KUDOS
PRAISE FOR PHANTASMAGORIA BLUES:Phantasmagoria Blues, the second collection from Oklahoma horror writer Mer Whinery, consists of seven stories that explore the haunted shadows of Oklahoma and Texas, and the damned and damaged souls that dwell in those shadows. Whinery deftly inhabits and breathes life into a bereft husband and father, a lovelorn teenage girl with a very unhealthy crush, a scummy projectionist, and a broken, cigarette-chewing repo man obsessed with a creepy photograph he finds in a dank old house.
The collection starts off ambitiously with “The Loved Ones,” a post-monster-invasion science fiction tale of a man who has lost his wife and two kids, and the replacements with whom—with which—he’s provided. It starts off by dispensing in a few paragraphs with its premise, but the info dump quickly pivots into a compulsively readable and tense story with a well-executed twist that some might have predicted—though I didn’t. Whinery won me over quickly.
The centerpiece of the collection, a-darker-than-dark little masterpiece, is “The Projectionist,” whose protagonist, the deeply unpleasant Newt McAlester, after suffering a grievous injury via a malfunctioning movie projector, is given a sketchy new assignment: He must arrive at the theater at 1:30 a.m. on Sunday mornings, sequester himself in the booth, run the projector without peeking at the film and, especially, never, ever look down at the audience below. He must wear earplugs.
He must stay until precisely 7 a.m., and not a moment before. And he has to keep the whole thing a secret.
The narrative starts off fairly predictably—of course McAlester’s curiosity gets the better of him—but it spins off into such grotesque and ornery insanity I felt myself grinning in admiration. And what an ending! Here Whinery proves himself an audacious storyteller with a flair for the grotesque.
I also really dug “Hungry Boy,” despite Whinery’s abject disclaimer that precedes the tale, in which he says his goal was to write “whiney-ass bullshit—like ‘Twilight.’” I haven’t read Twilight, but this story, told from the point of view of a precocious teenage girl, is smart, emotionally real, funny, and, of course, violent and grotesque. I went in not expecting much and emerged from the other end impressed.
Most of the stories in Phantasmagoria Blues were similarly surprising, similarly good, compulsively readable.“The Little Red Tent at the Edge of the Woods” is effective and eerie, with shades of S.P. Miskowski. “Memento Mori” is a terrific tale of a lost man who finds a women who may or may not be the subject of an ancient photograph of the Posed and Photographed Dead. “The 10th Life” is a buried-treasure story with an aspect that I—an admirer of cats—particularly enjoyed.
I recommend Phantasmagoria Blues as a refreshing take on Southern horror by a writer with a unique and strong voice. It’s well written, enjoyable, dark, and nasty.
Four blackened fingers out of five
--Matthew M. Bartlett, author of "Gateways to Abomination" and "The Witch-Cult in Western Massachusetts"
About "Phantasmagoria Blues":Little Dixie.
A place spoken of in hushed voices, where hard men dangle cold carcasses of meat to bleed from low-hanging trees and old women speak with the dead. A shadow country where old traditions bleed into new ideas, ghosts are all too real, and unnatural things stalk the roads in the skin of the familiar, waiting for you to let your guard down. Haunted throughout every tin-roofed shotgun house and trailer park. Haunted within every empty schoolyard and laundromat. Haunted to the core.
Seven sinister tales to chill your blood and put a tickle in your prickly parts.
Little Dixie welcomes you back.
She’s missed you.
LOVE FOR THE LITTLE DIXIE HORROR SHOW:
Mer Whinery’s collection of location-specific horror stories run a unique gamut: ghostly ghoulish lot lizards, the selling of your soul for comfort and new chances,children turning to rational (hallucinogenic?) violence, a beautiful short about a haunted movie house, and a decidedly unserious novella about a transvestite monster hunter.
The sheer variety of these bizarre and genuinely creepy tales is supported by the main character – the setting. Little Dixie is a spot in Oklahoma where all the worst parts of the Deep South uprooted and made their home, spawning generations of cultural, economic, and spiritual malaise. It’s a place of deep dark and people with secrets. Whinery shows us the darkest corners of Little Dixie, sparing no detail in what amounts to grisly, gore-ific, and straight up disturbing close ups on what goes bump in the night out yonder. Whinery’s stories, while dripping with horror, are also full of love for a bizarre and dying community of swamps, abandoned truck stops, and both the living and the dead.
I’ll buy anything Whinery publishes next. His sense of voice is fantastic, and he’s got a great appreciation for horror (Lucio Fulci gets more than a few references) literature, films, and culture. A spookhouse ride of an underground collection.
5/5 Ghoul-infested Truck Stops
--Jonathan Raab, Author of "The Hillbilly Moonshine Massacre", Editor-in-Chief of Muzzleland Press
About "The Little Dixie Horror Show":Next time you’re driving
through southeastern Oklahoma, be mindful of what road you’re taking,
the places you pass and the folks you see or talk with. Especially when
passing through Little Dixie.
Little Dixie…what…never heard of it?
Doesn’t
matter. Just keep on driving. Soon as you start noticing the Taco Bells
and suburbs changing into trailer parks and decaying antebellum
mansions, the cemeteries and pawnshops outnumbering the schoolhouses and
public parks, you’ll know just where the hell you are. Little
Dixie, where everyone has a story to tell, a Moonpie to share, and
something ugly hanging from the family tree.
Dead hookers that
won’t stay dead…the frozen memories of a haunted moviehouse that refuses
to let the past die…desperate men doing desperate things to pull
themselves out of desperation…the ghoulish revenge of children forced into the insanity of violence…a satanic farm where murder is the bumper crop…
This is The Little Dixie Horror Show.
