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Review of Spontaneous Human Combustion by Richard Thomas


Spontaneous Human Combustion is Richard Thomas’s fourth short story collection, featuring 14 tales ranging from cosmic horror, to science fiction, fantasy, and into realms beyond any simple definition. Richard Thomas has a unique style of writing, a trademark syntax that I can spot a mile away, though at the same time he is also chameleon-esque, changing the style and flavour of his prose in order to suit the aesthetics of his story, or to further highlight a theme he is exploring. This is perhaps why he is such an adept of the short story form in particular (though I do adore his novel Disintegration in particular). 

Stephen King describes short stories as “a kiss in the dark” and Richard Thomas exemplifies this transitory (and sometimes transcendental) experience, in which the very brevity of the form becomes the source of its power. We can only connect with the divine momentarily. Yet, to do so can be life-changing. In this way, Richard Thomas’ short stories more closely resemble poems. They do not always operate on the plane of conscious understanding. They are not meant to be comprehended through rational intellect, but to touch something lying beneath that. I found some of the stories in this collection to be moving without really understanding them in full. This collection also took me twice as long as it should have done to read because I was drawn inexorably to re-read virtually every story in the collection (and was rewarded every time with new insight)! 

I am fairly sure that this collection will be divisive in multiple ways. Some people will hate the poetic styling. Some will love it. And beyond this, there is unlikely to be any consensus on what the best story in this collection is. The range on offer here prohibits an easy narrowing down. As I mentioned earlier, Richard Thomas touches on virtually every speculative genre known to humankind, and combines them in often unexpected ways. Secondary world fantasies give way to dystopian science fiction. Lovecraftian horror is mixed with hope-punk. One senses a mind behind all these stories striving relentlessly for originality, to forge something new and not rely on tropes or easy wins. In the extensive and enlightening Endnotes at the back of this collection, Richard Thomas often mentions “challenging himself”, and one can feel that these stories are an almost Barker-esque attempt to discover something beyond the mundane, to “[explore] the further reaches of human experience” (Hellraiser). There is an experimental nature to this which is by definition inexact, but can produce startling alchemy. 

As I have said before, the experience will be highly personal, and no doubt there will be little agreement on which are the most potent stories in this collection, but I will highlight my own personal top four to give you a flavour of the book:

“Ring of Fire”

I would be criminally remiss not to mention this story, as it is the longest in the collection, practically a novella. It was first published in Seven Deadliest Sins, an anthology of seven novelette / novella-length works that centred on the eponymous Seven Deadly Sins, so I had read the story once before (my review of this collection can be found here:https://storgy.com/2019/05/29/book-review-the-seven-deadliest-edited-by-patrick-beltran-and-d-alexander-ward/). “Ring of Fire” is a little bit like a Lynchian Möbius strip, a circle that doesn’t quite complete, a mystery that forever unfolds but never quite solves; at the same time, it’s a tremendous character-arc. It is a slow burner, in which the seemingly explainable and mundane scenes we’re privy too are steadily re-contextualised until we realise that nothing has been “normal” or “explainable” from the start. It is also carries an indescribable sadness to it, as each repetition, each “circuit” of the Möbius, seems to lead us not towards salvation but deeper into the elliptical loops of the psyche. It’s worth mentioning this is not the only story in the collection that involves repeated scenarios or looping narrative. There are several “Groundhog Days” contained in Spontaneous Human Combustion. Some are literal, some spiritual, and others more subtle, but the idea of being stuck in a loop that either cannot be broken, or can only be broken by our most extraordinary efforts—with great sacrifice—is arguably the defining image of the entire collection, and a metaphor for the human condition. 

