Tag: flint

Categories
Flint - Cosmic and Eldritch Horror

The Ocean and All Its Devices

“We came here every year to renew the bargain. Oh, it’s not a good bargain.”

I did some field research…the sink was field enough. I dread to imagine the cold, wet onslaught of the ocean.

Listen. We all know damn well that it is a rare feline indeed who enjoys going swimming.

I’m not saying I disliked doing this review, but I should have avoided doing some field research.

Today’s horror story is called The Ocean and All Its Devices, and it is the premier short story in an anthology of the same name by William Browning Spencer. Published in 2006, this anthology takes on a distinctly Lovecraftian theme, my personal favorite. There are ancient beings which mere mortals cannot comprehend – human ones anyways; a distinct saltwater setting; and themes of madness and isolation.

But The Ocean and All Its Devices is also unique and award-winning for many reasons. I just wish The Writer hadn’t asked the Good Doctor to get me in the “mood” for reviewing something watery.

The Plot

This story is told from the perspective of one George Hume, a man who runs a seaside hotel with his wife. Every year for an unspecified period of time, the same somber family, the Franklins, make a reservation for the off-season.

Every time the Franklins appear, they are dressed like they are going to a funeral. They spend their days wandering their desolate beach in formal dress – a mother, father, and daughter trio.

This year, the Humes hear devastating news: Mr. Franklin has drowned. Mrs. Franklin is in shock and spends her time at a mental hospital for treatment, while the daughter is left in the care of the Humes, their college-aged daughter, and her boyfriend.

The girl, who is roughly 12, wears full formal dress at all times and has strange habits. She insists her father is not dead, and that those around her don’t understand the “real” things about the world. Plus, water seems to be attracted to her.

Over the next few days, disaster strikes again and again. The college boyfriend is decapitated by a wave trying to stop the girl from drowning, and the Humes are on the verge of madness trying to figure out where all of the seaweed and strange behavior in the hotel is coming from.

In the end, it turns out the daughter has been dead all along. She drowned when she was 3 and her parents made a deal with strange machines/gods underneath the ocean to bring her back.

Unfortunately, she is not the same, for she no longer only belonged to the human world.

At the end, she returns to the deep, her body exposed to be distinctly fish-like indeed.

That is one bowl of tuna I would not touch with a 10 ft. pole.

There’s something fishy going on here…

The Review

If there is one thing The Ocean and All Its Devices impressed upon me, it is the importance of mystery. Mystery can generate intrigue, interest, suspicion, and ultimately horror.

For George, there are many layers of mystery which need to be unraveled. Why do the Franklins consistently visit during the off-season, despite having first vacationed in the summer almost a decade ago? Why is his daughter so fiercely protective of the Franklin girl? Just what is wrong with the Franklin girl?

With several pages of build-up, the entire story reaches a satisfying conclusion in the span of a page and a half without revealing everything. Instead, it gives enough to wrap up the writing without finishing it with a gaudy bow.

William Browning Spencer earned his reputation as a powerful and influential writer, and The Ocean and All of Its Devices is a great example of my favorite style of writing – the Climate Change Iceberg.

I’m coining terms now.

In the original iceberg theory, roughly 10% of the story is revealed, with the reader left to draw many of their own conclusions. In a more modern take on the iceberg theory, around 40%-50% is given to the reader. It’s enough to generate a satisfying conclusion without leaving casual indulgers confused.

The writing itself is additionally tight. Because The Ocean and All Its Devices is a longer short story, there is room to develop the characters, especially George Hume. He is caring but disinterested. Disturbed by his surroundings, but wanting it all to go away. A loving father and husband, but also old-fashioned and the provider of strange commentary on the female characters.

I.E. “The girl walked and gestured with a liquid motion that was oddly sophisticated, suggesting the calculated body language of an older and sexually self-assured woman.”

  • This comment was about a 12 year old whose father just died and who is visiting a child psychiatrist.

