"In the Forest of the Night" by Alter Reiss

  Last night I woke around 4:00 and headed over to the Great Lovecraft Reread at Tor to see what Ruthanna Emrys and Anne M. Pillsworth were reading. It turned out to be, a story I had not read before, one that was available online, and one that I really liked. Alter Reiss’s "In the Forest of the Night" it was first published in the March 2015 issue of the Lovecraft E-zine.

The link to the story is here;

https://lovecraftzine.com/magazine/issues/2015-2/issue-34-march-2015/in-the-forest-of-the-night-by-alter-reiss/

The link to the Reread review is here;

https://www.tor.com/2018/10/24/kentucky-bourbon-and-elder-signs-alter-reisss-in-the-forest-of-the-night/

The story is quite short so I will a provide a few quotes and make some comments but try to avoid spoilers. Why not read it first and come back? 

The first paragraph propels us directly into the heart of the story as well as into the wonderfully atmospheric setting of the tale.

"“And who is this,” said the long-necked paneron, from the bole of one of the great, phosphorescent night oaks, “come to our solitary?”

Jack kept walking, not looking up at the paneron, or at the shimmer spiders, who pulled in their threads at his approach, hissing angrily.

“Abraham Jackson,” continued the paneron. “But he is not the only one to come out of the great mirrored hall in this hour.” It dipped its head lower, claws biting the night oak’s bark. “Two others are in the Dawning Wood, Abraham Jackson…,"

Not that the warning is really needed because Abraham Jackson, normally referred to as Jack or One-eyed Jack has entered the wood under compulsion. And what an eerie wood it was;

"So still that the spiders forgot him, and lowered their strands down, down past the roots of the night trees, into the dreaming world.

Jack watched the sparks rising and falling in those strands. Those were the souls of dreamers; each of the spinners had found a dreamer, and was bringing it upward. The spark would rise as the dreams drew closer to reality, and fall as they fell farther away and the dreamers woke. "

"In the Forest of the night is a nicely realized tale of betrayal and revenge. But the most impressive thing for me was Reisse's world building especially in such a relatively short story. The atmosphere is dark and grotesque with a real sense of place. It has an odd mixture of Southern Gothic and Baroque imagery that is totally appropriate for Reisse's plot. After talking with my wife and a number of friends I realized that a lot of readers visualize the setting or characters as they read. This is something I rarely do, but in the case of the paneron I envisioned something like an armoured pangolin but with the grace and agility of a gecko, and scary of course. What I do instead, while reading is compare the plot, character, tropes within the story to other things I have read. I do not claim that the authors has read or emulated these stories, rather this allows me (and hopefully others) to identify the type of things I like. In  "In the Forest of the Night" the setting reminded me of Clark Ashton Smith's two Maal Dweb stories, "The Flower-Women and "The Maze of Maal Dweb" and Jack Vance's Dying Earth stories both of which are concerned with the adventures of wizards and magic users in a world of deadly perils and strange magical beasts. 

But Jack himself with his bourdon, clasp knife, and silver dimes comes from another tradition. 

Pillsworth in her review says "and this fellow has definitely dropped into the Forest of the Night from some high ridge of our own Appalachian mountains.'" and I would not be surprised. He seems a more violent and morally ambiguous version of Manly Wade Wellman's character Silver John or John the Balladeer. Silver John is a character who battles evil through out the Appalachian mountains, with little more than his silver stringed guitar and the occasional silver dime, in a number of Wellman's short stores and novels. 

The image of Jack moving through a grotesque and twisted landscape of treachery, betrayal and revenge also reminded me of a number of Zelazny's heros or anti-heroes, including Francis Sandow in Isle of the Dead or especially Jack of Shadows (Shadowjack) in the novel of the same name. As I said earlier, I do not claim to know anything about about the author's, in this case Reiss’s inspiration for this work. I do know that it offered an interesting take on a Lovecraft themed story with shimmer spiders fishing for dreamers lost in a strange dreamland, and Great Old Ones yet again awaiting their sacrificial offerings. I loved this story and hope to read more stories about Jack by Alter Reiss.

For another very different take of betrayal and revenge in a Lovecraftian world I recommend "NEMO ME IMPUNE LACESSIT" by Michael Shea, and while it is quite different, there the rose garden scene.