occult | Lorelei By Starlight

Recently I read and was blown away by Joe Hill’s NOS4A2. So, I decided to write something up on Horns, too. The short summary of the book is that a guy wakes up with horns on his head and things get weird. However, this book is a lot more than that. It does some intricate footwork with childhood and fantasy, the difference between good and evil, and horror and comedy. The characters feel real, even when the weird stuff starts happening. Ig is clumsy and honest and often less than likable and, through it all, completely human. Hill pulls you in immediately

Ignatius Martin Parrish spent the night drunk and doing terrible things. He woke the next morning with a headache, put his hands to his temples, and felt something unfamiliar, a pair of knobby pointed protuberances. He was so ill — wet-eyed and weak — he didn’t think anything of it at first, was too hung-over for thinking or worry.

But, when he was swaying above the toilet, he glanced at himself in the mirror over the sink and saw he had grown horns while he slept. He lurched in surprise, and for the second time in twelve hours he pissed on his feet.

Ig’s day continues to get worse, and we learn that he has been accused — but never convicted — of the murder of his ex-girlfriend, Merrin, almost a year before. Small town life has made it hard for him. Many believe that he is guilty, and so he pretty much has had to deal with his grief on his own. On top of this, he now has the horns to deal with, which seem to compel whoever he is around to tell him — in complete honesty — all of their deepest, darkest desires. People seem to notice the horns, but not really find them unusual, and they kind of forget about them as soon as they’re not around him anymore. As Ig goes from family members to friends in search of help, he begins to learn more about the truth behind Merrin’s death.

Woven between the present day situation are flashes back to Ig’s childhood when he and Merrin first met in church (he thought she was flashing him a message in Morse code with her gold cross), and to a summer filled with cherry bombs (the real, old dangerous kinds), wild rides down a hill in a shopping cart (naked on a dare), and his first interactions with the third member of their little group, Lee.

The contrast of the raw feelings from childhood — first love, the efforts at fitting in — with the darker and more disturbing feelings of Ig’s present is interesting. Ig and Merrin seem to be made for each other, and at one point find a magical treehouse where they spend a few snatched hours together. They can never find that treehouse again, and it seems that the time they shared there was a doorway, or at least the beginning of what will happen to both of them as they grow into adulthood.

Ig’s transformation into the physical representation of what we typically would consider The Devil, is in marked difference to his all consuming, righteous need to find and punish Merrin’s killer. Hill works this transformation incrementally throughout the book, and there are aspects of it that are very clever, such as how Ig obtains red skin and a timely scene involving a pitchfork.

Throughout the book, though, there is the horror of loss of love, loss of world, and loss of self. Ig has to deal with losing everything, piece by piece, and he has little control over what is happening to him. Hill brings the book to closure with a bittersweet finale that I will not forget.

I am looking forward to seeing what the new film of the movie will bring, but I would highly recommend that you read the book first!

If you have seen some of my previous posts, you may know that I am a huge fan of Laird Barron. Out this month is The Children of Old Leech: A Tribute to the Carnivorous Cosmos of Laird Barron. The book is a compilation of short stories written in the vein of Barron’s work and features a superb cast of authors.

The book starts off with an eerie morsel from Gemma Files called “The Harrow,” in which an amateur archaeologist uncovers a number of mysterious artifacts in the yard of her new house. More greatness follows. “Pale Apostle” by J.T. Glover and Jesse Bullington takes place in a deteriorating import/export house, where a particular package contains more than the proprietors bargained for. And, I especially enjoyed “Walpurgisnacht” by Orrin Grey, which is a celebration of darkness complete with a remote castle, a mysterious film, and a gathering of people who have been invited to the show of the ages.

If you are a fan of Barron’s remote and creepy forests, there are several stories that feature this setting. For example, “Learn to Kill” by Michael Cisco incorporates a feeling of ancient alienness that is often found in Barron’s own remote populations, as the narrator faces a merciless corruption of his own body. Richard Gavin’s truly scary entry, “The Old Pageant,” recounts the aftermath of a terrifying story told to a child. And, Stephen Graham Jones‘s “Brushdogs” shows us how easy it can be to simply step from one world to the next.

There are also a few stories that are presented in the form of correspondence or diary entries. Molly Tanzer’s story, “Good Lord, Show Me The Way,” is presented in a collection of emails surrounding the mysterious disappearance of a student conducting research for her dissertation. In “Notes for ‘The Barn in the Wild'” by Paul Tremblay, we are allowed to read the diary of a man who set out in search of The Black Guide and found … something. And, in “The Woman in the Wood” by Daniel Mills, we are provided with entries from a centuries old diary where a boy recounts his experiences with a mysterious and dangerous woman.

Many of the stories managed to take on different settings and character types that, while different, still complement the overall feeling of Barron’s work. Jeffrey Thomas’s “Snake Wine” takes us to the world of an ex-pat in Vietnam who becomes entangled with a young woman who wields a deadly elixir. An almost psychedelic tone backs T.E. Grau’s “Love Songs from the Hydrogen Jukebox,” whose fantastic guru turns out to be worshipping more than just a magical high. Michael Griffin introduces us to an interesting and ancient ritual performed by an elusive cult in “Firedancing,” and we get a peek into a strange future in Allyson Bird’s “The Golden Stars at Night,” one in which our existence is fragile and not necessarily assured. In Joseph S. Pulver, Sr.’s “The Last Crossroads on a Calendar of Yesterdays,” a couple of guys deliver some very strange books to a reclusive older gentleman, with macabre Nazi ties. John Langan’s “Ymir” provides a new twist on some old characters from more mainstream mythology, while Cody Goodfellow adds a sort of mad scientist twist to his not so mainstream gladiatorial story, “Of a Thousand Cuts.” The collection finishes up on an appropriately creepy note with a pair of drifters, in Scott Nicolay and Jesse James Douthit-Nicolay’s “Tenebrionidae,” who end up taking the ride of their lives.

Editors Ross E. Lockhart and Justin Steele have put together a really great collection of short stories and, while the stories here definitely do justice to the flavor of Barron’s cosmos, they are also much different than anything you are likely to have read before. Find out more and score your copy now at Word Horde.