But such comments reveal a lot about the narrator himself and how he views the world.

Overall, this story gave me much to consider and was entertaining and horrific in a skin-crawling, “the universe is out to get us” kind of way – my personal favorite. It earns 5/5 Paws.

Has it left me considering things which are best not considered? Shall I be scared I have seen things which should not be seen?

Of course.

But, I always am.

Imagine – this could be your daughter!
Categories
Flint - Cosmic and Eldritch Horror

The Twisted Ones

“And I twisted myself around like the twisted ones…”

So majestic, yet so evil.

There is something to be said for stories which have relatable narrators. In The Twisted Ones, I was treated to the inner musings of an editor named Melissa, nicknamed Mouse. Besides needing to resist the temptation to make puns about the cat and mouse action going on in the story (because, haha, I’m a cat), I was able to identify with Mouse.

For you see, I too happen to love a dumb dog and have a habit of slipping on the linoleum.

But we’ll get there.

The Twisted Ones is T. Kingfisher’s take on The White People (not actually a race-related title) by Arthur Machen. For those of you who haven’t reach Machen’s short story, it features a group of youths talking with a hermit named Ambrose about The Green Book, the journal of a young woman who became involved in the ways of the Fair Folk.

One of the ways in which The Twisted Ones stands out is how it manages to pay homage to another tale without drowning in the source material. There are tons of clever nods to the original short story, but they do not overpower the new tale.

So what is this new story?

In short, Mouse is recruited by her elderly father to clean out her even more ancient and recently deceased grandmother’s house. The grandma was the human equivalent of a neutering, and did lovely things like call people up to tell them they deserved to have their dog die, gaslight her elderly husband by hiding his beloved possessions, and keep the same husband from sleeping to the point where he was forced to nap in the woods.

Even the villains preferred to sleep in the woods to get away from Mouse’s grandmother….

She was also a horrific hoarder and so unpleasant that even the supernatural ‘villains’ of the story refused to come near her.

And that is where the plot kicks off. You see, Mouse’s grandmother was married to her step-grandfather, an elderly individual who just happened to have some of the blood of the eponymous White People in his family background. When Mouse arrives, she soon discovers all of the creepy going-ons around the house are caused by a secret town of hundreds of effigies created by the White People to serve them.

Only there are no more White People, and they are desperate for new masters.

I have seen more than my fair share of eldritch, cosmic, and downright alien horror, and there are some distinct Lovecraftian tropes at play. There should be, seeing as how Lovecraft himself described the original story, The White People, as being one of the greatest literary works of horror of all time.

To count off a couple of Lovecraftian staples:

  • There are Eldritch Abominations
  • Half-Human Hybrids
  • Madness Mantras
  • The Fair Folk
  • And definitely a Fate Worse Than Death

Like, seriously.

The poor Writer would like to know why so many horror stories involve forced impregnation by monsters?

There’s also an evil deer…thing…and a room full of creepy dolls.

A doll whose eyes I would scratch out if I could…

Now, anyone with common sense would have fled once weird things started to happen, but the standard evil-detecting dog is an absolute moron, but lovably so.

Bongo, named after the antelope and not the drum, sometimes knows what is going on but usually doesn’t. This allows Mouse to struggle on her own using the journal her step-grandfather left behind to figure out what is going on.

Conclusion

Overall, a thoroughly enjoyable take on an older tale and many quasi-mythological European themes. I would say it could have used more cats, but I prefer my solitude.

I would give this story 5/5 Paws for fun, creativity, and the ability to nest a story within even more stories.

I wasn’t left questioning the futility of my existence against the grandeur of the cosmos or abandoned to weep in the corner as I went mad from eldritch revelations.

But I did get to watch the Writer visibly cringe and recoil from learning the fate of Anna (seriously, how do you need feel bad for her?), and I now am more suspicious about the deer lurking outside.

I have seen things.

I know.

I know.

I know.