The rural stories in The Black Maybe, inspired by the realities of farming and keeping and slaughtering livestock, continue these themes of cosmic horror by mythologizing those realities, creating weird cosmologies which at times resemble folk horror but which push far beyond.

‘Return to the Midnight School’ concerns the friendship of the narrator with another boy in his village. The local customs and harvest rituals are explored in loving detail, and it is gradually revealed how unique the biology and the metaphysics are in this region. Locals are born in a pit and some come back from the grave as mindless living dead. The peculiar harvest of their fields is a watermelon-like crop containing animals and humans sleeping in embryonic poses. Their bodies are turned into products from which the villagers profit.

This story was a curious, almost primeval experience, but even more peculiar is the title piece, ‘The Black Maybe’, one of the weirdest tales I’ve read in years.

‘The young ones collect the snails in the daytime, while the men oil the chains at night.’ Emese and her family are visitors living with a host family. They feel lucky to be there during the harvest, living in harmony with nature and discovering the outré knowledge possessed by the local farmers. They learn their roles in the harvest, cooking down the snails for their essence and oiling the silver chains and applying bait to the hooks. The chains and the hooks are dropped into earthen pits and then covered over.

‘They bite on it. But not like fish do.’

‘I know,’ Hugó said. ‘Because in fact they don’t really exist until they take the bait, right?’

Emese drinks a metallic booze which makes her speak in an altered voice and levitate. She is constantly pressured to have sex with a local boy, told she’d ‘be better off’.

Once they pull out the chains and the catch is delivered, Emese will only have twenty-four to thirty-six hours. Then it will be too late.

Given both the range and the originality of his dark fiction, Attila Veres’ career is one to watch.

Steve Rasnic Tem

January 2022

Steve Rasnic Tem has published nearly 500 short stories, seven novels, and ten collections during a career spanning forty years. He is a past recipient of the World Fantasy Award and the British Fantasy Award, and his 2014 novel Blood Kin won the Bram Stoker Award. Two of his story collections, Figures Unseen: Selected Stories and Thanatrauma, are published by Valancourt Books.

To Bite a Dog

To Bite a Dog

The room smelled like a used kitchen sponge. It was his flat. They lay in bed, waiting to be aroused again. Mutual attraction was inches away from turning into love.

‘Where did you get the scratches?’ he asked the girl.