The Ghoul Goes West

by Dale Bailey

The Ghoul Goes West by Dale Bailey is a fantasy novelette about two brothers, both obsessed with movies--one a not very successful screenwriter, the other an academic. When one dies from a drug overdose, his brother travels to Hollywood to investigate, and make amends for not being as supportive as he could have been.

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Genres: Fiction, Fantasy, Short Stories

46 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 17, 2018

About the author

Dale was born in West Virginia in 1968, and grew up in a town called Princeton, just north of the Virginia line. His stories have appeared in lots of places—The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Amazing Stories, Sci-Fiction, Lightspeed Magazine, and various anthologies. Several of them have been nominated for awards, and “Death and Suffrage,” later filmed as part of Showtime’s television anthology series Masters of Horror, won the International Horror Guild Award.

In 2003, Golden Gryphon Press collected his stories as The Resurrection Man’s Legacy and Other Stories. Two novels, The Fallen and House of Bones, came out from Signet books around the same time. A third novel—Sleeping Policemen, written with with his friend Jack Slay, Jr.—came out in 2006. He has also written a study of haunted-house fiction called American Nightmares.

He lives in North Carolina with his wife and daughter.

Reviews

[karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Movies change lives.

That’s the fundamental axiom of my faith.

Unfortunately, they don’t always change them for the better.

oh, man, i was SO THRILLED to see a new free tor short on the site today, after more than two whole months of zero free tor shorts, that i devoured this one like halloween candy even though i usually stay away from novelettes - i use tor shorties as saturday morning wake-em-ups, and committing to a fancy long novellette is too languid an introduction to the day - i gotta hit the ground running! however, you starve me long enough and i'll even eat olives (maybe), so 42 pages before my eyes are fully open? consider it gobbled.

this one is lovely, although i know there will be grumblings of "not fantasy enough" from people who grumble about such things (i may have, myself, once along the way). it's true, the magical element is not taking center stage, but the writing is so good, and it's a tale full of the gloomy themes i love. and i realized just now that he wrote another free tor short i enjoyed - The End of the End of Everything (although looking at it now, i only gave it three stars and a "meh" review, so my memory is a dummy), and one i am definitely going to check out soon, even though it is also a novelette - A Rumor of Angels.

since i have promised myself to review these tor shorts quick n' shallow from now on, so i don't get further behind in my reviewing than i already am, i won't say much, even though as a novelette, there's more content to discuss than usual, but a promise is a promise, even if it's only a self-promise. n.b. - i have made no promises about run-on sentences or excessive comma-usage. anyway, ambition, self-delusion, despair, mourning, regret, defeat, bittersweet possibilities, alla my bread and butter. plus, hollywood and the dazzling allure of fame and glory, to add a little glitter to the grit-themes. longer than usual, but definitely worth it. plus, "dale bailey" is a fun name to say.

perhaps i should go back to writing proper reviews for these tor shorts instead of just typing whatever pops into my head as quickly as i can type it. maybe in 2019.

WELCOME BACK, FREE TOR SHORTS!



read it for yourself here:

https://www.tor.com/2018/01/17/the-gh...

come to my blog!

[Igrowastreesgrow · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow wow wow!!! A wonderful short that bends time and reality. It has the ability to make you question what has actually happened or what could happen. I really enjoyed this story. Thank you.

[audrey · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is all a reconstruction, of course, colored by my own affection for Lugosi.

Yup, it's a novelette-length mash note for Bela Lugosi mixed in with threadbare ruminations about family or destiny and none of it works. One star for complete sentences, one star for a decent attempt at weirdness halfway through. And I'm being generous.

[Prabhjot Kaur · Rating 3 out of 5]

A grief-stricken, emotional story about lost dreams, things that could have been and they might be in some other dimension. I enjoyed the story and all the while I was reading it, I felt hopeful and hopeless at the same time. A strong start but fizzled out at the end.

3 stars

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

Melancholy, atmospheric story that gave me chills. Old Hollywood and new Hollywood aren't so different, it seems.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

Superbly researched and emotionally satisfying. A brother travels to Hollywood to see how his brother died only to find videos that can’t be real. If you are into old Hollywood movies, you'd enjoy this even more.

https://www.tor.com/2018/01/17/the-gh...

[Nerine Dorman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not so much as a story, but a collection of dog ends and ghosts, redolent with the possible dreams and lost dreams, and people slipping between the cracks. Because the Hollywood we see on the silver screen is an illusion, and those spent chasing that mirage invariably face disappointment. This story spoke to me on a deeper level, itchy behind the eyes.

