Black Static Horror Magazine #2 Read online

  "Your name,” the officer says. “What's your name, sir?"

  The nameless man speaks, saying his name over and over again. But he can tell by their faces they do not understand.

  Copyright © 2007 Steve Rasnic Tem

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  BLOOD SPECTRUM—Tony Lee

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  Hostel II

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  Tony is editor of Premonitions magazine (available from pigasuspress.co.uk), and The Zone website at zone-sf.com, and is also a columnist for Black Static's sister magazine Interzone. He lives on the Isle of Wight.

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  CREEPY UNKNOWN

  Bad places are a staple of genre horror. Essentially, there are two types. Places already known to be domains of evil, visited only for purposes of investigation or exorcism by fools or heroes (Legend Of Hell House, Ghostbusters), and places where the forces of darkness lurk unsuspected yet soon to be encountered by protagonists (The Amityville Horror, The Grudge). The first category tends to rely on broadly theatrical effects, while the second delivers suspense with audiences forewarned about a supernatural menace that characters have yet to confront. Based on a novel by Kei Oishi, Japanese chiller Apartment 1303 belongs to the latter group. A malevolent spirit haunts a hotel condo. Female residents commit suicide after disturbing events, and several girls exit via the 13th floor balcony. Wholly responsible for the strange death of her abusive mother, the resentful ghost is deficient in redeeming qualities, using her medusa hairdo and brooding expressions to drive the heroine crazy. Director Ataru Oikawa astutely preserves a novelistic approach to exposition here and so, because uncanny imagery and moody atmosphere are more vital to cinematic frights than witty dialogue or memorable characters, the movie plays out its generic narrative with a second-hand checklist of impressionistic scares. This is not a classic but it passes the time.

  Never to be confused with Lloyd Kaufman's tasteless and wholly redundant Poultrygeist: Night Of The Chicken Dead, or Eric Lavaine's execrably retro camp and hardly watchable farce Poltergay (a French disco fantasy sitcom with ‘Village People’ stereotypes, mingling Beetlejuice silliness with Ghost style romanticism), Tobe Hooper's Poltergeist is now available on digitally re-mastered 25th anniversary edition. Despite the influence of producer Steven Spielberg on this classic movie, it retains many peculiar characteristics found in the director's other works. From the sweaty chills and savage humour of Texas Chain Saw Massacre, to the childhood problems and domestic strife underpinning his underrated Invaders From Mars remake, and various sociopolitical anxieties in the pilot episode for TV series Taken, all these disturbing themes indicate that Hooper is one of the few auteurs capable of working on a Spielbergian project without losing his own distinctive vision, most evident here during the weirdly surreal goings-on affecting the Freelings’ household. Hooper takes Spielberg's spooky plot—inspired by Richard Matheson's Twilight Zone episode Little Girl Lost, and transforms it into one of the most nightmarish and shockingly visceral confrontations with death (the bathroom mirror shows a rotting face, the suburban garden ejects broken coffins) that fantasy-horror cinema has ever seen.

  Of course, horrible people are considerably worse than terrifying places. An outgrowth of splatter movies, the cycle of ‘torture porn’ popularised by Saw, Devil's Rejects, Wolf Creek, Captivity, and Eli Roth's Hostel continues with that director's uneven sequel Hostel: Part II, which fields more varied action/horror influences (from The Most Dangerous Game and John Woo's Hard Target, to Countess Bathory and Caligula) than its predecessor. Brazenly fulfilling the misogynistic trend as the focus of cruelty shifts from young males to primarily female victims, while evoking a unique theme park concept like a perversely twisted Westworld vacation, Roth spins a rather tatty web of episodic suspense and theatrically staged torments. It does have its moments, but there's nothing here to equal the searing intensity of Takashi Miike's period shocker Imprint from television series Masters Of Horror.

