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“To the Daemon”

A lovely way to open the collection, an invocation to Smith’s muse to bring him visions of wild, unbounded fantasies. “Tell me tales of inconceivable fear and unimaginable love, in orbs where to our sun is a nameless star, or into which its rays have never reached.” Some odd coincidences between this and the daemons of Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials…

The H.P. Lovecraft collection I read from Barnes and Noble included an essay on the history of Gothic and weird fiction, written by HPL himself. Apart from Edgar Allen Poe, the two writers he seemed to give most praise to were Algernon Blackwood - more on that later, maybe - and Clark Ashton Smith, maybe his closest (if only as a correspondent) friend.

“The Traveler With the Pasted Rag Picture”

Rounding out with the one more or less unequivocally supernatural story of the collection, a traveler chances upon an old man who has a very interesting picture / tablet and a bittersweet story to go along with it. This has the sound in my head of a Japanese fairy tale but with a framing story that recontextualizes it beyond the subject’s wish fulfillment.

“The Crippled Men”

This begins as a Gothic story about a former sleepwalker whose somnambulism reasserts itself and eventually gets so out of hand that, sleepwalking, he kills his landlord. As a prime twist, however, it turns into more of a classic mystery, albeit one whose solution is divulged by the perpetrator. Very cool; I really liked the twist, here.

“The Red Chamber”

From the tradition of bored affluent men telling galling stories comes this. The group gets the biggest thrill of their lives, starting when a newcomer relates his life story, that of a serial killer who engineers the deaths of people in sort of “live and let die” scenarios. Like “The Human Chair”, this one goes super hard before backing off at the last second. Ghoulish.

“The Twins”

Mostly Japanese mystery with some existential dread. The “younger” of identical twin brothers murders the “older” and assumes his place, later going on to commit crimes under a fingerprint scheme where he believes he has substituted his brother’s fingerprints for his own. I like the psychological aspect the most - his fear of mirrors as all reflections show the face of the man he murdered.

“The Hell of Mirrors”

As I read these it becomes clear that Junji Ito is an inheritor of Edogawa Rampo’s stylings. This is about a scholar who is possessed by some kind of mirror mania, his slow descent into insanity recounted by his friend. The scholar’s mania develops into understandable if perverse voyeurism before becoming increasingly unhinged. His unsolved insanity makes this more of a gothic horror.

“The Cliff”

Structured as a play, this is a densely layered mystery posed as a dialogue between a woman and her second husband. The men think that they have more knowledge of their situations than the woman, and her attitude at the end of the story is a conflicting morass of self-hated and empowerment. It is the male attitude of superiority toward a woman they consider expendable that is their undoing.

“The Caterpillar”

A realistic body-horror story about a suffering wife and her battle-scarred husband, who has no arms and legs and cannot speak or hear. It examines the depression that this kind of caretaking brings with it, even driving the wife - Tokiko - to abuse due to the negative energy feedback and in one fit doing something even worse, leading to the story’s depressing climax.

“The Psychological Test”

According to the foreward of this book, in the Japanese tradition of mystery stories, there is nothing unknown to the reader except how the criminal is going to be caught. Generally, their overweening intellect betrays them. This is an interesting story, and the criminal’s desire to engineer themself beyond suspicion under the premise that no one would TRY to look so guilty is his end.

“The Human Chair”

Sort of a horror story with an amusing twist at the end, about a man who conceives of an outlandish way to rob a hotel but then sublimates his identity into that of a chair because it is the only way in which he sees himself attaining human contact. It gets intense toward the end, but Rampo defuses the tension with a twist where Junji Ito’s adaptation takes it way, way, WAY farther.

Unlike most books, this intro and forward are paginated using normal numerals.

“Human Remains”

This one is most fascinating for its autobiographical notes. I don’t know much about Barker’s personal life before he became an author but I do know that he worked as a hustler - a male prostitute - so the front half of this story is probably as honest an account as I’ve ever read of the craft in London (it’s also the only account). Very cool story about humanity to end the collection.

“Scape-Goats”

In a vague way I’m reminded of King’s “The Raft”. But, uh, two pair of potential lovers facing death on what could have been a pleasurable excursion is probably a classic horror trope. This is another tale whose primary perturbator is toxic masculinity, in this case misdirected rage at impotence and the knowledge that, well, she just isn’t that in to you, Johnathan!

“Confessions of a (Pornographer’s) Shroud”

An innocent accountant is set up to be the fall guy for a pornographic enterprise. After he finds out and takes a stand, it annihilates his home life, and he takes vengeance. This is complicated by his death but unlife, uh, finds a way. The bits about Glass’s family hurt and I feel badly for the mobster’s poor 5 yr old daughter, both what is said and what is not.

“Rawhead Rex”

An ancient power is unleashed on an English country village. This is a rough read. Rawhead is a right horrid monster, a devourer of children that - in the past - defiled women only for its progeny to kill them during pregnancy. It’s a thing of raw violence against humanity - a careening, spindly horror that is a sworn enemy to women and the power of fertility.

“Son of Celluloid”

Starts off as something like a noir story before turning into a haunted theater. The mechanics of the haunting are interesting enough on their own - cancer, rogue cells, apparently qualify as having a life and a soul of their own in Barker’s universe. It also has a female heroine who suffers from a history of fat-shaming, which is a nice change from the parade of beautiful people.

“New Murders in the Rue Morgue”

In the grand tradition of Jules Verne, here is a sequel to a Poe short story. Poe’s was the birth of detective fiction, but this isn’t a detective story. There is a subtext about racism in here as the villain has raised an ape to behave as he does, including frequenting red-haired prostitutes, that specifically being a bridge too far for… both of the story’s men, really.

“The Skins of the Fathers”

Demons walk the deserts of Arizona. Except they have the impossible geometry of angels and they gang-rape a woman except she is cool with it because in the beginning there were the women and the Others and human men are an invention gone horribly wrong. Uh, one of the immensely weirder dark fantasies, something about male brutality and how our society reinforces it.

“Jacqueline Ess: Her Will and Testament”

A depressed housewife develops powers to manipulate flesh and uses it for, among other things, taking vengeance on the chauvinists of her life. This is a very sexually-charged story that dwells on aspects of heterosexual relationships, usually with men critically lacking - as they do - in empathy and respect.