A review that originally appeared in Black Static #16 as part of a feature on Canadian publisher Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy:-
Our second offering from publisher Edge is TESSERACTS THIRTEEN: CHILLING TALES FROM THE GREAT WHITE NORTH (Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing paperback, 336pp, $16.95), edited by Nancy Kilpatrick and David Morrell. To quote from the back cover blurb, the book consists of ‘twenty-three stories of horror and dark fantasy that reflect a melange of Canada’s most exciting known and about-to-be-known writers’, served up under three thematically linked sections, albeit the links are very loose.
Flag of convenience for the first section is children, though whether they are the subject of horror or its prime cause is debatable. Kevin Cockle’s ‘Stone Cold’ touches on the current economic climate, with a financier haunted by guilt and finding himself wheelchair bound thanks to a new plague, but then the granddaughter whom he loves starts to develop symptoms similar to his own, the story becoming a salutary warning, chilling in all its implications because it is the innocent who look set to suffer. There’s a similar end of days feel to several of the other stories, as with ‘Kids These Days’ by Rebecca Bradley in which a plague has affected all the children, and with no hope of any future families often commit suicide, an officially sanctioned option. The story places one such family under the microscope, asking questions about the nature of hope and how we cope when faced with the unthinkable on a daily basis. It’s a grim piece, written with a genuine emotion that filters through from the page and into the reader’s subconscious. There’s a J-Horror feel to the chill running through ‘An Abandoned Baby Carriage’ by Kevin Kvas, whose unnamed narrator discovers said carriage in a neighbourhood park, a memorial to a woman who died in a car crash, but from his own perspective something far more sinister is going on, with subtle suggestions of a haunting that stretches back over many years and his own, possible, culpability. Stephanie Short’s ‘Silence’ takes a look at the legend of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, giving us a story that draws you in as the plight of the entranced children becomes clear, and then shocks with an ending that is as violent and unexpected as it is absolutely right.
My favourite story from this section, and so given a paragraph all to itself, is ‘Billy and the Mountain’ by Jason Ridler. Fact and fantasy merge as two boys try to live up to the ideals of their comic book heroes and fight back against bullies, only in turning on their tormentors the wrong person gets hurt with tragic consequences. It’s a wonderful example of storytelling informed with compassion, of good guys you want to cheer and bad guys who deserve to come a cropper, and of the right thing turning out to be terribly wrong. It’s a tragedy in miniature, and the ending is like a knife in the heart.
The second section is the shortest, with only six stories, and also the weakest. While there was nothing that I’d describe as awful, little really stands out either. Ostensibly its subject matter is romance, though I find the label somewhat far ranging. We start with ‘Little Deaths’ by Ivan Dorin, in which Death comes calling for a retired prostitute who had a nice little sideline in assassination. It’s an intriguing idea, and after some engaging dialogue we get a twist ending that undercuts all that has gone before. ‘Bed of Scorpions’ by Silvia Moreno-Garcia sees a brother and sister con team try to seduce a dying, wealthy man, but there’s something else going on and tables most definitely get turned. The most powerful element of the story is the abusive relationship between brother and sister, with the controlling, manipulative nature of the former shown in all its unpleasantness, so that you end up rooting for the sister to get out from under no matter the cost. The ‘Overtoun Bridge’ in Bev Vincent’s story is a place where local dogs continually jump over the edge to their deaths, and a good time girl seeking comfort after being left by her husband is strongly tempted to follow their example. The supernatural element is both fascinating and intriguingly understated, serving as a catalyst for the human emotions, which is where the real concerns of the story lie.
And my favourite for this section, though it’s nowhere near as clear cut as with the previous section and on another day could be another story, is Kelley Armstrong’s witty ‘Dead To Me’. This is a tongue in cheek black comedy about a woman who has, possibly, been responsible for the death of her estranged husband, and is now conversing with his ghost, which simply won’t leave her home. The irony of the situation soon becomes clear, and Armstrong’s lightness of touch carries the story along to the twist ending for which we have been primed, even though a moment or two of thought will see the whole thing fall apart. I liked the story in spite of not believing a word.
Exotic settings seems to be the theme linking stories in the third section though, as previously, it’s rather a flimsy one, and this is also the section that I consider the strongest, with nary a story that isn’t first rate, though space mitigates against me discussing them all. In ‘A Patch of Bamboo’ by Jill Snider Lum a westerner in Japan bears witness to a haunting, but his efforts to set things right only cause trouble for the living. Beautifully written, this is a tale with a strong sense of atmosphere and awareness of different cultural traditions, the dangers of interfering in things which we don’t understand. Short and sweet best describes ‘The Woods’ by Michael Kelly, the heart of the story a conversation between two old men that hints at something terrible taking place and touches on the myth of the Windigo. The ending chills. Mary E. Choo’s ‘The Language of Crows’ is a subtle story that brings to mind Hitchcock’s Birds but conveys much more than that in a strange plot involving transformation and death, a manipulative sister to a dying man and his wife who wishes to preserve her own identity. Complex and compelling, the story has an atmosphere of menace that steadily mounts as events unfold, with hints of something beyond the ordinary taking place that culminate in a quantum shift in the narrator’s understanding of how her world works. ‘Lost in a Field of Paper Flowers’ by Gord Rollo has an elderly woman with psychic powers helping a boy in a coma escape from the shadow of his abusive father. The story is topped and tailed with two telling quotations that suggest different sides to the drama played out between them, and a highlight is the subtle way in which the figure of the father is painted in colours that are thoroughly credible but at the same time invite contempt and make the reader cheer the horrific fate that awaits him at the tale’s resolution.
The last story in the book is also my favourite in this section, though again it’s a close run thing. ‘End in Ice’ by Alison Baird is a grim and downbeat account of the dawn of a new Ice Age and the end of civilisation that it ushers in. There is a cloying, claustrophobic feel to the narrative as the ice sheet advances, sweeping aside all in its path, and the world of the story’s protagonist shrinks along with the possibilities open to her. The power of nature and the folly of man play out in bleak counterpoint, one against the other, until all the signs of civilisation, its vices and virtues, are obliterated by the wall of white. This isn’t a happy story, but it is one that will linger in the memory long after this book is finished.
And if these stories leave you hankering to sample more Canadian dark fiction and wondering where to turn next, the book closes with an essay by Robert Knowlton, ‘Out of the Barrens: Two Centuries of Canadian Dark Fantasy & Horror’. Like Lovecraft’s ‘Supernatural Horror in Literature’ it uncovers a mouth watering body of work for future exploration, expanses of the imagination as wide and boundless as the country that gave them birth.
Trumpetville 