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This is the fourth Datlow-edited anthology I’ve read now and I think it might the most uneven, unfortunately, though perhaps because I’m not as moved by Halloween-themed stories as I thought I’d be. I won’t talk about the stories I either disliked or wasn’t moved by at all, so I can focus on some highlights.

As these are horror stories, I won’t note any content warnings for e.g. gore, but I’ll note some otherwise.

My favorites:

“Dirtmouth” by [a: Stephen Graham Jones|96300|Stephen Graham Jones|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1631159041p2/96300.jpg]

I admit to being inclined to view Jones’ work favorably, as I’ve read and liked [b:The Only Good Indians|52180399|The Only Good Indians|Stephen Graham Jones|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1601545259l/52180399.SY75.jpg|71431671] and the Indian Lake Trilogy installments ([b:My Heart Is a Chainsaw|55711617|My Heart Is a Chainsaw (The Indian Lake Trilogy, #1)|Stephen Graham Jones|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1623264202l/55711617.SY75.jpg|86884065]. and [b:Don't Fear the Reaper|59366246|Don't Fear the Reaper (The Indian Lake Trilogy, #2)|Stephen Graham Jones|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1673499594l/59366246.SY75.jpg|93537111]). I think he’s observant of details that lend characters verisimilitude both physically and emotionally — in the latter case, he writes grief especially well. And grief underlies this story in a way that makes everything horrific all the more potent.

An excerpt I liked:

The whole time we were dating, probably a third of our dates were in tents. And she always brought a single waffle in a hard plastic bin there was never any actual space for in her pack. It was her prize, kind of. For pushing up this slope, for weathering that storm, for wearing wet socks all day.

“A Small Taste of the Old Country” by [a:Jonathan Maberry|72451|Jonathan Maberry|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1654105692p2/72451.jpg]

CW: racism, genocide

I’d never read anything by Maberry before, and was immediately drawn in by the specificity of the setting (Argentina, 1948) and of food, which is a seamless foundation of the story itself. I risk giving too much away if I speak more specifically, but: You have a pretty good sense of the trajectory of the story early on, and it feels like the author did so in a deliberate way that makes the reader feel something like an accomplice — in a satisfying way.

“The very best wheat and rye blended with caraway, anise, fennel, just a little coriander. And, of course, a touch here and there of allspice, fenugreek, sweet trefoil, celery seeds, and cardamom. I grind each of the spices by hand and then grind them again together and mix them into the dough. Everything is done the old way. Everything is done right, because such things deserve precision, do you agree?”

“A Kingdom of Sugar Skulls and Marigolds” by [a:Eric J. Guignard|3410564|Eric J. Guignard|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1689663469p2/3410564.jpg]

CW: gun violence, hate crimes

This is probably the only story in the collection that made me laugh out loud, repeatedly. It’s also a story of grief, and I feel like well-executed humor embroiders sorrow uniquely. I felt at different moments within it very much grounded in a moment physically and swept along in a dream. It lost me a bit in a few scenes of physical altercation, but I think that could be an idiosyncrasy of mine. This is the first writing of Guignard’s that I’ve read, and I look forward to reading more!

There’s a new skeleton standing beside Papá’s bones, a short, squat skeleton wearing a handmade Campeche dress trimmed with lace and mourning crepe. Its skull is draped by a black mantilla veil, held in place by a tortoiseshell peineta I recognize as having been passed down from its own grandmother’s grandmother.

“Lost in the Dark” by [a:John Langan|7083555|John Langan|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1691063041p2/7083555.jpg]

I’m coming to this already a Langan fan, so I may be biased! I liked how it united more perennial horror themes (monsters, possession) and their integration into contemporary culture. Langan seems to enjoy incorporating metatextuality into his stories and even when I think it weighs down the narrative somewhat, I think the story is better for it overall.

As a general aside: I think horror lends itself to this, because it makes sense that a character experiencing something horrific, especially if it’s supernatural, will naturally contextualize it for themselves through what they’ve picked up in fiction and folklore. But I also think that Langan’s experience as a professor makes him especially at ease writing from that perspective.

“Within a year or two, the local kids were telling stories about the woman in the mine. Some of them portrayed her as criminally insane, delivered to the place to be kept in a secret cell constructed for the sole purpose of confining her. Other accounts made her a witch, dropped at the mine for essentially the same purpose, imprisonment [. ...] A few years later, when The Exorcist was released, the narrative adapted itself to the film, and the woman became demonically possessed, transported upstate for an exorcism, which obviously had failed. It was one of the peculiarities of the story, the way it shaped itself to the current cultural landscape.”

"[I]t is not static images of a moment that I have made the subject of this collection, but certain places and particular landscapes in which the strange and horrific are discovered. Extraordinary aftermaths are inevitably and naturally impregnated with narrative, are immediately imbued with the potential for story. To cope with the confrontation of horror, the mind fills with an appalled curiosity, with questions. How did this event or situation come about? Who were the individuals who died here? What must they have felt before the end?

Such charged spaces naturally evoke mystery, suggest presences and atmospheres, and are akin to hauntings. With hauntings, what wields most power may not be what is seen walking, or flickering briefly into animation, but the anticipation of such, or the evidence off-screen – the sound of it. And when something unnatural seems to be taking place, one also suspects that these strange infestations from a past tragedy or malfeasance could manifest themselves within that ruined castle or aged room . . . at any time.

The stories here gripped me inconsistently, but the endeavor overall has gripped me indelibly, and the story notes excerpted above provided satisfying insight into what motivated it. I'll have to write more later!