“The Caged Bird Sings In a Darkness Of Its Own Creation” 

This is another story that I’d read once before; it was first published in Storgy’s Shallow Creek anthology, one of the weirdest and most underrated collections of fiction ever put to print. You can also read my review of that collection here: http://themindflayer.com/review-shallow-creek-storgy/. Richard Thomas’s story is the last story in the collection, and for good reason. It is a total mind-f*ck of chthonic proportions. It centres on Krinkles The Klown, who is a kind of Pennywise for Shallow Creek. But rather than going for shock-horror and killer clown antics, Richard Thomas instead tries to peel back the laters of Krinkles and show us why he is so strange (interestingly, there is another story in Spontaneous Human Combustion about a clown taking off their makeup—I sense a theme emerging!). I do not normally enjoy narratives that leave so much in the reader’s hands, but what I loved about “The Caged Bird Sings In a Darkness Of Its Own Creation” is that Richard Thomas give us a series of choices, and we realise that this is exactly what Krinkles has faced: a series of choices, bargains, and decisions that have led him to the edge of the abyss. The story can be seen as bleak, in some ways, but is this how Krinkles sees it? Richard Thomas shows us that perception is everything in this tale. What we choose to see in the mirror is the reality we inhabit. The story has two strange parallels: Twin Peaks, especially Part 8 of Twin Peaks: The Return (in which the macrocosm of the Lynch-universe is seemingly unveiled)and secondly, Close Encounters Of The Third Kind. In terms of the second comparison, not so much the retro late-seventies vibe, more the contact with something entirely other, and the sense of obsession, panic, and euphoria such contact can bring. 

“Nodus Tollens” 

This story was a huge surprise. It is almost an outlier of the collection, in that it is written in a more prosaic and down-to-earth style. Richard Thomas himself described it as his most “King-like” story, and I would have to agree. As much as I love Richard Thomas’ impressionistic bent, it was refreshing, indeed electrifying, to see him tackle a story in a more grounded way, and as a consequence the story stands out. The title, Nodus Tollens, is a phrase invented by John Koenig on The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows which means “the realization that the plot of your life doesn’t make sense to you anymore”. Thus, what starts as a simple hand of poker quickly becomes a cosmic game in which sin must be unburdened. 

“Undone”

This story was the biggest surprise in the collection. When I first started reading it, I was uncertain whether I would enjoy it. Essentially, and I don’t think this is not giving away too much, the entire 1,500 word story is written in one sentence. Usually, I would regard this as pretentious; howeverRichard Thomas pulls it off, for several reasons, perhaps the most important of which is that the frenetic, relentless nature of the single run-on sentence is used to encapsulate the relentless nature of a terrifying, heart-pounding chase. This clever mimesis justifies the technique and elevates the intensity of the narrative. The plot of the story is simple, or seems to be. Two people are running from something unspeakable. What emerges at the end of the tale, however, is a moment of transcendence, of contact with something ineffable and divine. It is weird, grotesque, beautiful, harrowing, and spiritually uplifting. There are shades of China Miéville here. Never in a million years could I have guessed this would be my favourite story in the collection, but it is. 

Spontaneous Human Combustion is not easy reading (to be fair, in general I do not find collections easy to read due to the stop-start nature of digesting a series of stories); however, it is a rewarding and powerful experience on so many levels. Richard Thomas pushes the envelope of what is possible in fiction, and strives to show us something truly sublime. Perhaps the collection is best summarised in Richard Thomas’s own words from his story “Undone”: “everything I could never be, nothing we have been before”. 

You can pre-order the collection here:

Amazon UK

Amazon US

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Review: Shallow Creek by Storgy

It was Spring in a sleepy little town when I finished reading Storgy’s Shallow Creek. I sat back from the glaring digital screen, hollows where youthful eyes had once been. Youthful. I scorn the word. Younger than I am now. To read this collection is to step outside of time, to travel across something of indeterminable depth, to glimpse things in the crevasses and folds, the cracks and tears; things which are better left unseen.

I wax poetical, but I said that I would set pen to paper and review the collection, this testimony to all Shallow Creek is, was, and might be. Firstly, I should say it is more like a multi-authored novel than a collection, stories carefully placed to tell a single – if treacherous – narrative. The editors Tomek, Ross and Tony are to be commended for their Herculean effort in assembling and editing these tales to make them into a singular yet fragmented tale.

