Secret Hours

by Michael Cisco

134 pp. Introduction by Robert M. Price. 14 short stories, some horrific, some fantastic, some uncategorizeable, but all haunting and unsettling. Some stories include a brief introduction by the author. The collection consists of several Lovecraftian tales: The Chaos Into Time / The Firebrands of Torment / I Will Teach You / The Water Nymphs / What He Chanced To Mould In Play / Translation (which also tips the hat to Arthur Machen and William S. Burroughs); also the remainder of the tales are evocative of Cisco' s own unique haunting style: Two Fragments / The Depredations of Mur / Dr. Bondi's Methods / For No Eyes / He Will Be There (a tribute to THE KING IN YELLOW by Robert W. Chambers, with a nod to Ramsey Campbell) / The Night of the Nights / The Death of Edgar Allan Poe / Ice Age Of Dreams (with varying influences of T.E.D. Klein and Arthur Machen, and dedicated to Thomas Ligotti). Color cover, endpapers and several interior illustrations by Harry O. Morris, and an interior illustration by Jason C. Eckhardt and by Thomas Brown.

Genres: Horror, Short Stories, Weird Fiction, Fiction, Literature, Collections

134 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2006

About the author

Michael Cisco is an American weird fiction writer, Deleuzian academic and a teacher, currently living in New York City. He is best known for his first novel, The Divinity Student, winner of the International Horror Guild Award for Best First Novel of 1999.

He is interested in confusion.

Reviews

[mark monday · Rating 5 out of 5]

sorry, seekers of swift and forgettable pleasures (and I include myself in that number): this one is for advanced readers only... if you aren't able to hang with that, time to move on. you may not like what you see here. or hey, maybe you will.



if you have to put a label on them, the stories in this collection would I suppose be considered Tales of Horror. they are not classic ghost stories nor are they visceral modern narratives either - some of these stories barely even have narratives. they come, if they come from anywhere, more from the tradition of 'Weird Fiction' - Blackwood, Bierce, et al. even that is an unsuccessful label. I would put this author next to Aickman and Ligotti: he has Ligotti's ability to conjure up physical landscapes of blight and decay and bizarre otherworldliness, but his focus is more on the internal, much like Aickman. and yet he is not particularly focused on the psychological, unlike Aickman. really, he is unique. his stories are often about a state of mind. spiritual transformation. mental degradation. crazed emotional highs and lows. metaphorical landscapes. terrible forms of transcendence. intellectual terrors. chthonic excavations. although the author makes good use of the Lovecraft mythos and ideas drawn from Machen and Chambers, this collection is about as far away from straightforward horror as the brilliant film Brazil is from traditional science fiction. but still, the frisson created in the reader is decidedly horrific more than anything else. profoundly ambiguous and cerebral horror. after finishing a story, my reaction was usually What the hell did I just read?

the man is a genius with the words. "literary writer" is a vaguely objectionable phrase to use when describing a genre writer because it condescendingly implies that most genre writers are tradesmen rather than artists. but I suppose the shoe fits in this case. he is highly literary and highly challenging, demonstrating complete ease in using modernist and postmodern techniques whenever he pleases and almost always refusing to allow easy interpretation of his methods and meanings. Cisco does believe in the genre - it is clear he's no dilettante - but he works against the genre as well. he toys with it. despite the rigorously intellectual take on horror, he's also quite playful - there is so much that is mordantly, perversely funny. so Cisco is the whole package: literary skills and mastery of the genre and gleeful gamesmanship, all in one. sentence by sentence, page by page, story by story... I was extremely impressed, again and again.

all that said, this collection is a hard one to recommend. I guess see the first paragraph of this review. Secret Hours is not for everyone. but it is definitely for me!

here are some of my favorite stories, in roughly ascending order:

What He Chanced to Mould in Play visits a sodden Coney Island where Azathoth & Nyarlathotep meet-cute. sorta.

Herbert West: Reincarnated has our favorite Re-Animator discovering a new frontier: time itself! oh, Dr. West, you bad boy you - always with the tricks up your sleeve. the story is narrated by a re-animated corpse, of course.

Dr. Bondi's Methods details how Dr. Bondi of The Moral Institute carries out his patriotic duty of Keeping His Country Satanic by trying to figure out the mystery of what makes a "good person". it's a tough job, requiring many subjects.

Machines of Concrete, Light and Dark's protagonist takes a day trip with an intriguing, devouring lady friend to a place beneath his skin. Co-optation. Use. Loss. "This is necessary."

City of God is a wonderfully sardonic and sinister story of the city Dusktemper, divided by the concepts of Life and Death. divided but connected, existing side by side. our young hero: a novice necrophore enrolled in the Embalmer's College.

