Stephen Volk’s Real-World Horror
Ingenious tales full of real, shocking surprises.
I DON’T REMEMBER WHEN I FIRST HEARD about Ghostwatch, the controversial made-for-TV horror film structured like and presented as a real, live news program purporting to be an investigation of paranormal activity, that aired on BBC1 on Halloween in 1992. It starred the late Michael Parkinson, a real British news host who acted as the show’s host, a role he plays with solid professionalism until the horror being investigated gets out of hand and creeps into the studio. When I learned of it, I was fascinated by the potential, though I wasn’t able to actually see Ghostwatch until years later. The wait was worth it: I now count it as one of the great horror films of the 1990s. If a large part of the film’s meta elements were lost on me—since, as an American, I was unfamiliar with the English TV personalities appearing as themselves—I was able to appreciate the concept, and, in any case, I was able to catch up on what I later learned was the rather alarmed reaction from the general British public, a not-insubstantial segment of whom were angry that the BBC would trick them in this way. It’s not every day public television makes viewers believe that a horror unfolding before them was real, that something unspeakable may have happened to Michael Parkinson before their eyes.
Ghostwatch is easy to see these days (and I highly recommend you give it a whirl); you can even find, on YouTube, an episode of another BBC show called Bite Back, in which audience members air their grievances to a couple of clearly uncomfortable TV executives who produced the show. Not present on that episode of Bite Back is the writer of Ghostwatch, Stephen Volk. Ghostwatch is probably what Volk is most famous for, but he’s written several other films and TV shows, including Ken Russell’s Gothic and William Friedkin’s The Guardian (co-written with Friedkin and Dan Greenburg). But Volk is also a prolific writer of short horror stories and novellas. My first experience with Volk’s prose fiction was his celebrated novella Whitstable. In it, a fictional version of Peter Cushing, mourning the recent loss of his wife, finds himself confronting a neighborhood pedophile. However lurid that premise may sound to you, I can promise you that it is anything but. Not horror as such, Whitstable is a quiet, melancholy tale of an old man acting on a moral imperative. It’s also part of Volk’s The Dark Masters Trilogy of novellas; the other two, Leytonstone and Netherwood, feature Alfred Hitchcock and occult horror writer Dennis Wheatley, respectively, as the protagonists.
Volk’s short horror fiction, on the other hand, is somewhat less quiet. His very brief story “With All My Love Always Always Forever XXX” ends with a young couple, who celebrate every Christmas by stealing wrapped presents from their rightful owners, receiving a comeuppance that rather exceeds what the courts would (rightfully) issue. As I say, it’s a very short story, so I won’t say more, other than that it leaves the reader with a question—one that might not occur to them until much later—about who the last gift they stole was actually intended for.
THAT STORY, AND THE OTHERS I’ll be discussing here, come from Volk’s collection The Parts We Play; that title subtly reverberates throughout the compendium. For example, in his story “The Arse-Licker,” the narrator, Colin, plays the part, at his job, of the office suck-up (or, you know, arse-licker). He describes himself as not really suited to business, and generally not much of an achiever. After telling the reader about a time in school when he buttered up a teacher sufficiently that his grades improved, Colin says, “This is a crucial thing, you see. From an early age I learnt how to get what I wanted by ingratiating myself.”
This behavior is obvious to his coworkers, but he doesn’t care. Until one day two new executives are hired, and one of them, Terry Kotwika, rather openly mocks Colin for his kiss-ass ways. So that, when budget cuts necessitate layoffs, Colin manipulates Innox, the boss he most blatantly sucks up to, to include Kotwika in those layoffs. All of which leads to the extended horror climax, which involves Kotwika taking Innox and Colin hostage, torturing them both, and forcing Colin to perform, and Innox to submit to, what the title suggests.
Now, this story is really disgusting. I was not expecting such a story from Volk, and, indeed, in his story notes at the end of The Parts We Play, he admits that this usually isn’t his sort of thing. But he pulls it off with aplomb (and concludes with a strange chill that raises the story above the merely repellent), I guess you’d have to say, and anyhow, as repulsed as I was, I’ve read Hogg by Samuel R. Delany all the way through. If I can survive that, then nothing in this world can harm me.
