Synopsis
A garishly painted figurine contains a terrible curse; the ten-year anniversary of a sensational horror film shot in an abandoned mine reveals stunning secrets; endnotes for a book review uncover a strange high-tech pathogen; a man witnesses something uncanny and unexplained as his friend succumbs to a watery death; a seasick woman aboard a ferry is pursued by a barnacle-covered specter; a professor reveals the mysterious connection between Joseph Conrad and Peter Pan; a man encounters the ghost of his lost sister in a liminal space between the land and sea; an academic meets a mythical creature on a mysterious island…
John Langan, author of the Bram Stoker Award-winning novel The Fisherman, returns with thirteen new tales of cosmic horror in Lost in the Dark and Other Excursions. In these stories, he continues to chart the course of 21st century weird fiction, from the unfamiliar to the familial, the unfathomably distant to the intimate.
Includes extensive story notes and an introduction by Victor LaValle.
Review
This seems to be the year of Langan for me! Starting the year having not read any of John Langan’s works, I have now since consumed The Fisherman, Corpsemouth and Other Autobiographies, and now in most recent days, his latest collection, Lost In The Dark and Other Excursions. I really enjoyed The Fisherman and the stories collected in Corpsemouth, but I think Lost In The Dark has finally cemented John Langan as a new favourite, auto-buy author.
Much like King, Barker, and James, there’s a certain flavour to a Langan story that is impossible to replicate and is wholly his own. It’s hard to describe, but to me, it’s a level of gravitas, a certain feeling of history and hidden depths to not just the characters involved – who always feel like actual human beings, despite only having a short screen presence, as it were – to also a wider cosmic structure at play. Whether John is just riffing with some of these connective tissues elements or not is irrelevant, because discovering these moments of connection between his tales is always a delight.
So what did I think of the stories contained within Lost In The Dark? Let’s get into it!
Madame Painte: For Sale
I believe John likes to start his collection with a fun little appetizer, and this is the funnest (that’s not a word Harry) one of the lot. Reminding me of King’s The Monkey, wherein we chart the course of a potentially cursed object – this time, a colourful garden gnome THAT MUST BE KEPT OUTSIDE AT ALL TIMES – the slight absurdity of this story makes for a very enjoyable start. It’s also one of the very few stories that are in 2nd person narration that I think actually works (otherwise, 2nd person POV can burn in a fire).
Lost In The Dark
The title story of this collection is a fascinating tales of truths, untruths, facts becoming fiction and vice versa. It’s also one of a few meta narrative stories in this collection in which Langan himself is our chronicler. What we get is three narrative branches detailing the story of an in-universe horror movie, the behind-the-scenes drama, and the history of the shooting location in question. All these stories have elements of reality to them, yet also have been tinged with the malleable nature of both memory, folkloric storytelling, and just that age old trope of the unreliable narrator. What it creates is a truly great tale where reality itself is questionable.
My Father, Dr Frankenstein
Briefly, and to remain truthful to my experience, this one is the only story that didn’t work for me. It’s a collection of endnotes to a made-up memoir of the son of a doctor who carried out malicious experiments on humans in a post WW2 and Cold War era world. What we get is a series of addendums which both document real-life events during this admittedly interesting period of modern history woven together with the fiction of this “mad-doctor”, except I found this to be a bit dry, and maybe lacking enough narrative bite to work for me.
A Song Only Partially Heard
A horrific death caused – directly or indirectly, that judgement is up to you – by something of sheer otherworldly beauty, A Song Only Partially Heard confronts yet another sea based oddity, but this time, I am left thinking if everything under the black unforgiving waves of the rivers and oceans of this world is something truly to be frightened of. It’s a short piece, and one where a horrible, gory death is juxtaposed against sheer magnificence in a truly… uh… magnificent way!
