Anna Taborska - For Those Who Dream Monsters

[dem]

Everything going to plan, the World Fantasy Convention will see the launch of two new titles from Charle's Black's Mortbury Press - the much anticipated Tenth Black Book Of Horror Stories and, a very special treat this, the debut collection from Anna Taborska.

Anna Taborska - For Those Who Dream Monsters (Mortbury Press, October, 2013)

Steve Upham

Reggie Oliver - Introduction

Schrödinger’s Human
Little Pig
Fish
Buy a Goat for Christmas
Cut!
Arthur’s Cellar
The Apprentice
The Girl in the Blue Coat
A Tale of Two Sisters:
I. Rusalka
II. First Night
Halloween Lights
The Coffin
The Creaking
Dirty Dybbuk
Underbelly
Tea with the Devil
Elegy
Bagpuss

Blurb:
What are you afraid of? What are you haunted by? What waits for you in the dark?

Face your fears and embark on a journey to the dark side of the human condition. Defy the demons that prey on you and the cruel twists of face that destroy what you hold most dear.

A sadistic baker, a psychopathic physics professor, wolves, werewolves, cannibals, Nazis, devils, serial killers, ghosts and other monsters will haunt you long after you finish reading.

For those who dream of Monsters by Anna Taborska

A Eighteen tales from the abyss, with chilling illustrations by Reggie Oliver.

"...... Anna is nothing if not a cruel blade when it comes to scary and horrible fiction." - Paul Finch, author of Stalkers and Sacrifice.

Those of us who've been fortunate enough to have experienced Anna's work will appreciate that she is not a lady to disappoint you with a happy ending when a perfectly depressing one is an option, and, from those stories I recognise from the table of contents, For Those Who Dream Monsters is unlikely to buck the trend.

Cost (UK) is £9, futher details from Charlie at Mortbury Press.

[dem]

" .... It is for these reasons that I asked Anna if I might do some illustrations for her first volume of stories. I have hitherto only illustrated my own work and have no plans to do so for anyone else, but Anna Taborska's work has a special quality which evokes powerful and seductive visual imagery." - from Reggie Oliver's introduction.

If you're looking for an endorsement, they don't come much better than the above. To coincide with publication of the milestone Tenth Black Book Of Horror, Charles Black's Mortbury Press have branched out with a first non-series title, and, true to form, it's a beauty. Anna Taborska's début collects eighteen of her bleak, powerful, often grimly beautiful shorts, including such masterpieces of morbidity as The Creaking and Little Pig, what looks to be the original, extended version of Bagpuss and two previously unpublished.

Reggie Oliver

Arthur's Cellar: During the Nazi occupation of Poland, grandfather captured a man-beast and imprisoned him in the cellar. Now the responsibility for feeding the crazed wretch falls to his grandson. Arthur wonders why granddad didn't just run the bastard through with a pitchfork. The truth is, for all it's crimes, the monster is adept in disposing of unwelcome visitors from various official agencies. But now the man-beast has escaped into the woods ....

Halloween Lights; A pumpkin-lit, nastied-up take on the Return To Death episode from Vault Mk. I favourite, Tales From The Crypt. This was the second story of Anna's I ever read (Schrodinger’s Human in The 5th Black Book of Horror was first), and, at time of writing you can still catch it online at The Horror Zine. Go on, (trick or) treat yourself!

Cut!: Eli may be an award-winning Hollywood director, but first time producer Mark can only marvel at his stupidity in casting the untried and, frankly, impossible, Sylvia as female lead in their slasher movie. Sylvia is as quick to lash out at cast and crew as she is slow to comprehend the most basic instructions. And she should never be allowed within range of sharp instruments.

The Apprentice: Thanks to the efforts of his mother, violent psychopath Ralph has an unlikely talent for baking. Shortly after his arrival in the village, the local bread-maker is brutally murdered, paving the way for Ralph to set up what is soon a thriving business. Now all he wants is an apprentice, someone he can play God to and use as his personal punch-bag when the mood, as so often, takes him. Providence sees to it that a scrawny mute kid, a 'will work for food and lodgings' placard hung around his neck, is delivered to Ralph's door ...

