Havoc After Dark

HAVOC AFTER DARK BY ROBERT FLEMING DAFINA BOOKS, 241 PAGES, $14

MANY OF ROBERT Fleming's horror stories begin like Stephen King's, with ordinary people in mundane situations—a widower stops off for a drink after a day at the mill, a man picks up a beautiful woman at a nightclub, a law student drives home through a raging blizzard. But by the end of each story, something has intruded upon the ordinary in ways that are neither recognizable nor understandable.

Unlike Stephen King's stories, there's something else going on in Fleming's work. Along with the supernatural elements (and lots of graphic sex), each story also deals with race issues in one way or another. In some cases—"The Tenderness of Monsieur Blanc," for instance, in which a CIA assassin is sent to Haiti—the racial and supernatural elements are intertwined (he pays dearly for mocking his host's beliefs). In other cases, the racial issues and the horror are independent—as in "In My Father's House," in which a neurotic, rich woman wrestles with liberal white guilt while trying to discover why the parents of her newly adopted (black) son suddenly vanished.

There's been an explosion in recent years of black lesbian vampire fiction, but as far as I know, this is one of the first collections of horror fiction written by a black man.

Fleming had previously edited two collections of short erotica by black authors (After Hours and Intimacy), but this is his first solo effort. As in any collection, some stories fall short of others. In some cases the supernatural element seems an afterthought, appearing out of nowhere in the final pages; other stories reach fairly predictable conclusions.

But there are several stand-outs. The opener, "Life After Bas," consists of a series of scenes from the life of a powerful New Orleans voodoo priestess. The writing is subtle, effective and very creepy. Another favorite was "The Inhuman Condition," which concerns a young man who wakes up a year after a fatal car accident determined to resume his life, even though he's begun to putrefy.

The horror is profoundly earthbound in "Arbeit Macht Frei," arguably Havoc's finest offering. After a black GI near the end of WWII takes a German officer prisoner, he encounters three escapees from Auschwitz. He learns in great detail of the horrors European Jews faced under the Nazis, and compares their situation with that of blacks in the States. The conclusion he reaches is not as hamfisted as it might have been in less skilled hands.

Despite its occasional shortcomings, this collection kept me reading. It's intelligent, imaginative and dares to go places other horror writers won't touch.