The Night Doctor and Other Tales

by Steve Rasnic Tem

This new collection of 25 stories, including two appearing here for the first time, collects the best of Steve Rasnic Tem's dark fiction published since his landmark Centipede tome Out of the A Storybook of Horrors. A number have appeared in various Year’s Best volumes. All represent the high quality of Tem’s prose and the wide range of his approaches to the horror genre.

In The Night Doctor And Other Tales, you will encounter the most haunting figures ever to cross Tem’s a man obsessed with his own breath and the breathing he hears that is not his own; a husband waiting for his wife as new bodies appear at the bottom of his yard; a weekend fisherman and the unseen man sharing his fishing hut; a loyal husband dealing with the latest changes in his wife’s physical appearance; a strange widower in his house by the sea; a devoted mother trying to protect her son from the nightmares of the past; a son returning to a dreaded summer vacation spot; a grandfather protecting his grandchildren from a legacy of dark transformations; and, in the title story, an elderly man awaits the visit of a mysterious family physician.

Stories included in this
Breathing
Apartment B
Red Rabbit
The Hanged Man
The Fishing Hut
A Sudden Event
Paula Breaks
Lost in the Garden of Earthly Delights
Blattidae Wine
Half-Light
Mister Ainsley
The Long Fade into Evening
Domestic Magic
The Secret Laws of the Universe
The Man in the Rose Bushes
The Night Doctor
The Enemy Within
Stick Men
Too Many Ghosts
When You're Not Looking
Between the Pilings
The Erased
The Wake
The Weight Lost
The Monster Makers

Genres: Horror, Short Stories, Collections

302 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 1, 2019

About the author

Steve Rasnic Tem was born in Lee County Virginia in the heart of Appalachia. He is the author of over 350 published short stories and is a past winner of the Bram Stoker, International Horror Guild, British Fantasy, and World Fantasy Awards. His story collections include City Fishing, The Far Side of the Lake, In Concert (with wife Melanie Tem), Ugly Behavior, Celestial Inventories, and Onion Songs. An audio collection, Invisible, is also available. His novels include Excavation, The Book of Days, Daughters, The Man In The Ceiling (with Melanie Tem), and the recent Deadfall Hotel.

Reviews

[inciminci · Rating 4 out of 5]

With a reading time of approximately three months, I possibly used up the maximum acceptable reading duration for a short story collection for Steve Rasnic Tem’s The Night Doctor, but I feel like it was necessary for the type of stories he writes. Generally of cumbersome, serious nature with a slightly melancholy or even sad undertone, Tem’s short stories firmly pull his reader into his unique literary world, in which the daily life quickly slips into darker channels and end flowing into catastrophic, claustrophobic oceans. Hence, these stories aren’t easily consumable and need time to show effect.

If you have a collection of equally weighty stories, I feel like the arrangement plays a big role in making the reading experience easier for the reader and that’s right where this collection might have failed. There are a big chunks of stories revolving around a similar set of characters – especially married couples and older men – set in similar kinds of places – some sort of accommodation or a house –, dealing with similar troubles such as aging, mental problems, unwanted or shocking transformations leaving the same kind of impressions, it might be better to arrange these in a more varied way, in order to prevent monotony. This book fails there in that the first half of the collection feels like a repetition of the same story with only minimal differences. If it’s intentional, I missed that point and it considerably slowed my reading. It is only about the halfway mark, in which the stories gain some momentum, become more animated, more entertaining if you want to, that’s where we can say the book truly establishes a connection to its reader.

That said, there were more than enough stories offering very original, sort of cagy, sort of isolated but always very interesting, even entertaining atmosphere very reminiscent of Brian Evenson’s stories. My highlights: Red Rabbit is about a married couple who repeatedly finds skinned rabbits on their porch and ends in a nice shock ending; Lost in the Gardens of Earthly Delights a strange piece of writing told from the point of view of a social worker for the homeless who claims to wander in different worlds at night, but then experiences weird stuff in her actual real life too; Blattidae Wine in which a guy needs to deal with his wife turning into an insect, and no, they’re not the Samsa’s; Domestic Magic, co-written with Melanie Tem, deals with child neglect among people with very witchy skills; in The Secret Laws of the Universe a man’s urge to kill his wife is strengthened by the conversations he’s having with everyday objects like the coffee carafe or his car; the titular Night Doctor a sad and scary tale of a lifelong companionship fading into old age; Between the Pilings, a piece of cosmic scare set in Innsmouth at the sea, and finally The Weight Loss which is enough to trigger anyone who ever has had to diet in their life.

