“Shall there be no mercy, then?”
Gary A. Braunbeck and Alan M. Clark team up in different ways to tell short and novella legnth horror stories that will chill you to the core.
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TITLE:
ESCAPING PURGATORY: FABLES IN WORDS AND PICTURES
WRITERS:
by Gary A. Braunbeck and Alan M. Clark
ART:
by Alan M. Clark
GENRE:
Horror Fiction
DESCRIPTORS:
Paintings, Illustrations, Short Stories, Novellas,
SUMMARY:
This is a collection of short stories and novellas by Ohio author Gary Braunbeck. The overall theme of the collection is the different ways people escape from a purgatory, often of their own making, and not always escaping into a better situation. There are five stories in this book:
“Mr. Hands” Lucy Thompson, whose daughter was abducted at a county fair, nurses a growing hatred for child abductors, abusers and child killers which costs her marriage and sobriety. But when a convicted child killer gets legal permission to join her support group for grieving parents, Lucy creates a huge golem out of garbage and dead animal remains which carries out her thirst for revenge and dubs it Mr. Hands because of it has stumps for legs and over large arms and hands for walking. Night after night it carries out her justice with no pity until one night she makes a mistake . . .
“The Big Hollow” The inhabitants are ghosts, invisible to the living, who haven’t or can’t move beyond the confides of their graveyard. But the highway is coming through and all the graveyards are being moved. When this happens is causes the ghosts to be herded like cows by dogs and ghosts on horseback to some unknown destination. The only other way out is to disappear by walking into the far fields. Both choices fill them with dread. But days before the construction crew arrives at their graveyard, Jewel realizes that several of their decaying community have disappeared and there is a murderer among themselves.
“A Host of Shadows” Howard Faber is dying and the specter of his old alter ego periodically attends his bedside exhorting him to pass on his blood-ridden mantle to his son.
“In the Directions of Summer’s Coming” Chief Wetbrain is a homeless drunk who plays the sax for money on the streets when a pack of boys descend looking for an easy mark. But one of them seeks something more than money . . . .
“The Circus of Central Motion” Sally, a young girl with the sight, sees the van pull up and a glorious host of clowns move into the house down her street. Her friends, including Daniel, can’t see anything until she points it out to them. The grown-ups can’t see anything either but they instinctively dislike their new neighbors. The clowns have a new home but in Sally, they may have something else . . .
APPEAL:
These stories were written by Gary A. Braunbeck. Two of them were co-written with Alan M. Clark. Some of the stories were inspired by paintings and illustrations while others served as inspiration for paintings and artwork. All of the artwork was done by Mr. Clark.
Besides the being an Ohio author, Braunbeck writes horror stories with intense psychological insight. Some of his monsters are human, such as Jack the Ripper, others are monstrous like Mr. Hands, while others still are eerie and archetypal as witnessed in the clowns.
If you like psychological studies served up with their horror, you’ll appreciate Braunbeck’s writing. And he doesn’t pull any punches. My first introduction to Gary was “Mr. Hands” from this collection — and in a few paragraphs, Lucy Thompson became real to me — so real that I shared her outrage when a child killer was allowed to join her group of parents who had lost their kids. So real I felt panic when Lucy turned around at the carnival and discovered that Sarah was missing. That’s why he’s one of my favorite authors.
The book has a long fold out color plate with all the paintings from the stories within. Within the book itself are black and white illustrations peppering the story, adding texture to the tales.
NOTES:
Perhaps the best way to think about this book is to see the book’s description which said it better than I could:
Escaping Purgatory is about personal hells. We all create them. We find ways to convince ourselves that we are comfortable with the really cruel ones, at least for a while. It’s understandable. After all change is frightening. But inevitably there comes a time when we are willing to do anything to end the torment. In this book you’ll meet some of those extremes and perhaps you’ll recognize yourself.
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