Thirteen Specimens

by Jeffrey Thomas

THIRTEEN SPECIMENS is a collection of bizarre and disturbing short stories, poems, and odd bits and pieces found preserved in dusty jars of formaldehyde in a sealed-off attic room in the condemned museum of the mind of author Jeffrey Thomas. Included are the novellas "The Mask Play of Hahoe Byeolsin Exorcism" and "Door 7," as well as a trio of powerful stories that -- for the first time in one collection -- visit the three fictional universes that Thomas is best known for. "Close Enough" takes place in the alternate Earth of the novel "Boneland." A sadistic, otherworldly force feeds off the nightmarish images of the Vietnam War, as captured by a conscience-stricken photojournalist. "Monsters" is set in the futuristic metropolis of Punktown. A compassionate surgeon is determined to restore a grotesque alien female, purposely disfigured by the males of her clan, even if he himself incurs their wrath in the process. And "The Burning House" takes readers to the netherworld of "Letters From Hades." Two men -- one of them an angel, the other damned -- join forces in an attempt to rescue the child they both love from an army of torturing demons.

Genres: Collections, Horror

296 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Jeffrey Thomas is an American author of weird fiction, the creator of the acclaimed setting Punktown. Books in the Punktown universe include the short story collections Punktown, Voices from Punktown, Punktown: Shades of Grey (with his brother, Scott Thomas), and Ghosts of Punktown. Novels in that setting include Deadstock, Blue War, Monstrocity, Health Agent, Everybody Scream!, Red Cells, and The New God. Thomas’s other short story collections include The Unnamed Country, Gods of a Nameless Country, The Endless Fall, Haunted Worlds, Worship the Night, Thirteen Specimens, Nocturnal Emissions, Doomsdays, Terror Incognita, Unholy Dimensions, AAAIIIEEE!!!, Honey Is Sweeter Than Blood, Carrion Men, Voices from Hades, The Return of Enoch Coffin, and Entering Gosston. His other novels include The American, Boneland, Subject 11, Letters From Hades, The Fall of Hades, The Exploded Soul, The Nought, Thought Forms, Beyond the Door, Lost in Darkness, and A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Dealers.

His work has been reprinted in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII (editor Karl Edward Wagner), The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror #14 (editors Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling), and Year’s Best Weird Fiction #1 (editors Laird Barron and Michael Kelly). At NecronomiCon 2024 Thomas received the Robert Bloch Award for his contributions to weird fiction.

Though he considers Viet Nam his second home, Thomas lives in Massachusetts.

Reviews

[GD · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jeffrey Thomas is the motherfucking MAN! This is my sixth book by him, and my opinion that he's the most naturally talented writer in today's weird fiction is as solid as ever. I still can't decide if he's glib as hell or if he really refines his work to sound the way it does, but he's like listening to someone on a long plane ride telling you something that would have been the best Twilight Zone episode ever. I've said before he's kind of like the Ramones of weird fiction, distilled down to the essentials: fantastic stories that usually move like lightning, with completely badass settings and almost always with a twist that went in a direction I wouldn't have expected. The last thing is probably what he does best, and what makes him so addictive.

This book has a few "stories" that aren't stories at all, but are pretty awesome anyway, little poems, recipes, a shirt that fucking sends your head through different dimensions when you stick your head through the neck hole (don't wash with bleach or hot water!). But the main stories:

These Are the Exhibits: Kind of going with the whole theme of the book as consisting of "specimens" that were collected by Jeffrey Thomas, this story is about a woman wandering through a strange museum with a stranger guide. Kind of reminiscent of his longer work, Beyond the Door.

Close Enough: An alternate history recollection of the Vietnam War by a photojournalist later on. Alternate history in that humans have all this badass technology made out of insects given us by bizarre aliens who simply want us to use their technology to make life horrible and violent and record it all for them to watch. Also a tiny piece of social commentary at the end regarding the intense hatred the South Vietnamese to this day hold for the Vietcong.

Sympathetic Identity Disorder: Odd little story told from the point of view of an old doctor talking about spontaneous sex changes due to reincarnation, maybe? Learned reincarnation?

American Cchinnamasta: I just skipped this word in my head's inner dialogue reading this one, haha. VERY graphic and gory ending to this otherwise deceptively innocent story. The descriptions of the Indian goddess are foreshadowing. I've got a really strong stomach for this kind of thing, and even I was probably making faces towards the end.

