Welcome to Alex Grass’s world of the strange. INFERNAL TRAMPS, an anthology of 17 short stories, showcases the author’s talent for weird fiction with a style akin to that of eldritch horror pioneer H.P. Lovecraft and more recent practitioners (such as Thomas Ligotti). These are dark, uncanny tales that, in the style of the Lovecraftian unknowable, frequently disturb more by what is implied than by what Grass literally describes.
The stories range from short and odd to more in-depth and nightmarish. The opening tale, “The Tezcat Apparatus” (about a bizarre pest controller and his machine), would have sit comfortably in any of the myriad sci-fi pulp magazines of the 40s and 50s. The title story is a more modern fiction, a gruesome gore-soaked fable from the dark side of the railroad tracks.
Grass has a good eye for conjuring up memorable scenes. In “Pujkamaunka Splash" (a Black Mirror-esque story about a mythical, menacing console game), there is a striking set piece where the narrator is trapped into watching pit bulls fight in a derelict ornamental fountain at a mall. The author is at his best when he undermines the banality of the everyday with an eeriness that creeps through the cracks of the normal. In “Odd Egg” he writes, “There are strangers, and then there are strange strangers, and there’s a world of difference between them.” One such stranger appears in the lengthy “Meeting Ivor Voelman,” in which the narrator seeks out a cult writer whose works have induced suicide and madness in his readers.
For those who prefer their horror to be more explicit, Grass is happy to oblige with some gleeful gore and old-fashioned monsters. There is even a story that manages to bring new life to the killer-clown trope by means of a crazy canine twist: “No gaudy sunflower boutonnière with a squeeze bulb for spritzing suckers in the stands; no, but a shriveled paw amputated from some indiscernible species, pinned to the brisket of the clown-dog’s chest.”
There is enough variety in this collection to surprise the most jaded gore-hound, while the author’s tight grip on narrative and dialogue will even satisfy readers who are tentatively dipping their toes into bizarre fiction.
Written by Alex Grass, INFERNAL TRAMPS really delivers the goods for fans of uncanny horror.
~ Kent Lane for IndieReader