As the nights get longer and colder, readers often crave books that remind them of the many terrors thriving in the dark. Such readers have likely read dozens of books about ghosts, draculas and biting corpses, but it’s possible they’ve never read about a detective who, after removing his hand to get out of a sticky situation, is essentially kidnapped by a cult composed of folk who love to lop of portions of their body. These practitioners of unnecessary amputations believe one becomes more holy with each part one removes, and while there’s debate about whether it’s fair to count the removal of two fingers as two amputations, their biggest problem, other than their shared psychosis and the damage it’s inflicted to their bodies, is a crime they need solved. So when they hear about the detective who performed his own amputation and cauterization, they’re convinced he’s the man for the job. Even for a book about a cult that cuts each other’s body parts off, there’s quite a few body parts getting sawed off, but there’s also a lot of dark, ultra-dry humor. If you need your reads not to unsettle your stomach and to answer the bulk of your questions, this book (“Last Days” by Brian Evenson) may not be for you.
Perhaps you’re not as concerned with learning about horrors you hadn’t conceived of as you are with taking another look at a well-worn horror. In the case of “Immobility,” the horror is a world in which nearly all life has been blasted off of it. While never made explicit, it’s clear that some nasty bombs blew up a while back, and their influence still precludes life from surviving outside of a bunker. The book’s protagonist is removed from suspended animation at the novel’s start. He has mysteriously evolved to heal quickly, defy death and become entirely hairless. His invulnerability is made more mysterious by the fact that he can’t walk, a condition the reader may immediately suspect is related to the excruciating injections delivered daily directly to his spine. He’s told the injections are to keep him alive, but I simply don’t buy that business. His invulnerability and healing powers allow him to survive outside the bunker, so he’s asked to go retrieve a very important thingy from some place far away. Because he can’t walk, two genetically engineered humans are tasked with wearing protective suits and carrying him across the wasteland. These poor fellows know the trip will be the death of them, but they’ve spent their brief lives knowing this was their purpose, so they perform their task without complaint. It’s a harrowing journey, but Evenson’s prose is tight and fantastic.
“The Warren” is a novella set in the same world, and is a great choice for anyone who wants to spend more time in a blasted hellscape pondering what it means to be human.
“Fugue State” is a collection of short stories, and as you might suspect, it’s pretty weird. You might find a character traumatized by a knock on the door or their inability to say what they mean, or discover the perils of murdering your mentor and accidentally taking his place aboard the ship that was meant to ferry him on from this world. One character suffers after being forced to give up publishing quality fiction in favor of popular trash; the reader wonders whether he will weaponize his boss’s fear of dolls. In perhaps the collection’s most horrifying tale, a woman has a fling with a mime. These stories, like all of Evenson’s (unsettling little rascals that they are), are perfect for reading while under the sinister gaze of mutilated pumpkins.
