At roughly 338 pages, give or take a font size, the book offers 20 short-stories averaging about 20 pages per story. There is an excellent introduction by Stephen Graham Jones (The Only Good Indian, Night of the Mannequins) outlining the style and nature of the contained stories and a brief history of his friendship with both authors. I enjoyed the book and here are just a few of my favorites:
“The Making”
The narrative is presented in an unusual way with a transcript detailing an investigative conversation between a detective and a murder suspect. This transcript is embedded into a first-person perspective from Stradivarious Cooper, the murder suspect. Cooper explains he was a failed musician with a father serving time in prison. He accepts a bizarre job working for a doctor and his associates in a 3,000 square foot house that looks normal – except for the torture room in the basement. The doctor believes he can capture the proof of ghosts through Cooper violently abusing and murdering victims. The most horrible death insures a very real possibility that a ghost will emerge. However, as these things normally escalate in horror literature, the experiment bites the experimenter. This was a very good opening story that matched the style and intensity of the film Martyrs.
“Many Carvings”
In the book's intro, Jones describes this story as a type of EC Comics homage. I felt it possessed a Shirley Jackson's The Lottery vibe crossed with a more contemporary flavor like Dark Harvest by Norman Partridge. A young boy named Alaster lives in a small farming village. He is questioning why his father and brother haven't returned from “the market”. His mother grows sick and when she is forced to bed he journeys to a neighbor's house. Together the two venture to the home of a pregnant woman where they witness a very strange birth. Mixed into the narrative is a witch that grows pumpkins...in a field with no pumpkin patch. It's a unique story that had me guessing until the end.
“The Bidden”
Many of the stories in Midnight Vintage take place in the 1800s or early 1900s and involve small farming communities. This story is set on a cornfield and begins with a father named Wallace attempting to lacerate himself on corn stalks to feed his ghostly son John. The story then flashes back to the beginning to explain how John's mother Amanda gave birth to the son and the weird aftereffects of birth, growing corn, and the pain of loss and absence. It is easy to compare to the most popular corn-feel short of them all, Children of the Corn, but this works more like a country-fried Frankenstein story of creator and creation.
I also really enjoyed “Bright Rain” with its post-apocalyptic isolation mood. I sense that both of these authors are mood writers. Midnight Vintage isn't the first collaboration between the two. In 2024 Blood Bound Books published their novella Stolen Pallor. It's clear they have a wonderful chemistry in their storytelling. This collection is a testament to their synergy. Recommended!
Get the book HERE.
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