[Beth Roberts · Rating 5 out of 5]

Once again, thank you, Tor, for providing such quality stories absolutely free for a true story-junkie like me. I have no idea how Ellen Datlow finds the time to read all these stories she puts into her amazingly endless anthologies. I've come to trust her judgment, and when Tor yields up another freebie that's been culled by Datlow I pretty much drop everything. I know it's going to be good.

This one reminded me a little bit of Excerpts from a Film, another Tor freebie I read last year: they both have that Old Hollywood enigma about them. Both are also longer than usual offerings. If you love old Hollywood or film nostalgia, I'd recommend both.

This one I'd have to describe as Twilight Zone meshed with that old Kinks song "Celluloid Heroes" tangled up with that family that lives a street over, two doors down. You know those people - well, not really, only by sight. The ones who live the Great American Everyday Tragedy.

Oh, wait: that could be any of us.

Check it out.

[Cristina Alves · Rating 4 out of 5]

https://osrascunhos.com/2018/04/03/th...

Hollywood destrói pessoas. De mais do que uma forma. Destrói as pessoas que conseguem o estrelato e que para tal abdicam de um parte de si. Destrói as pessoas que seguem sonhos de sucesso no meio cinematográfico. Destrói os que perseguem uma obsessão.

O relacionamento de dois irmãos centra-se, sobretudo, nos filmes. Mas são também estes que acabam por os afastar – o irmão mais velho muda-se para Hollywood com o objectivo de escrever guiões, enquanto o mais novo segue uma via mais académica estudando filmes. Ambos preferem filmes que tocam no fantástico de horror.

Quando o mais novo recebe uma chamada que indica a morte do mais velho, percebe que a vida do irmão foi destruída lentamente pelo perseguir de um sonho, alimentado pelo surgir de uma série de filmes impossíveis – filmes que teoricamente se tinham ficado por meros planos, ou filmes que ficaram a meio devido a alguma desgraça.

Esta história não é das melhores que já foram publicadas no TOR.com mas é uma história envolvente que reflecte o fascínio pelos antigos filmes de horror, uma alusão a referências como Bela Lugosi e a tantos outros que se perderam no meio dos filmes.

The Ghoul goes west foi publicado pela Tor.com e encontra-se disponível gratuitamente.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting story and one I much enjoyed. The writers love of old horror movies shines through and the Bela Lugosi backstory was very interesting. Alas it did not completely work for me and the ending was, no doubt deliberately, inconclusive and open.

[Cat M · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really loved this, it's haunting and bittersweet and full of both old-Hollywood nostalgia and forever-Hollywood realism.

It's the story of two brothers who love movies, and all the ways that love both sustains and destroys them.

cw: off-screen suicide

[Joe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nostalgic and wistful - a ghost story about a ghost story.

[Steven Cole · Rating 2 out of 5]

Another of the bits of free fiction from tor.com, this one left me dry. 2 of 5.

[rixx · Rating 1 out of 5]

[The Ghoul Goes West](https://www.tor.com/2018/01/17/the-gh...) may be nice if you're an Old Hollywood buff, but otherwise it falls flat.

[Marco · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Ghoul Goes West is a novelette about two brothers, both obsessed with movies. One a not very successful screenwriter, the other an academic. When one dies from a drug overdose, his brother travels to Hollywood to investigate, and make amends for not being as supportive as he could have been.
The genre of this story is "magical realism": the story is deeply rooted in real history (in particular I learned a lot about the life of Bela Lugosi, the actor that deeply affected the lives of the two fictional brothers of the story), and the plot is completely realistic, but for a very small, limited, element. The fantastic element is not the focus of the story, but more of a catalyst for other realist events that follows.

[Trigger Warning Database]

Trigger & Content Warnings

Suicide, off-page

[Katherine · Rating 2 out of 5]

I dunno about this one. I kept reading it, waiting for something to happen, and there was a little light touch of the paranormal, but that was really it. I can't tell if this was a fictionalized memoir or what exactly was going on here. It ends abruptly, and I just really was puzzled by it.

If you want to know more about Lugosi, I highly suggest the podcast You Must Remember This, and her series about Lugosi and Karloff.

[JM · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bit reminiscent of Latin American magical realism, and sufficiently self-aware about its shortcomings that in the end the narrator draws a parallel between the resolution of his tale and the subject matter he's been discussing, Bailey's story has enough honesty that it's easy to forgive its missteps. The Kinks' "Celluloid Heroes" kept popping up in my head while reading this.

[Janet Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A touching story about lost opportunities--not just to make life matter in big ways, but to keep all of us human. Haunting.

[LittlePiscesReading · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very beautiful meditation, very quietly devastating.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Annathea · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh.