Dark bleatings, my shadowy tribe! Today I’m reviewing Uneasy Beginnings, which is the 21st offering in the Black Shuck Books Shadows series. Each Shadows book is self-contained, normally written as a single collection by one author, and always themed (the author picks the theme). This one is different in that it’s co-authored by father and son, Simon and Benjamin. The first fun thing to note, which Simon tells us in the foreword, is that they haven’t told us who wrote which story.
So, let’s get into them!
Button
This story is a Joe Hill kind of weird, and I love it. Bruno catches a button that’s falling through the air, but then can’t get it off his hand, no matter what he does. It’s stuck to his flesh, and no amount of wiggling or prying or chemicals will remove it. What begins as a mysterious concept turns into very unusual body horror, and it was anxiety-inducing and brilliant.
A Lust for Ghosts
Fred absolutely loves ghosts and is always on a ghost-hunt. He’s invited to a haunted location but, unfortunately for him, concludes there are no ghosts there. This is unfortunate for him because this conclusion deeply pisses off the owners…
It went in a very unexpected, and welcome, direction!
Excision
A guy called Masters has a weird lump on his shoulder and goes to get it removed. It’s a little stressful, and he has to go under the knife under local anaesthetic, instead of general. He takes a look at the doctor and nurse in the mirror while he’s laying there and…oh lordy.
This evoked so much medical anxiety! It’s a short story that packs a hell of a lot in, emotionally. Also, absolutely wonderful horror.
Happy Families
A family (dad, mum, and young son) wake up somewhere unknown with no memory of getting there. There are pulsing lights that mess with them, and things get…visceral. This one runs pretty deep with the subtext and I read it twice. It’s a great, absolutely horrible horror story.
Dog
A man finds himself confined to some sort of cell, and he keeps getting sprayed with water. No matter what he does, he can’t escape the stream, and it hits him with varying degrees of force, for varying lengths of time. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to it, but – scrabbling to find reason and logic – he’s determined to find a pattern. And then he finds a dog in there with him. I can’t say any more about this story because it made me sad and mad.
Interim Report on an Incident at an Asylum
This one is written in first-person notes, detailing an incident at an asylum, as the title suggests. Something regular readers of my reviews know about me is that if I see the word “asylum”, the story is automatically a hard sell because I hate asylums as locations or themes in horror. The story itself is good but just not my cup of tea because of my disproportionate and inexplicable hatred of asylums. I did really enjoy the format though.
Plastic
At a hospital one night, a kid comes in and ends up coughing up plastic. Turns out that this has been happening all week – kids coming in with scary ailments, and then they cough up plastic. It’s a weird phenomenon in itself…and that’s before taking a closer look at what they’re coughing up.
Wonderfully weird!
Overall, this is a brilliant collection and because of the authors, had a weirdly wholesome feel, despite how horrible the stories are. I’d definitely recommend it to short-story horror fans, especially if you enjoy the Shadows books. If you’d like to check out the authors or take a look at the book, I’ve popped some links below for you:
UNEASY BEGINNINGS – FROM BLACK SHUCK BOOKS
UNEASY BEGINNINGS – FROM AMAZON
Bleeeeeat!
Happy Goat Horror 
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