Blood Red

QUOTH THE RAVEN ^{AN INTRODUCTION BY SIMON CLARK}

“Stone the crows.” A figure of speech uttered in exclamation. “A murder of crows.” A collective noun for a gathering of crows. There are more, including the evocative “a story-telling of crows.”

These devourers of corpse meat are found pretty much across the planet. There are over a hundred different species of the crow family, including the carrion, hooded, and American crows, plus rooks, jays, choughs, jackdaws, and Poe’s iconic raven. Some are big and ominous-looking; as dark as black holes in the sky. Several of the species are small. One is even white.

Crows can be metaphor for the horror story. In the best tradition of Hitchcock’s The Birds, crows tend not to arrive in a single battalion. A murder of crows assembles in ones or twos. You don’t notice them infiltrating your neighborhood until suddenly you realize your house, or that children’s climbing frame, is full of the black-feathered daemonic creatures. For me, the best horror stories are like that. The horror begins with a gradual accumulation of off-key details at near-subliminal level in an otherwise harmonious environment. The reader outside the book—and the hero inside the covers—doesn’t realize that anything is seriously amiss until it’s too late.

That’s why horror is subversive. It infiltrates the reader’s mind before it launches its attack. Sit with friends and discuss favorite horror movies and stories. A goodly bunch of those mentioned will feature an everyday, safe environment. Or what should be a safe environment. The home for instance. How many horror stories begin with the hero and family moving house to a new home only to find they hear footsteps on the stairs at the dead of night, or the lavatory inexplicably flushing? Psychologists will admit that the home and the self are inextricably linked. So the notion of your house being invaded or haunted by a ghost is, in effect, a metaphor for an invasion or haunting of one’s mind. And one thing our culture teaches us is this: what should be our one safe place in the world—our home—is hideously vulnerable to supernatural attack. As children, didn’t we fear the monster under the bed? Ghosts are already in the woodwork. Vampires, zombies, and assorted ghouls soon find a way across the threshold (heck, even those starlings in The Birds… remember the gush of our feathered friends down the chimney?). And it doesn’t matter whether you’re playwright-turned-caretaker in a swanky mountain hotel or a man of God. They’re coming to get you.

Case in point: in 1715, the Reverend Samuel Wesley, father of John Wesley, one of the founders of the Methodist Church, experienced a poltergeist infestation at their home, the Epworth Rectory in England. At night he and his family were alarmed to hear groans and weird howling from the attic, accompanied by frenzied banging. Frequently, he was woken at night by what sounded like torrents of coins cascading onto the floor and the crash of breaking bottles. But when he investigated, he found nothing visibly amiss. Members of the household glimpsed a strange figure in white. His children eventually called the specter Old Jeffrey. See, no one’s safe.

Nor are the inhabitants of the peacefully affluent Black Stone Bay, Rhode Island, in Blood Red. Oh, they think they’re in no danger, but just as the crows settle unnoticed one by one on their houses, a sinister infiltration has already begun in Black Stone Bay.

In this novel of James A. Moore’s you’re going to encounter crows aplenty, and that’s as much of the plot as I’m giving away. Of course, I can let other things slip… Quick! While the publisher’s out of the room! Come close and listen:

Blood Red is a beautifully written horror novel. The easy-going loquacious style is deceptive. Take it from me: anything that reads so well, with such attention to detail, is damnably hard to write. This prose style is the product of years of hard work, of staying home with the blinds shut when everyone else is out having fun in the sunshine. James A. Moore has paid his dues, honed his craft, and now the delight is all yours in reading a powerful and witty story, which opens in the elegantly tantalizing way that is the mark of exceptional talent. Pun intended but there’s a rich vein of humor here as well as horror. Despite the carnage of the climax, the ending is genuinely poignant, too. And as you read, you’re forgiven if you exclaim more than once “Stone the crows!” It’s a kind of book that unveils surprise after surprise.