Each story is accompanied by dazzling artwork by Michael To. These pieces are truly exquisite dark illustrations that often bring the images and metaphors at the heart of these stories to life. Michael has a way of synthesising two dispirit images that brings new meaning: a home springing from the curve of anchor, a bleeding rollercoaster, a mouth fountaining liquid…

The stories have been arranged, like the studded gems of a crown, in specific order. Characters waltz into the story, only to vanish and re-appear like ghosts; some commit terrible sins but are never punished; some seem to suffer grandly but never lose their ever-too-wide smile. Each story focuses in on a moment, a shining jewel-like moment, but with the close of each story these moments fade as the focus shifts. It is like surveying the town through a microscope, the lens only able to focus on one microcosm at a time. As it moves, you yearn for it to linger, to spend more time unravelling the delicate story it burningly fixes on, but move on it must, revealing new insights.

Our story starts with Dave Danvers’ Last Foray Into All Things Woo Woo by Stuart Croskell. This brilliant introductory story has been well chosen, opening with a man driving into Shallow Creek, treating us to a panoramic view of its squalid infamy. The story’s premise is at once meta- and original: a paranormal TV show host arrives in Shallow Creek in order to write a story about the town. Over the years, his belief in the supernatural has waned: ‘No bigfoot, no spooks, no little green men. The bastards. Only us. Us. Jesus.’ The twist of horror in the final line, in realising we are only alone with ourselves, and that humans are perhaps the worst monster of all, is deftly and subtly done. Our protagonist, Dave Danver, must go to Devil’s Gorge to write his story. As we follow him on his strange journey to the Devil’s Gorge summit via immaculate prose, the story gains Stoker-esque qualities – introducing us to enigmatic characters galore, bated-breath conspiracy, and the horrifying motif of a forced smile. The ending is nothing short of cathartic and sets the tone for the whole collection as one that aims to not just scare us, but also make us weep with epiphany. It’s here we first meet Krinkles the Klown, but it sure as hell isn’t the last time we see him.

Throughout Shallow Creek, we see nods to the old masters of horror like Bram Stoker and Mary Shelley, and there is something jubilant in that. However, there is also something fresh here. In Behind These Eyes by Alice Noel, we see juxtapositions of old-school horror vibes, an almost Victorian macabre storytelling, with the modern and comical: ‘Gothic is so in this year.’ Shallow Creek is a commentary on how just because we make fun of the oldest horrors in the book, it doesn’t mean they aren’t still scary.

The Soil of Stonier Hearts by Erik Bergstrom is another masterful blend of the old and new. Employing a poetic style throughout much akin to the glorious and rich elegance of Edgar Allan Poe, with brilliantly controlled language, Erik effortlessly invokes the Gothic aesthetic. The story is loaded with intriguing turns of phrase, as twisted as the nature of the town: a ‘phantom drunkenness’ haunting characters, suggesting that the line between supernatural and psychological is thin. With such fine writing, the smallest details become potential portents: “Something’s wrong with our soil, Gordy.” Jed heard the short echo of his voice in Gordon Anderson’s answering machine.’ This story is part The Omen, photos revealing mysteries and prophecies, and part The Happening, with moments of shocking inevitability.

This is also the story, the fourth in the collection, where things begin to interconnect. The events of Devil’s Gorge resonate here with what is going on in St Mary’s Cemetery. But who can say if these things are all happening in the same universe? Even the inhabitants of Shallow Creek are not to be trusted on that front.

Janet’s Vision of Love by Tom Heaton pushes the boundaries of what we will believe, offering us a story that is surreal and Twin Peaks-esque. It’s in every detail down to the inept law enforcement, the slightly off-kilter banter, and the characters that intentionally don’t seem to fit. The story is peppered with threatening and psychedelic imagery: ‘the occasional prophylactic wrapped around a fern like some species of woodland jellyfish’ This tale is truly a vision: of horror, consumerism, with a repeated line that genuinely sent chills along my arms. It transitions from a Lynchian creepy-town mystery to full-fledged Night Shift Stephen King horror. A triumph, to say the least.