  Approaching a comparable ambushed prey scenario, but with the paranoia of surveillance culture added to the story, Nimród Antal's Vacancy is about a married couple (Kate Beckinsale, Luke Wilson) that are stranded by car trouble at an isolated motel and then terrorised by anonymous killers. More like one of those utterly contrived TV movies than genuinely horrific cinema, this Hollywood siege thriller is efficiently produced, but has no appealing characters and so few genre surprises (snuff videos? Oh, yawn ... ) that its boilerplate conspiracy is actually spoiler proof. Romanian chiller Ils (Them) explored similar themes but with a much greater sense of risk to its heroine, and possessed a more visually imaginative style.

  Directed by Francis Ford Coppola, the ultimate Transylvanian gothic extravaganza of Bram Stoker's Dracula is now fifteen years old (the deluxe edition DVD features a worthwhile Coppola commentary track). Fondly remembered for introducing Sadie Frost (who steals the show as the enslaved Lucy), and for discovering Monica Bellucci (one of the Count's blood-lusty brides), this remarkable visual feast of sumptuous designs and dazzling effects, autonomous shadows and erotic nightmares, frames the timeless romance between Gary Oldman's shape-shifting night stalker and spirited Londoner, Mina (Winona Ryder), dominating a veritable hotbed of horrors, including the inevitable AIDS allegory. Indie video productions like Dracula's Dirty Daughter (cheesy softcore antics with eternal blood-fiend and soul-taker ‘Vamparina'), and Mike Watt's unashamedly cheap, frequently gory action-horror A Feast Of Flesh (small town mercenaries are provoked into attacking the undead hookers of a local brothel) are remarkably lurid compared to erotic vampire thriller The Last Sect, which features minimal bloodletting, artful lesbian action without nudity, and David Carradine as Van Helsing. Here, love-bite sexuality is bashful compared to The Hunger, home study-bound detective work unfolds like Sherlock Holmes on a lazy Sunday evening, and we get only limited kung fu slayings to liven up the relaxed pacing, so the immortal matriarch's scheme against humanity never seems like the world-shaking crisis it's alleged to be.

  Set in an alternative New Zealand, Glenn Standring's Perfect Creature is like a steampunk Blade Runner meets Underworld, with an elite brotherhood of priestly vampires protecting ‘flu plagued humans in Dickensian squalor. In the quest for better antivirals, a renegade geneticist turns nasty in the slums, and attacks the cop (Saffron Burrows) investigating Whitechapel style murders. The retro scenario fascinates, the SF-horror timeline intrigues, and there's much to admire in the widescreen detailing but, unfortunately, this feels like a comicbook adaptation that requires development to avoid the hazard of narrative clichés galore. As the flipside of Blade, it could have been a nocturnal SF thriller worthy of a similar franchise. Instead this is just another slapdash cross-genre oddity composed of elements that clash, and throw sparks that illuminate structural faults (why should the ban on medical research hinder engineering innovations?), when they really needed to fit together smoothly and seamlessly.

  Ahead of Robert Zemeckis’ blockbuster Beowulf, comes Sturla Gunnarsson's unpoetic Beowulf & Grendel, with its sketchy characters and borderline fantasy trappings (only a single wrathful sea hag). Here, the ferocious monster of Norse legend is just an orphaned hulking wild-man grown used to spree-kill rampages and cave troll cannibalism. Gerard Butler is the brooding hero, Sarah Polley makes a feisty witch of Selma, but Stellan Skarsgård looks merely haggard or morose as the village elder. Although the rugged Icelandic scenery is always breathtaking, nothing of sufficient import or particular interest to genre fans happens until the final fifteen minutes. On the traditional fantasy spectrum, colour this as a wormy Conan, not fabulous Tolkien.

  Copyright © 2007 Tony Lee

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  IN THE SHAPE OF A DRAGON—Mélanie Fazi

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  Mélanie writes mostly in French (her fourth book, a collection of stories, is coming out in February in France) but some of her stories have be
en translated into English and have appeared in The Third Alternative, F&SF and The Year's Best Fantasy & Horror. She lives in Paris where she works as a translator.

