Tom English [ed.] - Nightmare Abbey

[dem bones]

Tom English [ed.] - Nightmare Abbey #2 (Dead Letter Press, Nov. 2022)

Allen Koszowski

Tom English - Editorial: Dear Abbey
Matt Cowan - Horror Delve; 10 Tales For A Good Night's Rest
Gary Gerani - When Thrills Become Chills: Growing Up With Thriller

Fiction
Theodore Sturgeon - It
David Surface - These Things That Walk Behind Me
James Dorr - The Calm
Gary Fry - Voices of the Dark
Edward Lucas White - The House of the Nightmare
John Llewellyn Probert - That Which Overcomes
Adrian Ross - By One, By Two, By three
Kurt Newton - Our Father's Underwear
Matt Cowan - Dead Hand Clapping
Helen Grant - The Wynd
Gregory L. Norris - Tableau For two
Steve Duffy - La Nina Atardecar

Cover & interior illustrations: Allen Koszowski
Photo Art: Nabu Shabbey
Editor & Publisher: Tom English

Editorial remarks the enduring influence of Sturgeon's masterpiece, particularly on such comic strip anti-heroes as The Heap and Swamp Thing. Matt Cowan's column annotates his top ten nightmare short stories.

Helen Grant - The Wynd: Fresh from a disastrous dinner date with a prospective father-in-law, Martin Sloane, career gold-digger, inadvertently detours down an alley on West High Street, arriving at a church. Finding the door unlocked, Sloane slips inside for a thieve. No joy. Anything worth taking is nailed down. Might as well try his luck in a local bar, see if there are any unattended rich widows ripe for fleecing. But the door won't budge. Shut in! Which is when he first notices there's something horribly familiar about the figure depicted in the stained-glass window ...

Kurt Newton - Our Father's Underwear: One for Fashion Victims: If the children got loud and woke him in the night, Dad would storm downstairs half naked and tell them to shut up. Now he's dead, his phantom underwear continues the tradition. Sad.

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James Dorr - The Calm: (Bruce Gehweiler [ed.], New Mythos Legends, 1999). Set in 1755, a year into the French and Indian War. Captain Pindar's detachment, their numbers decimated by disease and desertion, arrive at an uncharted mountain village, pleading food and shelter for the night. The Curé welcomes the Captain, assuring him that the small community have no interest in any trivial war — they've graver concerns, such as rare nights like this when the wind dies to a dead calm .....

John Llewellyn Probert - That Which Overcomes: Jeremy's diligent research of the family home, Cressingham Hall, reveals the exciting legend of a subterranean ghost maze which only appears once a year. Partington's privately printed Gazetteer of England's Most Famous & Infamous Mazes & Labyrinths (n.d.) has it that the seventh earl avenged himself on an unfaithful wife by abandoning her therein before performing a black sorcery ritual to seal each exit. This being the anniversary, Jeremy prevails upon his friend, our narrator, to accompany him deep below the cellar .....

David Surface - These Things That Walk Behind Me: Episode in Dean's relentless war versus the grey people and their ghastly brethren, shadowy elemental's taking sustenance from every man's inner turmoil.

[humgoo]

The new mag sounds worth investigating!

Jan 4, 2023 18:20:51 GMT dem bones said:

John Llewellyn Probert - That Which Overcomes: Jeremy's diligent research of the family home, Cressingham Hall, reveals the exciting legend of a subterranean ghost maze which only appears once a year. Partington's privately printed Gazetteer of England's Most Famous & Infamous Mazes & Labyrinths (n.d.) has it that the seventh earl avenged himself on an unfaithful wife by abandoning her therein before performing a black sorcery ritual to seal each exit. This being the anniversary, Jeremy prevails upon his friend, our narrator, to accompany him deep below the cellar .....

A subterranean maze. Mr. Probert seems a very handy guy to have around for marital problems.

[dem bones]

Jan 5, 2023 9:29:03 GMT humgoo said:

The new mag sounds worth investigating!

