Gary Fry - Where The Heart Is

[dem bones]

Gary Fry (ed.) - Where The Heart Is: A Guided Tour of British Horror (Gray Friar, 2010)

Allen Ashley - Ticker
Stuart Young - A Killing in the Market
D. F. Lewis - So
Andrew Hook - The Onion Code
Stephen Volk - Easter
Rhys Hughes - The Cuckoos of Bliss
Mike O'Driscoll - Summerhouse
Joel Lane - The Last Witness
Mark West - The City in the Rain
Stephen Bacon - Last Summer
Simon Bestwick - Winter's End
Paul Finch - The Daftie
John Travis - A Victim of Natural Selection
Mark Patrick Lynch - Ways Out
Michelle James - Quarry Hill
Simon Kurt Unsworth - Scale Hall
Gary Fry - The Welcoming
Gary McMahon - We Are the Doorway
Carole Johnstone - Stamping Ground
Blurb:
Take an alternative tour of Great Britain . . .

Writers are often told to write about what they know best . . . and what do they know better than their own homes? In this anthology, 19 fine authors of dark fiction reveal some of the less palatable elements of their native environments.

There's blood where the heart is.

Much blood.

Back to the grindstone. Already warming to this collection as it includes a genuine sport is horror offering from our friend Mr. Finch.

Paul Finch - The Daftie: Wigan. Mr. Macleash, the football mad games master, is the most bitter and sadistic teacher in the entire school, mainly on account of it's promotion of rugby as the #1 sport. In his desperation to avoid finishing a very poor last in a cross country run, Lennie takes a short cut through Amberswood Brow, a mile-long stretch of colliery wasteland. The area is locally rumoured to be the haunt of a crazy who tortures loan passers-by. The 'Daftie' also has a flair for constructing terrifying junk sculpture. Perhaps facing Macleash is the lesser of two evils after all.

Stuart Young - A Killing in the Market: Set in and around the wall-to-wall tanning shop Hell that is Romford High Street. With a location that depressing, author can't really go wrong with the story of Dave, a young butcher's assistant with a morbid distrust of doctors. Rather than risk further humiliation and misdiagnosis at the local surgery, he calls in at the chemist for an off the shelf cold cure. If the remedy suggested by Mr. Weston is as dubious as his laughable wig, we suspect Dave will not be returning to work any time soon, unless its as part of the window display. Sub-plot involves one of Romford's most infamous sons, Colonel Thomas Blood, the seventeenth century murderer and bogus physician.

[Shrink Proof]

A fun collection, this one. Each tale about a different region of Britain, home to its author. As well as editing it, Gary Fry contributes "The Welcoming", about that fabled Yorkshire hospitality. It centres on a guy from London called Parker who's driving across the North York Moors. Mr Fry remarks in his postscript that the tale emerged from his own journeys across the (very dark, very bleak, very lonely) Moors in an unreliable car. Parker's car fails him and he has to take refuge in a cottage with some very hospitable locals. True Northerners, but they don't hold with any of this North-South divide nonsense and are determined to help out a traveller in distress, even one from darn sarf. In fact, he's not the first stranded Southerner they've had banging on their door....

Like Parker, I used to drive across the North York Moors for work, regularly crossing them at all hours and in all weathers, so this one really struck home. More than once I wondered what would happen if the car decided to give up.

[dem bones]

Thanks for that, Dr. Proof, will give The Welcoming a go next. I'm liking the post-scripts as much as the stories.

Stephen Volk - Easter: Clfton, Bristol. Martin arrives home one day to find several men in Bristol City Council overalls crucifying a man in the back garden. The victim, incredibly cheerful about his lot, says he likes the view. After moaning on and on at her husband for being more mouse than man, Cheryl suggests their novelty squatter must have volunteered for the role. "That's what's wrong with people today, if you ask me. People wanting a lot of attention instead of just getting on with things." Our modern-day Jesus in M&S y-fronts vacates their premises as quietly and inexplicably as he arrived, and no harm done. More weird tale than horror story, but, for this reader at least, an early best-of-book contender.

[dem bones]

Gary Fry - The Welcoming: Shrinkproof has so nailed this one, will restrict myself to noting that Terror Tales ever-present Mr. Fry is a modern master of the psychological/ supernatural horror shorts and this black comedy of aggressive hospitable North Yorkshire folk Ken, Gloria and helpful Harry, is among his very finest creations.

Simon Bestwick - Winter's End: Greater Manchester, Dovestone Reservoir, Oldham. Romantic interlude in the life of Paul Hearn, resentful psychic detective (see also The Battering Stone in Horror Uncut!, etc.), who falls madly in love with Helen Damnation (née Winter), a beautiful, talented and deeply troubled musician. Since her early teens, Helen has been stalked across Britain by an obscene corpse intent on carrying on where it left off. Five crackers in five. Can it last?

[dem bones]

It didn't.

Just read two on the spin I didn't care for in the least (not that it matters a jot: am sure others will), and can't be arsed writing about 'em. Fortunately, this next pair are much more like it.

Stephen Bacon - Last Summer: Another strong best-of-book contender. Sheffield, summer 1984. With Thatcher's war on the striking miners is at it's most brutal and pit communities fatally divided, a child killer strikes repeatedly in and around Renfield. Narrator Jason and best pal Neil 'befriend' a fellow thirteen year old, Karl Ashmore, if only because he has a flash new cam-corder and they're keen to film their light-sabre battles. Problem is, Karl's father is locally despised as a scab and Neil, fiercely loyal to his striking father, reckons something ought to be done to teach him a lesson. Tragic, unrelentingly downbeat and quite brilliant.

Michelle James - Quarry Hill: Leeds. The prank-loving ghost of the Wardrobe Theatre doesn't yet realise he's dead. The venue is built on the site of the sprawling high rise sink estate where he lived out his final years. Now, during a run of an adaptation of popular TV kitchen sink drama Queenie's Castle, his antics take a turn for the dangerous. Quite cheery (in this company, at least), though the depiction of the hopelessness and poverty of the dehumanised locals is depressingly convincing.

[dem bones]

Joel Lane - The Last Witness: Birmingham. Now this struck a nerve. Ostensibly an account of a doomed police operation to protect witnesses to a murder in the West Midlands. Such is the demoralisation effect of "regeneration" of the Kings Heath district on the indigenous population, that even corrupt property developer and ruthless killer Craig Forbes is robbed of his soul and condemned to death-in-life along with the rest. Very Horror Uncut!.

Mark Patrick Lynch - Ways Out: Dewsbury, West Yorks (again). Narrator pits himself versus Melanie, a fat, belligerent, thug-spawning benefits-scrounging ch*v, and invites reader to decide which of them is the better human being. Yeah. In his afterword, author explains story was written as a direct reaction to the media frenzy surrounding the Shannon Matthews 'kidnapping' case (a particularly despicable hoax perpetuated by the little girl's family), so desire to put a distance between himself and those involved understandable.

[dem bones]

Allen Ashley - Ticker: The Tick Man hand-picks his disciples from the crowd, anointing them with his version of the Bowie zigzag on the backs of their heads. Patrick, who is not particularly trendy, finds himself embroiled in the escalating "clothes war" versus the doomed Stripe Line diehards. Evidently the conflict has remained unresolved since the ancient Britons first began flirting with fashion - until now.