I am just looking at a huge, thick knit with gold ink on the cover. Over 500 pages of horror, 14 authors, one author. Their task was to create a short story under the slogan “pestilence” in order to open the latest project of the Vesper publishing house with a joint volume – a cyclical anthology of horror.
A bit of fear – they write to order!
For horror to evoke this thing in the reader, to stir emotions, it must arise from some common deep fear and be really well written. Is it possible to collect valuable stories in an anthology with an imposed topic? I bet the publisher asked itself that question too. During the interview accompanying the prime minister, the writers stated that such a task was nothing new or overly difficult for them, maybe it required some combination. Indeed, most of the texts that make up the first volume of the Tomb are interesting, or at least correct. Some continue the threads explored by the authors earlier, others are independent miniatures, snapshots from different times of the plague.
The stories from the Tomb are happening “somewhere in Poland”, so in apartment blocks of not too large cities, in single-family houses in the countryside, and even in a noble manor (great text by my latest “horror” discovery, Krzysztof Wroński). She is accompanied by fights for toilet paper and flour, szaber, fear for children, family quarrels and the breakdown of ties. Isolation happens – then the question is which side of the door is the real evil. The answers vary, usually depending on the nature of the threat – the more supernatural it is, the better you should be on your guard against the infected.
What besides the zombies?
Somehow it happens that the plague goes in a horde with living dead – such stories, of course, were in the Tomb, for example in Grzegorz Kopiec. Sometimes it’s a kind of virus – in The Sudden Death of Kamil Staniszek, beautifully paranoid What Has Been, Has Passed By Bartłomiej Grubich or a Holiday Postcard by Rafał Ziębiński (note, this story will surprise you!). Sometimes something undefined, associated with the Color of the Sky or Annihilation .
But there are also stories from a completely different barrel. Three of them take place in Silesia, including two in Bytom. I am thinking of the daring, gangster Recycling of Paweł Ciećwierz and the stylistically great Uwęglenie the existence of Anna Maria Wyselc . There is also a story from the world of Moths , Schlesierthal by Jakub Bielawski, a monologue of a heroine already known to this author’s readers. Together with the Widow’s court by Wroński and the oneiric handful of dust by Dawid Lipski , terrible in its glory, they constitute a collection of texts that I will remember and highly recommend.
Tales from the Crypt
The tomb is beautifully presented, as befits a Vesper. A nostalgic, spiritual introduction was written by Łukasz Orbitowski, which is a recommendation in itself. You will find here grotesque, turpic illustrations by Maciej Kamuda, which are a cycle of graphics independent of the stories, another interpretation of the collection’s main slogan. One-third of the stories are absolutely delicious and bring something fresh, mostly good language and a distorted view of horror. Others… as in the anthology, sometimes you feel that the topic has been imposed, other times that it lacks originality. We come across the same motives forever, be it a fight with zobie, queues to grocery stores, or finally obligatory gore. I also lacked the distance to the topic, which maybe I should not complain about from the perspective of 2021, but I am talking about the lightness of the language or humor, and not breaking away from everyday lockdown pictures.
Vesper is already working on the second volume of The Tomb , this time under the idiom “favor”. I’m waiting, of course I’m waiting. I dream of a larger representation of authors – Anna Maria Wyrzeniec also committed the prologue to the first volume, very interesting, but one swallow … So far, the publishing house has revealed four names: Anna Musiałowicz, Marta Guzowska, Wojciech Gunia and Radek Rak. It’s getting colorful!
The first volume of the anthology Grave is something for lovers of classic horror, heavy, often brutal history of our loved ones everyday. For those like me, who demand poetic prose and detachment from reality, there are, however, a few gems from Lipski, Wroński, Ciećwierz or the Chosen One mentioned here several times.