A very worthwhile collection I’d recommend for slow, intense reading.

[Char · Rating 5 out of 5]

THE NIGHT DOCTOR AND OTHER TALES is a collection of the dark and the weird from one of my all time favorite authors. It's terrific!

Grief and loss play a big part in these stories, as big a part as they play in real life. Sometimes there's also an eerie side to the tales here, but there are few outright scares. The predominant feeling I came away with can be stated in one word: Unsettling.

I can't review each story because there are a lot of them, but the ones that really stuck with me are:

BREATHING: The word unsettling describes this perfectly. Breathing is something you don't notice until it's gone. I could feel this man's grief in my very bones.

RED RABBIT is one of my favorite Tem stories of all time and I relish every re-read. It's just so damn disturbing.

DOMESTIC MAGIC: And I thought my mom was a witch!

THE MAN IN THE ROSE BUSHES: For whatever reason, this one reminded me of Robert Aickman-it was weird.

STICK MEN: I thought about this story all day. It creeped me out.

BETWEEN THE PILINGS made me think of a conversation I recently had with my husband about a vacation we took years ago. We talked about what it would be like at that place now. This is a story about just that-going back. Or maybe it's about moving on and letting go? You make the call. There was a palpable almost suffocating atmosphere here-between that and the name of the town, I felt a faint Lovecraftian vibe.

THE WEIGHT LOST: No, that's not a typo, but it IS a weird, weird tale that left me feeling...off balance.

I could go on and on about this book, the nature of all the stories and how much a fan I am of Steve Rasnic Tem's work. In fact, I briefly will! Back in my early teens, Tem's name in an anthology meant I was checking that sucker out of the library as fast as any superhero could move. To me, his name meant that I would be guaranteed relief from the boredom of a long summer day. In that way, his name has been in the background for almost my entire life. He's like the soundtrack to my life, but in written form.

His tales have always featured variety, unease and sometimes outright horror. They're entertaining and they make you think. You can take away from them all kinds of things to ponder, and sometimes they just haunt your mind for years. (CITY FISHING, I'm looking at you.) What they have never done is bore me, and for that I am grateful.

This is yet another excellent collection from the outstanding, literary mind of Steve Rasnic Tem. Let him invite you- entice you, even-but don't expect to get too comfortable settling in, because the specialty here is exactly the opposite: UNSETTLING!

My highest recommendation-especially to fans of the weird tales!

Available in October from Centipede Press!

*I was offered a paperback ARC of this collection by the author himself, in exchange for my honest review. This is it. (And, I was honored to.)

[Karl]

This is copy 40 of 300 signed copies produced, Signed by Steve Rasnic Tem and Gary Laib.
300 signed copies; 700 unsigned copies.

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection is comprised mainly of Tem’s short fiction between 2012 and 2017, weighted a little more heavily to the newer. Themes of husbands losing their wives abound, and the grief is palpable. So many stories of loss of a grasp on reality, slow mental dissolution, filled with an inability to escape the black hole of ennui.

“The Man in the Rose Bushes” was a nice change of pace with a creepy Jamesian ghost story, where our unlucky antiquarian was a curious American tourist boy. I think “Between the Pilings” would be better served without a veneer of Innsmouth and allowed to just be its own weird bit of disassociation.

[BlurbGoesHere · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Night Doctor & Other Tales

[Blurb goes here]

I know I've said this often. Anthologies are 70% 'meh' stories, 20% 'not-so-bad' stories and 10% great stories. This one, unfortunately, is no different. I'm not doing the in depth, tale by tale review I should. Instead I will give my opinion on a couple of things that, to me, are important. Steve Rasnic's writing style is beautiful. That alone makes the trip worthwhile. The stories themselves, not so much. Why? Because, as it turns out, most share common themes. They feel repetitive. Also, and this rings true for a lot of anthologies, you'll have to imagine the ending, since most of the stories don't have one. I'm not a fan of the 'leave it to the readers imagination', it feels a bit lazy to me...either that or I'm the lazy one, not wanting to imagine the ending to a story I didn't write. It's all in the eyes of the beholder...

Still, I will have a go at this book again, in the near future. That's how much I enjoyed the tales' eerie atmosphere, and Rasnic's prose.

Thank you for the free copy!

[Daniel Wright · Rating 3 out of 5]

A few good stories in there but, on the whole, pretty underwhelming.

