Weird Horror, Issue 4, Spring 2022

Weird Horror #4

by Michael Kelly (Editor), Andrew Humphrey, Annika Barranti Klein

New and startling original horror fiction

Contents (fiction):
- J.F. Gleeson "The Floating House"
- Linda Niehoff "Fever Girls"
- Daniel David Froid "Camera’s Eye"
- Sarina Dorie "Arachnids in Your Bed: An Interactive Bedtime Story for Children – and Adults"
- Annika Barranti Klein "Milk Teeth"
- Steve Rasnic Tem "Whenever It Comes"
- Andrew Humphrey "Hurled Against Rocks"
- Ashley Stokes "Fields and Scatter"
- Derrick Boden "Sunder Island"
- Armel Dagorn "Figments of the Night"

Includes also: opinion from Simon Strantzas ("Next Wave Horror"); commentary from Orrin Grey ("Clowns at Midnight: Why Silly Isn’t the Opposite of Scary"); reviews by Lysette Stevenson and Tom Goldstein.

Genres: Horror

90 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2022

About the author

Michael Kelly is the Series Editor for the Year's Best Weird Fiction, and author of Undertow and Other Laments, and Scratching the Surface; as well as co-author of the novel Ouroboros.

His short fiction has appeared in a number of journals and anthologies, including All Hallows, Best New Horror, Black Static, Dark Arts, the Hint Fiction Anthology, PostScripts, Space & Time, Supernatural Tales, Tesseracts 13, and Weird Fiction Review.

Michael is a World Fantasy Award, Shirley Jackson Award and British Fantasy Award Nominee.

Reviews

[Nicolai Alexander · Rating 4 out of 5]

I appreciate small press ventures and niche literary magazines. As a weird fiction AND horror enthusiast, I knew right away I wanted to support and explore this magazine in particular, which looks so professional and stylish. I ordered a copy of this particular issue first; the cover art spoke to me and the nonfiction essays seemed interesting.

As my four-star rating indicates, I’m happy to announce I enjoyed it. Well, it was a mixed bag for me in the short story department, with some clear misses here and there. Some of the stories don’t fit into the advertised genre (neither weird nor horror), which was very puzzling to me and seemed like a huge oversight. I think three stars is the correct rating for the short stories alone, but I think, with all the rest, my overall impression is that it's a four-star issue.

For instance, the cover art is made by Drazen Kozjan and looks perfectly stylishly weird (it’s been adorning my TV stand for years now and will continue to be on display). There are other illustrations in black and white, accompanying each story, which looks hand drawn. I liked how they added another creepy layer to the stories. Made them pop!

I like that the book reviews by Lysette Stevenson covers works spanning more than 100 years, both old and new writers get a mention. It’s a great addition to the magazine, introducing more obscure gems from the past while at the same time introducing works by newer authors with the short stories. I just wish Stevenson had done more than write a synopsis of each book and told us more about how she thinks about them. The movie reviews by Tom Goldstein are a welcome addition too, although they’re a bit too short in my opinion.

I even liked the advertisements in between stories. It’s a great way to introduce readers to similar things. It gives a sense of community among weird fiction fans.

So, I give the editorial work/layout and illustrations ★★★★.

Now, the first entries are two essays.

The first essay by Simon Strantzas is very short, and perhaps a bit too short given the subject matter: the development of horror as a literary genre from the 1970s. It's an ambitious undertaking, and it quickly becomes apparent that more space is needed to flesh out what he considers waves of writers and horror stories.

The first wave is covered in more detail and, in my opinion, more clearly defined. He fails to come up with examples of Second Wave Horror, which he thinks started at "around the turn of the millennium". He does point out that this new wave of writers grew up in a different world, and in a world where "horror was a major marketing category", subsequently having more horror fiction in general to contend with, which naturally makes sense.

Unfortunately, Strantzas only makes the claim that "the most successful of these Second Wave writers found inspiration in the cosmicism of Lovecraft, the oneiricism of Aickman, the pessimism of Ligotti" without giving us a single name or work from that second wave.

I do think he may be on to something in his understanding of this potential Third Wave of Horror. He makes a good point that "Things move faster now [...] we're left with a world where there may not even be waves anymore but instead just a steady and constant onslaught of new writers and new kinds of work. A state of constant flux and noise, on that will be impossible to parse because it's so overwhelming. A world where everything that can exist will exist and all at once", which has its upsides and downsides, of course. Arguably, that might make it even harder to talk about horror as a genre.

He suspects that we're about to see the end of the "default straight white male narrative" and what the next wave will "reject the notion that Horror needs to be viewed through a solely Western lens. Just as second Wave Horror writers redefined what Horror stories could be about; Third Wave Horror writers will redefine who they can be about."

His second argument is about how “this potential new wave will reject the notion that Horror needs to be viewed through a solely Western lens”.

So, there are two thing to consider here, but I do wish he had been more clear about what he meant about this new development, elaborated more on these topics and justified his observations with some examples (like, what's "Western", anyway?), but I guess that's what he was able to fit in to the two pages allotted to him.

I also liked Orrin Grey's essay on the relationship between humor and horror. Although I disagree that "we're as likely to laugh as scream when something startles us" and that humor and horror are "practically two sides of the same coin" in absolutely all instances, I do see how one can amplify the other. I also hadn't thought about how something cool is more likely to be the opposite of scary rather than something silly.

I rate these essays ★★★★

On to the short stories!

J.F. Gleeson - The Floating House - ★★★★★

The narrator recalls visiting a house with floating people as a child. These memories, and one particularly traumatic experience that happen, were so terrifying and unnerving that they still haunt and affect the narrator even in adulthood. Who wouldn’t be when confronted with a scene such as this?

“The people who floated about the house did so without purpose and without direction, and drifted, not noticeably moving apart from their drift, moving as, if something in our universe must be compared to it, corpses might in space.” (9)

Ah, goose bumps!

Memory is a delicate thing. Sometimes, what actually happened is secondary to how we perceive it now and how it feels when we replay things in our mind. And as is normal when it comes to childhood memories, your perspective at the time was different and likely skewed by your limited experience and knowledge. By naiveté, if you like. Because of that, your fears can become all the more intense. As the reader might attest, frightful things from our childhood have the power to change us or, if we let them, control us.

“Through fear of this I may well become very detached from everything, and float off the floor myself.” (13)

Gleeson writes from a grown-up’s perspective, but with a child’s intensity of feeling, and I think this story shows that in a very good way. It makes sense to leave out the who, the why and the how and focus on the imagery. Memories can also change, can become warped, as we grow older, and I see this story as an effective, atmospheric depiction of that sentiment. It also ties in very nicely with Orrin’s essay about how the silliness of threatening floating balloons becomes, by its goofiness, grotesque in the extreme and all the more horrifying.

Linda Niehoff – Fever Girls - ★★

I’m not too sure about this one. It opens with “Fevers brought the dead and the girls knew it” and therefore “they did everything they could to catch a fever”. (14) It seems like contacting the dead is a normal thing, and that you’re able to contact them only when you become sick. A girl named Claire is lucky enough to catch a fever and falls in love with a boy. A wedding is planned and then something happens. There’s also a secret society involved somehow. That part wasn’t quite clear to me. Most things about this story weren’t clear, and I think I need to read it several more times to get to the bottom of what the author was trying to tell me.

I generally don’t like this style of writing. One where there’s an omniscient narrator, but the story is told from an objective point of view. The subjects are many and often referred to in a more general sense, like “the girls”, “they”, “the newspapers”, “some said” etc.. And in stories like that, and this one, you tend to jump from one event to the next in quick succession, never taking the time to feel or think or experience anything at all. The writing becomes repetitive, stale, dispassionate, deadpan … you name it. That makes me indifferent to what happens and detached from the people involved, so I dislike it very much indeed.

“His hair was the color of mossy green, of one who’s been in the grave too long. His eyes were the dying sun.” (16)

Daniel David Froid – Camera’s Eye - ★★★★

This story is about a mysterious four-minute-long video with three people who “might be in a lonely desert somewhere on earth, but they are, supposedly, in hell.” After a rundown of what might have happened to those people and the sister of the woman who made the video, we, both as viewers and as readers, follow a man in his investigations. Froid makes an interesting comment with this story about what happens to videos once they’re uploaded to the internet. There will be debates and disagreements and conspiracy theories on social media, and over time it will become increasingly difficult to put all the pieces together. There will probably be a community dedicated, even devout, to this mystery as well.

