THE NIGHTMARE CHRONICLES

By Douglas Clegg
Leisure Books, $5.50, pb orig

There are those days when the mail brings something that makes you grin. A nod from the gods of literature. A pat on the back for clean living and piety. Okay, maybe not that ... but still, you open the package and find in your hand justification for doing more of what you do. 

In my case, finding reason to continue reviewing books and steering readers to what I think are the best dark fantasy experiences I can find. So when today's mail brings me Doug Clegg's new short story collection, I am fulfilled. You see, Clegg (The Halloween Man, Dark of the Eye, Bad Karma) writes some of the most harrowing, unforgettable tales you're ever likely to come upon. I consider Clegg and Brian Hodge two of the writers most likely to make me shiver; really shiver, way down deep inside. Both are superb novelists, but their short fiction hits you like a poisoned crossbow bolt, sudden and lethal, shocking and unmerciful. Here in this low-key but oh-so-impressive paperbound edition are 13 Doug Clegg tales to truly chill your blood, all reprints but well worth the cost of having them grouped so handily within a kidnapped child framing device that itself becomes a horror story -- but not the way you'd expect. 

Follow along on a journalist's tortured heart-of-darkness journey to find the evil of "White Chapel," but be prepared for what you'll find. A lonely widower finds what may have been his wife and child in an "Underworld" that may be Hell. In "I Am Infinite; I Contain Multitudes," escape from Aurora prison may be worse than staying for Doer, a man who has murdered his family. Other nightmarish tales include "O, Rare and Most Exquisite," "The Fruit of Her Womb," "The Ripening Sweetness of Late Afternoon," and "Chosen." These stories take horror beyond the cliched realm of slashers and serial killers, visiting the hallowed halls of strangely spiritual evils too gruesome and bizarre to comprehend, let alone invent. Doug Clegg's best stories (a nonsensical term, for I haven't yet read a bad one) slip into your subconscious and stay with you well beyond the last turning of the page. "Storytelling is a form of kidnapping," Clegg points out in his dedication. Let him take you prisoner, safe in the knowledge you can escape anytime.