Anchor by Marion Coleman offers us something a little different, a strong first person voice that seems meek at first but actually proves to be quite cunning and determined. Throughout this story I could not help but think this entire collection feels like it is building up to Krinkles the Klown. Storgy set up the dominoes oh so long ago with their character sheets and essays of one Mallum Colt, sparking the imagination in writers. They are at once homaging Stephen King’s Pennywise in Krinkles, but also taking him on, showing a modern and complex character that is his own unique brand of horror. This story ends with a brilliant subversion of desire, where our ‘hero’ gets what they want, but not in the way they think.

I met myself in Silverpine Forest. And I’ll never forget his grin.’ Some lines grab you by the throat, and this is one of them. It is the opening sentence of Backwards by Adrian J. Walker. This story almost has a True Detective feeling: A quest for a missing girl; A sheriff lost in his own failings; The sense of a secret about the town, and aid found in unlikely places, such as Mallum Colt himself. This line reminded me of a nonsense rhyme that has long haunted my dreams: As I was going up the stair, I met a man who wasn’t there. Backwards proves a convergence point for many stories and people in the world of Shallow Creek: Chelsea, Janet Lopez, the secrets of the forest… It introduces us to a Gothic trope as old as sin and also recently explored in Jordan Peele’s much anticipated Us: that of doppelgängers and parallel worlds.

The whole collection has the feel of a paranormal documentary gone wrong and off the rails, a documentary about the making of a documentary in which the paranormal activity suddenly becomes real and the presenters look sideways at the camera wondering whether a terrible, terrible practical joke has just been played. Some of the horror here hits hard, unflinchingly hard, but it is done not for shock value but to reality-check us to the world. We are told: ‘Her daughter couldn’t sleep… not because of memories or nightmares, but because she couldn’t expel the taste from her mouth.’ All of this culminates in a surprisingly redemptive and hopeful ending. Shallow Creek, bleak as it is, still harbours the human spirit. It is in every page of writing in this tome.

My mind boggles at the complexity of the interwoven plots. It isn’t just ordering the events into a logical continuum. There are subtle thematic and internal threads that are drawn throughout, such as Janet Lopez’s repressed sexuality, and the repeated and weird motif that Sister Augustine has not aged, which at some point starts to become sinister. We slowly unearth more details about Sister Augustine in Heather Cuthbertson’s Secret Ingredient which are alarming to say the least.

Shallow Creek is not just horror. Nor is it mystery. It is a hybrid that slips into whatever genre it feels will best unnerve you. So, with Brian Wilson’s Distraction, it slides into neo-noir. A midnight meeting at a pier with a dark becomes transcendentally significant. There are shades of Christopher Nolan’s cinematic masterpiece Memento here as Brian Wilson elegantly explores the things we do for peace of mind through the motif of a needle and nightdress. He describes a ‘seven eyed beast’ that is actually the light of seven cigarettes in the dark. It becomes like a biblical allusion to the Beast of Revelations. The cigarette butts light the gloom, but they are not hopeful. The narrator counts them again and again as one by one they are extinguished. What are we counting down to? Suspense and terror meet here. We are told by the narrator: ‘I had no intention of putting my family’s life in the hands of a man who professed to hear voices.’ Yet the narrator himself seems semi-delusional, unreliable, not quite honest with himself. We all hear voices, in fact. We’re all insane.

This is as much a commentary on the stories we tell ourselves as it is on religion. Wilson weaves a masterful tapestry here, tying the cigarettes directly into the tragedy at the heart of the story, the ‘filthy habit’. Now, our narrator Maurice has a new filthy habit, his addiction to a syringe filled with a nameless substance. This story is a flawless dovetailing of ideas. Just as the cigarettes remind our Maurice of his flaw, so too do they literally resurrect that which he has lost. The final two cigarettes become the eyes of someone we might just know… As they haunted Maurice, so they will haunt us in the future.

There are so many gems in this collection, I can scarcely catalogue them all. And the World Fades to Black by Adam Lock gives us Groundhog Day but with a sinister twist. It made me realise that so many moments in Shallow Creek are defined by fixations on talismanic objects. Trapped in a moment. Trapped in a grave mistake. This is where horror is so profound, it reflects out self-inflicted psychological punishment.