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  Even the walls of the house could not entirely stifle it. As soon as one came in through the main door the first snatches were perceptible. It slid under the internal doors and haunted the corridors, like a climbing plant that clings to empty space. It was everywhere, lurking in the corners. Seven days had passed, and even the night was no longer silent.

  It was in Faustine's bedroom, next door to the studio, that the presence made itself felt most tangibly. While still very small, Faustine had learned to lull herself to sleep to her father's comings and goings in the neighbouring room, the noise of footsteps, the creaking of floorboards and the turned-down radio spinning a protective cocoon around her. Sometimes, when she concentrated, she could even make out the gliding movement of the pencil's lead over the paper. Papa preferred to work at night.

  On the evenings when the studio remained closed it was from the living room, directly beneath her bedroom, that the music came to her, with the laughter of friends that Papa invited to stay late into the night. Faustine had learned, naturally, to relegate the noises to the background—at least when she did not strain her ears, with supreme curiosity, to catch the idiot laughter of adults transformed by alcohol into a gang of dirty children. The noises kept her company while she let herself slip into sleep. Absolute silence distressed her.

  For a week she woke up and went to sleep to the sound of the same overworked guitars on the other side of the wall. On the first morning, it had woken her up with a start. Papa had his rituals while he was drawing, but turning the music right down in the early hours had never been one of them. Faustine knew that from experience. She had hidden under the sheltering bedclothes to await the end of the song—which was renewed as soon as it was finished, in a perfect cycle. There was nothing astonishing in that: Papa liked to put certain songs on a loop in order to work. He too could be intimidated by silence.

  Mama had come knocking at the studio door: four closely-spaced raps, louder than was necessary. When Papa had opened it to her, their voices had drowned in the sonic mush. Even music allied itself with adults when it was a matter of protecting excessively curious childish ears. The door had closed again without Faustine having been able to catch a treasonous word on the wing—and the music had followed its perfectly circular trajectory. Hours, then days, went by.

  Faustine had quickly become accustomed to it. By the second day she had ceased to find it astonishing. It was entirely natural to wake up to the vibrations off the bass line, which she perceived before even catching the voices of Mama and William in the kitchen. It was her first impression as she opened her eyes. Had it not been for the glances of annoyance they exchanged over the kitchen table at meal times, she would have forgotten that there had ever been a time before Papa's absence and the music in the studio. Mama did not even listen to the radio at breakfast. In those early hours, the sound of her own voice became repugnant to her. She was eager to cut her sentences short with mouthfuls of coffee, and would rather keep silent unless she was forced to answer questions. The train of her thoughts was undoubtedly her most agreeable companion.

  How could they understand it, those who—unlike Faustine—did not have the privilege of sharing a wall in common with the studio? She alone was close enough to hear it properly. It is easy to grow weary of a song, when one stops at the surface.

  Papa no longer left his studio. He took all his meals there, and if he came out occasionally in search of provisions it was doubtless at a time when he knew that he would not bump into anyone. Faustine did not remember having heard him leave the room. Day and night, shuffling footsteps testified to his presence on the other side of the wall—unless she was confusing them with the echo of the drumbeat?

  For a week, that muffled voice had been that of the house. The mosaic woven by the guitars lived in the walls, spreading itself out in the recesses like the filaments of a spider's web. The bass imprinted its dull vibrations there until it had impregnated them. When Faustine had pressed her ear to her bedroom's decorative wallpaper, it had seemed to her that she felt a pulsation, as if the surface were animated by a life of its own. Since then, a little of that energy had infected her in her turn. Even when she went out, she carried it within her. On the road to school, that was what guided her steps. More than once, Faustine had been surprised to find herself drumming on her school desk, recognising the familiar rhythm thereafter.

  They ended up getting used to one another; it was a mere matter of time. And Mama ended up prowling around the studio door on occasion, in the evening, in the hope that Papa would let her come in. And William lifted his eyes to the heavens when he came home from college to find the silence still vanquished. He grumbled, thinking of all the times when Mama had shouted at him for not turning the radio down in his room. Go figure the justice of grown-ups.