One of the more acclaimed stories in the collection is “Newspaper Heart,” about a young friendless boy who finds happiness at last in the stuffed effigy he and his mother (from whose point of view the story is told) make in the lead up to Guy Fawkes Day (the story is set back when that sort of celebration was common, which I understand it no longer is). The boy begins to believe that this effigy (referred to throughout as “the guy”) is a living thing, a beloved friend. When he learns that the point of making such a thing is to eventually burn it in a pyre to celebrate the defeat of Guy Fawkes’s 1605 plot to assassinate King James I, he becomes panicked, terrified that his one friend will soon be sadistically murdered.
There’s much that is sad about “Newspaper Heart.” The boy’s family—just him and his parents—is not a happy one. His father seems cold and verbally abusive (though not, in a welcome change from the obvious and the typical, heartless), and as his obsession grows more alarming, his caring mother snaps at him harder, unsure as she is what to do about this uneasy development. And then the story ends on a note of true horror, both supernatural and cruel.
Speaking of cruel, another story that involves people playing the roles suited to them is “The Peter Lorre Fan Club.” In it, two men, once friends, reunite after many years. One of them, Florian Vogel, wants only to discuss their previous shared love for the titular actor, while the other, Dieter Grau, finds this a waste of time, given why he’s visiting Vogel in the first place, and because he now regards Lorre as a vile traitor to their country. You may begin to sense where this is going. Dieter is there on official business, and talks about Lorre, a Hungarian Jew who fled Germany during Hitler’s rise to power, as if he were vermin. The reader senses that Vogel is to be punished for something, and indeed he is. The majority of “The Peter Lorre Fan Club” is told through dialogue. When Volk deviates from that structure, the inevitable horror is soon to take place, and the graphically violent side of his work as a horror writer takes over.
I suppose it may seem to some that Vogel’s fate, stemming as it does only from the fact that he reveres a particular actor, is a bit of a reach. But of course it isn’t. In countries like the one described here (my sense, by the way, is that the story takes place in a world where Germany won World War II), and under the rule of such a government, the phrase “guilt by association” doesn’t even begin to cover it. There is a horrible logic to “The Peter Lorre Fan Club.” In a situation like Vogel’s, if you don’t rebuke everything you once held dear, then you can kiss your ass goodbye.
THE BEST STORY I’VE READ by Volk (so far, anyway), the one I consider truly ingenious, is called “The Magician Kelso Dennett.” The narrator, Nick Ambler, lives in the run-down, depressed seaside town of Seagate. He despises the place, and would do anything to remove himself from the grinding rut his life has become. One day, it’s announced that the famous magician Kelso Dennett is coming to Seagate to film a new TV special. Dennett is in the mold of David Blaine, and the performance he intends to give in this special involves him being buried deep under the sand, for 40 days and nights, without food or water, and to emerge at the end of that time, alive and well. This is of course impossible, but his audience is torn between wondering how the trick is done, and half-believing it isn’t a trick.
Nick gets a job with the production as a runner: carrying out various errands for the crew, and, ultimately, as a kind of escort for Dennett’s wife, Annabelle Fox. Once a child actor, now as beautiful as a fashion model, she gives Nick different small tasks to do, before eventually taking him as a lover. Nick doesn’t hesitate; his conscience bothers him not at all. Dennett has gone through all the preliminaries, including handing Seagate’s mayor a sealed envelope that is only to be opened after Dennett emerges from his grave, and is now underground. As long as Nick and Annabelle are careful, it’s unlikely that the magician will ever find out.
Nick begins to take their relationship more seriously than she does, which threatens to call an early halt to it, though they move past it. “The Magician Kelso Dennett” is, in fact, mostly about this relationship, its ups and downs, its secrecy and so forth. When, the reader might wonder, does this become a horror story? Near the end, is the answer, as Nick, asleep in bed with Annabelle, starts being awakened at night by visions of Dennett in the room with them, watching them from the shadows. Is he really there? Can he possibly be? This naturally makes Nick uneasy. It made me uneasy, too, because any number of dull, cliché endings began to seem like distinct possibilities, and I prepared myself to be let down. But no. The ending, which I wouldn’t dare reveal, is one of the best I’ve read in a horror story. Brilliant and shocking, perfectly bone-chilling. And utterly inexplicable. In his story note for this, Volk essentially says, “Yeah, I don’t know either.” Which is a testament to his willingness to follow his instincts, and trust that he’s right. And boy, was he right.
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