Reggie Oliver's "Masques of Satan" Reviewed

Reggie Oliver's latest collection from Ash-Tree Press, Masques of Satan: Twelve Tales and a Novella, is an intense mixture of awry friendships, eeriness distilled from the old ghost story, and biting wit. While some will surely say a budding latter day M.R. James will be found within the pages of this collection of (mostly) spectral tales, there is so much more. The author's literary talents are on high guard in this collection, seasoning stories with curious titles like "Mmm-Delicious" and "Mr. Poo Poo" with a fine balance of humor and sobering specters. Only Oliver, the weird writer and English dramatist, could meld the lively action of the theater with the shadowy horror of mysterious spirits, a welcome revival and update of supernatural literature's roots.

In fact, the theater is the setting for many of the ghost stories in this collection. Oliver clearly derives many of the vain and ambitious characters trotted out in these tales from personal experience. Ditto for the out of the way centers of haunted London and old stages, thinly masking freakish interactions between the weird personalities of this world and the other. This careful flavor laces each story with an absurdly realistic richness unseen in many small press productions today. In fact, it may be the defining feature whirling through the pages: an authorial megaphone demanding to be read--and urgently--even after finishing a single story or two.

As in Oliver's previous two collections of imaginative short fiction, there is no lack of experimentation in theme and style. Whether intentional or not, it must also be mentioned the anthology is well paced. The opening act, "The Man in the Grey Bedroom," is probably the most traditional ghost story in the book. It's also the most thoroughly weird. It involves the ominous tour of a family headed by a specialist in antiquities through Blakiston Hall, the old homestead of the Chekes, one of Britain's many aristocratic barons with mansions preserved in the public interest. The bombastic knowledge of the father is ultimately his downfall (I won't say how), after a jaunty stroll through an exhibition of the bizarre. The occult Black Room concealed in the house, the derelict museum-like atmosphere, and The Masque of Satan: A Dramatic Phantasy by Lord Deverell Cheke (from which Oliver's collection takes its name, and incidentally reminds me of Robert W. Chamber's The King in Yellow) are all worthy elements of the high weird well defined in this tale.

From this springboard, Oliver takes us to less traditional ground equally stamped with his unmistakable spirit. "The Children of Monte Rosse" is another tale of the purer weird, and highlights the fateful meeting of a child with another mysterious boy as his parents visit an old English couple in Portugal. Ultimately, the couple's nightmarish experiments drawing upon children and the old occult are revealed, as are their bizarre dioramas of small animals in monstrously human scenes. "Blind Man's Box," is told through the fictional clippings of media sources, travel guides, and diary entries of a theater Professor investigating a haunted theater. It stands out as one of the most experimental and stylistically effective pieces in the set, endowing generous shivers by piecing together the documents provided. "The Silver Chord" is another tale somewhat in the vein of the two noted above, but also takes liberties as an intentional Arthur Machen pastiche in a 19th century setting. The struggling "starving artist" type followed in the story, who's loosely based on Machen himself, succumbs to dark, mystical forces in a twist that's easy to see why this one won the Arthur Machen Society's short story competition.

Oliver's sense of humor and surprising literary settings are most strongly evidenced in subsequent fantasies. "Mr. Poo-Poo" quickly dives from an innocent expose of a slightly off kilter children's showman into a nightmarish version of hell itself, sent by Mr. Poo-Poo when the narrator steps into the marital problems between his housekeeper and Poo-Poo. Imagine the mental terror wrought on a sensitive mind after visitations by an infinite burning latticework and you begin to get the picture. The much more elaborate and expertly sketched hell scene is one of the most genuinely frightening terrors of the entire collection. Moving on, "Mmm-Delicious" utilizes an even heavier dose of humor. The firestorm of marketing success by a low level actor prompts the company to assign a young woman to study this man and obtain him for exclusive commercials. Her investigations, naturally, lead her to more than she ever would've bargained for--in startlingly more ways than one.

Oliver's "Puss-Cat" exhibits the writer's finesse in combining deranged attitudes with spectral features. A play manager's womanizing and notorious hate of cats leads to a moderately predictable end, but one that is at least a fun ride along the way. Similarly, his "The Road to Damascus" features a rather uninspired ghostly horror, but one that remains scary in action and description. This tale also contains an interesting political setting, as a young initiate in a Marxist organization is assigned to guard one of their offices in an old urban quarter. The yarn does an excellent job of stringing together subtle commentary on radical vanity among actors and the expected horror. Finally, the novella "Shades of the Prison House," while well written, ultimately seems out of place in this collection. While it stands as a solid tale of hollow juveniles going beyond the usual delinquency, the supernatural element isn't sufficient to warrant a place alongside the carefully crafted, weird ghost tales of the rest of this collection.

Several other capable, but less noteworthy tales round out the twelve and the novella of this book. All in all, Reggie Oliver secures his place as a rising star in the field of weird fiction with this work, and looks set to expand his cult following among lovers of horror and the avant-garde weird. Fortunately, the 500 copy print run and just affordable $50 price means this is Oliver's most accessible work of fiction yet. His earlier collections, The Dreams of Cardinal Vittorini and The Complete Symphonies of Adolf Hitler, were widely praised among readers who were actually able to hunt them down and buy them (by no means an easy task on both accounts, especially after their tiny print runs were sold out). Unfortunately, this means Masques of Satan will also be all but sold out within a year's time, and rapidly on its way to highly sought collectible by 2009. Weird admirers are advised to rapidly get their hands on this one, while they can, since the probability is high that they will thank themselves later.

-Grim Blogger