Unquiet Guests edited by Dan Coxon
Publisher – Dead Ink Books
Published – 30th October
Price – £20 hardback £5.99 ebook
A house is more than just a place to lay your head at night.
Sometimes, the walls remember.
Wouldst thou taste of dread most delectable? The season is come… Dead Ink’s own season. Unquiet Guests awaits thee, clad in green as the forest at midnight, its edges steeped in blood. Within, ten cunning souls do conjure their visions of the haunted house, each tale a door that should ne’er be opened.
Wouldst thou step across the threshold, and dwell where walls do whisper and shadows keep their counsel? These pages do not comfort, they beckon. Ten voices, dark and diabolical, do bid thee enter and once thou art inside, thou shalt not depart unchanged.
Edited by Dan Coxon, this grimoire gathereth the words of the wicked and the wondrous:
If we consider the core elements of horror the haunted house is going to be an element. As Dan Coxon in their introduction to the superb horror anthology Unquiet Guests notes though the haunted House in some ways has become a bit safe. It’s the amusement park ride, the stylish Halloween ornament and dare one say it safe? Fear not though as this collection of tales is very much focused on saying a haunted house is not always a stately home with a chequered history and that inside the various places we will enter very little is safe at all. One of the best collections this year.
As a sign this collection is designed to do something different it starts with a fascinating tale ‘I Am The House’ by Grady Hendrix. We are so used to tales where what people do affects the house, here we have a conscious house that affects the people living in it. In some ways charming and strange as we see how a house views people. Hair is described as shingles, hands as wings and so we have fun working through what the House is actually seeing. However, the horror seeps in slowly as the house gets very possessive over its family and seeks to stop any disruption. The phrase doghouse and red paint here are used to cover horrific scenes and effectively this is how a haunted house comes about. Wonderful inventive storytelling.
We get a very different vibe and approach in ‘Another Land Beneath’ by Claire Fuller which is one of two tales with a post-pandemic dimension to them. We meet middle aged sisters Jess and Hannah. Twins but very different as one uses mask and sanitiser while another does not, and one cares for their mother and the other lives away. Intriguingly we find they never met their father and so are going through the house with a view to sell and find a rogue cat that appears to have crept in. We tend to think we know the cat is going to be key to this tory but there isa wonderfully eerier atmosphere tot his tale and here the hauntings are more the two women finding evidence that their memories of childhood do not quite line up with the pictures they find. The exploration of family history, sibling’s ability to argue and immediately still be there for one another the way they realise the truth is delivered really well and the ending is ambiguous as to whether something bad has started or do they finally get some much-needed respite and I like that I still am not still sure about which way it has gone.
Perhaps the most classicla setting appears in ‘The Toll’ by Will Maclean as we visit the Cornish seaside and a group of young businesspeople trying to work out how to con an old lady into selling her dilapidated home for a song. Rather though than having all the classic ghosts of the past there is something interesting going on and playing with egos and rivalries particularly of the ‘alpha’ Ash who wants to prove everything to everyone and a has designs on his investor’s wife. Maclean allows us to get to know this group and its little odd dynamics and then things get plated with and it’s the idea of a house judging and the delivering its own specific punishment which captures the story. It has got a delightful flip when we realise what has been going on and it is always nice to see someone get their just desserts too!
We get something different and very unsettling in ‘Deep Clean’ by Clay Mcleod Chapman. Our narrator is an agency cleaner. Always on the clock, a company that has no loyalty to the employees and each day is pretty much the same. Chapman gets the voice of someone who is tired, constantly stressed and always working just perfect and the weirdness here is the house her team are in is never seemingly ending. This is weird horror at its finest, playing with time and space and people going mad in the process while the story is very much pointing out for some people it’s the job that eventually you can never escape. Chilling and intelligent horror.
From today to the near and uncertain future of the world in ‘Lapse’ by Kirsty Logan. A couple live in a big hi-tech house that is not their own that never really works for them. It’s a dark and dreamy tale as each person in alternating mini-chapters talks about their lives and experiences in the house. The sense of the world slowly ending, people still trying to live in the decay of the old world and trying to just hold on another day with all this pressure on them really comes across. Its got an eerie stillness to the tale of everything just stopping and now these people are still trying to still have some form of life and peace but are feel still tormented in the process. Rather beautiful to read.
That stillness is soon shattered coming to ‘Tearaways’ by Matthew Holness. Two middle aged friends decide it would be great fun to break into their old secondary school before it is demolished. Here the decay and destruction they find adds a lot of atmosphere but it is our narrator’s memories of what this school was like for the pupils that strikes home. What happened when particular teachers decide to play, get angry or torment those under their care. A very dark tale of hidden secrets and repressed anger but as the supernatural builds Holness also explores our capacity to not look to cause waves. That may be far more horrific than any phantom and the final page really has a punch that stays with you.
Another tale with a pandemic edge but also on that explores some other themes is The Collector’s House by Ally Wilkes. A young couple dealing with lockdown decide to stay at the boyfriend’s relative’s home. Here we uncover this famous family’s history and their prized collections they don’t want people to know much about. Wilkes as well as making the place feel extremely creepy also explores the human desire to both hide from the reality of the past and yet be strangely proud and being very possessive and protective of it. It’s a very well told claustrophobic and menacing story that constantly feels like it will erupt very soon.
I loved the flowing tale of ‘Rosheen’ by Irenosen Okojie. In some ways it feels like a old folk ballad but is placed in the late 20th century and we have Rosheen the free-spirited woman from an Irish mother and Black US airman father who from an early age seems at night to lose herself in the world. There is a fantastically ominous opening scene, and we then roll back to Rosheen’s childhood and her compulsion to travel to England and especially Norfolk where the tale takes a darker edge to it. The sense of someone on a mission they are unaware of and justices to right is strong in this story, it’s a wonderfully told tale that is very captivating and keeps us on edge as to where it is going to end up.
There is a brilliant story awaiting you in ‘Its Dinnertime’ by Alison Moore. We have our dramatic opening scene has our narrator on a mission to escape. She is very focused, and we have no idea why. This captivates us and we soon watch her with very little regard for the décor and style rents a strange little flat that definitely appears haunted. There is a brilliant unpacking of what has been going on in this story that really takes until the last page or so to fully reveal itself and it’s a fascinating and intelligent idea that works beautifully and is possibly my favourite in the collection.
Finally, we end with ‘Custodian’ by Chuck Palahniuk where a young man and his family decides to show some kindness to an elderly co-worker. The pulsing narration here though is much more scornful of the man and his actions being more for show than true kindness and so we se how a kind act can lead to something truly horrific and at the centre is a dolls house that is very difficult to open. It’s a writing nightmare of a final tale with a very ominous last line just to remind you it is not over yet.
As you may be able to tell I enjoyed this immensely. As with any great anthology there are many variations on a theme, the way the stories are placed and in conversation with each other about what is a haunted house means that you go away not just unsettled but also rethinking this sub-genre that based on this book is not as dead as we thought. Perfect for the season of dark nights and very strongly recommended.
