by Paul Mount
He may not yet be a household horror name like Stephen King but it’s easy to see why Ronald Malfi is acclaimed as “one of the all-time great horror writers” on the cover of They Lurk, this new collection of four of his early novellas and one brand new piece that, in all honesty, has got feature film written right through it.
They Lurk (the title hails from a margin note written by Malfi’s creative writing teacher on a short story he submitted for her consideration) touches all the horror bases; there’s psychological body horror, a supernatural mystery, good old-fashioned monster horror and in the all-new story Fierce, a very contemporary story of inhuman horror in a cold, remote environment. Malfi specialises in fully-rounded ideas often populated by conflicted characters, people who are jaded, tired, and disillusioned; people who have reached a significant crossroads in their lives or who have made bad decisions that have taken them down a dark path. In Skullbelly, a crumpled private investigator is dispatched to find out what happened to a group of campers who mysteriously disappeared in a woodland area in Oregon, where he hears tall tales of a grisly carnivorous creature that prowls the wilderness. The Stranger explores madness, paranoia and schizophrenia – with a very special twist all of its own – but the collection really kicks into high gear in The Stranger in which David booked into a rundown motel for the night with his much younger girlfriend, is plunged into a night of terror when he finds a man with a gun sitting behind the wheel of his car. ‘After the Fade’ shamelessly homages Stephen King’s The Mist as a bunch of barflies are trapped indoors by the arrival of huge, brain-sucking bugs that emerge from the dark of the night. Best of all, though, is Malfi’s all-new piece Fierce, in which a teenage girl and her mother plunge off the road after a near-miss with a huge tow truck in the middle of a snowstorm. The resulting nightmare – and a flashback to a terrible encounter from her youth – powers a propulsive, hugely cinematic horror story that can’t help but evoke the likes of Jeepers Creepers, Wolf Creek, and even the more recent Barbarian.
Malfi is a clever, considered writer, and there’s something for every terror taste in this scintillating, hugely-readable collection of five tales that will enthral, disturb and unnerve in equal measure. Flesh-creepingly good.
They Lurk is published by Titan Books on July 18th
