The New Gothic is a collection of unsettling tales, including a
story by horror grandmaster Ramsey Campbell, that seeks to regain gothic
territory ceded to defanged vampires and bantering demon hunters.
It’s an ambitious undertaking to revise the definition of gothic literature. What exactly “gothic” is has
been under revision and argument since the term was first coined. Does a story
need a spooky castle to be gothic? How about a doomed romance? Is some
supernatural element required? The
New Gothic takes the angle that the gothic pendulum has swung a bit too
far in the direction of romance. “Don’t embrace the darkness. Fear it,” reads
the book’s tagline.
I’m not too worried about
whether this collection redefines the field. What I can tell you is that editor
Beth K. Lewis and the team at Stone
Skin Press have selected a terrific set of stories. They hang together, despite
disparate elements; each tale hints at the darkness lurking in urban neighborhoods,
in old houses, on desolate roads, and in our hearts. Cue Vincent Price’s
menacing laugh echoing down a black corridor. There are no castles here, but
there’s no sympathy for the devil either.
Things get off to a terrifying
start with Jesse Bullington and S.J. Chambers’ “Dive in Me.” It pushes so many
horror buttons, from the crushing insecurity of youth to the simple fear of
drowning, and it builds to a stunning climax, the kind where you’re sort of
breathlessly turning each page as your eyes gradually get wider and wider. This
one will stick in my head for a long time.
It’s no insult to say that no
other story in the book quite reaches the heights of “Dive in Me,” because it’s
that good. Ramsey Campbell’s “Reading the Signs” is obviously a big selling
point here, and it’s a great story. It takes the common experience of being a
bit lost in a strange town on a lonely road and makes it extra strange. If you’re the type who hesitates to stop and ask for
directions, it only confirms that you’re right. Just keep driving.
“The Vault of Artemas Smith”
by Phil Reeves is one of the more purely Lovecraftian stories I’ve read in a
while. Lots of stories lay claim to that adjective, but Reeves’ narrator delves
into dark places where unseen things shuffle in the dark, creating creeping
horror and tension in the absence of any cosmic mythos.
You’ll find a handful of
stories about weird families, and I can’t think of a more gothic literary
tradition than that. Damien Kelly’s “The Whipping Boy” is about family tragedy
and magic (one leads to the other, it seems); Laura Ellen Joyce crafts a dark,
disturbing story of medical obsession and mental illness in “The Death Bell”; Steve
Dempsey’s “No Substitute” takes an oddly optimistic look at cannibalism; and “Viola’s
Second Husband” by Sean Logan features a strange old grandmother within a very
traditional gothic framework.
Two other stories really stood
out to me. Dmetri Kakmi’s “The Boy By the Gate” is a classic ghost story. It’s
predictable in a way, but it’s still damn scary and offers up some terrifying
images. “The Devil in a Hole” by Mason Wild is a simple story that piles
tragedy upon tragedy, ending with a literal pile of corpses. The imagery will
stick with you for a while.
Are these stories as purely
and technically gothic as, say, The Castle
of Otranto or Frankenstein? No,
and they’d feel silly and dated if they were. But in their pervasive gloom and
aura of creeping horror, they do an admirably gothic job of scaring the reader.
The New Gothic is keeping a spot on my anthology shelf, to be brought out on those
nights when I want to peer into the darkness for a while.