Worth keeping an eye on, I'd have said. The Koszowski illustrations throughout are a bonus, some striking photo art, too. This next story currently fighting it out with those by Helen Grant and Lord P (he's on a roll) as my pick of the originals, though we still have two to read. I also liked the James Dorr reprint (it was new to me).

Gary Fry - Voices of the Dark: Decades on from his 'eighties heyday, Charlie Guise, the once king of TV impressionists, is booked to play ten nights in Scarborough, with the promoter even throwing in a flat for the duration. Guise, alcoholic, divorced, and estranged from nine-year-old daughter, is a haunted man even before he hears the first of several despairing voices from inside a sealed room in his temporary home. With the help of a sympathetic local journalist, the entertainer unravels the grim history of a property which has seen more than its share of suicides since a scandal involving a local physician and the seriously unethical experiment he conducted using his only child as the guinea pig.

Gregory L. Norris - Tableau For Two: Brutal father returns home for Halloween, having recently discovered that one of the boys is not his. Some years later, the half-brothers chance upon a photo from that terrible night as they sort through late mother's effects.

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Matt Cowan - Dead Hand Clapping: Barriston finally locates a rare — and very cursed — live recording of Lionel Brunel's Variety Hour on the night of the Chrysalis Majestic Theatre gas explosion. The tape is of particular personal value to the maintenance man as the disaster claimed the lives of the natural parents he never knew.

Steve Duffy - La Nina Atardecar: "You and your goddamn fantasmas .... You goddamn hippie burnout, you're all the same, you make this stupid junk up 'cos you can't deal with the real world!"

As we've come to expect from this author, the issue's final story is excellent. Wayne and Lanny, drug-smuggler and a stoned drifter respectively, are among the most recent long-distance drivers to offer a lift to 'Bianca,' the sunrise girl, Guadalajara's gorgeous and deadly phantom hitch-hiker. A hundred makeshift crosses and bouquets of dead flowers by the roadside commemorate her victims.

[dem bones]

Last summer's launch. A Special Ramsey Campbell issue.

Tom English [ed.] - Nightmare Abbey #1 (Dead Letter Press, Summer, 2022)

Interior illustration Allen Koszowski. Front cover Virgil Finlay.

Tom English - Editorial: Dear Abbey

Special Features
Matt Cowan - 13 Questions with Ramsey Campbell
Gregory L. Norris - Remembering "Kolchak: The Night Stalker"
Justin Humphreys - "Everything Good Dies Here". Reflections on Jacques Tournier's "I Walked with a Zombie"

Stories
Ramsey Campbell - Down There
Ramsey Campbell - Dead Letters
Ramsey Campbell - Meeting the Author
Joseph Payne Brennan - The Horror at Chilton Castle
George Toudouze - Three Skeleton Key
Henry Kuttner - The Graveyard Rats
Helen Grant - Snow
Kurt Newton & Tom Boden - Awake in the Hands of Solitude
Tom English - The Last Sighting of the Black Dog
Gregory L. Norris - The Man in the Rubber Monster Suit
A. M. Burrage - The Waxwork
Robert Bloch - Catnip
David Surface - Give Me Back My Name
James Dorr - Victorians
Douglas Smith - Fiddleheads
Jason J. McCuiston - The Swamp Devil
Steve Duffy - The Hunting Grounds
David H. Keller - The Thing in the Cellar
Linda E. Rucker - The Dead Ways

Illustrations: Allen Koszowski


Ramsey Campbell - Meeting the Author: (Interzone #28, March-April 1989). 'Books and Things' host a signing session with Harold Mealing, a former schoolteacher turned author, whose publisher expects great things of Beware of the Smile, a macabre morality story for the little ones. Mealing detests children, as he does bad reviews. When Timmy's mum duly slates the book in the local press, the author overreacts, first with hostile phone calls, then with a special present for her little boy. Loved this one, especially the ending (first time I've read it). By the by, Any updates on the P.S. Mr. Smiles Surprise Pop-Up Book reissue?

