Carl Barker - Parlour Tricks

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Carl Barker - Parlour Tricks (Parallel Universe, Oct. 2017)

Luke Spooner

Unexploded Girlfriends
From Chatterton Hill
Junkyard Dog
Old Loves Die Hard
The Certainty of Chance
Eater of Lost Causes
The Cabinet of Ed Monroe
With The Band
Fish Out of Water
Kicks
Lemming Revolution
Why the Wild Things Are
The Man Who Came to Dinner
Things Lost in Fire

Afterword
The Inner Circle
About The Author

Blurb
"Devil worshippers stalk the ageing boards of Blackpool Pier, a scrap-yard automaton devours the souls of lost children, and a murderous priest hunts an ancient she-demon through the streets of New York.

A selection of horror stories to chill the blood, featuring revenant felines, garbage-eating clairvoyants, flesh-eating magpies and a severed head with murder in mind.

Planning to get stuck into this over weekend. First collection of shorts from the author of the well received (by me!) Broken Spectres in Terror Tales Of The Scottish Highlands.


Hardcover
amazon co.uk £20.00
amazon.com $26.00

Paperback:
amazon co.uk £9.99
amazon.com $12.99

Parallel Universe blogspot

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Unexploded Girlfriends: (Dark Horizons #57, Winter 2010). "I don't think you believe in God any more. I know lots of people who don't think he exists, so you should stop all that ridiculous nonsense at once." Drugged, stripped naked, gagged and bound to a table in an abandoned Blackpool B&B, the narrator is in no mood to meet Evie's new boyfriend, Steve, a genial maniac blessed with a genius for constructing mechanical torture devices. Evie, ever one to embrace an entirely new belief system on a whim, currently shares lover boy's passion for Devil Worship and attendant human sacrifice ...

Traditional Gothic mayhem with a truly bizarre pay off. Reads like The Pit And The Pendulum in fetish gear.

From Chatterton Hill: (Estronomicon, Oct. 2011). New York, October 1829. Leyland Mains, a poor little rick kid running away from his responsibilities - the serving maid he seduced is with child - encounters a one-eyed vagrant in a lonesome cemetery. The aged tramp has a nasty tale to tell in relation to the death of a fearsome Hessian mercenary during the War of Independence ....

A story for those who suspected Washington Irvine of the most heinous cover up when he penned The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow as a rationalised ghost comedy. If you want to know the truth of the matter, you'll need to consult the headless horseman's flesh-eating skull.

Junkyard Dog: As a twelve year old, Railroad abandoned his best pal and first crush, Ike, to face the voracious guardian of Burnell's Salvage yard, a composite of scrap metal and the bones of those killed in auto-mobile accidents. Now middle aged and eaten away with guilt, he returns to confront the horror.

The Man Who Came to Dinner: (Midnight Street #12, April 2009). It won't take you long to guess the gatecrasher's identity, but the ending might surprise you. Maybe even pleasantly.

With The Band: Niteblade #25, Sept. 2013). Satanic Rockers Jukebox Willy reform following an eighteen year sabbatical necessitated when 4/5 of the band perished in an air crash. Guitarist Bryann Symmonds fortuitously survived on account of he was otherwise engaged banging Willy's other half, Sandra, when the flight took off. Bryann is ill-disposed toward the comeback but has little say in the matter, Willy and the rest of the cadaverous crew having gang banged Sandra and dragged her down to the fiery pit as a damnably persuasive bargaining chip.

[To be continued]

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Back with the macabre Mr. Barker. Reanimated roadkill, a closet full of corpses and a plague of suicides may not sound like the cheeriest subject matter but Parlour Tricks has considerably improved my spirits.

Old Loves Die Hard: (C. Bryan Brown & Inanna Gabriel [ed's.], Title Goes Here #12, July 2012). Personal favourite from impressive collection to date is ostensibly a variation on the Pet Semetary/ The Monkey's Paw theme culminating in a Spaghetti Western shoot out. When Ellen leaves him to marry thug made good Jack Carruthers, Dylan Morris retreats to a remote woodland cabin to mourn his loss. Fourteen lonely years later and he's still there writing crime and horror novels to get by, exorcising his pain by dealing increasingly bizarre and horrible death to fictional versions of his enemy. Dylan's sole companions are Whistler, a hideously mutilated undead cat, and three zombie blind mice. You see, a while back Dylan made the startling discovery that his powers of imagination are so potent as to revive the dead. He can literally write the dead back to life.

Inevitably, Carruthers' brutality finally gets the better of him. Ellen is dead. Who better to pin the murder on than her pathetic 'ex'?

A strong emotional pull to this one. Delightfully morbid for sure, but whereas his fellow PUP author Kate Farrell delights in (I paraphrase) "a pathological inability to write a happy ending," Carl Barker's horrors are quietly optimistic.

