Halloween Carnival: Volume 3 edited by Brian James Freeman

Random House Publishing Group – Hydra, 2017

ISBN-13: 9780399182051

Available: Kindle ebook

Halloween Carnival: Volume 3 is another installment to Freeman’s anthology collection  with five more tales of horror associated with my favorite holiday.

In Kelley Armstrong’s “The Lost Way,” we enter the town of Franklin, where children have a habit of losing their way every Halloween. Dale is determined to find out why his schoolmates keep disappearing. This Halloween, he follows his stepbrother into the forest, where he is forbidden to venture, and finds the reason. The problem is, he finds out the truth much later than he anticipates, and certainly not how he remembers it.

Kate Maruyama’s “La Calavera” focuses on Trish, who is mourning and struggling with the untimely death of her best friend and roommate, Jasmine. They always did everything together: the Día de los Muertos Festival at the Hollywood Cemetery used to be one of their shared rituals. Things changed when Hector came along. The time has come that Trish make her pilgrimage with an unexpected guest, to let her go, and to pay penance.

“The Devil’s Due”, by Michael McBride, takes place in the idyllic town of Pine Springs, Colorado, a thriving small community that has been prosperous for generations. All of this good fortune has not come without a cost, however: the townspeople have practiced special traditions, and, for these, the town goes on. When Thom refuses to take part, the townspeople become angry and demand the ritual continue.

Anne discusses the disturbing events of a picnic she enjoyed with her spouse, Evan, in Taylor Grant’s “A Thousand Rooms of Darkness.” Anne has been diagnosed with samhainophobia, a fear of Halloween, and phasmophobia, a fear of ghosts. She finally builds up the courage to tell Evan after experiencing an episode during a picnic, after she talks with the therapist she’s been avoiding for months. In the weeks leading to Halloween, when things for Anne get particularly bad, she receives a phone call that her therapist has died. Her paranoia increases as she worries about harm coming to Evan. Then there is the matter of the demon she hears as it gets closer to Samhain.

In “The Last Night of October”, by Greg Chapman, we meet Gerald, wheelchair bound and suffering from emphysema. Every Halloween, Gerald  waits for the boy in the Frankenstein monster’s mask to come knocking at his front door. This year, it is different. There is his nurse, Kelli, who waits with him, and hears Gerald’s tale of woe. Will they both be able to face the child and remain sane…or alive?

Something unique about this particular anthology is the theme of lies: lies people tell themselves to avoid the truth, lies about relationships, lies that a community propagates to its own end, lies about fear and sanity, and lies people tell so they can sleep at night. While there isn’t anything too graphic in this volume, I would recommend it for adults and teenagers who can handle their horror. Recommended.

Reviewed by Lizzy Walker