Guts, gore and grisly deaths: they’re the staple of the teenage slasher flick, but are they really scary? The contributors to this anthology might say no. Phobic is an investigation into what terrifies us in today’s society — and there’s not a werewolf or a masked murderer in site.
Instead, these unsettling stories investigate fear in our daily lives: Christine Poulson’s brilliant ‘Safe As Houses’ sees a house alarm system trick a grieving couple into thinking their daughter is still alive; in ‘Mortal Coil’, Robert Shearman presents a world were we are all told how and when we will die; Paul Cornell investigates the horror inside ourselves, the acts we are capable of; actor Matthew Holness (star of ‘Garth Merenghi’s Dark Place’) sets his story post-7/7, in which we have become desensitised to tragedy; and Paul Magrs makes his narrator’s humdrum existence seem the real horror story compared to the so-called scary neighbours next door. A stunning collection that could give you goosebumps even in the height of summer.
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