Breathing 4/5
Apartment B 3/5
Red Rabbit 4/5
The Hanged Man 4/5
The Fishing Hut 3/5
A Sudden Event 3/5
Paula Breaks 2/5
Lost in the Garden of Earthly Delights 4/5
Blattidae Wine 3/5
Half-Light 3/5
Mister Ainsley 2/5
The Long Fade into Evening 2/5
Domestic Magic 4/5
The Secret Laws of the Universe 4/5
The Man in the Rose Bushes 4/5
The Night Doctor 4/5
The Enemy Within 3/5
Stick Men 4/5
Too Many Ghosts 3/5
When You’re Not Looking 3/5
Between the Pilings 2/5
The Erased 4/5
The Wake 2/5
The Weight Lost 3/5
The Monster Makers 3/5

[Eugene Novikov · Rating 3 out of 5]

A number of high points (“Mr. Ainsley,” “The Man in the Rose Bushes,” “Between the Pilings”) and the prose is uniformly superb, but too many of these stories just run headlong into symbolic abstraction without offering much in the way of reward. Certain thematic obsessions—characters feeling unmoored after the death of a loved one, or struggling to find some shape to the arc of their lives as the end nears—bubble up again and again, but only occasionally coalesce into a substantial-seeming tale. Think Brian Evenson but slightly monotonous and not quite as consistent.

[Kevin Lucia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review coming soon.

[Ran · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall: 3.5, rounded up to 4 out of 5. I'm also giving individual ratings to each story.

Breathing - 3/5
A man has recently lost his wife. Every night, he hears breathing. He’s haunted by the idea, the memory of her, and he doesn’t know how to deal with it. The ending is kind of weird, but I can somehow grasp the concept. Decent, I guess.

Apartment B - 3/5
Three years after the death of his wife, a man enters early retirement and moves into a second-floor apartment unit called Apartment B. He is visited by a strange woman who seems to be able to enter his unit even without a key. This is one weird story… like, really weird. I actually don’t get it that much. I have a vague idea of what occurred, but that’s about it.

The Red Rabbit - 3.5/5
Matt and Clara have been seeing dead rabbits on their porch almost every day. It’s obvious there’s something wrong with their relationship, and it’s also obvious that there’s something wrong with her. Ending confused the heck out of me, but it IS pretty creepy, I gotta say.

The Hanged Man - 3.5/5
I’m not even going to attempt to make a summary for this because it’s so, so weird. However, I do like the descriptions of the man, and I managed to piece together an image of him in my mind as I read. Still, the ending left me with plenty of questions.

The Fishing Hut 2/5
A man goes fishing for relaxation but finds something else entirely. It started out kinda slow and only began picking up in speed after the second half.

A Sudden Event 4/5
Ann sees a chair in the corner, Roger doesn’t. FINALLY. First story I liked.

Paula Breaks 3/5
Kinda weird. I liked how it was going at first, but it’s way too vague.

Lost in the Garden of Earthly Delights 4.5/5
I like this one. Doesn’t feel scary at all, more wholesome. Unless I didn’t understand it again.

Blattidae Wine 3/5
Blattidae is the scientific name for the family of cockroaches. This story is fairly direct to the point in terms of scares, but it’s still confusing as hell. I think that’s one trend that this anthology has. Most of it is confusing. I’m a third into the book and I feel fairly confident saying that.

Half-Light 4/5
Elaine is an old woman confined to a facility of sorts, with nurses taking care of her. Every now and then, she sees a half-light outside her window, which she’s compelled to follow. We’re not sure exactly if Elaine is in a mental health ward, or in a facility for old people. At first, I thought it was the former, though later on it became weirder and weirder and I couldn’t be quite sure anymore. But the writing is beautiful so I actually enjoyed it.

Mister Ainsley 4/5
Mister Ainsley is visited by a campaign volunteering doing house-to-house visits. This is a rather fascinating story, and I’m not disappointed by the ending. It’s more direct to the point than the others but still does a good job at being subtle enough to maintain its creep factor.

The Long Fade Into Evening 3/5
Another strange story. At this point, I’m not even going to bother trying to describe the stories. I’m just going to rate them unless they’re particularly outstanding, I suppose.

Domestic Magic 2/5

The Secret Laws of the Universe 2/5
The Man in the Rose Bushes 2/5

The Night Doctor 2/5
I expected a lot from this story considering it’s the title of the book, but I was a bit let down.

The Enemy Within 3.5/5
I read this one twice. The ending was vague, as is most of them, but the build-up was interesting enough that I re-read it to try to understand it better.

Stick Men 3.5/5
Written beautifully. The ending was still too subtle for my liking but… I liked this one.