Water Nymphs... submerge, emerge, submerge again. rinse & repeat. drain yourself out of you. there is no you at all...

Translation is set in the far-future. or another dimension. or our own, transformed. our ambitious duo of translators find a way to summon their new employer. he has a very special story to tell them. I am You and You are Me and We are All Together!

The Depradations of Mur are not "depradations" per se. they are more like invitations. invitations to a personal-cosmic memory palace where the narrator is most at home. a palace of the mind in which the mind in question exults in its slow disintegration as it becomes one with a malevolent memory decay transform rot ruin unlife lkjsfd xyxyxy jklsf vines tendrils deadmind father,ohfather youmnemosynx'uu[]

He Will Be There: Hey Brother! Let's do something! Let's go somewhere, let's make a new friend, let's force a new friend into our car. Let's show our new friend something.
"Knock Knock"
"Who's There?"
"King In Yellow!"
"King in Yellow Who?"
"King in Yellow You!"

and my favorite, the brilliant novella The Dream of the Ucasunis. this is the sole traditional tale of horror and suspense in Secret Hours. I'm reminded of Robert Aickman's "Pages from a Young Girl's Journal" - an equally brilliant and atypical story from that author, one that illustrated his ability to concoct a fairly straightforward narrative, if he so chose. he chose not to, 99% of the time. and so it is with Cisco and this story. I feel guilty about this being my favorite as it is so different, almost mainstream. but love's arrow flies where it will! and I fell in love with this haunting, morbid, and appalling story of a village girl employed by a beautiful and aloof family. there are things implied in this story that are so repellent, so monstrous, I really didn't even know what to make of them. my mind blanched. and yet the creeping horror, the awful grotesquerie, the sheer nastiness... it all comes wrapped up in page after page of luscious, evocative prose in an eerie story that is subtle, sensual, a model of elegant craftsmanship ... swoon. I guess. I'm either swooning or passing out horrified, I dunno. Jesus Fuck!

to sum up: this collection really sucked me in. but where did I go to exactly?

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

I recall the day I finished my last H.P. Lovecraft story like some people do the day Kennedy was shot. Not unlike a rainy day slush fund, I saved it for that time when everything else I would try to read didn't even touch the sides going down; we've all been there and are grateful to that work of fiction that scours off the leprous words from books with no soul. (N.B. These were the Wilderness days, pre-GR when I was alone in my choosing of next read before I knew all of you wonderful people and your talent of providing recommendations that lead me back to the Path).

So I can't properly express how over-the-moon I was to find an author that writes Lovecraftian stories that echo H.P. - and yet are creations that stand on their own. This is no mere fanfic shadowing - Cisco has the chops and inventive imagination to world build (and destroy) in his own right. Cisco's writing might be an homage to the master but he brings the Reader to that same dark place via roads of his own paving.

I am so very happy there are more Cisco works for me to devour. And thanks again to Mark Monday for this recommendation (you have yet to fail me, good sir!)

[S̶e̶a̶n̶ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Michael Cisco is a difficult writer to pin down—he’s a bit of a shapeshifter between books, and a lot of readers seem to really dislike his writing; they have these very visceral reactions to his books. This draws my attention because often it means a writer is doing something interesting, something so different that it disturbs people’s sense of how writing should unfold on the page (or perhaps just how they want it to, either consciously or not). Anyway, I’m starting to really like Cisco for his elusiveness and for his erudition. I never fail to encounter words in his books that I don’t know, but it’s not like he throws them around in a pretentious way. I think he probably just really likes words and cares enough to learn ones that most people don’t know.

This collection combines previously anthologized stories with others that are presumably original to the volume, resulting in a surprisingly cohesive whole. Cisco writes brief introductions to most of the previously published stories. In these explanatory notes he may cite a specific writer he was cribbing from or paying homage to, but even when he’s doing this in a given story his narrative approach usually feels unique. Even Cisco’s Lovecraftian stories—in which you would think it would be nearly impossible by this point to avoid being derivative (if not of Lovecraft’s own writing then certainly that of the bazillion writers who have since emulated or riffed on his style)—still reflect a distinct otherness in their genetic material.

Cisco tends to leave a lot unsaid in his narratives, which seems uncommon in contemporary horror (at least in that which I’ve read), but it’s a big part of what draws me in. Exposition is limited to the essential or dispensed with altogether. There’s never any spoon-feeding with Cisco. We’re thrown into the torrent and maybe we keep our heads above the dark churning water long enough to glimpse a few splinters of light, or maybe we sink leaden into the green depths of incomprehension. Either way is fine with me.

