By RAY VAN HORN, JR. (Raw Earth Ink; 2024)

A hugely enjoyable collection that offers up a full blast of media infused gen-X oriented horror.  Readers who aren’t part of that demographic, and so didn’t grow up with cassette tapes, TOP GUN, Geraldo Rivera TV specials, Garbage Pail Kids and MARRIED WITH CHILDREN may not fully comprehend my enthusiasm, but those who are most likely will.

The stories of Ray van Horn Jr. are drafted with enormous energy and ingenuity, but what really gives them their edge is the author’s Tarantinoesque grasp of late Twentieth Century pop culture minutia (typical is a throwaway observation about a pair of chairs “looking like they’d been around when David Bowie had released the LOW album in 1977”).  This could have resulted in something along the lines of those interminable wannabe Tarantino films that proliferated in the late 1990s, but the skilled prose and pointed conceptions, which often revolve around actual media events from years past, make for a collection whose horrific content registers as strongly as its name drops.

“Death of the “S”” refers to DC Comics killing off Superman in November 1992, as recounted by a comic book store employee dealing with the hordes of people attracted by the media coverage of that momentous event (as one who was around and paying attention back then, I can attest that Horn’s depiction of the hysteria surrounding Superman’s purported demise is accurate).  The scary business here takes the form of an apocalyptic event that results in mass carnage and a final line that ties in quite cleverly with Superman lore.

“Secrets” is set in 1982, in which a father and his 13-year-old daughter are faced with a very close-to-home, familial horror (amid references to THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK and members of what was then known as the WWF).  “The Carnelian Pick” involves ageing bandmates, one of whom is described as resembling “the elder version of Terry Silver transitioned from KARATE KID III to COBRA KAI,” and a fateful guitar pick.  “Behind the Shadows” offers a most eccentric depiction of a lycanthrope’s final day on Earth, while in “Backdoor Breaker” a baseball game provides the setting for a highly idiosyncratic tale of zombie horror, and in “Lunch Break” a harried businessman finds himself irresistibly drawn to cuisine de cannibal.

One of the more up-to-date offerings is “The Darkest Side of Jericho,” which incorporates a bickering ghost hunting couple, a YouTube video and that video’s comments section.  At the opposite end of the spectrum is the book’s most atypical story, “Vladana’s Daughters,” about one of the wives of Count Dracula in search of a coven of her own, related in a convincingly rendered tone of world-weary refinement.

The final entry is “The Grinning Soul,” an expect-the-unexpected account set in 2011, “When CDs were still a thing.”  CDs do indeed figure into the text, as do vinyl bootlegs, a music store, infidelity, KUNG FU PANDA, gaudy album covers and a giant gnat.  I say that’s an irresistible combination of elements, mixed well and simmered to perfection.