood out.
April 8, 2019
STORGY Books have outdone themselves with this macabre slice of horror.
Enlisting some great known authors such as Sarah Lotz, Richard Thomas, Aliya Whiteley and Adrian J Walker and a cast of new writers of the genre they have created an anthology that is chilling and very unsettling in equal measure!
Each story is set within the fictional town of Shallow Creek and as you read you soon discover that some characters that pop up in one story appear in other stories in a seamless interwoven narrative which is impressive and something that has never been achieved before (with such skill) - if you are a fan of Stephen King and his extended universe of Castle Rock, The Twilight Zone, Black Mirror and Twin Peaks then this is the crazy horrific anthology for you!
The cover is gorgeous and the artwork doesn’t stop there, each short story in the anthology has its own illustration and each adds a little class to the overall book! Stunning!
Shallow Creek gave me nightmares!
Enjoy your visit...while it lasts!
Enlisting some great known authors such as Sarah Lotz, Richard Thomas, Aliya Whiteley and Adrian J Walker and a cast of new writers of the genre they have created an anthology that is chilling and very unsettling in equal measure!
Each story is set within the fictional town of Shallow Creek and as you read you soon discover that some characters that pop up in one story appear in other stories in a seamless interwoven narrative which is impressive and something that has never been achieved before (with such skill) - if you are a fan of Stephen King and his extended universe of Castle Rock, The Twilight Zone, Black Mirror and Twin Peaks then this is the crazy horrific anthology for you!
The cover is gorgeous and the artwork doesn’t stop there, each short story in the anthology has its own illustration and each adds a little class to the overall book! Stunning!
Shallow Creek gave me nightmares!
Enjoy your visit...while it lasts!
May 28, 2020
David Hartley's story, "Pentameter", stands out. Though his stories always do.
Discovered a lot of new authors to me whose stories I enjoyed. An ambitious effort from STORGY that truly pays off!
I can only hope this isn't the last trip into the wealth of characters & stories offered by Shallow Creek.
Discovered a lot of new authors to me whose stories I enjoyed. An ambitious effort from STORGY that truly pays off!
I can only hope this isn't the last trip into the wealth of characters & stories offered by Shallow Creek.
November 5, 2019
A great mix of horror shorts.
Don't read if you have a clown phobia!
Don't read if you have a clown phobia!
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