The Lurid Trance by Gregg Williard, as well as offering us some of the most disturbing artwork in the whole collection, gives us something different. It is about the betrayal of memory. And tardigrades. The premise runs so: someone takes credit for an artist’s work from forty years ago and sends them the envelope. This is a fascinating narrative hook that quickly becomes an esoteric, surreal descent into lost identity. ‘Hard to say how many of the town are descendants of the pseudo psychos.’ Each part of Shallow Creek feels like an attempt to describe exactly what Shallow Creek is. As this story moves towards one of my favourite tropes, that of the ‘lost film’, we are treated to a list of insane movie titles, an exercise in Nate Crowley-esque catalogue, except when I typed the titles in Google, there were actual results. It’s as though Shallow Creek is coming alive. The research Gregg Williard has done to achieve this (or perhaps it is merely a field of study for him and he knows?) is staggering. The faux manifesto for the eponymous movie The Lurid Trance, which lies at the heart of this disturbing meta-story, is exquisitely observed: a satire of film critique as well as a disturbing portent of what’s to come.

Throughout the stories of Shallow Creek we encounter more and more of the mythos of Krinkles, as well as old VHS tapes and unanswered questions. In places the descriptions of Shallow Creek are Melville-esque, unbelievably lavish, such as in Knock, Knock, Knuckle Bone by Allyson Kersel. We are told of one Shallow Creek regular Angus Runt: ‘Runt will have an opinion and, whether informed or fabricated, it’s bound to be interesting.’ In a way, this reflects the entire meaning of Shallow Creek. We cannot verify any of these stories. They shift even as the townspeople shift, as we slip into one multi-verse and out of another. But regardless, it sure as hell is going to be interesting.

In places, Shallow Creek is downright experimental. David Hartley’s masterpiece Pentameter is one such example, the entire thing written in iambic pentameter stanzas rounded off with rhyming couplets. At first, I railed against this form, but the conceit for this device was too well thought out to ignore it. The Lighthouse Keeper thinks in pentameter because he finds comfort in Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets, which have helped him cope with profound loss. This leads to moving moments of poetry amidst prose:

I sprawl back on our steps and think of you.

My Molly, who always knew what to do.

Arkady,” I say, “yes.” The asylum,

where old Jud was zapped into this shadow.

Jud, the Lighthouse Keeper, believes that Shakespeare is speaking to him through the walkie talkie. As we move towards the conclusion of this tale, we will see more and more evidence that someone may well be manipulating Jud. It all ends with a terrible threat which is Shakespearean in itself, recalling the ending of Twelfth Night, where the shamed Malvolio claims he will be ‘revenged on the whole pack of you’. This was certainly one of the most unexpected and hair-raising stories in the collection.

There is something for everyone here in Shallow Creek, including black humour, which is expertly employed by Sarah Lotz in The Eyes Have It, the title a pun in and of itself. We’re told: ‘The town was the kind of place where you could get away with murder. He’d done it to free himself up to see his girlfriend at the time.’ It makes us laugh, but it’s also frightening, how casual people can be when referring to murder. Our journey through Shallow Creek desensitises us, but Sarah Lotz brings us back around again, ‘waking us up’ to the horror of what we’re seeing. Towards the end of the collection, a new theme emerges, that of forgiveness and whether we even can be forgiven, by human or divine. Lotz takes us on a rollercoaster ride: a bleak quest that is Dexter meets Frankenstein, an exploration of our deepest existential dreads and spiritual fears. It is a paedophile on mission from God, or rather, to cheat God’s will, and in doing so, kill a whole load of sinners in very satisfying ways. Interspersed with some very real theology are observations so darkly witty they make me a little crazy: The notes were signed ‘Dr Ruth Usiskin’, the facility’s psychologist, who clearly wasn’t averse to doodling on her reports. In the margin, next to ‘sexual deviant’, she’d drawn a smiley face.’

