Blood In The Bricks edited by Neil Williamson
I would like to thank the editor and NewCon Press for an advance copy of this anthology in exchange for a fair and honest review
Publisher - NewCon Press
Published - 5/11
Price - £13.99 paperback
Tales of the city redolent with ritual and drenched in dread.
Folk Horror is primarily associated with isolated settings and weird beliefs. Traditionally the isolated setting is rural, but our cities have been around for a long time too, their histories constructed layer upon layer, their secrets long kept and buried deep. And there are other types of isolation than geographical remoteness: housing schemes and suburbs, gilded business districts and gated communities, industrial wastelands and crumbling tower blocks...
Who knows what our old bricks were made of or what lies beneath our brightly lit pavements? Who knows what superstitions have been passed down the generations and who knows what goes on behind the locked doors of the community centre?
I am a city dweller and I would not like to live anywhere else. Gather a group of people allow a few centuries to brew and you get something interesting where the old parts of the city often run across the new. Now when it comes to folk horror we often tend to think of that as the rural side of life where things can dwell on forests or strange villages where everyone watches you but in the anthology Blood In The Bricks edited by Neil Williamson we have a collection of authors remind us cities are full of places where magic and horror can combine. It’s a very good collection and there is a lot to enjoy here and it will remind you to be careful where you go!
Among the many stories I enjoyed were
Down Street by James Bennett - London and the Underground have always been a strange experience for travellers and in this story we follow Cherry grabbing a late night commute. Things soon go wrong and mysterious characters wearing animal masks have plans for her and her fellow passengers. It’s a wonderfully menacing story but then really lets rip as the reason for this activity is revealed in all its bloody glory. A dark and nasty story that should linger long in the memory as you mind the gap.
Danse Macabre by Kim Lakin - post WW1 and the slums of London start this historical tale which initially focused on Mary trying to survive with young brothers and a sick mother. Lakin makes us feel the poverty and desperation so when a sinister woman offers hope in reward for a dance from her we smell a trap. What is fascinating here is how Lakin uses the war and attitudes to it to drive the more stranger cosmic horror aspects that the second half of the story use. The ending is up to the reader to decide what happened next and no option looks a good one!
Hagstone by Tracy Fahey - to Ireland just as the Credit Crunch is about to hit and this story mixes horror with some gorgeous character work. Our narrator has worked all his life and is now dealing with some building work revealing a body. One theme is how jobs consume us at the cost of everything else, another is how the working people’s sacrifice is used to propel capitalism and then there is among a grim story just a slight sense of hope. That’s a hard balance to deliver but Fahey really succeeds.
Geradert Fuhlen by Steve Toase - to the post industrial parts of a mysterious German city and this is a very impressive menacing and strange tale I hugely enjoyed. Our narrator is a journalist looking at the history of the city’s many small motorbike firms. He is recovering from injury and is suddenly finding himself agreeing to a tattoo of a strange broken wheel. This story grabs the feeling of strange back streets, those odd buildings that are deserted until they’re suddenly not and you sense all the secret history and traditions underneath a city lurking. How this ends is unexpected but still very frightening!
The Inverse Nurse by Ian Whates - a wonderfully strange tale that starts with our narrator just hearing a barrage of people in hospital tell them who they are and what they are doing. If you’ve been in hospital this all rings quite true and then suddenly the Inverse Nurse appears and things go dark and troubling very quick. The decision asked is terrible but the consequences are too. A not so moral dilemma for the reader and this one may trouble you long after reading it!
Escape Notice by Tim Major - this story imagines what happens when you really look hard at a a city with a slight conspiracy theory style approach. Our narrator decides to ask what some building work is for and very soon regrets this. The idea of a city having its own rituals and rules that the unwary should not break is delivered here initially with middle class exasperation but increasingly we feel the main character has bitten off far more than he can chew. Really inventive!
Open Studios by E Saxey - a really interesting story where our main character adopts running through backstreets and finds a secret artistic community. However all art has a price. A theme about how looking for the thing to help you feel you can sometimes exact a higher cost than you think.
Larking by Phil Sloman - back to London but this time the Thames is the focus. A modern day story where our narrator is after some quick money and decides some illegal mudlarking is the answer. An old lady offers to train him but he soon decides he doesn’t need her but will have her share of the profits. There is a delightful flip into folk horror here and we see just before our main character does what a huge mistake he makes and his punishment is huge but delicious to read!
Our Sister of Blackthorn by Dan Coxon - it’s a podcast show focused on the disappeared and our host is going to explore the mystery of her lost friend that inspired the show. She is going back to the se state that her friend’s boyfriend lived on to get answers. The story is tense, explores growing up guilt and is also very dark and sinister. Some places always want their sacrifice and this story has a cold but very hard to forget conclusion.
The Rope Swing by Penny Jones - a mother and her daughter have moved from a village to a city and the flats. The teenage daughter is trying to get her bearings but the place feels demanding and a strange gang of girls want to know her name. Jones uses the fear of a new place to build tension with nightmares and ominous parts of the city’s past being found and the ending while on some ways just a confrontation feels incredibly menacing and we feel things are about to get very very dark. I really liked this one!
A Pinch of Salt by Joanna Corrance - I really like this inventive story! It’s about a respected man who at night delivers salt but no this is not about gritting streets in winter. Corrance has created a horror story in a world where magic is now real and salt is valuable protection. That’s inventive enough but then Corrance explores the ideas of those parts of the city that are unwelcome to strangers, class and has a very inventive but powerful ending I loved. One of my favourites in the collection!
Extraction by Don Redwood - this is a very dark weird take as we meet Senga an elderly woman one of the last ones in her tower block. She has memory issues, her daughter has asked a dr to assess her and her flat is getting very damp strangely damp. Is this our character’s imagination or something more menacing - becoming lost in your own home, aging and wanting to belong is really explored well here
Also prepare to visit post apocalyptic cities, the world of skaters, serial killer’s lairs and more. A really enjoyable collection reminding us folk horror is everywhere - highly recommended!