I would lie on the floor of empty rooms here and there and keep as still as possible, because I had a propensity to scream at these times, and the urge to scream would come and go. Fractures run through the world, through me—I always rushed from failure to failure; as long as I did so, my forward momentum would hold the fractured pieces together—but, when I was unable to maintain that momentum between failures, the fractures would gape, and the pieces would begin to spread apart, like breaking ice floes, over nothing—once started there was no stopping the torturing spreading of the pieces—over nothing. They yawned apart opening terrifying gaps that would mean insanity to fall into the gaps, living death of sense—I had the terrifying and bizarre idea that, falling down there, I would not find myself alone. I had a propensity to scream, that would build in me when I felt this way—like running exhausted beyond endurance on breaking-up ice floes—I sometimes tried actually to hold my head together with my hands, as if I thought it would separate, and then I would scream a little into my sleeve or I would use my arm as a gag and scream into it.

[nethescurial · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some of the longer stories here hit a bit too straightforward of a genre fiction note to make much impact for me (though "The Depredations of Mur" is a wonderful dream-trip featuring one of the best bouts of Cisco's imagistic prose-psychedelia, and "The Firebrands of Torment" is likewise a fun and gnarly take on the Hounds of Tindalos). But he's on A-game in the shorter stories here, which are on fire with creative ideas. "Two Fragments" is written as a historical/epistolary research document about a very charming species of linguistically-inclined wood sprites, and "The Death of Edgar Allan Poe" plays on its title and subject to a very clever effect. "For No Eyes" and "The Night of the Nights" are both exercises in prose poetry, the former seemingly centering a dissociated attempt to describe some cataclysmic event that befell an alternate universe and the latter being a very rhythmic, musical portrayal of some cosmic horror ritual. Finally, "What He Chanced to Mold in Play" is an evocative and haunting take on the awakening of Azathoth. Not Cisco's best work, but it's cool to have a collection in which the Cthulhu Mythos is viewed at the more avant-garde angle of which is Cisco's specialty.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gorgeous, ethereal/tactile writing. The words have a wetness, a silky-stickiness as they fall gently over their nightmare subjects. Some of these pieces feel like exercises, and Cisco, in occasional introductory statements, acknowledges that such and such a piece is done "in the style" of, or as "a pastiche" of another writer (Arthur Machen, Ramsey Cambell, T.E.D Kline). For me, "The Depredations of Mur", "Translations", "The Water Nymphs", and "Ice Age of Dreams" approach the same level of poetic intensity as "The Genuis of Assasins" and Cisco's novel, "The Divinity Student."

[Bbrown · Rating 3 out of 5]

Secret Hours is a collection of minor works by Michael Cisco, though he’s a good enough writer that even his lesser efforts still have their strong points. The best of the lot is probably The Depredations of Mur, the longest of the short stories in the book, and the one that relatedly feels both the most complete and the most substantial. Some of the other 14 works, in contrast, feel like fragments, more so concepts than actual stories. Most of the pieces in this collection are inspired by or connected to the extended Lovecraft mythos; it’s strange to read an excellent author like Cisco attempting to mimic less talented writers like Frank Belknap Long, Ramsey Campbell, and Arthur Machen, but in Secret Hours that’s much of what you get, since for better or worse those figures have shaped that mythos much more so than Cisco has. People looking for lesser-known works of Lovecraftian horror are the primary group of people I might recommend Secret Hours to, along with Cisco completionists. Even if you fit either of those descriptions, though, I’d go into Secret Hours with measured expectations. 3/5.

[Jon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I...really don't know how to rate a Michael Cisco book of any kind. But I keep giving them 4 or 5 star ratings regardless. His work, when taken in large doses, whether in novel form or in a collection like this one, is a challenge. Intentionally so, based on what I've read from/seen of interviews with him. He likes to make his readers work for their pleasure. He also enjoys confusion. His writing style and sentences and grammar is very uniquely him and sometimes it takes multiple reads to 'get' a sentence.

This collection of short stories is short; the edition I have is only about 130 pages of text. But it took me four nights of reading to get through. The stories are varied and often written in response to, or in the style of, or as a homage to, various authors in the weird and horror genres. Lovecraftian and Ligottian (is that a term? It is now) influence is noticeable here and there, but even when writing in the Lovecraft mythos, Cisco is undeniably Cisco and not anyone else. Getting drawn into the stories is worth the time spent on reading them. He can really build up some fascinating stuff. As always, looking forward to reading more of his works sometime, but my brain needs to work out more often if I want to read him more frequently than once a year or so.

[Ctgt · Rating 4 out of 5]

7/10

[Jason · Rating 2 out of 5]

Promising from Thomas Ligotti's praise on the back cover, but doesn't strike heights anywhere near what you'd expect. Does have some intriguing elements of Ligotti and Lovecraft, but feels more like imitation than a unique rendition of their works. Forgettable stories, unlike those of the other two authors mentioned.

