Safe Return Doubtful

British Literature – Weird Fiction – Short Stories – Published 2020

Broodcomb Press are a small indie publisher from ‘the peninsula’, which I take it refers to the southwest of England, Cornwall, Devon and Dorset.

The peninsula abounds in strange tales, and the nature of the way the settlers here have found harmony leads to distinctly off-kilter fictions and poetry. Encompassing poetry, strange tales and experimental fiction, Broodcomb Press is a home for the writing that belongs here: disquieting truths about the region – tales both eerie and shocking – together with exploring the fantastic / everyday meaning of what it means to be human.

Amongst the local writers who are showcased is the mysterious R. Ostermeier. Other than that his writing is about the ‘peninsula’, not a lot else is available; age, gender, background etc. That fits in nicely with his writing, typical of Broodcomb, folkloric and weird.

Though we could have guessed it pretty soon into the book, Ostermeier tells us that one of his great influences is Arthur Machen in the first story of this collection, A Tantony Pig. In particular in this case, to Machen’s classic tale, The Ritual. It’s a really good play on the concept, and probably the best story in the book.

Machen’s influence is evident also in a story later in the book, The Bearing, a folk horror in the ‘Wicker Man’ mode in which at a village’s annual festival seven coffins are carried around each of the 63 houses.

In paying homage to Machen in the way he does, Ostermeier does run the risk of his influences diminishing his own work. I suppose later books of his will tell us more, as this is his first collection, but his stories do come with there own trademark, taking the weird to a different level, not higher, but one with more explicit body horror, and his own timely insertion of extremely dark humour. They are personal also, with a first person narration in several, for example, the last and longest, the novella Bird-Hags, in which as an adult, the narrator is looking back at his time in early adolescence, when he was admitted to an institution supposed to help him with recurrent and terrifying nightmares. One feels there is something of Ostermeier himself here.

It’s easy to be put off by Broodcomb Press because of the price of the books. They are usually a very limited print run and sell out quickly, and expensive, but beautifully bound, and would sit splendidly in the bookcase. A few, three, are issued later as ebooks, which is the path I have gone down, and more affordable. Ostermeier has a new novella out in February, Black Dog, of which there will be only 200 copies, and no ebook anytime soon, if ever.

My GoodReads score 4 / 5