The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All Review

Nine short stories from a new horror master: gritty, grotty, grimdark, with words like bloody knives.

Night Shade Books, 2013, 280 pages

Over the course of two award-winning collections and a critically acclaimed novel, The Croning, Laird Barron has arisen as ane of the strongest and most original literary voices in modern horror and the dark fantastic. Melding supernatural horror with hardboiled noir, espionage, and a scientific courage, Barron'south stories have garnered critical acclaim and have been reprinted in numerous yr's best anthologies and nominated for multiple awards, including the Crawford, International Horror Order, Shirley Jackson, Theodore Sturgeon, and World Fantasy awards.

Barron returns with his third collection, The Cute Affair That Awaits The states All. Collecting interlinking tales of sublime cosmic horror, including "Blackwood's Infant", "The Carrion Gods in Their Heaven", and "The Men from Porlock", The Cute Thing That Awaits United states All delivers enough spine-chilling horror to satisfy even the most jaded reader.

I kickoff encountered Laird Barron in another horror anthology — his story, "Borderland Decease Song," invoked icy, existential horror in the Alaskan wilderness where Barron grew up. This is my offset time reading a collection of his stories, and damn, they are expert. This is a blood-slick treat with buckets of violence just not a drop of gratuitous gore for gore'southward sake, and I haven't looked forrad to reading more short stories by a horror author since early on King.

If there is one thing I find fault with in this collection of gruesome, violent, scary, and very literate horror tales, it is that Laird Barron shows himself to be equal to Lovecraft in imagination and writing ability, but won't quite stride out of the neurotic old pulp author'southward shadow.

Of grade it'southward hard to write about catholic, nihilistic horror without echoing HPL. All the stories in The Cute Affair That Awaits Us All invoke the horror of a cold, impersonal universe filled with night things that volition casually grind you between their teeth, which is practically the definition of "Lovecraftian," only Barron'south stories are harder, grittier, filled with hunters, lumberjacks, gangsters and carnies, rather than Lovecraft'southward shrieking academics. Of grade these rough men fare no better than academy professors when faced with madness-inducing horrors and monsters that lurk in the shadows, but they put up a fight.

Almost of the stories in the drove are set in the American northwest, and Barron has a fondness for period tales — the HPL/pulp influence once more. Although some of the violence and horror takes identify in cities, it'south out in the weald where Barron actually conveys the sense of how quickly civilisation flickers and dies. I gather from other reviews that many of the settings seen hither — Olympia, Washington, and the Broadsword Hotel — feature in his other stories. But equally Stephen Rex has turned Maine into King territory, Barron seems to take claimed the Pacific Northwest as his primary storytelling venue.

Blackwood's Baby

One of several period tales in the collection, "Blackwood's Baby" is a legendary buck haunting the woods around a rich human being's manor. He invites a select group of hunters to join him in seeking this creature, simply they have been lured there past a servant of the woods, and Blackwood'south Infant is of course, as one hunter puts it, "no tender doe."

Mr. Williams leaned over him and Luke Dearest nearly skewered the human being. Mr. Williams leaped back, staring at the Barlow pocketknife in Luke Dear'due south fist. "Sorry, male child. Yous were having a fit. Laughing like a crazy man."

Luke Honey clambered to his feet and put away the pocketknife. His scooped up his rifle and brushed leaves from his apparel. The glow had subsided and the two men were alone except for the idol which hulked, a terrible lump in the darkness.

"Sugariness baby Jesus," Mr. Williams said. "My uncle told me about these damned things, as well. Said rich townies—that weren't followers of Christ, to put it politely—had 'em shipped in and set up here and there across the estate. Gods from the Old Globe. There are stories about rituals in the hills. Creature sacrifices and unnatural relations. Stories like our hosts told united states about the Blackwoods. To this twenty-four hour period, folks with coin and an interest in ungodly practices come to visit these shrines."

The Redfield Girls

There are a couple of stories in this collection focused on women. The Redfield Girls is about a group of schoolteachers who accept an almanac weekend vacation at a local lake, reputed to be haunted. The cosmic horror is less pronounced here; it'southward more of a ghostly tragedy, but Barron's telling evokes yawning abysses of terror that go across merely beingness frightened past spirits of the dead.

