No author has ever come close to terrifying me quite like H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937). His novella At the Mountains of Madness (1931), about an ill-fated expedition to the Antarctic, remains my all-time favorite horror work. His stories involving the Cthulhu mythos, in which humans are inconsequential specks in a hostile universe dominated by ancient, nightmare-inducing gods, had me checking under my bed and in the closet for weeks when I first stumbled across one of his short-story collections (Dagon and Other Macabre Tales, I believe) in a used bookstore when I was a kid. And even more than 70 years after Lovecraft’s death, horror writers and fans all over the world are still exploring and expanding the Cthulhu myth with new anthologies, role-playing games, works of art, clothing, toys, bumper stickers, etc. (There is even Cthulhu thong underwear available, I kid you not...)
In Lovecraft’s essay “Supernatural Horror in Literature,” he stated: “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.” Lovecraft was (and still is) the master at inducing fear—especially fear of the unknown—in readers, and he accomplished this through a highly intelligent and persuasive narrative that featured mysticism and esotericism while utilizing elements of psychological horror. I have never come across a contemporary writer who even comes near to his dark, bowel-loosening storytelling brilliance—until now.
And his name is Laird Barron.
His second collection, Occultation and Other Stories, was released a few months back with similar results—a critically acclaimed collection of short stories that mainstream American readers are completely unaware of.
Hence this blog.
From my years of experience as a moderator in BarnesandNoble.com’s online community, I’ve gotten the sense that many readers are sick and tired of the splatterific blood and gore that powers many of today’s horror novels. From my perspective, these over-the-top narrative shock tactics could very well be an indication that a writer is either not particularly talented or just plain lazy. Yes, having some zombie dismember a victim and crush his skull like an overripe beefsteak tomato then pull out his intestines like it’s stringing up Christmas lights may be entertaining to some—but is it truly scary? No. Inducing real fear in readers is no easy task—I can probably list the authors that have actually scared me in one breath: Lovecraft, Poe, King, Barker, Koontz, Matheson, and Campbell, although I’m most definitely forgetting a few… My point is that a lot of contemporary horror isn’t scary at all: it’s just gross. Shocking readers is easy. Scaring them takes talent.
Reading Laird Barron reminds me of what it was like discovering works from the aforementioned horror masters. The nine stories featured in his latest collection are painstakingly constructed—a darkly poetic narrative fuels these deftly plotted stories of existential angst. In the collection’s introduction, veteran author Michael Shea (The Extra) describes Barron’s cosmos as “an omni-morph that can dragoon you whenever/wherever it wants into its swarming, pullulating fabric. This, of course, is a simple Axiom of the reality we all share, every second of our lives, with our Universe: in that great Starry Engine, we all end as mulch… this radiant, hair-raising Truth is the very engine of Barron’s imagination.”
A common thread in many of Lovecraft’s stories was the insatiable need to understand the world around us by seeking out arcane knowledge and that theme is most definitely at work in Barron’s “Mysterium Tremendum,” a terrifying story about a group of gay friends who get together for a camping trip in Washington State. After finding a strange book entitled Moderor de Caliginis (roughly translated as The Black Guide) in a Seattle general store that lists secret arcane attractions across Washington, Willem and his friends decide to see if there really is a dolmen on the aptly named Mystery Mountain. What the friends find in the remote woods will change them forever… In the masterful “The Forest”—which I hope Barron extends into a novel in the future—a cinematographer visits some old friends at a secluded New England compound only to find that one of his friends, a renowned entomologist, has found a way to communicate with a horrifying inhuman intelligence, a species that will rule the world long after humankind is extinct… “Strappado” follows two adventurous (and drunk) travelers in an Indian tourist town who decide to witness an infamous guerilla artist in action—and, deep in the jungle, become part of the bloody performance… But perhaps the most disturbing selection is the title story “Occultation,” in which a husband and wife—sprawled out in bed in a rundown motel room after having drunken, tequila-fueled sex—see a strange thing in the shadows on the wall and no amount of denial or rationalization will change the reality of what it is. And as the story ends, the inebriated man doesn't exatly eat the worm...
Although the nine stories included in Occultation and Other Stories were diverse, there were reoccurring images and themes throughout: insects, worms, masks, bodily vices (smoking, drinking, sex.), etc. I particularly loved how Barron’s dark descriptive style created another subtle level to the stories by transforming the most mundane objects into something sinister. In “Strappado,” for example, he describes the lights of a discotheque bar as glowing like “the bioluminescent tentacle of a deep-sea creature” and in “Six Six Six,” a splintered door is a “toothy maw.”
But above all else, there is a timelessness to Barron's writing. Here, in "Mysterium Tremendum," his characters stumble across a megalithic structure in the woods. "The trail wound under the arch of a toppled dead log, and ended in a large hollow partially ringed by firs and hemlocks. The hollow was a shadowy-green amphitheatre that smelled of moist, decayed leaves and musty earth. Directly ahead, reared the dolmen—two squat pillars of rock supporting a third, enormous slab. I was amazed by its cyclopean dimensions. The dolmen was seated near the slope of the hill and blanketed with moss, and at its base: ferns and patches of devil's club. It woke in me a profound unease that was momentarily overshadowed by my awe that the structure actually existed."
The bottom line is this: Laird Barron is to horror what Paolo Bacigalupi is to science fiction. In 2008, Bacigalupi was a relative unknown when he released his short story collection, Pump Six and Other Stories. Now he is a Nebula Award winning novelist (The Windup Girl) and science fiction’s brightest star. Laird Barron may be a relative unknown now but, trust me, when his debut novel The Croning is released in 2011, everyone will be talking about this guy and heralding him as horror’s next superstar.
Why wait until next year? I’ll say it right now. Laird Barron is horror’s new messiah. If you want to experience this guy’s singularly brilliant writing, don’t wait until his debut novel is released—read this collection now. And after you’ve devoured these nine dark gems, make sure you check under the bed before you go to sleep. As Barron wrote in “Mysterium Tremendum,” “there are frightful things lurking in the shadows...”
Paul Goat Allen has been a full-time book reviewer specializing in genre fiction for almost the last two decades and has written more than 6,000 reviews for companies like Publishers Weekly, The Chicago Tribune, and BarnesandNoble.com. In his free time, he reads.
What? No link to the Cthulhu underwear? That’s just doing a disservice to Cthulhu’s most ardent followers… 
That said, Laird Barron’s book appears to be a *Must Own* for me. The story hooks listed here really grabbed me.
I’ve always loved this type of dark, almost epic-in-scope horror fiction. And people finding Evil Grimoires? Love that trope. I snatched up a H.P. Lovecraft horror collection when I was in high school (a Del Rey one, I believe, with a picture of a woman in a rain slicker showing off her cobwebbed, skeletal ribcage that had absolutely nothing to do with the stories inside, but whatever…) and the first story I read was “At The Mountains of Madness.” Classic. Such brooding—almost suffocating—dread generated in that story. Also loved Arthur Machen’s “The Great God Pan” and Stephen King’s recent story “N” which was influenced by the Machen story. Good stuff.
I’m more than ready for this kind of horror story, so it’s almost an understatement to say I’m very excited about “Occultation and Other Stories.”