“They thrill at the mystery, and they will, as is the habit of their kind, begin to ferret out whatever pieces of the puzzle they can find. They will find likeminded others in whom they will feel that thrill or thrum mirrored back to them, who will share it. These few feel – and they are correct – that they have glimpsed a secret, something dredged up from the bottom of the world. It is this private intensity they are after. It is like inhaling some heady, sweet, and rich fume, such as gasoline. It changes them because they allow it to do so and because they want it to do so.” (20/21)

It’s borderline voyeuristic at times, our collective obsession with public scandals or murder or gruesome pictures and videos. I am very much reminded of Paul Tremblay’s “Horror Movie” here (review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...). It taps into that same vein and draws the same parallels.

In any case, I really liked it. I love the mystery of the video, and I kept following the man’s investigations with bated breath at the edge of my seat.

“It is impossible not to feel, at this point, a shiver of dread. That he is getting closer to it feels palpable, unmistakable. A feeling of trepidation that is very much like desire begins to take root within us.” (23)

Sarina Dorie – Arachnids In Your Bed: An Interactive Bedtime Story for Children – And Adults ★★

I’ve never come across an interactive story like this before. What a fun exercise! Sadly, it wasn’t much of a story and more like a questionnaire, and the various answers became a bit too similar towards the end. I laughed several times, though, so I guess it was alright.

Annika Barranti Klein – Milk Teeth - ★★

A fairy tale about a young girl. Her mother is dead, and her father goes away every now and then – but oddly enough just before wolves appear outside. She also lives with her grandmother. The title refers to the teeth that grandmother is hiding in her drawer. The story was fairly uneventful, unoriginal, simply written and predictable.

Steve Rasnic Tem – Whenever It Comes - ★★★★

A very short short story (three pages), but the author managed to convey a lot. The plot is a bit unclear, but I think it’s because of the unreliable narrator. He doesn’t come across that way at first, though. Some readers may notice that sooner, but I realized it later. I won’t say how. The narrator, a man, has been through a lot he tells us. He’s lost his job and is now staying at home with his family. In fact, he’s becoming paranoid about leaving. Something’s happening outside. I don’t know what, but I think society is breaking down. Either that or he is.

“I said ‘I thought we agree we wouldn’t be going outside anymore. Don’t tell me you’ve been going outside.” (41)

You know, at the end, I think I understand perfectly well what it’s all about, but at the same time I have no idea what’s going on. It’s all a little bit dystopian, paranoid, frenetic, dysfunctional. Overall, I think it’s ultimately conveying a sense of collapse. This story too is a bit misplaced here, and I don’t think it deserves my four stars in a magazine called “weird horror”, but the world building is fascinatingly dense, and I like the way the story made me think and feel, and I would like to credit the author for doing something a bit different.

“My father wanted to come too, but my father was dead. So I told him no.” (40)

Andrew Humphrey – Hurled Against Rocks - ★★

Another one of those stories that I refuse to call weird fiction or horror. It’s closer to magical realism. The narrator is a failed male writer who suddenly meets his ex-girlfriend in a library. We then get some flashbacks and stuff about their relationship and his brother while at the same time we see them trying to catch up. And insult each other. It was all very mundane and forgettable.

Ashley Stokes – Fields and Scatter - ★★★★

A man and a woman are “breaking the rules to take a shot at impossible romance”. The state of the world is otherwise a perilous one, with brain devouring spores spreading everywhere. I suspected early on that this had to be affecting both of them and read on with vigilance for any signs of deterioration or change. Unfortunately, we don’t get to know very much about the fungus organism and how it has changed society at large, but there’s an undercurrent of cognitive dissonance here that I found beautiful, and I really liked the delicate prose. It was like being led down an aisle of decomposing dreams.

The fungus/spores were mostly in the background here - at least when it comes to the main focus of the characters (which is each other) and whatever consequences it’s having on society, but I still think it had a meaningful effect on the main character’s experiences and consequently me as a reader.

But the ending took a completely different turn and didn’t make any sense to me.

“A mist of violet flickers hazed across him. He was not sure if they were real floating bits of leaf debris or seeds or spores, or just spangles in his eyes because he was in love again.” (56)

Derrick Boden - Sunder Island - ★★★★

Something called “The company” sends a female inspector, Ellen Rodrigues, to a remote island to locate a former inspector, Francis Turner. He was supposed to check in but never did. The story is told through her journal entries. She investigates and meets a man called Andre and a doctor Wells. We soon realize that something’s not quite right. Something’s off about the birds there, and inevitably something’s off about the men she meets as well.

