Weird Murmur

Artwork by Dan Rempel Rex Burrows, "The Forest Has No Immediate Plans to Kill You" in Weird Horror , Issue 3, Fall 2021, Undertow Publications. Read the story here on Weird Horror's website Both fun and horrifying, the story works well on different levels. I particularly like the questions that it raises once it sits with you for a while.  That we actually fear something else becoming like us—doing things that we would do—that is a horrifying commentary on consciousness and self-awareness. And then it gets worse; the forest pulls another trick from our own book: it rationalizes its actions to its victims.

Thomas Ligotti, "Flowers of the Abyss" in Grimscribe: His Lives and Works (Carroll and Graf: 1991).  It is the madness of things all the way down; it seems foundational. The threads of this story fold in on themselves in fascinating ways. The solution to the madness is just more madness—the town gathers its torches.  There is more going on in "Flowers of the Abyss" than I can figure out, but one theme that is worth more thought is the relationship between fear and the impossible/the contradictory/the paradoxical/the mad. That tie between the two is something prevalent in many early works of weird fiction: Arthur Machen, in particular, comes to mind.   

Nicole Cushing, "The Suffering Clown" in  The Mirrors  (Cycatrix Press: 2015). Snuck into the anthology, this King in Yellow story is handled with precisely the right touch. Cushing has a way of distilling philosophical pessimism into something that delivers a gut-punch. It has clowns in tatters with cosmic connections; its got grime, hopelessness, and loss. Ultimately, we must sell out and reconcile ourselves to living in this sham of a world. Have a great weekend!

M.R. James, "A View from a Hill" in A Warning to the Curious and Other Ghost Stories (1925). Read the story here on Gutenburg I was inspired to give M.R. James' "A View from a Hill" a re-read after coming across Sarah Coomer's fantastically eerie illustration. With a touch of weird science and a dab of necromancy, this story delivers some great characters, beautiful descriptions, and uncanny happenings. This is one of my favorite James stories, and it leaves enough unanswered questions to make readers work for their own interpretation   Illustration, A View from a Hill, Sarah Coomer https://www.sarahcoomer.co.uk/

 Fritz Leiber, "Smoke Ghost" in Unknown Worlds , Vol. 5 No. 3, October 1941. Read the story here on the Internet Archive Among other things, the story works as a critique of environmental harm attributable to industrialization, and Leiber's conception of ghosts as the personification of twisted aspects of society, the environment, and ourselves is the coolest! This is an eerie tale that leaves us wondering what it wants, when it will return, and what will it look like. What did you think about Mr. Wran's reaction on the roof at the end?

Robert E. Howard, "The Man on the Ground" in Weird Tales , Vol. 22 No. 1, July 1933.   Read the story here on the Internet Archive Illustration by Greg Staples Not an oft-read story of Howard's, this gem is about the power of hatred, and its ability to overcome death itself. "The Man on the Ground" highlights the things that Howard is good at: thrilling action, violence, and the American West!   Incidentally, the July 1933 issue of Weird Tales is spectacular. Along with Howard's short story, the issue contains H. P. Lovecraft's "The Dreams in the Witch-House," Hazel Heald's "The Horror in the Museum, and Clark Ashton Smith's "Ubbo-Sathla."

  Justin Dowling, "The Arm" in Weird Tales , Vol. 6 No. 1, March 1954. Read the story here on the Internet Archive To compensate for losing an arm in an accident, a man dedicates himself to making "his left arm the strongest arm in the world." Sound pulp enough? It gets wild, and things don't go well! The flawed story explores themes of control, obsession, and guilt. It is told from the perspective of a friend of the injured man, and it is just as much a story about the narrator as it is about the arm-obsessed accident victim. Despite its flawed presentation, there are things worth exploring here. What redeeming qualities did you find in this forgotten story?

Victor LaValle, The Ballad of Black Tom  (Tor.com, 2016) In part, the book sub-textually explores why we’ve, up until now, only heard the skewed and misleading account of the Red Hook horror through the legacy of Lovecraft’s story. It is interesting to see the original “The Horror at Red Hook” itself become a kind of cover up story—that is something Lovecraft does all the time with the news reports of mythos occurrences, and here, it is turned against his own tale.  Among other things, there are some neat ideas about our subconscious perceptions of others being like cast spells. In addition, Black Tom’s motivation for throwing-in with such an awful entity is thought-provoking; this goes some way toward giving one answer to that age old question: why would there ever be mythos cultists? 

Nicole Cushing, "The Company Town" in The Mirrors (Cycatrix Press: 2015), 71–5 We are all already living in the company town. Moved here without being asked and working so hard for what we don’t really want.