As with all genre fiction, horror can offer inspiring limitations bound only by the author’s inclinations. Nathan Ballingrud’s first collection of short stories North American Lake Monsters exemplified this these possibilities. I managed to miss his second collection, Wounds: Six Stories from the Border of Hell on publication by Saga Press, a major error I have recently corrected. It’s been re-released, with new material and illustrations from Midworld Press, re-titled The Atlas of Hell: Stories. In either version, it’s a masterpiece of both horror and literary fiction. This is work for the ages.
I’ve not (yet) laid hands on the Midworld Press Edition. It has new material, and illustrations, which, I am certain, will elevate it even higher than the Saga Press version. But make no mistake, however you find it, this writing will sear your mind. I first read Clive Barker’s Books of Blood, Volume 1 in a ratty, ugly US paperback. Nonetheless, the writing within was (and remains) among my favorite, most memorable reading experiences. Of course, the Scream/Press illustrated hardcover compilation of Volumes 1-3 took the reading a haunting new level. The upshot is that ultimately, while the binding/publication makes what’s already masterful more enjoyable to read, herein are Words That Matter.
All of the stories in The Atlas of Hell are Hell-adjacent. The first story, “The Atlas of Hell,” is a paint-peeling supernatural noir, in which a book hunter is asked to locate a volume called “The Atlas of Hell,” deep in the bayou. Ballingrud begins the piece as extra-hard boiled noir, and brings in the supernatural with inexorable literary power. What you’ll find, sentence by sentence, is existential terror, memorable characters, and over-the-top graphic weirdness.
The stories that follow are all violently different, by which I do not mean they’re more violent or graphic. Some, in fact are. But each and every story is radically different from the others in the book. In “The Diabolist,” a theomancer trawls the depths of Hell, looking for one thing but bringing back another. His daughter must deal with the aftermath. Though the characters are unpleasant, they’re affecting, and the story manages to both disturbing and strangely sweet. “Skullpocket” is light-years weird, an imaginative triumph of Bradburyesque end-of-summer nostalgia in which ghoul children, accustomed to eating dead humans, find the living, living it up at a seaside fun fair. Then it gets really weird. “The Maw” imagines our world invaded by pathways to Hell, vividly, terrifyingly, imagined and described, against which Ballingrud plays a heartbreaking story of loss. “The Visible Filth” takes us back to present-day New Orleans, where a bar owner finds a cell phone, much to his (but not the reader’s terrified, horrified) regret. And finally, in the novella “The Butcher’s Table,” a Victorian gentleman Satanist embarks on a pirate journey to Hell itself, managing to close a circle with the title story.
I’d recommend reading these stories slowly, spacing them out. I tore through the whole book in a couple of days; I couldn’t put it down. In retrospect, regretted it, because after reading, I realized I could only read them for the first time once. Having the Midworld Press version out there, I was (am) re-assured that I can re-read them in a significantly setting.
What I did have to hand to read was Ballingrud’s forthcoming masterpiece (yes, again), the novella, Crypt of the Moon Spider, Book 1 of The Lunar Gothic trilogy (to be released 8/27/24). While this bears some resemblance to The Strange, it’s not set in the same “universe.” In Crypt, it’s 1923, and we travel to the moon regularly. There’s a breathable atmosphere, there are forests and The Barrowfield Home for Treatment of the Melancholy. Veronica’s husband, tired of her bad attitude, has sent her here for treatment by one Dr. Cull. Unusual is only the beginning. The writing here is as beautiful and horrifying as the stories in The Atlas of Hell. The plot is both chillingly inevitable and utterly unhinged. It’s so superb, you’ll end up reading the excerpt from Book 2. Ballingrud brings everything you find in The Atlas of Hell to Crypt of the Moon Spider and more. And it’s only the beginning.
In conversation, Nathan Ballingrud gives readers an idea of how and why he crafts his work. No plot spoilers or deflating explanations, but hints of the methods within his mad creations. Listen where you want, Hell’s not far away.
Narrative Species 