  Faustine did not despair of penetrating the secrets of what was still, on the first day, no more than a vague drone. By straining her ears, she discerned the outline of a structure in the apparent chaos. It was at night, most of all, when the house fell silent, that the sounds revealed themselves to her. She learned to separate out subtle intonations or, better still, successive layers, and whatever she once unmasked remained definitely acquired. She soaked up sounds to the point of nausea, as if her stomach, filled up by a chocolate orgy, continued to demand its share of sugar: a hunger impossible to satisfy. There was something that required explanation.

  That passage in which the song slowed down before bursting forth explosively ... Faustine would have give a great deal to hear that clearly. It teased her senses and her brain, by dint of keeping them in a state of tension: the torture of Tantalus readapted to her scale. It is difficult to appreciate music when a wall separates you from it. She still knew it only in fragmentary form, when its thread demanded nothing less than to be laid entirely bare.

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  On the seventh evening, rooted in front of the studio door, Faustine pushed audacity to the point of pressing her ear to the keyhole. The sound seemed clearer there, and closer than ever—within arm's reach, so to speak. There was no longer the thickness of a wall separating them, but a simple wooden panel—hardly anything to speak of, but still one barrier too many. The bass line's vibration had already reached her bones. One gesture would be enough to bring them together, so intimately that she had not dared imagine it.

  The door swung open without any resistance, without even a creak of protest. To think that she had always believed it to be locked, as if it were a sanctuary!

  Finally freed from its shackles, the vague sound unfurled, engulfing her with its clarity. It brought Faustine out in goose-pimples. She was now at the heart of things.

  The studio seemed so tiny. Judging by the noise of footsteps coming through the wall, and the pattern they traced, she had imagined that it would be more spacious. Her only previous incursion into the room had taken place more than a year ago. Since then, a kind of superstitious dread had prevented her from going into it. The place was impregnated with an indefinable odour of paint and chemicals: an alchemist's lair, Faustine thought, undoubtedly possessed by something similar; it was a place where mysteries were created and penetrated.

  Seated directly on the carpet, with his back to one of the walls, Papa did not appear to notice her intrusion. The source of the music, his CD player, was set at his feet. Faustine was sufficiently emboldened to take a step into the room, so that she might close the door behind her. It was a bad idea to let the notes spread out into the corridor; Mama would arrive within a minute to call loudly for silence.

  With the exception of the one that Papa was facing, the studio walls were covered with postcards and film stills, pinned directly to the wallpaper: decoration worthy of a teenager's bedroom, not of the room where a family man earned his daily crust. Papa designed book covers; that was what Faustine wrote
on the card on which her teacher asked her to write down her personal details at the beginning of each school year, under the heading ‘parent's profession'. The studio was reminiscent of William's bedroom, with its walls covered in football posters.

  The fourth wall had been stripped in order to be plastered with as many drawings as space permitted. To judge by their perfect alignment, they had been arranged in this manner quite recently, in order that they might be taken in by a single glance from the spot occupied by Papa.

  Faustine crept forwards like a mouse, obliged to zigzag between the dirty plates and empty beer- and soda-cans strewn upon the carpet. Excitement knotted her gut; if she placed herself right beside Papa, at the very source of the music, she would understand what she had been hearing for seven days. She would put her finger on its essence.

  When she sat down next to her father, without a word, he gave her only the briefest glance. He obviously had not shaved since he had closed the door between himself and the world, not to mention changing his clothes. Between these four walls the notion of time took on an entirely different meaning. Apparently it had more than one.

  The voices...

  Faustine had always expected there to be only one voice. It was obvious now that she had overcome the last barrier, though, that she had been listening to two voices all along, without being able to tell them apart: two male voices, so similar in their texture that a wall was sufficient to efface their differences; two voices that alternated before joining together in subtle harmony.

  The bass vibrations slowly insinuated themselves beneath her skin to blossom inside her. She felt so well, as if she had found her true place. Every now and again, the song would interrupt itself in order to begin anew: a slide, a burgeoning hum, a crescendo. Then one of the voices would pronounce the first words; everything would go smoothly.