Little Pig: Our unnamed heroine has just watched her husband Piotr slaughtered Cannibal Ferox-fashion by Russian soldiers, and is now whipping her beat up old horse through the forest, a pack of starving wolves at his heels. Behind in the sled, her three terrified children. The mother faces the most appalling dilemma ....

To be very very continued ...

Thank you, Anna x

[dem]

Very difficult to do this next shocker credit without giving the game away, so let's just say it's shot straight onto my favourite reads of 2013 listing, and note that Mr.Oliver's lovely accompanying illustration has a certain The Slime Beast quality about it.

Fish: Two ruthless heavies are dispatched to obtain information from some poor sod who has incurred the wrath of their boss. Once they've half-drowned their victim in the aquarium containing his pet scorpion fish, the pair realise they've been torturing the wrong man. Unfortunately, poor Harry Tomlinson, postman, has already received a fatal shot of venom from the panicked fish whose spikes are now impaled in his fast-ballooning face. The thugs toss the dying Harry and fish into the canal at back of his garden, and drive on to the correct address.

Meanwhile, under the water, Harry's body is undergoing an extraordinary transformation .....

Shades of the EC comic about this next, too, or make that the anti-EC comic, in that, as with so many of Anna's characters, the person on the receiving end has done nothing to deserve so dreadful a death.

The Coffin: Jack isn't a great lover of cemeteries. but a short cut is a short cut and this one can trim half an hour from the daily commute. All is well until the day he spots a coffin left unattended by a recently dug grave. As Jack is soon to learn to his cost, this is a very special coffin. And it doesn't like him at all.

Unless I am horribly mistaken, certain among our regulars will have little trouble identifying the burial ground in question ....

Here's one i made earlier, and depressingly, have been unable to improve upon.

The Creaking: Anna's Bagpuss is The Sixth Black Book Of Horror is as morbid a horror story as i've ever read and The Creaking is likewise commendably short on good cheer. Healer Alice Goodman has noted the growing hostility toward her from the villagers, even those she's helped with her herbal remedies and poultices. When little Tommy Tyrell goes missing, his father, a Parish constable and violent drunk, needs little persuading that the "witch" has abducted the boy to drain his blood, and leads a lynch mob to her cottage. Everybody loves a scapegoat.

The bit about "as morbid a horror story ...." etc., still holds true of both these titles, and The Girl In The Blue Coat is no barrel of laughs either. More on that particular gem in next harrowing instalment.

[dem]

Reggie Oliver Fish!

Schrödinger’s Human: A physics lecturer gets his kicks from torturing puppies and kittens (if you are the least squeamish about extreme total animal abuse then the second page in particular is vileness-a-go-go). The tables are turned when he returns from college one evening to find a starved and beat-up cat camped on his doorstep. Schrödinger, who is particularly fussy about what he eats and drinks, is no ordinary cat. He gets inside the tutor's head and encourages his progress from killing domestic pets to butchering teenage girls.

Buy A Goat For Christmas: Shortly before the convoy arrive in the African village, Alicia, an aid worker is bitten by what she takes to be a rabid dog. When a native child bursts into tears and a goat goes berserk on sight of her, we suspect the worst.

The convoy arrive. Among the donations, food, medicines and an obsolete battle tank for the villagers to strip down and recycle as tools. The job falls to Pierre, blacksmith and world's premier The Exorcist fan, but he can't bring himself to dismantle the tank before taking it for a test drive. Jim, a volunteer, obliges. The village elder is furious and orders Pierre to get on with his job, just as ....

.... Alicia is succumbing to her infection. It wasn't rabies after all, but lycanthropy! A bloody conflict with villagers, soldiers and volunteer workers alike satisfies her voracious appetite for an hour or two, but soon she's loping back to the village to mop up the survivors ....

The story builds to an action-packed and bloody finale, culminates in a very charming pay off.

[jamesdoig]

That's one cracking illustration.

