FEARFUL IMPLICATIONS collects twenty recent tales by Ramsey Campbell, ranging from the uncanny to the satirical, the disturbing to the comical, and sometimes they meet in the middle.
Can our mobile phones connect us to the afterlife? A voice from a bush tempts a child off a path, and a street performer’s routine proves to be infectious. Christmas brings its own kind of chill: a traditional rhyme is macabrely reinterpreted, and watch out who or what you meet under the mistletoe! A traveller finds reasons to regret going all-inclusive, and even delivering the mail can become a nightmare. An infamous nobleman and his dread companion turn out to be still at large, and a discussion of famous monsters grows monstrous. A bomber brings about an unintended future, while elsewhere the past sends guilt to exact a price. A Tarantino tribute is dreamed up, and a holiday resembles someone’s bad dream. You might hope it’s just a dog that you hear someone calling, and is everybody in the picture above your hotel bed staying as still as they should? Comedy can become infectious in a less than welcome way, and some playmates are best not wished for. A science fiction fan finds ways to live a different life, and a view of a problem family leads to a devastating revelation. Some needs may persist beyond the grave, and a writer does, not only in his writing.
Many things haunt these pages, and perhaps closing the book will keep them in. Or perhaps they will visit the reader in the dark.
Dark bleatings everyone! I was so excited to get my hands on this new collection from Ramsey Campbell – I’m a long-time reader and fan, so to say I was excited is a bit of an understatement. Did it live up to (my own) hype?
I’ll be here all day if I attempt to dive into each and every story, but there are several in particular that I’d like to talk about. The book opens with a bang, I’ll say that. Those first few stories scared me and creeped me out so much that I had to walk away from the book for a bit (granted, I was reading it in the middle of the night during an insomnia bout, when everything is already spooky, but still!).
We begin with SPEAKING STILL, the tale of friends Bill and Daniel. Dan has sadly lost his wife, but that doesn’t seem to have stopped him from communicating with her. This story left me with the same sort of horrible, terrifying notion about the afterlife that was conjured in Stephen King’s Revival. The longer I think about it, the more frightening it gets.
There are three stories in this collection that I loved for the same reason, and weirdly, the reason is the sheer level of discomfort they induced; A NAME FOR EVERY HOME, THE RUN OF THE TOWN, and FULLY BOARDED. They’re not connected, but they’re all so effective at building a very particular type of frustration and dread in the reader (or me, at least). It’s hard to fully describe the feelings and tension evoked in me as I read this, or to even fully understand how the hell Campbell does it.
You know the kind of gnawing irritation that grows when you’re stuck with someone you dislike, who won’t stop talking to you? Or when you’re on a train platform in an unfamiliar place, and your train is cancelled, and the following stress because you don’t know the area or how to get home? Perhaps you’ve once had a housemate who not only doesn’t pull their weight but somehow manages to decimate any area you spend ages cleaning, only minutes after you’ve cleaned it? Imagine that sort of constant, jabbing stress and then throw an ‘oh god, something unknown, dangerous, and possibly supernatural’ on top of it. Reading these stories actually dredged up the anxiety I felt reading Adam Nevill’s YELLOW TEETH from his short story collection, ‘Some Will Not Sleep‘. That story has plagued me since I read it, and makes me feel grimy whenever it forces its way back into my mind. Campbell and Nevill are the only writers who can make me feel like this, and they’re both so damn good at it.
I enjoyed every story in this collection: from a guy that can’t find his way out of a town, a real-world horror about prejudice, to photography unleashing the horror inside a particular work of art, this book is packed full of varied, eclectic scares. However, my very favourite has to be THE FOURTH CALL.
Holy cripes, this story scared the bejeesus out of me. The fear wasn’t even immediate. I initially felt amused and curious, then a little creeped out, and then cold seeped into my nerves. The more I think about the people and the town in this story, the more messed up it seems. This is the story of Mike, who used to live near a family called The Bundles. This family have a….. Christmas tradition. It is weird. IT’S REALLY F***ING WEIRD. There’s a delicious folky feel to this one, and a general air of ‘oh this is fun and fine… wait a minute…. no it isn’t!’ Campbell blends belief systems and holiday traditions here, but what’s truly unsettling is the way he twists the jovial into something akin to demonic. It’s a contained story that requires no further explanation, but I’d love more. I can’t stop thinking about the wider world of this story, particularly the town and its inhabitants.
Did Fearful Implications live up to the hype, then? YEP! I loved it and devoured it, and after reading my ecopy ARC, I bought a physical copy. It’s a truly gorgeous book in every respect. I’d recommend this to the general horror reader, it’s a great book. I’d also recommend this to the writers amongst us for the pleasure of just reading it, and also because it’s basically a masterclass in how to create an assortment of horrors.
If you’d like to get your own copy or check out the author, the links you need are below:
Happy Goat Horror 
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