I recently read “Moth and Rust” by Tim Kane. He managed to breathe new life into a dead (pardon the pun) genre. The story begins with Uncle Peter dying. But he didn’t stay dead. He had chores to do, so he kept on moving.

The twist comes from the point of view character. Obviously a kid, probably eleven or twelve. He just wants to hang out with his uncle. He couldn’t care less that Uncle Peter is dead. It’s the chores that are killing him for the second time.

Some readers might find this story actually disturbing. Sure, you’re used to blood and guts. But when a kid’s involved, some people get squeamish. For the record, this story has no gore at all. A smooched lemon. That’s it.

What it does have is creepy. And lots of it. Everything Uncle Peter touches rusts. Moths cluster on his sweater, rambling around. Breath that smells like rotting milk.

This is a good read. Scoot over to NevermetPress and give it a read.

Chris Kalidor

Although we’ve recently crossed our own centennial border, the lure of nineteenth century steampunk is with us even more.

Okay, so you can’t actually have a mechanical creature powered by steam scrabbling around on your living room carpet. But you can come close. Kikkerland designs all sorts of wind up toys for the mechanical aficionado. These are far removed from those tin wind up replicas coming out of China these days.  Kikkerland wind ups wobble, jiggle, and crawl. They really do seem to have a life of their own.

Most of these toys are the brainchild of Chico Bicalho, a designer from Rio de Janeiro. The first wind up I experienced was Critter, sometime in the early nineties. The design firm I worked for was going to help with the promotion of these toys, and we all got a sample Critter. It wobbles and walks like a man with a severe case of hiccups. Very fun.

Critter

The next wind up I purchased only a few years ago was called Le Pinch. This operated like metal inch worm. It has seemingly thousands of tiny plastic gears to give it that pinch movement. It crawls all over my desk.

Le Pinch

For the gammer, you might check out this set of steampunk dice. Although, I think trying to read these number in low light might produce eye strain.

Your best bet on finding steampunk items is on etsy, like this steampunk inspired terrarium called Professor Alexander’s Botanical Vasculum. My wife picked up one of these for me last year and the foliage is still alive. The magnifying class allows close viewing for aspiring botanists. There’s also a solar powered light that you swap out the cover to get purple, green, or red glows. The plants do well out of direct sunlight and need only a drop of water every month or so.

Finally, if you want to experience steampunk firsthand, then why not visit the Gaslight Gathering in San Diego this spring (May 6th – 8th). The Gathering is a steampunk convention disguised as a ride on a dirigible: The ZRA Gaslight. Attendees can purchase tickets as either first class, second class or steerage passengers. This is the first year of this convention, and I’m excited to discover what they’re all about. Check out the Gathering here.

Merry shopping this Christmas season. And please remember to oil your gift so that the gears continue to mesh tightly.

Chris Kalidor

As you may have noticed, young adult horror has been making a comeback in 2010.  Of course, anyone who has set foot in a bookstore in the last few years knows that genre novels for teens are the in thing.  The Borders in Mission Valley has a whole section of the stuff, right up front, close to the doors and the registers.  But there was never much horror in the mix.  Urban Fantasy, sure.  Vampire Romance, yes.  But genuinely creepy books?  Not so much.  Now, thanks to authors like Dan Wells, Jonathan Maberry, and others, teens can get their fair share of shivers and shudders.  Better yet, they can get them along with a protagonist their own age.  To celebrate this gratifying trend, I present a pair of potential gifts for that young person on your list.

I Am Not A Serial Killer by Dan Wells

Fifteen year old John Wayne Cleaver is afraid that he could become a serial killer.  John has good reason to fear.  Raised by morticians—including an abusive, now absent father—John is often baffled by human emotions and feels far more comfortable with the dead.  To avoid harming others, John has created an elaborate system of rules that curb his violent tendencies, but make him even more isolated.  John’s carefully ordered life is thrown into chaos when a new serial killer sets up shop right in his home town.

I will be giving away very little when I tell you that this killer is not a man, but a monster in disguise, a demon that fits into human society far better than John ever could.  While there is plenty of demonic mayhem (and long passages describing embalming), these pale in comparison to the scenes in which John loses control of the monster within himself.  When John grabs a kitchen knife during an argument with his mother, we can’t be sure what he will do.  And that is truly frightening.

Fair warning, some people (especially over-sensitive parents) will find this book severely disturbing.  Disaffected teens should love it.

