The Supernatural Tales of T.E.D. Klein
Klein’s skill lies in his attention
to detail, the verisimilitude of his prose, and his talent for slow-burn tension.
His descriptions of New York in the 1970s are superb, giving the reader a real
window into life on its gritty, crowded, crime-ridden streets. Most impressive
of all, at least in my view, is the way that Klein crafts stories of terror
that give all the details, relying on the reader to finally put it all
together. He is a master of the “don’t show the monster” style of storytelling,
in much the same way as HP Lovecraft.
Klein’s literary output is tiny
compared to other masters of the genre, and he was constantly plagued by raging
writer’s block, which prevented him from expanding his output further.
Nevertheless, even with a mere two novels and a handful of short stories, Klein
has received numerous award nominations, won World Fantasy Best Novella award
for Nadelman’s God, and in 2012 was selected as a Grand Master by the
World Horror Convention (despite not producing any works of fiction since his Reassuring
Tales collection in 2006).
Now, without further ado, I present
my overview of four of my favorite tales from this unprolific but masterful
author. I will do my best to avoid spoilers, but be warned.
Petey
An ingenious tale that best
encapsulates Klein’s “slow burn” approach that I mentioned previously. George
and Phyllis have, through some marginally-ethical antics, obtained a palatial
mansion deep in the Connecticut wilderness. It seems that a planned state
highway threatened to demolish the old house, and its former owner — possessing
what are described as “eyes like a sorcerer” — was committed to a mental
hospital. Using insider knowledge that the proposed highway was to be canceled,
George bought the house for next-to-nothing, moved in and invited a horde of
friends to attend the housewarming on a bleakly cold Connecticut night. The
story cuts between the increasingly tense party and the hospital where the
former owner is incarcerated, growing increasingly agitated as the night
passes. It seems that the poor man tore out his own tongue, and now can only
communicate by tapping his foot to spell out messages. And those messages are
pretty bizarre… “RUN AWAY,” “HUNGRY,” and “PET.” What the heck could they mean?
Experienced horror buffs will definitely know.
Back at the party, George and Phyl’s
guests marvel at the sheer size of the house, grumble about their hosts’ lucky
break in obtaining it so cheaply, and play with a strange tarot deck hidden in
the house that contains a number of strange cards that don’t belong, while
George — unaccountably troubled despite his good fortune — finds in the attic a
collection of jars where “wrinkled things floated serenely in formaldehyde,
fetuses of dog and pig and man, their bulbous eyes closed in reverie, with only
labels to tell them apart.” Even more alarming are the jars with floating
contents that George cannot identify and doesn’t want to look at too closely,
labeled “PT #13”, “PT #14”, and so on.
Petey is almost entirely
set-up, and the expected horrors don’t occur until the very last sentence. Even
then, there’s very little overt horror on-screen. The real terror is in the
reader’s head, imagining things that lurk in the cold, dark night or float
unseeing in jars of formaldehyde.
The most intensely New York focused
of the four stories, Children of the Kingdom is set in 1977 and ends with
the city-wide blackout in July of that year. When his elderly grandfather
suffers a stroke, the unnamed narrator is forced to find a home where he can
recover. Eventually, his grandfather is settled in a Puerto Rican neighborhood
in the heart of Manhattan. Restless and gregarious, the grandfather seeks out
friends in the area, including an eccentric Costa Rican priest whom the
narrator nicknames “Father Pistacio.” The old cleric takes an instant liking to
both the narrator and his grandfather, and shares his crackpot theories about
the origin of the human species (which, according to the good father, is none
other than his own homeland of Costa Rica). Notably, Father Pistacio believes
that the first humans abandoned Costa Rica, pursued by a hostile race of
humanoids called the Xo-Tl’mi-go, or the Thrice Accursed. In an attempt
to punish this foul species, God caused their females to become barren, their
males’ genitals to wither and vanish, and their eyes to atrophy, forcing them
to crawl blindly in the darkness. Though Father Pistacio assures the narrator
that the Accursed Ones are extinct, evidence persists that something lurks
in the secret places of New York, creeping through drains into basements, still
driven by the reproductive urge and seeking to visit their progeny on
humankind. When the ’77 Blackout hits, all hell breaks loose, and the narrator
will never look at the world the same.
Children of the Kingdom is an
intriguing and fascinating story, once more presenting readers with the pieces
of a puzzle, trusting them to put it together and see the terror staring back
at them. All this is, once more, accomplished with only minimal glimpses of the
fearsome things that may or may not creep through our sewers and lay in wait
for us.
