Elemental Forces by Mark Morris

Pauline Morgan

Once upon a time, anthologies might be restricted to genres, such as SF, fantasy or horror, but within them there was a wide range of material, similar to that found in magazines. The criteria were that the story should be of a high quality and appeal to the editor. Different editors might have a taste for different styles, but they would look for variety and something that was new. In recent years, anthologies have asked for stories relating to a particular theme. There have been some very good ones, but the danger is that there are elements of similarity, and the overall effect is not as spectacular as it could be. Thus, an anthology that welcomes a broad range of ideas with the only link between items within is horror is refreshing and welcome. It allows the authors to follow their own desires.

            Elemental Forces is the fifth volume in this series showcasing horror from twenty writers in the field. The range and degree of horror is varied.

            ‘The Peeler’ by Poppy Z. Brite is the kind of story where the horror is appreciated by the reader rather than the characters. Here Barton is prepared to give up memories of his mother to ease emotional pain, not realising that it is the memories, good and bad, that make us who we are.

            ‘The Entity’ by Nicholas Royle takes two recognised tropes in that the narrator is house sitting in a building that the building has an Entity haunting it, and naturally strange things start happening. Royle. Though, twists the plot to add a revenge element to the story. Revenge is also the theme of ‘The Scarecrow Festival’ by Tim Major. Here, Andy is invited to the scarecrow festival in a small village by a man who he had fallen out with at school.

The monster has more reality in ‘Nobody Wants to Work Here Anymore’ by Christina Henry. This creature, which appears initially as a rat, is lurking in the walk-in refrigerator of a fast-food outlet and is eating people. The monster on ‘The Call of the Deep’ by Laurel Hightower is equally deadly, but this creature has been awoken by the building of wind turbines off the coast. Some monsters are the people you know. In ‘The Only Face You Ever Knew’ by Gwendolyn Kiste, the monsters that Veronica knows are her parents. When Veronica disappears unexpectedly, her fiancé, Catherine, tracks her down in an attempt to rescue her from the people who are not prepared to let her go. Paul Tremblay’s ‘The Note’ also involves a disappearance. This time it is the narrator’s wife, Linda, who vanishes the night after reading a note passed on the door of an abandoned house. ‘I Miss You Too Much’ by Sarah Langan is an unsettling story and another of a woman having escaped from her mother’s control. Her mistake is to go back when she is told her mother is dying.   

Some horror stories work well because of the subtlety of their construction and unexpected turns. ‘The Wrong Element’ by Aaron Dries is one of these. It has some supernatural elements but revolves around the assumption that Hugo’s son Finn has been abducted by his ex-partner.

Encounters with death are a feature of horror stories. In ‘Mister Reaper’ by Annie Knox, Stephanie is in the act of committing suicide when the Reaper offers her a second chance.

In contemporary stories, often diseases escape from laboratories to ravage the population. However, in ‘The Plague’ by Luigi Musolino sees the resurrection of the bubonic plague on a world unable to cope. A different disease is wiping out the population in Andy Davidson’s ‘A House of Woe and Mystery’. The unnamed protagonist is waiting her turn to die and reminiscing.

There are many different ways to frame a story. A popular one is by way of a confession. In ‘Jack-A-Lent’ by Paul Finch, as ex-con tells his story to a priest, hoping that absolution will save him from the demon he believes is hunting him.

A desire to belong or be included is a strong motive for the ways people behave. ‘They Eat The Rest’ by Jim Horlock has an example of a couple wanting to be invited to exclusive dinner parties, unaware that what they desire is a death sentence.

Probably the best story in this anthology is ‘Unmarked’ by Tim Lebbon. It is a ghost story. The narrator ghost works in partnership with Ronnie. He finds the unmarked graves of those whose bodies have not been found. Ronnie reports the locations to the police so the spirit can rest in peace. He does this because he is searching for his own elusive grave.

For straight horror – people doing nasty things to others – there is ‘Red Meat Flag’ by David J. Schow. Here, an old-school cop, approaching retirement, is trying to track a serial killer who leaves no traces, and gets caught by him. ‘The Doppelgänger Ballet’ by Will Maclean is a similar kind of story but told from a different direction. The protagonist is an old-fashioned gangster. At the encouragement of his mistress, he visits a fairground fortune-teller who not only relates his past in detail, but predicts his future. The horror comes with the extreme lengths he goes to to try and avoid that fate.

Not all stories have to have a traditional format. Confident authors like to experiment with the way they unfold a story. ‘A Review Of Slime Tutorial: The Musical’ by P.C. Verrone is, as the title suggests, a review of a performance of a musical starring the slime.

Horror is able to cross genres with fluidity, so much so that it can be difficult to pigeonhole an effective piece of writing. ‘Eight Days West Of Plethora’ by Verity Holloway is one of those. Because of the setting, it has the feel of a Western about it, but it could as easily be either fantasy or science fiction. Ribbing a strange couple about what he thinks is treasure, he finds himself embarking on a journey to a shrine that is the skeleton of a huge lizard-like creature.

Discovering that your body is changing in ways that are unpleasant is very unsettling. This is what is happening to Mary-Alice in ‘The Daughters of Canaan’ by Kurt Newman. There are also secrets that have been kept from her as she has to fight to become queen of a tribe she didn’t know she belonged to.

            The important thing about this volume is that it showcases a range of different types of horror story, from the psychological to the gory, from the supernatural to the apparently mundane. All have elements that are unsettling, and there will be something for everyone who likes reading horror.