Book Review: "Close to Midnight" edited by Mark Morris

This anthology comes from a set of different anthologies which are each dedicated to the new age horror stories that come out of specific sets of time. This happens to be (I think) the third set of said stories and within the anthology there are twenty stories or so. I have to say that I was relatively excited to read them but I was also cautious as I knew a lot of new age horror stuff just plays with the gore shock factor and honestly, it annoys me and makes for sloppy writing. Close to Midnight has some good stories within though, making it better than average but, it takes some sticking out to find these good stories. You really do have to wade through other, less interesting narratives to get there.

One of the most interesting stories I found in the whole anthology was a story called Remains by Charlie Hughes. The narrator turns out to be nothing but a dead body in a strange place by the train tracks. The narrator describes that there was one day where a graffiti artist was spraying a wall and apparently saw the corpse or at least part of it. He knew that he saw it but continued with what he was doing. The passage of time means that graffiti artist is now a father with a family and only has passing thoughts about the corpse. The story kind of goes on like this where the dead body seems to watch the commuters on the train, being suggestive about how they will never truly see her at all because of where her body is. I did like the idea that the whole story was narrated by a dead body though, that was very different and made all the difference to the narrative which now, as a result, feels haunting and foreboding.

Another story I thought was pretty well written was called Nine of Diamonds by Carole Johnstone. This story deals with a woman who is depressed as her life continuously falls apart around her. It is a story where we are given a false sense of security in redemption as this woman has a job interview at a place that specialises in putting curses on people. It is well written in the sense that it is a familiar story of being 'down and out' with the idea that there is something that is always more questionable or slightly worse than being in that position.

One of the stories that I do want to talk about though is Phillip Fracassi's Autumn Sugar which I feel is typically in his style. After reading his books Boys in the Valley and A Child Alone with Strangers, this story about a kid that goes looking for his dog only to never return feels like something he would definitely write about. The parents are rightly concerned but delay actually looking for the child until it is much further than too bloody late. The wrongs of the adults around a child that cause them to fail in their duty of safety only for the child to experience the dire consequences of the adult's failures is something that Fracassi has practically perfected at this point and it is truly horrific.

The last story I will talk briefly about is Brian Keene's The Floor is Lava. This story is about a man who has a frightening vision that the floor is not actually a floor but is instead made entirely of lava. As we go through the story we realise that this is only one of many stages that are going to happen in a weird Dante's Inferno style situation blended with the sardonic metaphors of Stephen King, dark and almost strangely humourous until you find out it isn't really funny at all. Instead, it is horrifying.

As I have said, in order to get to the good stories, you kind of have to wade through others that are a little bit stereotypical and others that just are not very interesting. But there are some gems amongst them which will really make you want to restart that particular story and read the whole thing again. I've never really read anything quite like it but I don't know if I'll continue to do so.