[dem]

It's one cracking story, too, James, and a very impressive collection. Together with the gleefully macabre Tales From The Crypt morality plays (often minus the morality), we've a number of harrowing war stories (i'm struggling to do The Girl in the Blue Coat any kind of justice), and the deadly bleak likes of Bagpuss and The Creaking. The stories set in and around the Polish woodlands and drawing on Slavic folklore have the most sinister, dreamlike quality, reminiscent of Enda McCallion's "Forest" advertisement for Metz, or a particularly disturbing episode of The Singing Ringing Tree. Cases in point being the Two Sisters.

Rusalka: First person account of a young man's encounter with a very seductive water-nymph who, needless to say, has other than romance on her mind. From the moment the Rusalka waves to him across the river, we have a shrewd idea of her agenda, but that of Piotr, the cheery local lad who has befriended our narrator is less clear cut.

By some happy accident, I'd been listening to Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds' Sorrow's Child for the first time in ages prior to reading Rusalka. It's a very appropriate soundtrack.

Reggie Oliver Little Pig.

First Night: The Past. The most beautiful girl in the village weds her true love, the humble blacksmith. To the joy of nobody, the Lord of the Manor and his boorish entourage gatecrash the reception. He has come to demand his right to the bride's virginity. The mortified young woman turns to the groom, who sheepishly stands aside. All her hopes crushed in an instant! The bride determines to deny the Nobleman his despicable sport and dashes for the lake.

The Present. Henry and Dan touring Eastern Europe, the former keen to lay claim tp the the now derelict Mansion House of his ancestors which, even now, may be worth a tidy sum. Meanwhile at the lake, the willows lie in wait for the last of the line.

[dem]

Reggie Oliver Buy A Goat For Christmas

Of those stories new to me, Fish and The Coffin are, as mentioned, ghoulish horrors likely to raise a nasty chuckle, but this next is more in the tradition of such bleak offerings as Bagpuss, The Creaking and Little Pig. It isn't very cheerful.

The Girl in The Blue Coat: Deathbed revelations of acclaimed war correspondent, Frank Johnson.

Frank's editor at The History Magazine sends him on a fact-finding mission in Poland for a forthcoming feature on the Holocaust. On arriving in Międzyrzec, his contact directs him to the house of an elderly lady, Bronislava, who agrees to speak of her war experience. Hers is a harrowing ghost story, centring on the murder of her best friend, Mindla, by a despicable farming couple, Nazi collaborators both, who exploited the most vulnerable and prospered until the end of their days. Mindla's ghost has haunted her ever since.

Frank promises that Mindla's story will at last be heard, but his editor has other ideas. His readers want facts, not superstitious nonsense!

Frank first saw the pitiful spectre of the girl in the blue coat during the Iraq conflict, where-after she returned to him at regular intervals, whenever he's let her slip from his mind. And now, in this, his last interview, he trusts the story to a cub reporter, who swears that this time the tale will be told .....

Tea with the Devil: How does Lucifer spend Halloween? On this evidence, dodging racist youths with baseball bats on the way to the home of his dear friend, 'Mr. John', who has a very interesting painting to show him. Lucifer is very genial in person, quite the gentleman, noble to a fault, and ultimately, far too decent for the modern world. Sandwiched between the horrors of Underbelly and the sobering prose poem, Elegy, it comes almost as a light comedy interlude.

[dem]

Underbelly: At 28 pages, the longest story in For Those Who Dream Monsters, and yet another winner. Anna Weedon, thirty-nine, has been diagnosed with abdominal cancer, and returns to her bedsit to die. Miserable and doubled over in pain, Anna drags herself down to the basement to die, only to chance upon a trapdoor. Descending into the darkness, Anna disturbs the near century long sleep of a winged, ape-like creature from a Hieronymus Bosch nightmare. The fanged demon relieves her pain, but only on the understanding that she nightly procure his meals. He is a fussy eater. Only living human flesh will do.

Anna has no option but to comply with his wishes.

What begins as a hateful, guilt-ridden necessity becomes something approaching job satisfaction, as Anna revenges herself upon a cheating ex, several pretend friends, and a callous GP. All is well until she picks up a homeless young Polish refugee on a park bench, drinking himself into oblivion ...