Too Many Ghosts 2/5

When You’re Not Looking 4.5/5
This is a good one. The ending was still pretty vague, but I loved it from start to finish.

Between the Pilings 4/5
Whitcomb visits an old motel that he went to with his parents when he was much younger. I liked the ending. I wish it was less vague, but I had enough details.

The Erased 3.5/5

The Wake 3/5

The Weight Lost 3/5

The Monster Maker 2/5

Overall thoughts:
One thing I’m noticing is that the author has a way with words — I’m awed by some of the sentences and paragraphs in these short stories — but the plots don’t make a lot of sense. Or if they do, they’re told in such a confusing way that I can’t make sense of it. I'm also not a fan of the open endings/interpretations... they took away from the creep factor because I wasn't sure entirely where the story was actually going.

[Al · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review!

The Night Doctor And Other Tales is a collection of short dark fiction stories, two of which are appearing here for the first time. Many of the stories are quite short but still haunting and unsettling reads written with beautiful prose.

Tem's writing is very atmospheric and although not usually outright scary, it is quite eerie and leaves you both wanting more and wanting to get away from it- and I do mean that as a compliment. This is the kind of horror book that sticks with you and makes you think of it when you see a shadowy place by your fence or dark mud in a canal. Tem also has a very good way of writing characters that you feel you know well, despite only just now meeting them for a short moment.

As much as I enjoyed most of these stories, some of them did not seem to give a full sense of closure as much as I wished for. I wanted to see these characters through to the end, to know what had become of them. Over all though, I enjoyed this book and particularly Tem's writing quite a bit.

[Simms · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars rounded up. I've encountered Steve Rasnic Tem's name on award lists (Bram Stoker, World Fantasy) before but this is the first of his work that I've read. Overall, it was a good first experience. I might compare most of the stories to bad dreams: as you read them you're immersed in a creepy, unsettling tone, often with some fuzzy logic and dreamlike imagery, but once you finish not much sticks with you aside from an unsettled feeling. Without any real standout memorable stories I can't rate the collection that highly but it's well worth dipping into for a spooky fifteen minutes at a time. I will certainly pursue more of Tem's work.

Thanks to NetGalley and Crossroad Press for the ARC.

[Ira Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting and creepy collection of short stories, many of whose protagonists walk the line between reality and unreality. As in any volume like this, there are stories that shine (Breathing, The Red Rabbit, Mister Ainsley, Between the Pilings) and others that don’t quite work, some of which don’t even have any definable ending. The writing, as always with Mr. Tem’s work, is outstanding. Overall, a weird (in a good way) assortment of stories.

My thanks to Crossroad Press and to Netgalley for a reader’s copy of this book.

[D.K. Hundt]

THE NIGHT DOCTOR AND OTHER TALES - By Steve Rasnic Tem – Rerelease

I may dive back into this Collection at a later date, but for right now I’m putting it aside at 31%.

From what I have read thus far, the following are my favorites:

‘Blattidae Wine’ – Creepy And Oh So Disturbingly Good

‘Breathing’

‘Red Rabbit’

‘Paula Breaks’

‘Lost in the Garden of Earthly Delights’

Thank you, NetGalley and A Macabre Ink Production (Crossroad Press), for providing me with an eBook of THE NIGHT DOCTOR AND OTHER TALES at the request of an honest review.

[Des Lewis · Rating 5 out of 5]

The real Night Doctor curated this whole wonderful collection, whatever the suitable case for treatment. The optimum gestalt of dark imaginative fiction as a disarming and counterintuitive aid to keep body and soul together.

The detailed review of this book posted elsewhere under my name is too long to post here.
Above is one of its observations at the time of the review.

[Rebekka · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this as it was a lot of short stories, very easy to read and get into and a lot of suspense. This is really good if you are on a break at work and enjoy reading as they're very quick to get through. My favourite was half light. I enjoyed the story of Elaine and the half light she sees outside of her window. However we are unsure if she is mentally unwell.

[Rick Powell · Rating 4 out of 5]

An unsettling collection of stories that get under your skin. Quiet, sublime, and dark, Tem has the power to scare you by not what is shown, but what is felt.

[Wayne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another great collection from Steve Rasnic Tem. Many great stories, and had to pick the best (maybe the title story). Steve Rasnic Tem never disappoints. #TheNightDoctorOtherTales #NetGalley

[Josef Hernandez · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very strong anthology

For a full review, please go to https://areviewerdarkly.blogspot.com/... and follow me on Twitter @josenher

[Joseph · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 rounded down.