Papa Was a Gypsy

Short Story by Shannon Celebi

Another Pseudopod 'cast featuring Ben Phillips' Southern accent!

Text available online at Ideomancer

Elma is a black girl working as a nurse/servant for an old white man in the 1920's (or so) South. Mr. Haggle is bedridden and mute since a stroke, but he still laughs and pees on Elma. Mrs. Haggle beats her, and their son regularly rapes her. To top it all off, Elma is haunted by the ghost of her mother. This is the story of how she finally has had enough and snaps. Also how she uncovers a whole bunch of family secrets.

You're never really sure how in-control Elma really is, until the end, but you can vaguely feel her slipping, especially any of her thoughts involving power. I like all the ghosts, and the seeming ghostly chain-reaction, set off by Mama at the beginning, where Elma is increasingly more and more haunted. You really get a feel for everything spiraling out of control. Which is why I'm so disappointed by the supernatural ending. Don't get me wrong, Celebi has created a great (if hard to understand motivationally) villain by the end of the story, and the smaller ghost and charm level supernatural elements were entirely necessary. But why not leave it at that, with the possibility of interpreting the whole things as psychosis + superstition, rather than firmly committing to the supernatural?

That said, the ending is actually pretty good, Elma's emotions are perfectly described, you really feel for her, and the final line about love is great. Overall, Elma is an extremely well-drawn character, and the Southern Gothic setting is pretty well done too. I just wish we'd learned a bit more about Regina. 4 jars of blood-preserves out of 5.

Creature

Short Story by Ramsey Shehadeh
Read for PodCastle by Norm Sherman
Originally published in Weird Tales (Text Online)

An amusing and dark post-apocalyptic story about a girl and her amorphous blob monster told in a sort of children's-book style. There is a dry humor to the whole thing, some amusingly named fantasy animals, and a dystopian police force. The plot and world are much darker than the narration style would indicate, and this difference makes for a much better story. Still, not all that much happens, imagery and humorous description only go so far, although the story is nicely dark.

3.5 bulbous ballerinas out of 5.

The Whistling Room

1910 Short Story by William Hope Hodgson

Read for Podcastle by Paul S. Jenkins

One of Hodgson's Carnacki the Ghost-Finder stories, a sort of supernatural answer to Sherlock Holmes. Some of Carnacki's cases have mundane solutions, and some supernatural, so you're left unsure of things until near the end, thereby avoiding the Scooby-Doo/Dresdan Files failure of always falling on one side or the other.

Basically a guy buys a (maybe) haunted castle, makes several bets that he'll stay there for a number of months, and then hires Carnacki to figure out if it really is haunted. Obviously anyone he made a bet with has motive to try faking him out, but the reputation is pre-existing.

I enjoy the Sherlock Holmes feel: the story is told by Carnacki after he has half-finished his investigation, to his friends over dinner in his flat. One of these friends then relates the story to us. The whole thing is full of references to previous adventures, and I suspect some of those references were never written, in the style of Arthur Conan Doyle's fictional self-references (I haven't read all the Carnacki stories, so I can't be sure, but I definitely get that impression).

As to this story in particular, the pace moves along rapidly, and I'm really in edge-of-my-seat territory towards the end, despite the 1910-style prose. The characters are pretty flat, and there is no metaphor or subtlety, but the whole thing is still a good, fun read, and it is just a really strange (and therefore interesting) story, both in the actual solution to the case and in the techniques Carnacki uses and off-handedly references during the course of his investigation.

The climax could be read as a bit of deus-ex-machina, but essentially Carnacki still has to take action, he is only given an opening to do so, and it doesn't absolutely resolve everything, so I'm a bit more okay with it. I also like the implications of much grander things implied here, in a pre-Lovecraft Lovecraftian fashion.

A very strange story, not the best written (and I feel I can expect more from Hodgson given books like The House on the Borderland), but I really like the style and this is fun just for some of the bizarre pseudoscience used in the investigation. 3 numbered wafers out of 5.

P.S. This is available free online here, and in plenty of other places, since it is public domain.