Rot & Ruin by Jonathan Maberry

Benny Imura is also fifteen.  In the walled compound where he lives, this means it’s time for him to find a job.  Either that, or get his rations cut in half.  Unable to find work elsewhere, Benny reluctantly takes a job with his half-brother Tom, a man for whom he has little respect or patience.  But hunting zombies is nothing like Benny thought it would be.

Benny’s experiences out beyond the fence, out in the Great Rot and Ruin of post-apocalypse America, leave him questioning everything he thought he knew about the world and about his brother.  But before Benny can come terms with what he has seen, a very human violence erupts inside the fence itself.  Now the brothers must ride out into Rot and Ruin once more if they want to save the people they love.

Despite the zombies, Rot & Ruin is primarily about the evil that men do when there is no rule of law.  But it’s also about a confused young man learning to accept the past and contemplating his future in a strange and hostile world.  I think we can all relate to that.

Dave Hurwitz

Thirst on DVD

Thirst DVD

The latest film from Korean auteur Chan-wook Park, creator the Vengeance Trilogy (Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Oldboy, and Lady Vengeance).  Thirst is the story of Sang-hyeon, a Catholic priest who volunteers for a deadly series of vaccine trials.  The sole survivor of the experiment, Sang-hyeon emerges with a reputation for saintliness and thirst for human blood.  Insinuating himself into a family who believes in his miraculous powers, Sang-hyeon becomes infatuated with Tae-joo, the young wife of a man he has supposedly healed.  What follows could be described as a mash-up of Interview with a Vampire with The Postman Always Rings Twice, with a bit of The Ring and Rear Window thrown in for good measure.  Thirst is an epic, and not just because of its 133 minute running time.  Regular shifts of plot and tone lead the viewer to believe that Sang-hyeon really has lived a lifetime, from initial horror at his condition, to acceptance, through reckless abandon, and back to a much more weary horror.  His destruction, when it finally arrives, clearly comes as a relief.  As with all of Park’s work, there’s plenty of deeply disturbing, blackly humorous incident in between.  Highly recommended.

Ben Templesmith’s Dracula

The perfect gift for aspiring young Goths who haven’t yet graduated beyond Stephenie Meyer.  The unabridged text of Stoker’s 1897 novel with twenty-seven color illustrations by top horror comix artist Ben Templesmith (30 Days of Night, Wormwood: Gentleman Corpse, Welcome to Hoxford).  That’s one illustration for each and every chapter.  (Take that, Barry Moser.)  Templesmith’s work here (and elsewhere) is an eerie mix of scratchy pen, dark hued paint, and hazy digital overlays.  A distinctly modern edition of the Victorian classic.  I already own two editions of Dracula, but this book makes me want a third.  (I recommend on-line purchase for this one, as it not stocked at most book stores.)

Richard Stark’s Parker:  The Hunter

Adapted and Illustrated by Darwyn Cooke.

Okay, this isn’t so much a horror item as a noir item, but it’s still a worthy gift.  As regular readers are no doubt aware, I am something of a Richard Stark fanatic.  Even by my exacting standards, Cooke’s adaptation of the first Parker novel is incredibly faithful.  (Cooke even dresses his sets using décor described in the book.)  For once, Parker is allowed to be the brutal bastard he really is.  (It’s also worth noting that this is the only Stark adaptation to receive the author’s unconditional approval.  Neither of the two films based on the book was even allowed to use the name Parker.)  Better yet, the story is presented as a period piece, taking place in 1962, the year of the novel’s composition.  I was unfamiliar with Darwyn Cooke’s work prior to reading this, but his talent is evident here.  Utilizing only black, white, and a murky blue, Cooke’s panels look more like mid-century advertising art than a contemporary comic.  The design on the endpapers would look equally at home on the wall of a jet-age bachelor pad.  This book is a major artistic achievement, as well as a fine introduction to one of crime fiction’s greatest anti-heroes.

Stiff Kitten T-Shirt

You don’t have to be a fan of the sadly defunct band to enjoy the shirt.  C’mon, folks, it’s Zombie Hello Kitty.  What’s not to love?  (For those who care, Stiff Kitten was an alternative rock group out of Birmingham in the mid 90s.  The band fell apart when guitarist Keith Barry committed suicide after an argument with singer/bassist Daria Parker about Barry’s heroine use.  Parker is now a fixture on the lesbian folk circuit.)  Buy the shirt exclusively at Ziraxia.  It’s creepy.  It’s cute.  It’s Christmas.

Dave Hurwitz

The Roman Ritual

One more item needs to be added to this list. All through the 70s, 80s and 90s, I’ve yearned to reenact my favorite moments from The Exorcist—the film adaptation of William Peter Blatty’s novel. (The script was also written by Blatty. Having later read the actual text, the film is incredibly faithful.) Specifically the reading of the Roman Ritual to exorcise Regan.

