This was the third volume in my Devil Quartet, and in some ways was my favourite set of tales to date. Short stories can operate like photographs; many of these contain specific memories of times and places and people I was with, and often there’s more truth in them than you’d realize. In the foreword I mention the origins of several of the stories, and how many are factually based. Clearly there are exceptions, like ‘Hitler’s Houseguest’, and yet even that has its roots in reality. I wrote it after I discovered a very unnerving document instructing servants and guests how to behave around Hitler.
On the grimmer side, I really wish ‘Personal Space’ wasn’t based on fact, because even I get upset re-reading it. If there’s a lesson I could teach every new writer of fantastic tales, it’s that your prose can’t just be doom-laden, otherwise you depress your readers. However, there’s a strong argument for the exploration of darkness, and after this collection I began prefacing new volumes with a round-up of all the awful news stories that had broken at the time of writing and had influenced me.
There are lights in the dark here: ‘The Scorpion Jacket’ was another of my colourful Oriental fables, which I’m continually drawn to. ‘One Night Out’ was specifically written for my father; I read it to him when he was ill and needed cheering up. I still dabbled in revenge tales at this point, but often avoided explicit violence, preferring to ply my trade in subtler cruelties. Many of the ideas behind the tales resurfaced in other people’s novels and films – it was as if we were all experiencing the same fears. Or they were nicking stuff from me.
Hollywood horror films generally feel too artificial to me. Most feature groups of teens whom it’s hard to imagine being friends in real life. A jock, a prom queen, a nerd, a stoner – they’re friends, really? The exception to that rule was ‘It Follows’, with believable characters. Instead I modelled quite a few of my tales in the style of Spanish horror films. Around this time they started strongly influencing my writing. When Hollywood stopped making heartfelt, un-ironic horror movies with the power to move audiences, Spain adopted the mantle with strange dramas like The Orphanage, The Others, La Madre Muerta, Fausto 5.0, Community, Fermat’s Room, Pan’s Labyrinth, The Witches of Zugurramurdi, The Nameless, Anguish, Julia’s Eyes, Darkness, The Hidden Face, Blind Alley and many others. Perhaps the Spanish temperament lends itself to horror melodrama. Certainly, the rules of taste that govern Hollywood lifestyles don’t exist in this world – why else would you let a woman who is going blind blunder into the basement of an asylum, or deliberately leave her alone in a thunderstorm?
It’s not enough to catch a mood in a piece of short fiction. To my mind, you need to tell an interesting story, which places me much closer to pulp fiction than intellectual essays. That’s not to say you can’t touch on intelligent themes in a short tale. The other important point to make is that you need to vary the tone in a book like this to keep things fresh. Dark must be leavened with light, which explains the variegated running order of these tales. I’ve written thirteen volumes of short stories now, and plan to continue. To see these return in e-book format is nothing short of wonderful for me.
Christopher Fowler, 2016