[Glenn Russell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fourteen weird tales collected here. Since I am a new Michael Cisco fan, I will add to this review as I go back and compose a write-up for each of the stories in this collection. Meanwhile, here is a favorite of mine - He Will Be There. Enjoy.

A dark, twisted tale that begins when the narrator decides to pay a visit to his brother. On the way to his car, down the street, he spots a house on fire, with long flames leaning out of scorched, broken windows. Although the smoky air makes his eyes water—which, in turn, makes the sky look the color of clotted blood—he gives no thought to his neighbors, who might have been severely injured or burned alive in the blaze. We should keep the narrator’s reaction in mind as we continue reading, especially in the final section of this Michael Cisco story.

“My brother Lewis lived alone in a slovenly apartment, which was incongruously small for the monumentally immense building that housed it. I had helped him move his few things there after he was released from the hospital, but for all that, his apartment resembled a hospital room, smelled like a hospital room, and the building looked as if it might have been a hospital in the past.”

Vintage Michael Cisco: so many telling details in so few words. To live as a slob in such a matchbox apartment—one resembling a hospital room, complete with its hospital smell—suggests that Lewis spent time in a psychiatric facility. This is quickly confirmed, in an understated way, when the narrator observes that his brother is pale and lean and looks like a hazy photograph, like “an expatriate scoured clean and blank by very foreign places.”

It isn’t a stretch to imagine Lewis as a U.S. Army veteran, traumatized in a warzone in Iraq or Afghanistan, then hospitalized on his return home—and later released not because he was healthy, but because the Army said his treatment time was up. We would do well to remember a seldom publicized fact: seventeen U.S. veterans commit suicide every single day.

Since Lewis was reading Eusebius the last time he visited, the narrator asks him about it. Facing the window, his back to his brother, Lewis informs him that his religious practices have changed. When the narrator inquires what he means, Lewis replies in a voice that “elbowed its way in between the random noises the other apartments made.” Such strain suggests that speech for Lewis has become not so much a natural act as a violent intrusion. He then states, “I've discovered a series of hand gestures,” begins an elaborate demonstration, and concludes by saying, “If you sat with them long enough, everything else would follow—come to you, right at your kitchen table.”

An observant brother with a sense of responsibility and a degree of compassion would take all this as an alarm bell, symptomatic of a deep psychological fracture requiring immediate help. But no—the narrator’s response is bizarre in the extreme: he opens his mouth, positions his arms like a chicken, and begins to wail. Lewis watches him with rapt, shocked attention. When he finally stops, he tells Lewis about hearing a strange sound during his last visit to the family graveyard plot. His wailing, he explains, reproduced that sound.

The oddness continues. The narrator hands Lewis a copy of The King in Yellow and asks him to read it. He admits to us (but not to Lewis) that this is the real reason for his visit today. While the narrator putters in the kitchen, Lewis reads, and finally says, “I think this is a little beyond me, Bill.”

So we now know the narrator’s name is Bill. Anyway, Bill tells us that he and Lewis decide to go to the city together. When they’re down on the subway platform, Lewis buys a lighter and some hard lemon candy. A lighter? Why would Lewis purchase a cigarette lighter if he doesn’t smoke? Brother Bill doesn’t even bother to ask.

Once on the subway, Bill looks out the dark window but can only see their reflection—he and Lewis sitting in the subway car, “Our eyes were four holes in a canted row.” Then something truly disturbing happens. A large Black man in a suit, carrying a zippered Bible, takes a seat near the brothers. Lewis nudges Bill, nods toward the man, and says “Uoht,” in a humorous voice. The brothers share a chuckle.

This brief exchange signals a profound shift in the brothers. Michael Cisco subtly conveys how Lewis and Bill now believe they are united through an esoteric spiritual knowledge, initiates in some hidden cosmic order. This is reinforced when the brothers walk the city streets, imagining people peering at them in an exceptional, coded way—until finally, “A trance unfolded and made us walk without pausing, trailing through the streets as if the city was the shipwreck over which we drifted.”

How dangerous can individuals become when they believe they possess superior, esoteric knowledge revealed through a religious text or through their own practices? We need only recall Marshall Applewhite and Heaven’s Gate, David Koresh and the Branch Davidians, and Jim Jones and Jonestown. And if those same individuals are deeply psychologically disturbed, the danger increases exponentially.

What happens the next morning, in the concluding section of the story, when Bill leads Lewis back to his car and the brothers kidnap a boy near a schoolyard, is for each reader to discover. He Will Be There counts as one of the most riveting, disturbing tales I’ve ever encountered.

[Curtis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I hope the author was as stoned while writing this as I was while reading it. If he makes this stuff when sober, I'm questioning how art works.