The Children of Old Leech Excerpt: “The Old Pageant,” by Richard Gavin

Today’s excerpt from The Children of Old Leech comes to us courtesy of Richard Gavin, an author who knows a thing or two about the carnivorous nature of the cosmos. So let’s head out to the woods with this sample of “The Old Pageant.”

—

He didn’t want her to know how physically taxing he’d found the long drive to the woods, how tedious the prospect of unpacking seemed, or how repugnantly primitive he found their accommodations to be upon their arrival. The holiday had the potential to be far too special an occasion for him to sour it by sulking.

The cabin had been in her family for decades, though the moment he spied it—an oblong box slumped between leprous-looking birch trees—he wondered why she didn’t regard the cabin as a skeleton from her family’s closet instead of a prideful heirloom.

After an anxious struggle to fit the copper key inside the ancient lock, the door gave, allowing the pair of them to be assaulted by the stench of long-trapped air. The dark had evidently grown so accustomed to the cabin’s interior that it stubbornly refused to part for the sunbeams that the man and woman ushered in.

Shutters were peeled back, windows were pried ajar. She stripped the ancient white sheets from the beds and took them outside and hung them from the birch limbs so that the breezes might push out their mustiness.

They cleaned and unpacked and traded off-colour wisecracks. The supper they cooked together was hearty and its aroma managed to mask a bit of the cabin’s cloying staleness.

After eating he delighted her by finding the detached footboard that had once braced the lower bunk bed she’d slept on as a girl. It had been wound in a shower drape of translucent plastic and stored behind her grandmother’s dormant sewing desk.

Her grandfather had carved (with visible skill and obvious love) an inscription into the footboard:

Here lies Donna Hammill
Each and every summer
Dreaming…

—

The Children of Old Leech: A Tribute to the Carnivorous Cosmos of Laird Barron may be ordered directly from Word Horde or wherever better books are sold. Ask for The Children of Old Leech and other Word Horde titles at your favorite bookseller.

Review: The Darkly Splendid Realm by Richard Gavin

At Fear's Altar was one of my favorite reads of the past few months (also ranking high in my list of favorite single-author short story collections). I own Gavin's other three collections, but have only read a few stories from them (I am a reader that is quite guilty of picking up short story collections and anthologies only to read a story or two here or there, and before blogging it was rare that I would read a collection/anthology from start to finish). Fellow reviewers seem of the opinion that At Fear's Altar is Gavin's best work, and since I loved that book so much I was a little nervous that Gavin's previous collection, The Darkly Splendid Realm, would fall a bit short. Luckily, this was not the case, and I enjoyed this collection almost as much as I did At Fear's Altar.

The Darkly Splendid Realm is Gavin's third collection, and in the author's afterword he refers to it as his "earthiest". Many of the tales within have recurrent themes; dreams play an important role in several stories and most all of them deal with other worlds encroaching on our own.

The collection opens with Prowling Through Throated Chambers, and follows a man who's attraction to dark places brings him to an abandoned amusement park and a true house of horrors. The setting alone should resonate with horror fans of all sorts, but the horrors Gavin explores are bleak and reminiscent of classic weird tales. Where the Scarab Dwells takes a guilty, corporate worker into a dark tenement, where his ancestry and guilt merge leading to a redemption of sorts.

Phantom Passages is a morality tale of sorts, and takes a look at a character who's greed spells his doom. So much is hinted at throughout the story, building up to a terrifying conclusion. Primeval Wood marks the longest piece in the book, and is a great example of the "earthiness" I mentioned earlier. A city man who was recently abandoned by his girlfriend, goes on retreat to a small, rural cottage. Finding more than he bargained for, the man loses time and undergoes a dark transformation. Final Night in Nevertown is an eerie, dreamlike story where a town is disappearing in mist. The imagery is surreal and makes for quite a moody piece.

Gavin takes readers far back into history with Children of the Mound. A group of Roman soldier-missionaries visit the far reaches of their kingdom in order to learn the fate of an earlier group sent to build a church and convert the "savages". One of the best blends of historical fantasy and weird horror I have ever read, the story starts off reminiscent of a typical horror plot (group arrives to find no sign of anyone) and quickly descends into weird nightmare territory. The Language of the Nameless Region is a story where dreams take center stage. The story features an accomplished dreamer (a la Lovecraft's Randolph Carter) who comes across a woman straight out of his dreams. He turns into the obsessed, creepy suitor, giving her strange gifts of dreamstuff. The story is well written, and more melancholic than horrific, but creepy enough.

The Astral Mask is one of my favorite stories of the collection. What began as Gavin's attempt to explore UFO/extraterrestrial horrors, has become much, much more. The main character finds himself questioning reality. Stories that blur the lines between sanity and insanity and feature a character struggling to tell what is real and what is not always hold an interest for me, and the horrific nature of this character's episode made for quite a chilling story. Dreaming While Adrift on the River of Despair is another story that drips melancholy and puts aside horror. It's a beautifully told story of loneliness, and is proof that Gavin can pen more than just horror stories.

Getting the Strap explores a disturbing relationship between a boy and his grandmother, and Waterburns blends sorrow and horror for a story about a woman who's fate was sealed when she was only five years old.

The Bitter Taste of Dread-Moths is another favorite from the collection, and is another story that explores only the tip of the iceberg. A woman's essays about fear capture the attention of an eccentric man, and the ensuing correspondence strikes a deep chord within the woman and brings back a horrifying memory from her childhood. A great story where mad science meets the essence of horror. Gavin closes out his collection with Following the Silent Hedges, an experimental story told in the unconventional second-person narrative. Gavin makes this unorthodox style work in an exploration of the veil between worlds, and the thin places where we can cross over.