The Cabinet of Ed Monroe: No sooner have I typed the above than the next story turns deliciously nasty. What with fending off Kathryn's increasingly aggressive demands for a divorce, obsessive model-maker Ed already has enough on his plate without a Caligari-Cesare tribute act using his wardrobe as a makeshift morgue. Is he losing his mind? Who are these dead girls and where do they vanish to?

Kicks: (David Nell [ed.], Miseria's Chorale, Nov. 2013). She that once was Lilith can posses bodies at will, driving their rightful owners to messy suicide. Only the tongueless street beggar, Priest, can stop her. As his name suggests, Priest was once a man of the cloth but those days are long gone. Now he kills to rob to eat to live to destroy the She-demon. Lilith selects a grim New York diner for the final confrontation.

Some links:

Hole In The Page: The Website of Carl Barker
Carrion House: Luke Spooner

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Another pair of contemporary Weird Tales, the first of which features something which may or may not be an oil relative of the Junkyard Dog, the second, an especially determined door to door canvasser.

The Eater Of Lost Causes: (David. J. Howe [ed.], Full Fathom Forty, BFS 2001). Leonard Peters, an abused teenage runaway with a very selective appetite - he eats only household garbage - takes up residence on a municipal dump where he's taken under the wing of the Raggedy-man, an aged tramp with similar dietary inclinations although his extend to the consumption of metal. The pair are eventually joined by three fellow vagrants, two of whom are ghouls. As the uneasy alliance unravels - Raggedy-man disapproves of carrion eaters - something terrible stirs beneath the refuse ....

The Lemming Revolution: Widower Gant and Eliza, his bolshy daughter, clash over the revolutionary politics of Musharek, whose suicide cult at least provides an alternative to the tired mainstream parties. Musharek and followers are determined to die horribly for a better world - their opponents wish they'd hurry the fuck up and do so. Does martyrdom achieve anything?

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Mutation Spreads To Domestic Animals

Having neglected Parlour Tricks for too long, I sure picked the right story to return on ....

David Lange

Why The Wild Things Are: (Tim Curran [ed.] Zombie Zoology, Severed Press, May 2010). A genetically altered gorilla escapes from a Biological Research facility to wreak havoc in the surrounding countryside. The crazed ape deals death and dismemberment to any humans it encounters while infecting every genus of wildlife with the Occuld virus. In the wake of what the media euphemistically refer to as 'The Event,' South East England fast deteriorates into a no-go zone as entire communities come under attack from all creatures great and small. The contagion spreads.

The Government introduce a Nationwide Domestic Cleansing programme, but paragon of virtue Lionel and his fearsome neighbour Mrs. Garrett conceal their dogs - Saxon the Alsation and Fifi the poodle respectively - from the extermination squads. After all, neither have developed the tell-tale red eyes. Under cover of darkness, Mrs. Garrett takes Fifi for walkies. Bad new for the postman, and, ultimately, the entire village.

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The Man Who Came To Dinner: (Trevor Denyer [ed.], Midnight Street #12, April 2009). When you're in decent health, he is the uninvited guest you least want to gatecrash your birthday party. But on occasion his arrival comes as a blessed relief.

Fish Out of Water: (T. W. Brown [ed.], Midnight Movie Creature Feature, 2011). Maximillian Schenk, reclusive billionaire, funds Captain Exelby's biological exploration of the Tonga Tench in the South Pacific. Exelby and his two-man crew (the hefty Gunnarson twins) are accompanied by Jove, pipsqueak journalist and constant pain in the arse, whom the captain comes close to throttling before all their attentions are distracted by something attempting to board the submarine ...
The mission is accomplished at the cost of two lives, a small price to pay considering what Schenk has to show off to his fawning entourage. The terrible old man invites an exclusive audience of crooked politicos, tin-pot dictators, and all manner of big-shots to his Beverley Hills mansion for a first look at his greatest scientific discovery to date. The "Sea Unicorn" — a giant aquatic cockroach of insatiable appetite and deadly mind-bending capabilities.

The Certainty of Chance: When John Brunson, professional poker player, and undisputed family black sheep, is informed the tumour is inoperable and he'll be lucky to see out a week, he sets to saying goodbye to wife, mistress, parents, brother, and best mate in his own inimitable fashion - via a pack of cards.

Things Lost In Fire: (Cinsearae C. [ed.], Dark Gothic Resurrected, October 2011). Annihilation by soul mate. A prose poem I guess, deeply personal to the author and difficult for person of my limited capability to synopsize. I prefer the, likewise sombre, The Certainty of Chance and The Man Who Came to Dinner. Fish Out of Water is a 'when sea monster's attack' to treasure.