Tales From The Shadow Booth V02 edited by Dan Coxon
Publisher - shadowbooth.com
Published - Out Now
Price - £9.99 paperback £3.99 Kindle eBook
The booth juts at an angle from the sand, the canvas taut beneath the weight of the drifting dunes. Janet almost passes it by. But it’s the sign that snags her attention. Painted in rust-red onto three pieces of driftwood, the sun-bleached planks lashed together with lengths of twisted blond twine, it looks surprisingly fresh. Enter the Shadow Booth, it says, and you will never be the same again.
Welcome to The Shadow Booth, a journal of weird and eerie fiction edited by Dan Coxon. Drawing its inspiration from the likes of Thomas Ligotti and Robert Aickman, The Shadow Booth explores that dark, murky hinterland between mainstream horror and literary fiction.
Volume 2 contains stories by: Chikodili Emelumadu; Dan Grace; Kirsty Logan; Johnny Mains; Ralph Robert Moore; Mark Morris; Gareth E. Rees; Giovanna Repetto; George Sandison; Anna Vaught; Aliya Whiteley
Enter the Shadow Booth, and you will never be the same again…
What is lockdown not for but also trying to catch up on books in your TBR. As I Runalong the Shelves (ok sometimes a pile on the floor) one item I’ve been catching up on was the volumes of Tales From The Shadow Booth I’d not read and so logically to get up to date I get to Volume 2 of 4. This is great quality weird horror fiction - tales of atmosphere, tension and above all disquieting. I’m pleased to report Volume 2 was just as entertaining as it’s predecessors.
Amongst the stories I enjoyed
We Are The Disease by Gary Rees - A science vessel treads to the remaining Arctic at a time of environmental collapse but encounters a ship in distress for no apparent reason. This is excellent horror (with a touch of body horror thrown in) as our narrator’s crew themselves find ‘something’ taking them over and seeding death and destruction. Brutal and haunting with a theme also that we will end up providing the means for our own destruction.
Waves by Dan Grace - Two friends take their regular camping holiday but one feels haunted by a strange feathered humanoid figure whispering to them. This one is more a gentle melancholy haunting and a person haunted by a representation of doubt and fear is a classic image but the approach here was ultimately uplifting
My Father’s Face by Giovanna Repetto (translated by Amanda Blee) a young man who was orphaned at young age grows up but find particular images bring distressing feelings and beginnings of repressed memories. This is a tale of self-discovery but in a horror scenario - slowly we see our young narrator’s life is hiding some family secrets that threaten his sanity. Extremely unsettling but shiveringly well told.
Ear to Ear by Aliya Whiteley - Barbara works in the local Butchers she is happy she also has a tunnel running through her skull that you can see through. The local Women’s Bookclub think something should be done! What could be simply a comic tale of snobbery becomes a much weirder tale of someone being made to fit societies’ expectations of what a woman should be and it then having consequences good and bad. It is a disquieting tale and my favourite in the collection as it keeps coming back in my own head as to could events have gone a different way!
Feasting; Fasting by Anna Vaught - a short but dramatically weird tale of a house, it’s owners and it’s other occupants. A trapped housewife finds a different way to escape - a short but powerfully written tale that just creeps strangeness
Keel by George Sandison - another of my favourites as a middle-aged group come to arrive back at the scenes of their younger’s selves festival partying. It’s a tale of grief, growing up, lost love and guilt. Captures that feeling of knowing your younger selves days are over and life and that group of friends you knew are now very different. But it also manages to be disquieting as secrets rise up to overwhelm it’s central lead.
Cave Venus et Stellas by Anna Vaught - a seemingly normal house has a danger ins tore for a repairman. Its very short yet goes very strange and dark in the blink of an eye - expertly delivered
The Joanne by Johnny Mains - another nautical tale but this time a crew on a ship many years ago are about to cross over the equator when suddenly they see two suns. This is more a cosmic horror nightmare where the ship is overthrown by weird events, death and madness with a truly unusual final scene. Nothing is explained and that makes it even more unsettling as our lead character gets his lie changed forever for no reason.
Another fine collection of tales in this series and nice to be fully up to date. I hope one day we get to travel in the Shadow Booth again,