Shallow Creek is a celebration of genre fiction, but it also proves that the distinctions between ‘literary’ and ‘genre’ are not only arbitrary but unnecessary. In Aliya Whiteley’s The Alteration we see a staggering portrait of what it is like to have a relationship with someone who is a compulsive liar and losing their mind. Madeleine, bound to a wheelchair, confesses to murders which Ruth, her carer, does not believe, but slowly but surely, we sense the terrible coming of ‘the change’. We’re told ‘Books had stories in them, and my mother said all stories were lies.’ – I think this includes the stories we tell ourselves.

So much of Shallow Creek revolves around the act of finding something that should not be found, whether it be as simple as a wedding ring, or as controversial as a licentious VHS tape. Shallow Creek is a library located in some near-unreachable place, some deep place, far from the crowds and sanitising technology. Within this library are forbidden stories. Profane tales. Tales that can scarcely be given credence, yet they ring true. Why are we so fascinated by darkness? It’s a question that keeps being asked in this collection, but never more potently than in Andrea Hardaker’s The Fulmar’s Cry: ‘She relocated to a small town out west, accepted a job in a store, re-built her life. But all that did was trigger a different unexpected issue. Despite everything—she missed the terror.’

While Shallow Creek feels eternal, all stories need an end. The final story, The Caged Bird Sings in a Darkness of Its Own Creation, by Richard Thomas, feels like the culmination of the entire collection. I am biased as a huge fan of Richard’s work, but he genuinely pulls out all the stops in this Lovecraftian tale. In it, he shows us Krinkles as an old man, staring out at us from his ramshackle hut in the heart of the woods, a figure of ague and remorse, of dark hilarity and mirthless terror. There are so many unsettling details here. Why is Krinkles vomiting up balloons, marbles, and other items? Why is he keeping what might be a child’s heart in a jar? Why do six figures – ‘tall shadows’ – pray outside his hut in the dark? And why is the time of his departure near? There is a religious reverence in the way Richard describes the scene, a kind of sacred wonder at the horror of it all. Like Krinkles’ audience, we await the dreaded punchline with what is tantamount to agony.

This tale is about sin too, and about the price we pay to get what we want: ‘Eventually, it was inverted. Not the death of one for the good of many, but the opposite—the death of many for the good of one. Or the few.’

It is a dark creation story, delving into the origin of all myths. Richard peels back the layers, gives us an almost glacial sequence of images that lead to revelation, like the atom-bomb episode of the third season of Twin Peaks, yet he condenses that extended form into something comparatively microscopic – the prose is so controlled. At the end, we are left with a sense of the entirety of what has happened, something bargained, something lost, something dark and terrible learned. He re-writes the entire script of what we think we know about Shallow Creek, and shows us a side of Krinkles we could not have ever anticipated. Richard may not be as prolific as Stephen King, but his work is just as memorable.

X

In all its horror, and all its glory, this collection has captured the spirit of my mucilaginous hometown.

Oh, didn’t I say?

I was born and raised in Shallow Creek. I live in the flat above Croskell’s pornography store. And before then, I lived in the caves that run deep beneath the old bones of the settlement. And before then… well. Not many in the town know me. I am something of a recluse. I have lived in Shallow Creek a long, long time as I’ve said. Too long, by any reckoning. I’ve thought many times about moving on to other cities, those teeming millions just so tempting, like a ripe fruit full of sugary, sweet juices. But if the people here loathe and distrust me, then elsewhere, I stand very little chance of going unnoticed.

But I grow tired of hiding. My kind are a dying kind. I might even be the last one. What would be the use of passing from ageless history unremembered? One last act of glory, then. I will draw them to us as moths to a flame! My light! My blinding true form!

Come then ye curious souls! Follow my light. Pour in your millions down to Shallow Creek. Follow my good friend Mallum Colt, whom I call the Pied Piper, down to the rancid streets and silver trees and stagnant waters – to the stones that smell of secrets – and I promise you shall see wonders like you have never seen before.

You can pre-order Shallow Creek here.

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