Alone On The Darkside Ed. by John Pelan (ROC 2006)
‘And Our Turn Too Will One Day Come’ – Brian Hodge
‘Belinda’s Coming Home!’ – Eddy C. Bertin
‘The Cheerleaders, the Geek, and the Lonesome Piney Woods’ – d.g.k. goldberg
‘Sentinels’ – Mark Samuels
‘Reel People’ – Patricia Lee Macomber
‘Devil’s Smile’ – Glen Hirshberg
‘Inside The Labyrinth’ – David A. Riley
‘Skins’ – Gerard Houarner
‘Desert Places’ – Matt Cardin
‘Mugwumps’ – Hank Schwaeble
‘Linkage’ – Lucy Taylor
‘Shadows in the Sunrise’ – Mark Dillon
‘The Old North Road’ – Paul Finch
‘Warm, Wet Circles’ – Michael Kelly
‘Just Beyond the Middle of the Journey’ – Joseph A. Ezzo
‘Sometimes I Think If I Stand by the Phone It May Ring’ – Robert N. Lee
‘Belinda’s Coming Home!’ - Eddy C. Bertin
This is exciting news for Karen, as she confides everything to her diary. As the story gradually unfolds we learn that Karen is 17 and has a mild learning difficulty making her sound younger than she really is, her unpleasant parents don’t realise how much awareness she has. She overhears her parents arguing, some of it she doesn’t understand but she realises her father doesn’t want Belinda to come home. Karen on the other hand is overjoyed for her older sister to be coming back. We slowly learn the shocking events that led to Belinda going off to ’school’ for 5 years. When she does return Karen finds her sister much changed from the Belinda she remembers and loved so intensely she’d do awful things to please her. We finally realise how scary Karen is and what she is capable of...
‘Sentinels’ – Mark Samuels
This story ticked a lot of boxes for me – weird goings on in the tunnels of the London Underground, a missing author of a book on urban legends, a great central character – Inspector Gray, who is probably a Vault member (he reads lots of 60’s and 70’s horror pulp novels). The combination of dark disused tunnels and stations and bizarre urban legends is very strong, and the notion of reverse skyscrapers containing who-knows-what is brilliant. This stuck in my imagination for a long time afterwards. Excellent story, and I’d love to visit one of those abandoned stations myself…
‘Inside The Labyrinth’ – David A. Riley
An atmospheric story of a history teacher making the trip he’d often dreamed of, visiting the ancient Minoan palace at Knossos. He meets a charming old Greek man full of the history of the place, who then gets him drunk and offers him up to the fabled labyrinth. This was satisfying in that way that you kind of know what is coming, but it’s an enjoyable anticipation which doesn’t disappoint.
‘Desert Places’ – Matt Cardin
Stephen is summoned to the hospital bedside of his best friend Paul, being kept alive on life support machines, diagnosed as being in a vegetative state. Also present is Lisa, Stephen’s ex-love who left him for his best friend Paul. The reunion is a difficult and painful one, full of emotions. Stephen tells Lisa how he was driven away by their betrayal, how he took refuge in the Brazilian jungle and how he suffered disturbing visions, experiencing the teeming life in the jungle too intensely for him to cope with. Lisa then tells him how she and Paul had been experimenting with their spirituality, exploring a powerful connection with the Earth and nature, that she feels they were somehow connected to Stephen across the miles and caused his vivid jungle experience. She also believes she knows of a way to bring Paul back to them, but at what cost to Stephen?
This was quite a complex and emotional story, sometimes beautifully written, other times feeling too wordy and expressive to the extent the story starts to get lost in the language. I’m still not entirely sure what happened at the end…
'Reel People' by Patricia Lee Macomber
Gus is a good cop, an old school traditional cop, who also loves going to the old movie theatre in town, watching Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. The cinema he goes to is an old one, as traditional as he is, with it's original seats, screen and projector still in use. During one of the movies a man is murdered, has his throat cut. Gus is appalled because he was there that night and never saw a thing. He sets out to find the killer...
'Shadows In The Sunrise' by Mark Dillon
This is set in a rural and remote part of Canada, some unspecified time in the future. One day the man at the centre of the story realises he's lost twelve hours in some kind of blackout. He struggles to regain the memory of what happened, retraces his steps and remembers...the lights in the sky, coming down to earth...
'The Old North Road' by Paul Finch
While driving along the Old North Road Drayton sees a car crashed off the roadside, nearby is a pretty young woman. He stops to help. She says she's ok and seems like she wants him to go, she says her boyfriend will be back soon. When boyfriend does return Drayton offers them both a lift to the nearest town.
Drayton is a writer, doing a book on the folklore of the Green Man. He wants to stop off at a ruined abbey nearby to take pictures. His passengers, the dominated Shirley and the aggressive secretive Andy go along for the ride.
It turns out Andy is a bad guy, he's a drug dealer who has stolen £300,000 from the mob. He has a gun and a bad temper and a plan to bump off Drayton and nick the car. It doesn't go down quite as easily as he'd thought...
'Warm Wet Circles' by Michael Kelly
Disturbingly weird and unpleasant story of a bored office worker who finds the dead body of a homeless person in an alley, in the first stages of decomposition. For some inexplicable reason he decides to keep a section of skin that has peeled from the corpse's face as he turned it over. The next day the body is gone, in it's place are a number of warm wet circles. Then he finds another body, and more skin for his collection, and more warm wet circles on the ground, which he is beginning to find quite arousing...