Joseph Grych

The Apartment Building Next Door: a Collection of Dark Tales Joseph Grych

A collection of six macabre short stories set in apartments, each separated by a brief, haunting poem . In the first story the apartment building is a malevolent, hungry entity that preys upon the human soul. Jamie's friend told him that the town was bad--the Native Americans knew about it and avoided lit. A dancer casts spells on those who obstruct her goals; an encounter with a sinister psychic telephone network; insanity, ghostly faces that appear on everyday objects; an incubus, and a mysterious intense stranger who is very popular with the widows . Toxic places draw toxic personalities and threaten the well-being of the innocent. All the while, cold neighbors either look away or are as wicked as the ground they live on. Reviewed by Todd MercerForeWord CLARION ReviewsThree stars ...gaze long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into thee. - Friedrich Nietzsche Beyond Good and Evil (1886) In the older, declining Midwestern community of Littlefall, an apartment building performs the same end function as a hospice program, without the gentle compassion. Tenants move in under their own power and end their residencies on sheet-covered stretchers. Neighbors with manicured lawns and settled lives are malicious, or at least unconcerned. Neither they nor local EMTs expect anything less than a continuing string of sudden vacancies. They refrain from issuing warnings to those in peril, instead treating them as objects of morbid curiosity. "She'll read your mail, spy on you, and count the beer bottles in your trash. But when there is something truly wrong, she won't be there." Indeed, carnage as a by-product of disappearing industry underlies much of what is symbolically presented as supernatural. Character foibles and failures travel between stories, but the sources of doom are a jukebox of variety. The apartment building and the vicinity under its sway function as a clearinghouse for cruel human beings, tormented spirits and maybe even Ol' Scratch himself. Rotating antagon