The Deep Sea Swell
A creature-feature with an incredibly memorable monster that was part Bioshock Big Daddy and part “the bloke from the cover of John Carpenter’s The Thing”, I felt the desperation here, the mad rocking of a ship in a storm, the queasy nature of sea travel, the heavy clomping steps of the pursuer on your tail. Vivid and immersive, The Deep Sea Swell did two things: excited me in its building of tension (whilst again giving plenty of history to those involved) and reminded me to never bother visiting the Scottish Isles!
Haak
Another meta one, where Langan flexes his English Lit muscles. John’s ability to combined real world history – and in this case, the actual life of one of English Literature’s most celebrated authors, Joseph Conrad – with the fantastical on full display. It’s the un-Disney-ified look at Peter Pan, a childlike creature of mischief, and what would have happened if he was put through the lens of the vengeful, unforgiving nature of Greek mythos. It’s again another 3-layer deep nested tale, and it was a joy to peel back its layers whilst also having fun with Pan and a bunch of pissed off Spanish sailors!
Breakwater
The closest to a thriller I have read from Langan. Simply put, I want more of this! I want this as a full blown story, a 300-page story that runs at breakneck speed and builds the tension over and over and over. It’s the kind of dark noir story that I’d see No Country For Old Men era Coen Brothers adapt into a grim and gritty crime epic. Of course, there is always something else hidden under the surface…
Errata
Have you ever had a mis-print in a book before? Been to your local Waterstones (or whatever local equivalent you have), you buy a new book, get home, crack the spine, and then 100 pages in, you’re met with some kind of printing mistake? Maybe there’s pages missing, or a portion of the book has been printed upside down, or maybe it’s a section from an entirely different novel? Well, what if it was eldritch writing? Something incomprehensible that it causes trouble somewhere that you’ll never find out about. Well, that’s Errata for you! John and his real life publishing partner make an appearance too!
Natalya, Queen of the Hungry Dogs
Possibly my favourite story from the whole the collection, it just so happens to also be the longest. A ghost story in which the ghost becomes more prominent and vicious the thinner between our world and the next is, this was exciting, had rich, memorable character work, and an inventive take on Limbo. It also features what I’d consider to be a tangible villain (I’d argue that a true “villain” of a story isn’t something John often goes for), one that you’ll sympathise with come the end. The closing moments were very moving and had me smiling a bittersweet grin.
Oscar Returns From The Dead, Prophesizing
Only John Langan could take a seemingly daft true-life story – the one of a beloved pet lizard who meets an accidental death and is replaced with an identical lizard – and turn it into one that quickly spirals into madness. One where the inexplicable is the only truth, and the consequences wrought upon our main protagonist are harrowing and distressing.
Alice’s Rebellion
I kind of don’t want to spoil anything about this one. Let’s just say; if any of you have played the cult classic PlayStation 3 game Alice: Madness Returns (or the original PC only game, American McGee’s Alice from the year 2000) then you’ll love the flavour of this one. It had me giddy, and I love when an author takes something that’s very iconic and twists it into something recognisable, yet tonally, it’s drastically different.
Snakebit, Or Why I (Continue To) Love Horror
Originally a story that was due to feature in Becky Spratford’s collection of essays, Why I Love Horror, we are treated to a bit of a twofer. Despite not being the essay that would go on to feature in the collection, Snakebit is both a narrative tale in which John Langan takes us, the reader, down all the roads and questions he loves to continue to explore in the horror genre, the whys and hows that keep him writing what he writes and the thought process behind several of his works, but also a story about an island with a urban legend, an eccentric with a penchant for snake statues, and an expedition that seems doomed from the start.
Clapping Teeth and Driving Beats
A nice little one to round off this collection, this puts me in mind of those Analog Horror reels or TikToks you see. You know the ones, the videos that have that “if you see another person that looks identical to you, run away and hide” sound. Well, those videos give me the creeps. I also can’t stop watching them. And this story also gives me the creeps. It was the cherry on top of a decadent collection of the best cosmic, existential stories I’ve read in a long, long time!
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