James Dorr - Victorians: (Wendy Webb & Charles L. Grant [eds.], Gothic Ghosts, 1997). On the eve of marriage to dear Amelia, Joseph Parrish finally inherits the family mansion where philandering father was axed to death shortly before mum's unsolved disappearance.

Gregory L. Norris - The Man in the Rubber Monster Suit: Set during the 'fifties monster movie boom. When bit-player A. J. Vocks slips into that rubber outfit, he is truly a changed man; from pale, sweat-sodden nobody to 'The Horror from the Bomb,' run amok at Pearl Harbor on "the darkest night in human history." Screenwriter Miles Johan Tibbs regrets a fatal career choice.

Ramsey Campbell - Dead Letters: (Charles L. Grant [ed.], Shadows 1978. Uk, Shadows II, 1987). Narrator and wife invite around four friends for the evening. Unfortunately, these include Bob and Laurie whose marriage has reached the point of no return. Bob, obnoxious drunk, has brought along the ouija and insists on conducting a seance.

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Helen Grant - Snow: Absolute killer opening to bleak tale of a young mountaineers rescue by mystery girl on Beinn a' Chaorainn after his best friend fell to his death in a snow blizzard. The young woman leads Calum to safety in return for his promise that he'll come back and find her in the summer. Once recovered from his ordeal, Calum finds it easier to dismiss the girl as a figment of his imagination. He gives the Munro's a wide berth until new girlfriend innocently suggests they tackle Creag Meagaidh ....

Tom English - The Last Sighting of the Black Dog: Churchill, a huge black shaggy Newfoundland, is popular with seemingly everyone in Leyden save Mayor Brooks, who simply won't have an unlicensed dog in his town. Churchill evades every attempt at capture, which proves just as well when Brooks' troubled daughter is lured into the clutches of a rapist. According to the author, story is based on various folk legends. Its cheery nature is a little incongruous in the grim company of a Down There or The Graveyard Rats.

Linda E. Rucker - The Dead Ways: As the emergency services remove a body from the line, Kate jumps a replacement bus to St. Pancras; her ma has been taken seriously ill, and she needs to reach Peterborough right now! As the bus pulls away, with her the lone passenger, Kate recalls East Anglian folk legends of the Wild Hunt ...

Snow my pick of the three, though all engaging in their way.

[dem bones]

Kurt Newton & Tom Boden - Awake in the Hands of Solitude: (Farah Rose Smith [ed.], Machinations and Mesmerism: Tales Inspired by E.T.A. Hoffman, 2019)Feared the worst from the title, but this is great fun. Cyril Von Foerster, MAD SCIENTIST, digs up and mutilates corpses for the raw materials essential to his experiments. His latest victim, Camille - or, to be precise, the bits he's interested in - prove recalcitrant. Seems Foerster only married Camille as he'd missed out on his true lust, her sister, Claudia. Now Claudia is bored, and husband, Roger, is asking awkward questions about the cemetery desecrations .....

Jason J. McCuiston - The Swamp Devil: Another good one, this time set in South Carolina during the War of independence. Captain Roberts, aka "The butcher of Waxhaw," leads his men into Scape Ore Swamp to evade capture and/ or certain slaughter by British Dragoons. Just as we hoped, there's way worse than mere soldiers haunts the stinking black waters.

[dem bones]

Ramsey Campbell - Down There: (Lin Carter [ed.], Weird Tales #1, 1980). There's something mouldy and terrible haunts the basement of the inland Revenue's temporary home. Ramsey's first WT appearance? Read this, and you'll never look a cheese sandwich in the face again.

Douglas Smith - Fiddleheads: (Michael Kelly [ed.], Chilling Worlds 2: In Words, Alas, Drown I, 2013). It's nearly two years since Martin went missing, aged seven, at Toronto's Wonderland Theme Park. Little brother Andy misses him something terrible. As the anniversary nears, the wild fern at the ravine tell Andy what he must do to put things back the way they were. Watch out, nine-year-old kids!