Elegy: As the Nazi Death Squads arrive in the Ghetto, the doomed Jewish author reflects on a miracle in his youth. Far removed from light entertainment, Elegy is one several billion stories that do not lend themselves well to my microscopic talent for synopsis, and, to my shame, having no familiarity with the writings of Bruno Schulz, the references elude me.

Dirty Dybbuk: A staid young Jewish college girl is possessed by the spirit of a dead aunt who made her living from prostitution. After dragging her appalled best chum, Hannah, along to a Camden Town Sex Emporium to stock up on kinky costumes, sex toys and sundry essentials, Mitzi embarks on a joyful reign of promiscuity and exhibitionism. With the neighbours suitably scandalised and her parents distraught, the local Rabbi arrives at a solution to benefit Mitzi, the Dybbuk, and an extremely grateful young married couple. A very lovely sex comedy, much recommended to the Vault 'Globeswatch' team.

Which leaves only ....

[dem]

I deliberately left this next until last out of usual concern that it wouldn't affect me quite as strongly the second time around. Silly me. This story is bloody heartbreaking.

Bagpuss: "I'm here. I won't let anything bad happen to you." Would that that were so. This is the extended version of the story that appeared in Sixth Black Book of Horror Stories, and time has done nothing to soften its impact. Bad form to quote your own words, but I can't improve on my original impression.

Morbidly imaginative Emily, twelve, has a sense of foreboding about moving to the country with her neurotic mum and eight year old tabby, Bagpuss. But never in her worst nightmares could she conceive the triple-tragedy shortly to befall them. .... After the horrific revelations at close of (the previous story: David A. Riley's Their Own Dark World), ... Anna's story is deceptively quiet. Cat-lovers and worried parents of depressed pre-teenage girls are advised to give it a miss. Unless you're curious. Unless you like your horror to be horrible ....

Penultimate words to Reggie Oliver: "I immensely enjoyed entering the strange and terrible world of Taborska."

You and me both, Mr. Oliver. You and me both. What a magnificent début collection.

[dem]

Heartfelt congratulations to Anna Taborska on bagging the Dracula Society's annual Children Of The Night award for "the best piece of literature published in the Gothic (including horror or supernatural) genre - novel, short story, or biography - during 2013," namely her For Those Who Dream Monsters collection. Scoot down the list of previous winners - including Chris Priestley, Reggie Oliver and Lord Probert - and you'll realise the dark princess of Mortbury is keeping the most excellent company. Am looking forward to seeing the trophy!

[annat]

Thank you, Dem! Never would have happened without your kind support and encouragement, and that of many friends here on Vault. And I was very lucky to work with Charles Black, Reggie Oliver and Steve Upham - very talented gentlemen, all three. I will post a pic of the trophy as soon as I get my grubby paws on it! :-) X

[dem]

Jan 1, 1970 0:02:21 GMT annat said:

Thank you, Dem! Never would have happened without your kind support and encouragement, and that of many friends here on Vault. And I was very lucky to work with Charles Black, Reggie Oliver and Steve Upham - very talented gentlemen, all three. I will post a pic of the trophy as soon as I get my grubby paws on it! :-) X

Well done, Anna. A most deserved triumph if you want my opinion. Also, I like that the Drac. Soc. personalise the trophy; will be interesting to see what they come up with for .... Monsters!

[Craig Herbertson]

Sept 28, 2014 18:06:31 GMT dem said:

Jan 1, 1970 0:02:21 GMT annat said:

Thank you, Dem! Never would have happened without your kind support and encouragement, and that of many friends here on Vault. And I was very lucky to work with Charles Black, Reggie Oliver and Steve Upham - very talented gentlemen, all three. I will post a pic of the trophy as soon as I get my grubby paws on it! :-) X

Well done, Anna. A most deserved triumph if you want my opinion. Also, I like that the Drac. Soc. personalise the trophy; will be interesting to see what they come up with for .... Monsters!

Tremendous news. Couldn't happen to a nicer person either.

[annat]

Thank you, Craig! :-) X

[dem]

For those of you 'with it' hep cats who prefer ebooks over the physical variety, Anna's majestic collection is now available in Kindle Edition via Am*z*n