By Mike Griffiths
Burleson, Donald R. Wait For The Thunder. Hippocampus Press: New York (March 2010). ISBN: 978-0981488813.
I went into this collection not knowing what to expect. I had never been exposed to Donald Burleson and I have to say I was quite pleasantly (or, in this case, unpleasantly) surprised. This man can weave a strong horror tale and one can see Lovecraft’s influence in quite a number of his stories.
One of the many things Burleson does is make his protagonist someone a bit vulnerable. Whether they are children, younger women, or even the elderly, Burleson increases the tension by making his characters people who can’t just physically fight their way out of the situation. Some of these characters can barely control their own bodies, so how can they hope to control the horrors they are confronted with?
Burleson gets an idea, an often sick and twisted idea, and just runs with it. Some of his stories may be one-trick ponies, but they all strive to be original. In a field like horror ,were so much has been said and done, this is an impressive accomplishment.
One story that stuck out for me was “Lujan’s Trunk”. In this tale, an man shows up in a small, New Mexican town and finds that he has a very odd neighbour. The more he asks about him, the stranger he seems. Not only does the man never go to town for his supplies, he never seems to leave his chair on the porch. Stranger still is the trunk that stays beside him, which no one has seen Lujan open. Brad is offered a chance to peek inside. Maybe he should have refused.
Another unnerving story is “Hopscotch”. This is one of his many tales that focus on the elderly – in this case, a woman who returns to the place where she grew up. Seeing her old hopscotch game brings back memories, but when she is forced to finish the game she started, will her old bones be able to hold out before what lurks in the shadows claims her for its own?
“Down In The Mouth” introduces an elderly man living on an isolated farm in Vermont. What at first seems an innocent oddity becomes a life-and-death struggle, as something horrid rises from the ground and starts to hunt him. Again, Burleson’s use of an elderly protagonist compounds the horror. How can a frail senior citizen escape an otherworldly evil?
Burleson finishes his compilation with a short novella. “Papa Loaty”, like many of his tales, is set in the New Mexican desert. A workingman from the city named ‘Chad’ is just trying to get a job, but instead, finds himself in the middle of a dangerous mystery. Not only is the huge extended family he is now living with extremely odd, but the desert itself seems to move around outside of his window. When he is told to never leave his room at night, this does little to calm his nerves.
There is something out there moving in the darkness, something large that leaves strange prints, which the women hurry to sweep up each morning. There are things traveling across the desert that should never be able to move and when they appear in places they shouldn’t be, Chad knows that the horror is really just beginning.
Burleson’s tales are powerful and he has his own voice. Some things happen that could bother a reader. He often seems to get an idea and replicate it. In a sense, he is not stealing from others but rather, from himself. These mini-themes wouldn’t ever be a problem on their own; individually, these are good stories, but when read together they seem a bit odd. For instance, there are two stories where an old man in Vermont ends up in trouble. There are a couple of tales about scary, old transients. There are even two stories about things moving through the desert. Again, these are well-written stories, but to see them all under the same cover might not have been the best idea.
There are also other common threads, like the use of the New Mexican town, Corona. Things like these are not necessarily wrong. Creating a world where a particular town sees more than its fair share of trouble is fine, but perhaps some readers might be left scratching their heads when several stories all centre around the same locale (though Lovecraft did return to certain locations over and over again).
Despite these potential issues, Wait for the Thunder is a rewarding collection. Burleson is a strong writer who has novel ideas. Some of these stories leave you wanting to turn on the hall light before you take that midnight trip to the bathroom and for most of us, that is what horror is all about.
Wait For The Thunder can be purchased from Amazon.com