While not quite as brilliant as At Fear's Altar, The Darkly Splendid Realm still stands strong as a collection where it is hard to find faults. The stories within explore thin places, the power of dreams and fear, and how dealings with all of the aforementioned can lead to transformation.

Review: At Fear's Altar by Richard Gavin

Canadian author Richard Gavin’s first story collection Charnel Wine came off the press in 2004, and since then Gavin has had a steady stream of collections published. Omens was put out by Mythos Books in 2007, and two years later came The Darkly Splendid Realm. Halloween of 2012 saw the release of his most recent collection, At Fear’s Altar, and boy is it a good one.

Gavin writes some of the best weird fiction I’ve had the pleasure of reading. The influence of all the masters is readily apparent: Lovecraft, Machen, Blackwood, and Ligotti. A keen reader can easily discern that this author lives for the weird, and he writes it oh so beautifully.

In his fourth collection Gavin offers a wonderful variety of tales, showcasing his different influences and making a strong case as to why Gavin’s name should be on any shortlist of modern masters of the weird. At Fear’s Altar contains thirteen (such an appropriate number) of stories, seven of which are original to this collection. And it must be said, that every single story is great. Gavin's style is sharp, and cuts neat.

Gavin kicks the collection off with a Prologue titled A Gate of Nerves. This short piece is the perfect way to open his collection, and serves to set the mood for what follows. The story follows a college student and her experience with a horrifying Asian parlor game. The imagery is excellent, the suspense builds, and after reading this prologue I knew I was in for something special.

Following the prologue is one of the best stories in the collection. Chapel in The Reeds is a greatly disturbing tale of an old man, his experience with an abandoned church, and his diminishing grip on reality. Gavin writes an extremely convincing example of an old man slipping into dementia, and the story leaves just enough questions open to really keep the reader guessing.

The Abject originally appeared in S.T. Joshi’s Lovecraft-inspired collection, Black Wings II. This dark story focuses on a woman in a troubled relationship, as she and her boyfriend join friends on a trip to a cursed place. Adding the deep-seated relationship problems to the primal desolation of the setting makes for quite a chilling experience.

In Faint Baying From Afar, Gavin works in the epistolary format. The story, which is a direct sequel to Lovecraft’s The Hound, follows a series of letters from a son to his mother. It’s beautifully written, and really captures the feel of classic Lovecraft.

The next story, The Unbound, is also a direct response to a Lovecraft story, this time being The Unnameable. The Unbound acts as a sort of re-telling of the original tale, from the point of view of the Unnameable itself. It’s a very interesting tale, and really captures the image of a man shutting himself out from the world, and becoming a Gollum-like grotesque.

A Pallid Devil, Bearing Cypress deals with faith, albeit a dark one. The main character is an outsider, who takes up a strange and dangerous habit of taking jaunts during nighttime air raids on his city. He has a fascination with all things dark which turns into more of an obsession over the Devil in particular. This eerie craving seems to have been inspired by the character’s mother, and the story follows the man as he lives out a life of chasing something that most people would run away from.

In King Him, Gavin writes a truly disturbing tale about siblings and “imaginary” beings. The story has some truly disquieting elements (which I won't detail for spoiler purposes) and really toys with the idea of whether or not the characters are truly dealing with a supernatural element or are just very deeply disturbed mentally. In my opinion I think it's a bit of both.

I have always been a fan of weird Westerns, especially ones that tend towards the horror side of the spectrum. The Plains is a tale about a creepy, blasted piece of land (reminiscent of the Blasted Heath from Lovecraft’s The Colour Out of Space). When some men travel to this place searching for salvation for their drought-plagued town, they are in for a bit of a surprise.

Only Enuma Elish is another story dealing with a shut-in, outsider type character, who makes a connection with his elderly neighbor. What seems like a good thing quickly deteriorates into something surreal when he finds out about her strange beliefs.

In The Word-Made Flesh, a man attempts to help his troubled friend, who believes he has heard the “Word of God”. What is truly going on is something much darker.

Annexation is a heartbreaking story that follows a woman on a quest to find her estranged son at the behest of her dying husband. As she tracks him to a remote island in South America, she ruminates on how her son has always been different, and finds out about the dark path he has chosen.

Darksome Leaves echoes Thomas Ligotti, and is about another outsider character who finally meets someone that he feels a connection with. The only problem comes in the form of a transformative mask that mysteriously appears. The man’s attitude and ideas reflect Ligotti’s typical outsider protagonist, and the masks themselves bring to mind Ligotti’s well-known story, The Greater Festival of Masks.

Finally, the collection finishes with one of its strongest tales, The Eldritch Faith. The longest story in the collection manages to hit on so many ideas, and was quite a chilling read. The story follows a young boy who doesn’t seem to fit in, and his attempts at contacting a spirit. When he finally manages to make contact with an entity which calls itself Capricorn, his life is forever changed. The buildup is grand, and touches on several aspects of horror that many youths experience, such as sexual angst and facing local urban legends. There is some spectacular imagery in the story, and the ending is brilliant.

With this collection Gavin has managed to bring together thirteen stories without a single  bad one amongst them. The stories range from dark to downright terrifying, and every single one will linger in the reader’s head for days. I couldn’t recommend this collection more, so finish up what you’re reading, buy this collection, pour yourself a rye-and-ginger, and settle down to read one of the best books published in 2012 and one of the best weird horror collections published ever. Absolutely essential.