"Inheritor," Cemetery Dance #58
Of all the stories in this issue of Cemetery Dance, only Ian Rogers’s “Inheritor” made me stop and shiver. It is surely a sign of an effective horror story that, even when read on a crowded commuter train on a bright summer’s day, the final paragraphs can leave a reader dread cold.
Daniel Ramis is estranged from his family, so on the death of his father, he is surprised to discover that he has been left his childhood home, which Daniel had assumed sold years before. Dragged back there against his better judgment, Daniel also discovers that he has been left some unfinished family business.
Rogers does a very fine job of building a sense of anticipation and dread as Ian is drawn from his safe city life back to small town America and the long-abandoned farmhouse. The ending is handled with a compelling economy that allows for chills but no histrionics. It is clever writing and effective storytelling.
"Relaxed Best," Not One of Us #38
Any small press publication that reaches thirty-eight issues is to be commended. A ‘zine that, like Not One of Us, edited by John Benson, can do so while publishing a bunch of strong fantasy stories that either play with or defy genre conventions, deserves a much wider audience.
Take Ian Roger’s “Relaxed Best,” the darkest story on offer, combining as it does the tropes of hard-boiled detective fiction with elements of paganism and witchcraft to create a horror story shaded with a sense of menace and creeped-out paranoia. Private investigator Ryerson is hired by Veronica Marchand—known as the Blue Fairy for her skill in playing the stock market—to investigate husband Jonathan, whom she suspects of straying from the marital bed. The alias signals Veronica’s true nature, and explains her success in predicting stock prices. It also suggests that there’s more to this marriage than Ryerson anticipated, with the possibility of some kind of demonic pact being hinted at as the story strays down the kind of horror/crime hinterland explored in fiction as diverse as William Hjortsberg’s Falling Angel and Jay Russell’s Marty Burns stories. Like Hjortsberg’s Harry Angel, Ryerson is soon way out of his depth and discovers too late the meaning of the term “relaxed best” as he pays the price for Marchand’s broken contract.
"Charlotte's Frequency," Horror Library, Volume 2
“Charlotte’s Frequency” by Ian Rogers has a science fiction slant. Morris, all set to enjoy his newly purchased big screen TV, instead discovers a modern-day Charlotte, a la Charlotte’s Web, feeding off something far worse than the crickets living around the water heater. Morris and his wife, Jude, both start to feel sick, weak, and dangerously vulnerable. Charlotte herself seems to be half organic and half electronic, spinning webs that feed off electricity and the people around her. This fable, however, doesn’t end with three happy children and their anthropomorphic porcine friend. On the cutting edge of today’s hi-tech world, stories like “Charlotte’s Frequency” will drag horror kicking and screaming into the new century.
"Horror Library Volume II is an excellent collection of short stories that can be enjoyed all at once or savored over many days. The pleasant surprise with the Horror Library is that in addition to stories covering familiar territory, as seen in John Rector’s "A Season of Sleep" and Kevin Donihe’s "Preacher Mike and the Black Cross Revelation ," there are also original ideas that result in enjoyable tales, such as "Charlotte’s Frequency," by Ian Rogers. The collection has no particular theme and the stories cover a wide variety of subjects. Although the stories in Horror Library Volume II vary in length and in theme, they are all strong, entertaining reads. Most are short enough that readers will find themselves easily starting another... then another... in fact, the book should come with the tagline "you can’t read just one."
"The Tattletail," Dark Wisdom #9
"The Tattletail" by Ian Rogers was a funny piece about a boy who summons a demon for elementary school show-and-tell. This, in itself, is not strange at all, for the boy solicits advice from his father as if he were doing no more than making a greenhouse to grow bean sprouts in styrofoam cups. Yet when we learn the demon takes on the form of whatever it eats, the story gets interesting, with a strong ending rounding everything out. This is a close second to "Acceptable Losses" and only loses out because of its humor element, oddly-placed for a magazine featuring dark fiction.
A positive review of the Dark Wisdom #9 in which "The Tattletail is listed as one of the "notable" stories.