Beyond the Veil edited by Mark Morris

I would like to thank Flame Tree Press for an advance copy of this anthology in exchange for a fair and honest review

Publisher – Flame Tree Press

Published – Out Now

Price – £9.95 paperback £5.99 Kindle eBook

Beyond the Veil is the second volume in an annual, non-themed horror series of entirely original stories, showcasing the very best short fiction that the genre has to offer, and edited by Mark Morris. This new anthology contains 20 original horror stories, 16 of which have been commissioned from some of the top names in the genre, and 4 of which have been selected from the 100s of stories sent to Flame Tree during a 2-week open submissions window.

All genres contain shades of tales and with horror you can have blood-soaked gory tales but also the tales where you’re not even too sure anything supernatural happened you just feel like something very wrong has been witnessed. The tales I like are chillers where you start to feel as you read that fate is definitely locked in and something horrible is going to happen. Reading the great horror collection Beyond the Veil edited by Mark Morris I felt that feeling an awful lot as I sped through a great collection of tales perfect for dark and gloomy Halloweens

Amongst the stories I enjoyed

The God Bag by Christopher Golden – this tale looks at the pain of losing apparent to dementia and declining health which makes you sorry for the narrator watching the decline, but the tale then explores a mysterious God Bag where different types of prayers where placed over the course of his mother’s life with apparently successful results. The tale gets darker and then we get a truly terrifying realisation of what the latest prayer has cost. A slam dunk of a dark tale.

Caker’s Man by Matthew Holness – this tale uses the terror of a neighbour we try to avoid and then magnifies this into a nightmare of a tale. Our young narrator talks about a strange man they noticed ever watching them and his constant attempts to get our narrator and their sibling to eat cake. This is a spooky uncomfortable tale where we feel the child’s growing terror and sense of powerlessness. One of my favourites in the collection

The Beechfield Miracles by Priya Sharma – I loved this tale so much it tells of a near future dystopian Britain where everything has got worse from poverty, crime to food shortages and a disgraced journalist looks for a proclaimed preacher with apparent powers. The writing here is absolutely beautiful yet grim and initially feels hopeful and yet things sour and when that final shoe drops it is absolutely chilling. Excellent

Clockwork by Dan Coxon – This is an amazing disturbing tale of toxic family relationships. Our narrator has finally laid his unpleasant father to rest but starts finding cogs and automata pieces in the garden. This for me was about being trapped in an endless cycle and is startling and linger sin the memory.

Soapstone by Aliya Whiteley – This powerful tale if about grief and loss as Jen in terror avoids the funeral of her former lover. A trip to their old university haunt leads to a game that she seems so good at and yet has a price to pay. Being trapped in life and never moving on becomes something grasping in this story and you await to find out what the final cost of the game will be with dread.

Provenance Pond by Josh Malerman – this is a very strange eerie tale of a young girl and her imaginary friends who inhabit a pool and then one friend named Theo who clearly has their own agenda. This story is about fighting the dark side of growing up and staying true and it gets quite disturbing trying to work out Theo’s goals. Really brilliantly delivered all the way to the end

For All The Dead by Angeline B Adams and Remco van Straten – this tale is remorseless heading to it’s final page with a tale of women living a hard life of watching their lovers and family live and die on the cruel sea their tow lives on. Lost hopes, fleeting moments of life and a final bittersweet ending make it quite a spectacle we have to watch. A really impressive tale.

Nurse Varden by Jeremy Dyson – a man has dreaded hospitals all his life for reasons he has never been able to untangle and now needs a minor knee operation. To prepare he goes back into his memories and finds a scary figure constantly there in his life. This tale cleverly takes the author on a journey through our lead character’s life and builds up the dread of the figure’s secret but the final realisation is brilliantly delivered and tragic.

A Mystery for Julie Chu by Stephen Gallagher – a tale of strange objects with unusual properties. This creates its own strange world of secrets in miniature and the initially quite funny object in question a dancing robot radio turns into something powerful and also both light and dark. Very very cleverly constructed and you also want to know what happens next.

There are many more tales in the collection but these in particular grabbed me. These are tales to puzzle and disturb you in the ways good horror collections should always do. Highly recommended for anyone seeking reads for the dark autumn and winter nights. Highly recommended!