I’ve seen criticism that Children
of the Kingdom presents a racist and fearful view of New York and its
inhabitants. Certainly, the narrator is a a misanthrope, and describes the
racial makeup of the various individuals whom he encounters. Passersby
sometimes display stereotypical behavior, and the narrator speaks of how he
despises whites, while fearing blacks. This may not be everyone’s cup of tea,
but I grant Klein the benefit of the doubt, as his MC can be seen as a literal
“unreliable narrator.” Both he and his grandfather display some inborn racism
and certainly judge others based upon their race, but I don’t think that this
suggests any such feelings on the part of TED Klein himself. That however, is
simply my opinion, and as someone who hates racism in all its forms, I leave it
to readers to decide.
During his naive college days, I.
Nadelman (similar to the narrator of the previous story, I don’t think we ever
learn his first name) wrote a pseudo-intellectual poem, pretentiously titled Advent
of the Prometheans: A Cantata, chronicling the rise of an ancient, brutal
and utterly uncaring god, published in his campus literary magazine and
intended solely to piss off the authorities. He fails and the poem vanishes
into obscurity until, years later, a heavy metal band called Jizzmo adapts the
poem into a song called New God on the Block. Nadelman gets his small
royalty payment, abandons the artsy pretentions of his youth, takes a job in
advertising, marries, and takes on a mistress. It’s the most mundane of mundane
lives, and his college poem-turned-heavy-metal-epic becomes nothing more than
an amusing anecdote to tell at parties. Then, a repellent fellow by the name of
Huntoon begins to write to Nadelman, telling him that he has made contact with
Nadelman’s god, and has assembled the god’s servant out of garbage and offal,
animating it to do his bidding.
At first, Nadelman humors the
obvious madman, but as letters and phone calls continue, and bizarre events
begin to follow him, he begins to suspect that there is more to Huntoon than he
suspected. A visit to the filthy apartment that Huntoon shares with his mother
does little to assuage Nadelman’s fears, and when mutilated corpses start
turning up… Well, what can you do?
Another NYC-centric tale, Nadelman’s
God tells a straightforward and frightening story, where once more the
monster lurks just out of sight. Another reviewer pointed out the interesting
irony of the title, which could either mean “the god that belongs to Nadelman”
or “Nadelman IS god.” Which interpretation is accurate is left entirely to the
reader.
The most overtly Lovecraftian of
Klein’s tales, Black Man with a Horn’s narrator (unnamed AGAIN… are you
detecting a pattern here?) is based on HPL’s associate Frank Belknap Long, an
aging horror writer whose original work has been largely forgotten, and whose
notoriety derives entirely from his association with the man from Providence.
The story is almost epistolary and could even be seen as a long letter to the
narrator’s late mentor. “…My life seems hardly to have mattered in the scheme
of things,” he writes. “Surely its end cannot matter much. Ah, Howard, you
would have understood.”
While flying home (to New York City,
naturally) from London, the narrator encounters a disguised missionary named
Mortimer, who is fleeing his last assignment in Malaya, and seems convinced
that someone or something is following him. He explains that he ministered to a
strange and cruel people who treated him with amused contempt, eventually
kidnapping his groundskeeper and “growing” something inside him. After the
flight, the narrator glimpses Mortimer browsing through LPs at a gift shop,
only to flee in terror at the sight of a Coltrane album cover, which portrays
the artist playing a saxophone, silhouetted against the sunset.
The narrator gives the incident
little thought until later, when visiting the Natural History Museum, he spies
a ceremonial robe from southeast Asia, said to be from the “Tcho-Tcho” people.
It portrays another black silhouetted figure seemingly playing a horn and
terrorizing smaller, fleeing humans.
A solid entry into the Lovecraft genre, Black Man with a Horn delivers terror in small, disturbing chunks, leaving the narrator helpless in the face of unearthly forces.
***
Klein released a collection titled Reassuring Tales in 2006. I haven't read this particular collection but most of the Amazon reviews suggest that it isn't his best work. The exception seems to be Klein's first short story, The Events at Poroth Farm, which the anthology brought back into print after a long hiatus. Events gained significant acclaim upon its initial publication, and formed the basis for his only novel, The Ceremonies. My rediscovery of Klein and his work during the grim days of the pandemic have led me to start delving once more into the world of weird fiction, and I can wholeheartedly recommend his limited oeuvre over that of less talented authors who believe that quantity equals quality.
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