Rook Circle, The (Book)
David Gelmini
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Written by Jef Rouner
Illustrated by Dori Hartley
Published by CreateSpace
Although it isn’t revealed until the author’s notes at the end, the title of the book The Rook Circle refers to how a bunch of crows have a habit of ganging up and circling a single crow in a nest. The bird in the centre will then caw and caw, and at the end the ones surrounding it will either fly away or peck it to death. Which presumably depends on whether or not they enjoyed whatever it had to say.
Sadly, I can’t speak crow, so I’ll never be able to judge which fate is most fitting for the carrion-eating bird, but after reading the horror anthology book The Rook Circle, I have no intention to peck writer Jef Rouner to death. That’s something, I guess.
The first story is called Underbite, and it is by far the strongest of the bunch. It has a descendant of the legendary vampire slayer Abraham Van Helsing named Whitney hunting creatures of the night in the present day. But rather than a crucifix-wielding tough guy, we’re instead presented with a frail old man wearing a Hawaiian shirt who simply wants to teach the vampires of today’s world that immortality and supernatural powers mean nothing in the long run and that if they truly want to be superior to humans, they should do so through endeavors and achievements.
Sure, we’re all so used to hearing vampires boast about how they are the superior race, but what’s the point if they don’t use their immortality to achieve true greatness? Too bad that when old Whitney actually does convince a vampire to make something of his never-ending life, the other undead are horrified by the prospect and cast him out as an outsider. Thus, the process of everlasting and meaningless life continues.
The privileged class will always have a sense of superiority, which in most cases in unwarranted. Many people still continue to believe that their nationality, parentage, or social class automatically make them above everyone else; and the vampires in Underbite are testament to that. The first step towards genuine change in a community is to erode the sense of supremacy that those in control always have.
The idea of a vampire healing factor kicking in before the effects of a head injury leaves them permanently brain-damaged for the rest of eternity was also a nice touch. Immortal bodies have their downsides, too.
A Senseless Eating Machine is a pretty straightforward, but still damn enjoyable, tale of an animatronic shark in an amusement park which develops a mind of its own and starts munching on the visitors. Nothing groundbreaking here, but still a fun romp that reminded me of all those classic Roger Corman monster movies.
Nevaeh has no monsters or supernatural elements but deals with an all too real and even worse kind of horror: organized religion.
Lissa is a young girl who takes a job at a drive-thru church so that she can pay for a car. Yeah. A drive-through church. The managers are Christians in the same way that Donald Trump is a politician. They couldn’t give two shits about spreading the word of Jesus or the Gospel; nope, they only thing that they care about is making as much cash as they can by exploiting people’s blind faith. And that won’t be hard to do in an area of rural Texas where most people have Republican mentalities. Remember how Marco Rubio said that if elected President, he would fight to criminalize gay marriage because it was against God’s will, but that he would not do anything about climate change because he thinks that it’s a non-issue? Remember how most of Ted Cruz’s Presidential campaign ads make absolutely no mention of any of his policies, and yet people still support him in droves because he claims to be a God-fearing Christian? Yep, faith can be a scary thing when people in power use it for their own nefarious ends.
Anyway, Lissa has a young friend called Nevaeh, who suffers from the very real problems of going through a phase where she finds herself attracted to members of different sexes. Y’know, that thing almost all teenagers go through. But her parents, being the kind, decent Christians they are, think that her attractions are an abomination and recruit Lissa to pray the gay away. The two develop a close friendship, and things seem to be going hunky-dory until a series of incidents force Lissa to full realize just how disgustingly her church is exploiting the gullible masses rather than encouraging people to do thing like “love thy neighbor.” Not really a horror story by any means, but still a terrifying observation of how religion can poison everything in society.
As for Ceridwen’s Cauldron, well, okay… this is an odd one. A misogynist (he doesn’t understand how rape can occur in marriage as he believes that women should always be submissive to their husbands) is transported into a horrific fantastical land via magical bath salts sold by a mysterious female store clerk. He eventually makes it back to the real world and brings the apocalypse with him.
I have to say this was probably my least favorite story in the volume, mainly because I couldn’t understand just what the hell it was about or what it was supposed to be representing. The author’s notes at the end reveal that GamerGate was a key inspiration, and in retrospect I guess that makes sense (and although the men involved with GamerGate were indeed deplorable people, the women who “suffered as a result, such as Zoë Quinn and Anita Sarkeesian, are equally loathsome figures who have done nothing whatsoever to help the cause of feminism), but overall this one didn’t work for me.
Everyone’s Waitin’ for the Man with the Bag is another very straightforward, but effective as hell story. A young boy is abducted by a dirty pervert on his way home from the store on Christmas Eve, only for the comic spirit of Christmas itself, Krampus, to save him. Yup, rather than punishing people for not feeling the Christmas cheer, this version of the festive horned demon is more of a Frank Castle-style avenging angel who punishes those who inflict harm on others during the season to be jolly. I’m now waiting for a vigilante Krampus film, and if it never comes, at least we’ve got this great story.
If there is one overall beef that I have with the book, it is the dialogue. Every character talks in the same weird, scripted “I’m going to describe plot elements in a witty and humorous manner” kind of way. One character asks another if she swallowed a dictionary, something I should ask to everyone in the book.
But that’s a small criticism to make when overall, in the space of under three hundred pages, Rouner was able to craft an incredible bunch of stories that not only turn most of what we know about conventional horror on its head, but also make you stop and think about just who or what the real horrors in life might be. Sure, a robot shark with razor-sharp teeth is terrifying enough, but the local church down the road from your house is likely to be responsible for far more damage in the long run by filling people’s heads with nonsense about certain people being inferior to others and the world only being six thousand years old. Let that sink in, and if you still feel that you’re ready for something that never shies away from the most despicable horrors of society, then prepare yourself for The Rook Circle. And I really dug the illustrations by Dori Hartley too.
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