Monsters: Great Punktown story (look up Punktown on the internet, it's too big and awesome for me to go into right now) about a doctor taking care of a giant slug-like female beast that has been mutilated and almost killed for some obscure religious reason by her own "people." There's even sexual tension between the doctor and the beast.

October 32: I first came across this in a special Halloween thing that may have just been for Kindle, three Jeffrey Thomas stories for about a dollar. I couldn't remember the details of this one, just the ending, so I happily reread it. One of his VERY best, I swear to Christ this guy could singlehandedly write entire seasons of the Twilight Zone. I can't tell you much without giving it away, but isn't that the best title ever?

The Mask Play of Hahoe Byeolsin Exorcism: Having landed in Korea on my way to Thailand 11 years ago, this story was full of familiar things, the traveler in a foreign east Asian country that's shockingly westernized (that wasn't the original destination anyway, it was Vietnam in this story), the guest house, the foreign tv, the trouble with banks, embassies, getting directions, even the coffee and internet news searches. This was a pretty long story, and not like the others in that it was pretty slow-moving, and also more like a Hitchcock movie, centering around a murder witnessed through a dark window across an alley and the resultant suffocating paranoia. It's a slow burner, but it's worth it.

The Burning House: This was the reason I didn't give the book 5 stars, this was a kind of, I don't know, I didn't like it. It is based on the question a lot of kids raised in religious families ask about heaven, and do nice Buddhists get to go, or atheists, or unbaptized children, and if not what happens to them. Thomas's answer is no they don't get to go to heaven, they all go to hell, because God is a son of a bitch. I love the idea of making a story based around this, but it fell flat here, was a little childish (people (one damned and one angel) are walking around in hell fighting demons with a shotgun and an M-16) and had a cheesy feel-good ending. I think he should probably revisit this idea later and change the ending.

Door 7: Oh man, pour yourself a whiskey and sit down for this story. It's kind of long, but this is what Jeffrey Thomas does best: paranoia, crazy fucking story, unstable characters, mounting dread, gruesome violence, twist ending. I'm a little unsure exactly what happened in the end, but I think that's on purpose, because it's in first person and the narrator is (maybe quite literally) losing his mind. Lonely weird guy takes late night walks through what's probably not a completely abandoned industrial estate, that's all I'm going to say.

Overall, with the exception of The Burning House, this book is a machine gun clip full of live rounds, open up it up and blow your brains out with it. A complete Kindle steal for the amount of fun I got out of it.

[Alan · Rating 1 out of 5]

I quit after six solid pages of prose so awkward, word by word and sentence by sentence, that I just couldn't bear to continue. I did open the book to a later page at random, just to see if it got any better, and this is the first phrase I saw: "he made a wincing motion."

This book sorely needed an editor, one who has read Strunk & White at least once, one who could have explained why "he made a wincing motion" really is, objectively, not as good a choice as just saying "he winced."

I winced, and gave up.

[Geoff · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an eclectic collection, as it has everything except the kitchen sink thrown it. You have vignettes, short stories and novellas all thrown together. The meat of the collection is the novellas and they are the most satisfying. Close Enough is a disturbing tale of a photographer who must take photos of the disturbing scenes he's seeing. The Mask Play is an interesting tale set in Korea, where masks and murder follow an American who is temporally situated here waiting for his vista. It has a nice twist at the end. Monsters is from his Punktown setting, and an interesting take on a doctor with morals which apply to something as disgusting as the patient he's working on. The Burning House is from his Hades setting and is a pretty cool story about an angel that won't give up on his son who is condemned to Hades. The last story I wasn't thrilled with Door 7. It moved pretty slowly, and the payoff wasn't that great. But I really enjoyed everything else in this collection, and it was a joy to read. If you want to get acquainted with Jeffrey Thomas and his worlds that he created, this collection is the best place to start. Recommended!

[Robin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I always enjoy reading Jeffrey Thomas, who walks along the boundaries of bizarro without going over. The stories are always coherent, but the things he comes up with! And his depictions of emotional conditions can be so poignant. The last story is terribly sad, until the end, which I confess I did not get.

[Jengordon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very weird stuff, nicely written, but it gets a little tedious toward the end. Probably would have been better had I read the stories a week apart, rather than in two sittings.

[Karl]

This book is a PC of 150 copies signed and numbered by Jeffrey Thomas.