Sadly, this text was a deep dark secret of the Catholic Church, which had wanted to sweep the whole exorcism thing under the carpet. Fortunately for us, all this changed on January 26, 1999. Pope John Paul II approved the document  De Exorcismus et supplicationibus quibusdam (actually back on October 1st). This paved the way for the official recognition of  “angelic creatures” and the aptly named creaures “who are opposed to God” (aka demons).

This new exorcism ritual replaces the 1614 version. Sadly, I have not yet found the phrase: “The power of Christ compels you.” The Second Vatican Council had been working on all the rituals for the last 30 years, with exorcism being the last on the docket.

You can find the Roman Ritual on eBay or Amazon or at your local Catholic store. Just make sure you get one marked with exorcism. The cost doesn’t get any cheaper than $65. Now go out and kick some demon butt.

Chris Kalidor

The Red Tree

Somewhere in the vastness of her internet musings, or perhaps in an preface to short story collection (I cannot now find the find passage, though I have tried), Caitlin Kiernan remonstrates with a reader who complained that he “could not find the story” in her stories.  In a way, I see this unnamed critic’s point.  Kiernan’s writing is notoriously short of both incident and resolution.  For example, her story “Standing Water” consists entirely of two bookstore employees getting freaked out by an especially deep, water filled pothole in the alley behind the shop and deciding, wisely no doubt, not to fuck with it.  It’s a far cry from “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet,” and a bit of a shock if you don’t know what you’re getting into.  Throughout her career, Kiernan has consistently refused to stay within the lanes of genre boundaries, explain the origin or “rules” of supernatural manifestations, or to banish evil with a shotgun and a cross in the final chapter.  (The aborted showdown at the climax of Threshold is a marvelous example.)  It is these carefully fostered ambiguities which draw me to Caitlin Kiernan’s writing, though I see how they might drive more conventional readers crazy.  Such people would not enjoy Kiernan’s latest novel.

The Red Tree purports to be the journal of one Sarah Crowe, an Atlanta novelist who has fled to rural Rhode Island after the suicide of her lover, whom she refers to as “Amanda.”  (Suicide and its aftermath are recurring topics in Kiernan’s work.  Chance Matthews of Threshold has lost both her best friend and the Grandmother who raised her.)  Plagued by guilt and unable to write her next novel, Crowe finds a manuscript left behind by the previous tenant of the aged farmhouse she rents.  The manuscript, written by Charles L. Harvey, a sociologist from the local university, details the grisly folklore surrounding a massive red oak on the farm property.  As Sarah learns, Harvey took his own life by hanging himself from the oak five years previously.  Sarah is soon joined by Constance Hopkins, a local painter recently returned from Los Angeles.  Together, they descend into madness and mutual suspicion as they experience or imagine various spooky goings-on.

Threshold

Compared to the grandiose shootouts and choreographed mutilations of modern horror films, the major incidents of the book seem small.  Sarah and Constance get lost on their way to visit the red oak, less than a hundred yards from their back door.  Later, Constance explores the cavernous farmhouse basement, only to emerge naked, covered in mud, and speaking in tongues.  (Her first coherent words in English are, to me at least, the most frightening in the book.)  Sarah reaches the oak on her own, only to find a sacrificed rabbit.  Woven in and around these events are Sarah’s guilty dreams of Amanda, tales of mass murder, cannibalism, and lycanthropy from Harvey’s manuscript, and the growing distrust between the two women.  The handling of this last is one of the novel’s great strengths.  Kiernan portrays Hopkins as sympathetic, though increasingly wary.  Nonetheless, there are hints that the artist is not what she seems to be.  Perhaps she is a werewolf, or a suicide’s ghost.  Or maybe just a figment of Crowe’s imagination.

In the end, what the reader gets is not so much a narrative as a bouquet of dark hints, strange moods, and suggestions of the intolerable.  The Red Tree leaves a lingering aftertaste of fear, but that fear has no object, no single definite cause.  We learn in a prologue by her supposed editor that Sarah Crowe dies, that she takes her own life shortly after the book’s final lines.  Not only is the evil in The Red Tree not vanquished, it is never clearly defined.  We are left with more questions than answers.  We are not allowed, as at the end of most horror stories, to shake off the taint of evil and live again.

Dave Hurwitz

Buy The Red Tree from Mysterious Galaxy.
Buy A is for Alien from Subterranean Press.
Visit Kiernan’s Red Tree website.

A is for Alien