After they disconnected, Bernice lay staring into the glow of the dresser lamp. She slowly picked autonomously what Li-Hua had said, and equally she did, something shifted deep within her. She removed the cordless phone from its cradle and began to cycle back through every recording stored since the previous summertime, until she heard the mechanized voice report there was an unheard message dated 2am the morn of the accident. Since the power had been down, the telephone call went directly to voice mail.

"My God. My God." She deleted information technology, and dropped the phone as if were electrified.

Hand of Celebrity

Another period piece set in the 1920s, virtually a gangster's hired gun, post-obit in his father's footsteps, who decides to seek vengeance when another gangster tries to kill him. This leads to an encounter with a magician, who claims his old man was washed in by blackness magic, which leads the protagonist on a bloody quest into the backwoods to face witches and wizards of a decidedly not-Hogwarts variety, and devil-worshipping rednecks. This is a bloody tale with guns, knives, fists, cannibalism, sorcery,

To see an example of what I hateful when I call Laird Barron a literary horror author, check out this fight scene. It's bloody and fierce, as activity-packed as a lurid take chances, only Barron uses carefully crafted words similar a Nobel Laureate of Horror. This passage is where I started to fall in beloved with his writing.

Curtis Bane screamed and though I came effectually fast and fired in the same movement, he'd already pulled a heater and begun pumping metal at me. Nosotros both missed and I was empty, that drum clicking uselessly. I went directly at him. Happily, he also was out of bullets and I closed the gap and slammed the barrel of the rifle into his chest. Should've knocked him down, but no. The bastard was squat and powerful as a wild animal, thanks to being a coke fiend, no uncertainty. He ripped the rifle from my grasp and flung information technology aside. He locked his fists and swung them up into my mentum, and it was like getting clobbered with a hammer, and I sprawled into a row of trash cans. Stars zipped through my vision. A leather cosh dropped from his sleeve into his hand and he knew what to do with it all right. He swung it in a brusk chopping blow at my face and I got my left hand up and the blow snapped my two smallest fingers, and he swung again and I turned my caput simply enough that it but squashed my ear and you improve believe that injure, only now I'd drawn the sawback bayonet I kept strapped to my hip, a fourteen-inch grooved steel blade with notched and pitted edges—Jesus-fuck who knew how many Yankee boys the Kraut who'd owned it gashed before I did for him—and stabbed it to the baby-sit into Blight'due south groin. Took a couple of seconds for Bane to annals information technology was defunction. His face whitened and his rima oris slackened, breath steaming in the chill, his evil soul coming untethered. He had lots of gold fillings. He lurched away and I clutched his sleeve awkwardly with my cleaved hand and rose, twisting the handle of the blade side to side, turning information technology like a auto crank into his guts and bladder, putting my shoulder and hip into it for leverage. He moaned in panic and dropped the cosh and pried at my wrist, only the forcefulness was draining from him and I slammed him against the wall and worked the handle with murderous joy. The cords of his neck went taut and he looked away, as if embarrassed, optics milky, a doomed petitioner gaping at Hell in all its fiery majesty. I freed the blade with a cork-like pop and blood spurted downward his leg in a nice thick stream and he collapsed, folding into himself like a bug does when information technology dies.

The Carrion Gods in their Heaven

Another contemporary story. Lorna is fleeing her abusive ex, seeking haven in a cabin in the woods. "Cabin in the woods" is your inkling that things are going to go night and squamous. Lorna's lesbian lover, Miranda, is there to have intendance of her and protect her, and in another genre or with some other writer this would be some kind of dark chick-lit tale, merely Barron mixes crime thriller and shapeshifter legends to turn it all dark and grisly.

"Don't worry, infant." Miranda took her hand and led her back to the motel, and tenderly undressed her. She smiled faintly when she retrieved the revolver and set it on the tabular array. She kissed Lorna and her jiff was hot and foul. Then she stepped dorsum and began to pull the hibernate away from her trunk and every bit information technology lifted then did the underlying skin, peeling like a scab. Blood poured downward Miranda's breast and belly and pattered on the floorboards. The muscles of her cheeks and jaw bunched and she hissed, eyes rolling, and then it was washed and the dripping packet was complimentary of her ruddy-slicked mankind. Lorna was paralyzed with horror and awe, but finally stirred and tried to resist what her lover proffered. Miranda cuffed her temple, stunning her. She said, "Hold notwithstanding, infant. You're gonna thank me," and draped the cloak across Lorna's shoulders and pulled the skullcap of the beast over Lorna's eyes.

