Reading – The Corpse King

Released last year by Cemetery Dance Publications (website, Twitter), Tim Curran’s (website) short novella, The Corpse King*, is a frightening, extremely fun work of historical fiction that makes me wish for more nineteenth century horrors. At only 140-pages this isn’t a long read, but since I’m a fan or shorter books (short stories are my absolute favorite form of fiction) the length suited me just fine. And is long enough to tell a full and creepy tale of two grave robbers in the early 1800s.

Thick With Atmosphere

Curran does an excellent job wrapping you in the setting, with lots of atmospheric/flavor text spread through the book. At times the text skews slightly off course as Curran focuses on setting rather than plot, but it’s those infrequent diversions from the main story that really helped me get into the book. And the text gets suitably grim and twisted at times:

And during one particularly hot week just last summer, after burying beneath the floor no less than twenty-five bodies that could not be moved quick enough . . . said bodies had bloated with gas and begun to rise up out of the dirt. Arms and legs and heads bursting through the soil. An ugly business it had been spearing them with pikes to let out the gas.

Simply beautiful text, if you’re idea of beautiful text in a horror story is the gross and macabre. And all 140-pages of the book are packed with this sort of writing, with entire pages sometimes devoted to some sick and twisted nightmare or other. Curran’s very good at getting a disgusting idea across.

Clow and Kierney

But The Corpse King* isn’t all just disturbed and flowery text. No, in the story we meet two grave robbers, Samuel Clow and Mickey Kierney, two men who love their work and aren’t afraid to explore the more frightening of graveyards in the city. In fact, it’s their inability to heed the warnings of others that eventually leads the two to an encounter with a foul, worm-like monstrosity that is known to the grave robbers as The Corpse-King . . . yes, the truly monstrous star of Curran’s novella.

Throughout the novella, Tim Curran does a great job of introducing the protagonists, their filthy friends, and even the city itself which is as much a character as Clow’s old mother (who, if a movie were ever made of this story, would clearly be terrible to look at).

A Fitting End

I don’t want to give the story away, but by the end of The Corpse King* we’ve seen Clow and Kierney suffer greatly, and even watched as the monstrosity beneath the cemeteries of the city. The public hanging scene is especially fun, as is the time spent in Clow’s cellar, and overall I’ve gotta say that if you enjoy a horror story then this one’s worth a shot.

The book was a limited edition of 750 copies (now sold out), but it’s not impossible to find and hasn’t yet climbed to insane prices. And, I suspect, it’s only a matter of time before this makes its way to an electronic edition so if you’re patient you’ll get the story soon enough.

That is, if you like scary tales.