I started off hating B.D. Prince’s 13 Ghastly Tales. Then I liked them. It oddly started around Jaadu. I’m a sucker-punched softie for carnival and railroad stories, seems he is too. Then I noticed his approach with each story, heated a little with campfire scares, then spun a lot from 1950s comic book horror conciseness, and glazed with a simple but jolting ending. His characters start lean and gristled around the chops, then take on meaty weight as they hustle to whatever horror digests them. Short and sour best sums it all up. There is flash fiction here too that also bites.
So, about that Jaadu. Prince mentions Cole Bros. Circus briefly but it immediately hooks me—all ready and gutted to be pan-fried—because I have a nostalgic connection to Cole Bros. as they were a long-running tented circus here on Long Island. But Emma Wilson and her husband are not visiting Cole Bros., just a smaller circus outside of town. A midway barker grabs their attention while they munch their popcorn and they are quickly swept into the oddities tent. Emma is particularly caught up with all the stifling strangeness and that bizarre bovine with two heads and five legs. Poor Emma. She just so badly wants to have a baby. A common element in each of these stories is a longing, a desire, a need. Amazing how much horror can come from those three simple things.
Another tale, Feetus, starts off with a nice breakfast with eggs, to winding up with an evening trip, for mom and Cindy and her annoying brother, heading to the carnival. He insists the cotton candy she is eating is clown hair. She insists on getting a balloon from that sinister looking clown that persists on giving her one. Her mom suddenly interrupts, but Cindy does manage to get a purple balloon to take home. Her brother has more smarts to share about what balloons taken from persistent clowns really are. It leaves quite a mess for them to clean up.
Prince gives backstories as to how he came up with the plot for each tale. For Feetus, it grew from his visit to the Orange County Fair. For Jaadu, it was an internet news story already fueled by his love for Weekly World News. For Hot Box, it began as the prologue for a novel.
A hot box is an overheated wheel bearing on a locomotive. Today, not so much a problem. Back then, it could lead to catastrophe. Prince describes the breakdown with precision, tossing in a lot of lingo like a railfan. Bingo! I’m one too and now I’m hooked again. I am not a trainspotter type, but maybe he is. Even if you do not know the older North American lingo, you can still feel the shudder on the rails, with two fast-moving trains aimed in the same direction. One train carries—you guessed it—a circus. Another carries a sleepy engineer. Do the math. This one is Prince’s strongest entry: you have the sparse but adequate details, the inevitable doom unless… and the people who know what is going down on both trains working against time, soon merging to a fixed point that cannot fit them all. It also carries the most horror because it is based on real events from 1918 and 1945. Of course, you also have a strange clown on the circus train creeping out Albert as he rushes past the sleeper car to fix the hot box, while Gus is signaling the go-to-hell signal to try and slow down his train.
I realize not all readers are railroad or circus and carnival aficionados so there are more stories filled with common people unfortunately caught up with uncommon people. Each one, both people and plot, written to one-act, like an EC Tales From the Crypt comic or an Amicus portmanteau movie. It is suspense that Prince dances with, through the prolonged emotions and terse environs, building to a one-two punch at the end, leaving you feeling like someone on a station platform, watching the train steam off with your baggage.
If you have an aversion to worms, don’t read Wiggle Room. Herman Stokes is too much of a mama’s boy anyway and that diner waitress best stay clear of him, even if he’s trying to hook her like a worm. If you are house hunting, don’t read Into the Shadows. Two boys discover their new home is a bit off-putting, especially with its habit of eating people. If you really do not like carnie stories, don’t read Rattle and Sway. That first of mayer gets his ultimate wish although with some painful fringe benefits he did not plan on. Oh, right. I was pointing you to the other stories without clowns, trains, and showfolk. If you feel charitable, best avoid Will Work 4 Food, because both questionable characters wind up getting what they asked for. Well, maybe just one of them. The other gets what he was asking for, if you catch my drift.
Which brings me back to the beginning with The Last Drive-in Matinee. Hopefully you have or will experience a drive-in at some point in your life. Hopefully, without the problems Howard and Ellie are experiencing. Like I said, I started off hating this story. It’s exactly like a horror comic story, maybe even like an old-time radio episode of Lights Out. The emotional narrative was drawn out, the ending preposterously ended. But then I realized that one-two punch style that B.D. Prince excels in and I reread it, imagining it illustrated in the EC style or told in the old-time radio script style. That’s when I knew I had missed the groove. But I found it. You will too. I just hope it does not turn you off from visiting a drive-in. They are cool. 13 Ghastly Tales is a cool read too.
Book reviewer for The Horror Zine