The Siphon

I'll admit that this story made me wince a fleck, because the protagonist, a chameleon-similar white collar sociopath named Lancaster, is recruited past an intelligence agency and Barron demonstrates that he knows far less about intelligence agencies than he does the dark claret-matted pine forests of the Pacific Northwest or the spirit-haunted trails of the Alaskan wilderness. Ignorance of such prosaic details bated, this wasn't my favorite story in the collection, but it however had its moments of marvelous literary violence, equally Lancaster discovers that darker powers operate between the gears in which he was a cog.

Mrs. Cook concluded Dedrick's heroics. She grasped the butt and jerked and the gun exploded again, shattering the rear window. She made her other hand into a claw and gently raked drab, blue-painted nails across his confront. One of his eyes outburst and deflated, and the meat of his cheeks and jaw came unstitched as if kissed by a serrated saw bract and his face more or less peeled away like a decal. The human being dropped the gun and pitched backward and out of view.

More blood. More blood. More screaming. It was anarchy. The limousine left the route, bounced into the ditch and plowed a ragged line through a wheat field. The occupants were violently tossed nearly, except for Mrs. Cook who sat serene as a padishah on her palanquin.

The car ground to a halt. The passenger door contrary Lancaster opened and Mr. Blaylock stood there in an evening suit. He said to Mrs. Cook, "Chop chop, my dear. Nighttime is wasting." He bowed and was gone.

Mr. Cook'south dagger had flown from his hand and lodged in the costly fabric of the seat betwixt Lancaster and Dr. Christou. Lancaster caught his remainder and snatched the knife, and it was heavy and cruelly curved and fit his paw most murderously. He stabbed it like an water ice pick just below Mrs. Cook'due south breast. the bract crunched through muscle and os and slid in to the hilt where it stuck tight. He tried to climb through the broken rear window. She cackled and clutched his ankle and yanked him to her as a mother retrieving her argumentative child. She kissed him and life drained from his limbs and he was paralyzed, notwithstanding completely enlightened. Completely aware for the hours that followed in the dark and desolate wheat field.

Jaws of Saturn

Some other gangster tale, though this i taking place in the present day. Phil Wary is an occultist/magician who shows up in several of Barron's stories, and here he is the adversary over again, confronted by a hired gun who wants him to stay away from his daughter.

In Lovecraftian stories, of course, magic always beats gunplay, and the unfortunate Franco suffers full SAN loss.

An impossibly tall effigy lurched from the shadow of the ornate support column. A demonic extravaganza of an old man, his wizened caput about scraping the domed ceiling, hunched toward Franco, skinny fingers reaching for him, lips twisting in apprehension. Franco recalled the de Goya painting of the titan Saturn who stuffed a man into his frightful maw and chewed with broad-eyed relish. He roughshod back, raising his arms in a feeble gesture of defense. The behemothic took the fistful of Franco'south strings, the quondam ethereal cords of his soul, and yanked him from his feet; grasped and lifted him and Franco had a long, disturbing moment to recognize his own confront mirrored by the primordial aspect of the giant.

Even in pieces, eternally disgorging his innards and fluids, he remained cognizant of his agonies. He tumbled through endless darkness, his shrieks flickering in his wake.

Vastation

This is a psychedelic tale with Barron'south imagination let loose equally if laced with liberal doses of acid. The narrator is a tripping megalomaniac, and you can chalk his story of being the creator and destroyer of the universe up to insanity, or yous can read it direct as cosmic metaphysical horror. The story rambles and twists and goes all over the place in time and space, but every paragraph is interesting if ofttimes opaque.

I stare at my freakish eyeball, gaze into the distorted pupil until it expands and fills the mirror, fills my brain and I'1000 rushing through vacuum. Wide awake and so far at such speed I flatten into a subatomic contrail. That grand catholic maw, that eater of galaxies, possesses sufficient gravitational force to rend the fabric of space and time, to obliterate reality, and in I go, bursting into trillions of infinitesimal particles, quadrillions of whining fleas, consumed. Nanoseconds subsequently, I understand everything there is to understand. Reduced to my "essential saltes" equally it were, I'thousand the prime mover seed that gets sown afterwards the rut death of the universe when the Ouroboros swallows itself and the wheel begins anew with a big bang.

