Black Static

I reviewed six volumes of the Terror Tales series in the pages of Black Static but somehow managed to miss 2013's excursion to Great Britain's capital city, an oversight I get to rectify now.

As usual with this series, the stories in Terror Tales of London are punctuated by fascinating snippets of local legend and superstition contributed by editor Paul Finch that enhance the ambience of the anthology and on occasion are more intriguing than some of the stories in the collection. This time around we get to learn about Sweeney Todd and Jack the Ripper, Boudicca and the Black Dog of Newgate, among others.

Leading off the fiction is "The Tiger" by Nina Allan in which parolee Croft, a former photographer who was sent to prison accused falsely of murdering a young girl, is drawn into a sordid conspiracy by his parole officer. It's a finely nuanced piece, one that hides in plain sight with Croft's desires never really pinned down (he may not have committed the act, but doesn't seem wholly innocent) and in the person of Symes and his group presents us with some rather sinister people, while the atmosphere of the pub where Croft is staying adds heavily to the feeling of unease the story generates. In Roger Johnson's "The Soldier" we get an old style ghost story, related among friends and concerning a young man's wish to serve in the previously unknown Worshipful Company of Militia. It's a story that sets out its stall with a beguiling ease, a delight in describing the lesser streets and byways of London and the ancient things that can be found hiding there, with a neat end twist that hints at a little known aspect of the city's history.

"Train, Night" by Nicholas Royle has an actor lured into a woman's plans, the story beautifully written and elegantly suggestive, with reader and character kept continually off balance by the swerves it takes. For my money the best story in the book, Adam Nevill's "The Angels of London" has city newcomer Frank finding that, just like the Hotel California, you never check out of The Angel. It's a piece with a steadily mounting sense of menace and in which dreams and reality overlap, touching on themes of the old gods and their worship in the modern age, overall putting me in mind of Harlan Ellison's work in Deathbird Stories, but with an even sleazier and more downbeat backdrop. "Capital Growth" by Gary Fry has an overly protective mother's attempts to keep her young son safe from the temptations of the big city blow up in her face. It's a tongue in cheek piece, one with larger than life characters and a delicious final line that underlines the writer's understanding of who his people are.

In "The Thames" by Rosalie Parker a child prostitute finds a protector in the form of an older woman who is far more than she outwardly appears to be. The story is set against the backdrop of war, which is convincingly brought to life on the page, as is the plight of young girls forced to earn their living in this way, so that you end up entirely in sympathy with Cally's methods of dealing with abusers, extreme as they are, all of which is backed by the suggestion that she is somewhat more than human. Chloe's loss of faith is marked by the intrusion into her life of "The Red Door". Mark Morris gives us a subtle story, one in which the metaphysical takes on concrete form, with the weird events in which Chloe finds herself embroiled only reinforcing her doubts when they should, by their very nature, allay them, and then the end when the consequences of her spiritual malaise assume very real dimensions.

Barbara Roden offers us a traditional ghost story with "Undesirable Residence" as a man reveals the secret of an abandoned underground shelter. The story builds with assurance, drawing the reader in and making us believe in the unthinkable, with the WWII setting thoroughly convincing and adding to the general air of menace. "The Horror Writer" by Jonathan Oliver has a bibliophile trapped in a book store and events taking an increasingly surreal turn. It's a clever piece that focuses on the love of books and horror, then turns it against us only to deliver a triumphant ending in which fictional worlds overlap. Christopher Fowler's "Perry in Seraglio" is another tongue in cheek piece as its 'master of the universe' protagonist gets sucked into a nightmare of his own making. The writing here stands out for the almost detached way in which the story is put over, culminating in a glorious end line, one rich in black comedy, and throughout there is a certain glee in seeing the obnoxious Perry get what is coming to him, while the shallowness of his existence is shown by the lack of concern demonstrated by his supposed friends.

In "Someone to Watch Over You" by Marie O'Regan junior reporter Emily suspects that she was saved from assault by a ghost, but her editor/uncle George appears to know far more about the matter than he should. It was an interesting story and well written, with a good sense of atmosphere, but not a story that I entirely believed in, one that felt a little too contrived, with George's actions seeming to lack a credible motivation and perversely having the opposite effect to his intention. David J. Howe's "The Outcast Dead" starts slowly, with Milly frightened of using the underground late at night, and then goes gloriously over the top with a host of the walking dead and our heroine dragged down into the story's vision of Hell. The sense of threat is put over well, with Milly trying to get out from under and every step she takes plunging her further into the mess she's got into, so that it all has an escalating nightmarish quality that shakes the reader.

Finally we have "The Bloody Tower" by Anna Taborska in which that august building is turned into a detention centre for political prisoners and one innocent makes an alliance with a benevolent spirit while another revenant runs amok slaughtering the Tower's staff. Yes, this is as crazy as it sounds, the plot of a straight to DVD horror movie, and yet such is Taborska's skill at piling one unlikelihood atop another that it works very well. We are drawn in by the plight of Shakil, the unfairness of what is happening to him, the way in which xenophobia and bigotry find their victims, while the figures of the Warden and his guards are so malicious that you can't help but applaud their fates. I could quibble about the timing of the story's end game (Shakil gets an awful  lot done in an implausible period of time, to my mind anyway) but if this seems like wish fulfilment on the part of the author then as far as these characters are concerned I have the same wish list, so we'll allow it. "The Bloody Tower" is a fine end to a solid collection of tales, all of them enjoyable and with several stories that stand out.