I’m having a lot of fun these days catching up on all of Valancourt Books’ impressive recent releases, which includes stuff never before released and reprints of rare and classic tomes of horror. On a short trip to Chicago to visit family, I read Karl Edward Wagner’s In a Lonely Place (1983), which has been out of print and hard to obtain for a long time.

This edition includes a new introduction by my horror fave Ramsey Campbell, which made it truly irresistible to me.

Karl Edward Wagner (1945-1994) is one of those horror authors who, as a friend of mine would probably say, “is well-known to those who know him well.” In other words: he isn’t really well known by the general public, but every horror author probably knows his name. He is best known for his short horror fiction, but he also was a longtime editor of The Year’s Best Horror Stories anthology and also an editor and writer of pulp sword and sorcery fiction.

In a Lonely Place is Wagner’s most well-known collection, and includes eight stories, including Wagner’s most famous. A short summary of each of the stories is given below:

• In the Pines. A grieving couple rents a house in the Tennessee wilds to get away and recuperate. Nobody has ever said the house is haunted, but the husband finds himself becoming increasingly obsessed with a painting of a beautiful woman he finds inside.
• Where the Summer Ends. Mercer, an avid collector of antiques, strikes up a friendship with a junk dealer named Gradie whose property lies at the end of an abandoned and ruined avenue, now filled with kudzu. But there is something wrong with the kudzu, and Gradie keeps a sinister secret about it to himself.
• Sticks. While on a fishing trip, artist Colin Leverett comes across a strange arrangement of objects: sticks nailed to boards in perplexingly unsettling geometric patterns. These patterns later inspire his artwork, but by the time he learns the meaning behind the patterns it will be too late. This is Wagner’s most famous story, and I can’t help wonder if it is at least an indirect inspiration for John Carpenter’s 1994 film In the Mouth of Madness.
• The Fourth Seal. Doctor Metzger is on the verge of a breakthrough in cancer research, and it opening new opportunities for Metzger. It is also, however, drawing the attention of much more sinister forces at the same time.
• More Sinned Against. An up and coming starlet in Los Angeles places her faith — and trusts her heart — to the wrong man. He uses her to vault himself to the top and leave her behind, but she comes up with the most diabolical way of getting her revenge.
• .220 Swift. Dr. Morris Kenlaw, an archaeologist, is in the Virginia mountains looking for the legendary mines of the ancients, and local man Brandon is intrigued enough to help him with the search. But Dr. Kenlaw is keeping secrets from Brandon, but neither of them realize that Brandon has secrets as well.
• The River of Night’s Dreaming. When a correctional facility bus has an accident and crashes into the bay, one convict decides to take her chances swimming to the city across the water, banking on the hope that she will be considered drowned. But she ends up in a strange, deserted city that she does not recognize, and finds shelter with an older woman and her maid. The longer she stays with them, the more she starts to lose track of the difference between dream and reality. This excellent story is inspired by Robert W. Chambers’ classic collection The King in Yellow.
• Beyond Any Measure. Since moving to London, Lisette has been having increasingly horrific dreams of a dark place and a person she is terrified to see. Doctor Magnus thinks she is experiencing memories of a past life, but the truth is stranger — and more catastrophic — than anyone can imagine.

This is a fascinating and well-written collection, and undoubtedly a classic. “Sticks” deserves all the attention and accolades it gets, as do a number of the other stories in the collection. My other favorites are “The River of Night’s Dreaming” and “Beyond Any Measure.” The stories are all relatively long: Wagner takes his time building up the setting, mood and characters before hitting the reader with the big reveal.

One thing that strikes me about Wagner’s stories is that the strongest of them, like “Sticks” and “Beyond Any Measure,” are really cleverly unpredictable. “Beyond Any Measure,” in particular, is a truly imaginative mixing of multiple ideas drawn from folklore and pseudoscience to create something truly unique and a bit mind-boggling.

So I’m very happy to have read a full collection of Karl Edward Wagner’s stories! I had read “Sticks” years ago, and now I can finally say that his other stories are just as memorable.