“He said the people on this island, they’re not of this earth.” (63)

The isolation and loneliness force her to confront her past, and it may or may not be connected to Andre or the doctor. They’re very strange and intimidating. We don’t get any clear answers to what’s happening, and there’s not really any resolution at the end, so there’s a strong element of doubt here. Are any of the people involved going crazy? Do her experiences manifest because of drugs or lack of food? Or something supernatural? But there is a real threat here, not just vague insinuations and tricks of the light, which means we get both an inner and outer conflict. And it was a creepy read. Four stars.

“The island takes us apart.” (71)

Armel Dagorn – Figments of the Night - ★★

A woman called Oonagh is at a party when young men (?) in straw hats enter and demands all the attention that Oonagh doesn’t seem to want, despite being a newlywed. And that’s about it. People do party things, Oonagh is slightly uncomfortable and something half-surprising happens at the end. Nothing really happens, no conflict, no interesting characters, no weird stuff anywhere (subject to interpretation, I guess) and no atmosphere to speak of. I can’t find anything positive to say about this one, unfortunately.

By the way. I have ordered issue 8 - I love the cover on that one too, and the non-fiction entries appeal to me, so I’ll be giving this magazine another go! :)

[Annika Klein · Rating 5 out of 5]

My story "Milk Teeth" is in this issue! My rating is for the nine other excellent stories (it would be gauche to rate myself).

[Lewis Housley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some really great stuff in here. I love the nonfiction articles as well.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed the fiction in this issue. Stand outs for me were the stories Camera's Eye by Daniel David Froid and Fields and Scatter by Ashley Stokes.

[Shikhar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Weird Horror Issue 4/Spring 2022

Weird Horror Issue 4 continues to evoke the deepest feelings of the most delicious dread two years since its launch. Some of the non-fiction and fiction contained herein:

Author/Editor/Horror Philosopher Simon Strantzas returns with another fascinating installment of On Horror. Next Wave Horror is the topic, and Mr. Strantzas clarifies immediately that if you are hoping for a treatise beginning with works of dread from Beowulf (666 A.C.E., for those who care) onwards, you should look elsewhere. The topic concerns the New Wave of the Genre of Horror, AKA Category Horror. Born circa 1970, the horror genre as we know it began with the publications of William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist, Thomas Tryon's The Other, and Ira Levin's Rosemary's Baby (do I detect a preoccupation with evil children?), all books by mainstream writers active in the early 70s. This concentration of horror novels resulted in the birth of First Wave Horror. The First Wave was defined by writers like Richard Matheson, Ray Bradbury, and Stephen King, as well as certain recurring concepts like twist endings and unpleasant children. The First Wave, Mr. Strantzas states, "remains the most popular form of horror story in the mainstream." The nearing end of the Twentieth Century gave rise to Second Wave Horror, with young writers never knew a time prior to the horror boom of the First Wave (which I personally feel damaged the genre, due to the publishing industry's preference of quantity over quality), and thus moved to a less literal, more metaphorical, more pessimistic (realistic) view of the vast cosmos and our miniscule part in it. I think Mr. Strantzas alluded to the fact the Second Wave horror writers add a more literary sensibility to their dark works. Here, Mr. Strantzas gave a nod the my favorite of the Second Wave authors, the largely mysterious Thomas Ligotti (I used to carry around my copy of The Nightmare Factory, or as I called it, the Gospel of Thomas, everywhere I went.) Twenty years after the birth of Second Wave horror, Mr. Strantzas states his belief that "we're about to experience another shift led by a new wave ... already percolating up through the small presses." He does acknowledge the possibility that our much faster-moving society and culture could leave us "instead just a steady and constant onslaught of new writers and new kinds of work, a state of constant flux and noise, one that will be impossible to parse. Because it's so overwhelming. A world where everything that can exist will exist and all at once."

Orrin Grey, in this issue's Grey's Grotesqueries, makes the argument that in fiction, funny, silly or goofy incidents, or characters, do not necessarily dispel terror. In this highly persuasive argument, Grey posits that horror fiction where the artist diligently avoids even a dash of humor ends up with "somber meditations on grief, or bloody and brutal depictions of ostensibly realistic violence." We've all seen those types of films. They are exhausting, perhaps disturbing, but have you ever wanted to give them a second viewing? I know that I haven’t. "Humor and horror, then, are...practically two sides of the same coin." That one I intent to print out in huge letters and hang over. My writing desk! He mentions two masters at flipping that particular coin, the manga writer and artist, Junji Ito and author Matthew M. Bartlett. He ends by quoting an artist I'd never heard of, Trevor Henderson. The quote is illuminating and seals the cap of Grey's cogent, highly convincing contention. But in order to read it, and to see the frankly horrifying reproduction from one of Junji Ito's panels, originally published in one of his collections from Viz—you need to pick up a copy of Weird Horror Issue 4, available at https://undertowpublications.com/shop....