Meanwhile, dorsum on Globe in the bathroom of the shabby efficiency apartment, my body teeters before the mirror. Lacking my primal ichor and animating force that fueled the quasi immortal regeneration of cells that in turn thwarted the perfect pathogen, the latent mutant factor of the Pod People activates and transmogrifies the practiced onetime homo me into one of Them. Probably the last cocky-willed fungus continuing—but not for long; this shit does indeed spread like wildfire. My former guts, ganglion, reproductive organs, and whatnot, dissolve into a thick, black stew while my former brain contracts and fossilizes to the approximate size of a walnut and adopts an entirely new set of operating principles.

The Men from Porlock

This was possibly my favorite story in the collection, very similar in tone and time period to "Blackwood'south Babe," just even more than horrific. Think M. Nighttime Shyamalan crossed with Stephen King crossed with Cormac McCarthy. A agglomeration of loggers become into the woods to purse some deer for their little encampment, in training for a visit by the large bosses. Of course the big bosses are coming, merely not the ones they call up. And in a subconscious valley in the forest, they encounter a village populated by inbred pregnant women. Things get worse and worse, in stomach-clenching grisliness and hopeless terror.

Into the forest. And gods, the trees were larger than ever there along a shrouded ridge that dropped into a deep gulf of shadows and mist. He was channeled along a trail that proved increasingly treacherous. H2o streamed from upslope, excavation notches through moss and dirt into the underlying rock. In sections the clay and vegetation were utterly stripped to exposed plates of slick stone, veined cherry-red with alkali and the bloody dirt of the world. The trees were then huge, their lattice of branches so tight, it became dim as a shuttered vault, and chilly enough to see faint vapors of 1'due south breath.

The game trail cut sharply into the hillside and eventually passed through a thick screen of saplings and devil'south order and leveled into a marshy clearing. A scattering of boulders lay sunken into the moss and muck around the trunks of three squat cottonwood trees. Surprisingly enough, there were odds and ends of human habitation carelessly scattered—rusted stovetops and empty cans, rotted wooden barrels and planed timber, bits of erstwhile shattered drinking glass and aptitude nails. Either the site of a ruined business firm, long swallowed by the earth, or a dumping ground. The rest of the men gathered at the rim of the hollow nearest a precipitous drop into the valley. Fast moving water rumbled from somewhere below.

More Dark

The concluding story in this collection seems to exist an extended within-baseball satire of the contemporary horror field. Barron is the narrator every bit he goes to Poughkeepsie to meet a gang of his swain horror authors. Everyone is named but by first name and terminal initial, and since I am non that familiar with all the current writers, I recognized many, but non all of the references. "Berkeley Nick and New York Nick" was an obvious shout-out, and the entire story seems to be a bit of a poke at Thomas Ligotti, whom I have not read.

Although it contained a lot of the same visceral imagery as the other stories in the collection, information technology was, for the most part, narrated every bit descriptive prose rather than an actual story, and since I'1000 not securely immersed in contemporary horror, I fright information technology went a chip past me. Nevertheless an interesting read, only probably my to the lowest degree favorite in this volume.

"Yes, oh yep, you lot are in luck, mon frère. L's written a fresh book of essays, the companion volume to Horror of Existence. No one other than his amanuensis has even glimpsed the manuscript, but word is, it's his masterpiece. Distils fifty-odd years of spleen in i raging spume of a satirical opus. It's called The Beautiful Matter That Awaits U.s.a. All. A howling void of blackness, I imagine." Michael said that with what I swore was a shiver of delight.

Verdict: Non every story in The Beautiful Thing That Awaits U.s. All was v stars, only I wouldn't rate whatever of them below 4. Laird Barron has hit my list of "authors to read more of presently." I'chiliad highly recommending this book, though I am scoring it not quite a 10 because I haven't read his other books still and am not sure still that this is his best. If you similar your horror nighttime and 2-fisted, like a less prissy, less dainty Lovecraft, or a contemporary Ambrose Bierce, check this Barron guy out. 9/ten.

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