FOREWORD
PATHS THROUGH DARK WOODS
THIS IS A COLLECTION of horror stories. The contents won’t make you think of a mad slasher movie, nor are they kin to HP Lovecraft’s work. (Amusingly that’s true even of the story in which Lovecraft himself is a character.) What these most put me in mind of is Walter de la Mare’s horror stories, in that they’re (generally) quiet, closely observed, and very damned frightening by the end.
Time is always an important factor, but it’s time in human increments—not the vistas of eternity for which Lovecraft strove. Here people revisit their pasts—sometimes literally. Books and more generally literature are often factors, and both are described by a writer who knows and loves them.
The stories have a California ambiance, though a few are set at considerable distances in space and time. This California is neither glittery Hollywood nor the industrial giant in which my uncle worked for Bethlehem Steel. It’s a fringe California in which the viewpoint characters are as clearly defined as the settings, but they’re outside mainstream society.
They aren’t criminals, nor are they opposed to society for political reasons; they’re just folks who aren’t quite making it and are being paid off-book. Intelligent people, often creative people, but people who don’t fit into organized structures. That’s at least part of the reason the stories work so well: they start with a skewed perspective, so the reader is never quite sure where the fantasy begins or whether there is supernatural fantasy at all.
This is particularly true of A Time to Cast Away Stones. The viewpoint character is Edward John Trelawny, a 19th century literary figure who was as real as Dante Gabriel Rossetti (whom he knew well).
As it chances I’ve read both of Trelawny’s published books, and I’ve recently stood on the slopes of Mount Parnassus, where much of the story’s action takes place. Events in the story are in keeping with geography and the historical record. Things going on in Trelawny’s head are fantastic—
But as I said, I’ve read Trelawny. The life he created and claimed for true in his autobiographical books is no less fantastic than the causes the author posits here. Trelawny is exactly the sort of fringe character who people many of the other stories in this collection, and who are just as real and vivid to the reader.
I began by saying that these are different horror stories. There is another fashion in which they differ from most horror—and certainly from the horror stories that I once wrote: these are stories in which there is hope.
Characters start with very little and may lose much even of that in the course of the story. Nonetheless, they have a chance of salvation even though they themselves are never looking for it. They have given up on god, but God—in the broadest sense—has not given up on them.
Tim Powers’ paths really do come out on the other side of the darkness.
—Dave Drake