I do not review short stories, as they generally speak for themselves, but of the 10 entries in Issue 4, all of which were satisfactory, special kudos are extended to Armel Dagorn for his story "Figments of the Night," to the always fascinating Steve Rasnic Tem for "Whenever it Comes," to Andrew Humphrey for the thoroughly chilling "Hurled Against Rocks." And to the single most effective story in Issue 4, "Camera's Eye," by Daniel David Froid. This ghastly descent into darkness, both literal and figurative, would not leave my mind for three sleepless nights! Froid maintained absolute control over every element in his story, and thus over the reader. I will be seeking Daniel David Friod's first collection, as soon as it is published.

The story illustrations were competently rendered, by artist David Bowman, in a consistent hatching style. Also eye-catching is Drazen Kozjan's perfectly pulpish cover illustration.

These fine stories were followed by the book review section, "The Macabre Reader," more then ably handled by Lysette Stevenson. I love the fact that this section suggests new reading material in the horror/weird fiction fields that would not necessarily be evaluated in other journals. She does not waste time covering the latest Stephen King or Dean Koontz novel, as many other sources have already jumped on those books prior to their publication.

Similarly, Tom Goldstein fills his "Aberrant Visions" column with out-of-the-way films of the macabre, including quite a few foreign films. I don't usually read the review sections of genre magazines, but Weird Horror's inciteful and sometimes shudder-inducing book and film reviews are worth checking out. There are always a couple of offerings in each column that turn out to be worth their weight in blood, dissolved musculature, ligaments, and crushed bone!

At this point, none of the issues of Weird Horror have arrived late, unlike some other horror magazines I might mention. Editor Michael Kelly has proven that Weird Horror is also reliable in delivering the highest quality literary pulp horror and weird fiction, in a consistently attractive package. I think this magazine is here to stay.

[Dan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like this anthology. It's part of a series and I would love to have another anthology series I could read and enjoy. But I didn't care for this at all. The cover art was fine; the production values were high. Even the non-fiction material in it was a delight. The essays were thought-provoking, even if I didn't agree with their authors' points. The book and film reviews at the end were great. I appreciated the synopses telling us about the authors too. Even the advertisements for other books and magazines about this subject matter (weird horror) were interesting.

The only problem with this short story anthology was the stories. There was not a single good one. I thought I might be able to give the werewolf story, "Milk Teeth," three stars. I'm a sucker for a good werewolf story. But as is typical in all these stories, the werewolves never had a role. They were just background. Story after story, the main horror or weird occurrence of the story is placed in the background. We then get informed indirectly how the protagonist feels about the weird event. And the story ends. Not one person in the entire book dies (on camera), is injured, or is even seriously threatened. The worst thing that happens is some hurt feelings sometimes.

There is never a real story anywhere to be found in this volume, only feelings about untold stories that get alluded to rather than told. And that is the case with every story! I would get it if this happened once or twice in an anthology. Not every story is going to be great. But this anthology had every story fail in the same way. There's also a certain lack of clarity in the telling of the plots as the story starts that creates a sense of disorientation. The story would typically become somewhat clearer as it progressed. It's like the authors were all in the same Creative Writing class listening to bad instructions from a professor, directions all followed to a tee.

The only thing I can compare the experience of reading this to is listening to a rock concert under water. The entire concert! You can hear from the percussion and the noise that something pretty cool must be going on somewhere, but you can't hear what it is because you're under water for the entire music set.

I can't believe this anthology is averaging a rating of 4.37. Who is reviewing it and giving this stuff five stars? The authors and their friends?

[Daniel Reid · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best one yet. Loved just about every story!

[Ash Leaux · Rating 5 out of 5]

loved this mag !! truly the exact kind of horror I like best, lots of spooky funky vibes

[Tony Ciak · Rating 5 out of 5]

great collection of stories ad articles, Loved it!!!