Gateways to Abomination

Truly, for authors who are considering their first foray into the realm of self-publishing, Matthew M. Bartlett’s Gateways to Abomination should be used as one of the prime texts in terms of both professional refinement and freedom of creative expression. There have been books issued by third-party publishers that have had more instances of typographical errors in a matter of pages than Bartlett’s work does in the whole of its volume, to say nothing of their lack of imagination. This might sound like damning with faint praise, but let me assure you it is not. Bartlett’s collection resonates with the care and enthusiasm that went into its preparation. This author respects his audience. Like a master chef, he knows that the presentation is just as important as the taste of the dish.But, to belabor a metaphor with an idiom, the proof is in the pudding, and Bartlett demonstrates abundantly throughout his book that he is a voice worth listening to. The connective tissue of the collection is Massachusetts-based radio station 89.7 WXXT, a channel run by a witch cult of decrepit ancients who broadcast all manner of upsetting, mesmerizing, and ominous songs and monologues that enrapture and entice the listeners who happen upon it by accident or design.The book’s contents—all of the titles are in lowercase like the scribbled descriptions on the side of transmission tapes—range from short stories of traditional length to vignettes spanning a few paragraphs. Of the vignettes, there’s really only one, “accident”, that feels too fleeting to make any kind of lasting impression. If anything though, this is just a further testament to Bartlett’s skill. In a volume spanning 33 individual entries in all, some of them running the same length as “accident” or shorter, each one of the contents feels as if it’s adding a little bit more to the cult’s sinister history while simultaneously keeping most of its mysterious workings pleasantly in the dark. It’s a tough balancing act but Bartlett makes it look easy.The first entry, “the woods in fall”, perfectly sets the stage for what is to follow and provides us with themes and images that will recur throughout: a subtle insinuation of the radio station’s power; the first appearances of many by tall, thin men staring from the woods and interfering cats; a fascination with bodily ejaculations. More than that though, it assures us of two things. One, that we are in the hands of a writer with a facility for the language and an eye for baroque detail.Leaves fall like dry, dead angels, piling up against the leviathan broken bones of storm-savaged trees.And two, that we are in the hands of a madman.An ungodly gurgle bellowed up from his throat and he vomited a thick stream of wriggling worms.It’s this dichotomy that keeps us glued to Bartlett’s stories, the poetical turns of phrase mashing up against the scatological horrors of bleeding Leeds, MA in a dizzying mix of the sublime, the silly, and the strange.There are trappings of classic weird fiction within the collection—the evil sects vying for domination, the books intimating forbidden secrets—but Bartlett puts his own spin on them by concocting images indelibly his own and far more surreal than your everyday tentacle. There are porcupine-quilled clowns with plastic rumps, flying leeches, brain-melting beetles, ravaged angels riding a stampede of ravening goats through fields of madness. As the sole creative force in control (writer, editor, publisher), Bartlett is the one holding the keys to the screaming metal deathtrap that is Gateways to Abomination. The doors are locked, the engine is cackling, and the author is grinning at us from the driver’s seat with a mouth full of too many teeth. All we can do is wonder where the hell Bartlett will take us next and hope that we’ll be ready for it.Bartlett is at his best when dealing with the longer narratives, the stories that are given the space to breathe and bloom like sickly-scented fungi. “when I was a boy—a broadcast” feels like a deeply personal confession gone horribly wrong, the tale of a growing lad obsessed with the corpulent body of a friend’s mother whose burgeoning sexual longings are hideously fulfilled. It is a tale drenched in the sweet and stink of New England and the dirty, musty banality of sex. “path” follows a fairly original conceit, namely how a deranged murderer deals with a devilish horror greater than himself. The story meshes an effectively disturbing psychological insight (the killer’s method of detaching himself from the world) with the disconcerting bits of quiet horror (the discovery of too many knives in the drawer, the silhouettes of the hypnotized drivers listening to WXXT) that Bartlett handles so well.Similarly great are the pair of two-parters, “the ballad of ben stockton” and “the arrival”. The former describes the narrator’s should-be routine visit to the dentist that takes a turn into obfuscation and disturbing hints at unseen gears turning that would make Thomas Ligotti proud. The latter tells its story in reverse, going from a rebirth in the woods to the precipitating events of a goat-man’s reign of terror and mission to devour information through radio antennae. Bartlett performs this narrative experimentation on a few occasions, forcing the reader to set the misarranged puzzle pieces aright only for them to find out that the finished picture still has deep pockets of impenetrable darkness. Bartlett also takes joy in revealing towards the end of some entries that they’ve actually been broadcasts straight from WXXT all along, insinuating that the station has already torn through the fourth wall and that its messages have nestled in our gray matter like contented maggots. It all makes for a delightfully teasing and immersive game.Best of all the stories are “the sons of ben” and “the gathering in the deep woods”. The first concerns a teenager discovering his true unholy parentage and contains one of the most exquisite invocations of a nightmare that I’ve ever read. It fills up your heart with the shadow of familiarity and disquiet.In a blink, I was driving on a deserted highway amidst tall black buildings with windows glowing red and shadows dancing somewhere within. Alongside the elevated highway raged and roiled a black river, bisected by ornate, spired bridges that passed somewhere below the road on which I drove. Looming above the arches and the terraces, a large skyscraper seemed to rise before me, tattooed with an enormous, neon red inverted cross. Below the cross sprawled unreadable letters that looked vaguely Arabic.The city was vast, lit red, save for blue lights that blinked in patternless intervals atop the taller spires and rooftops. Stone-winged cathedrals, with many stained-glass eyes, crouched like tarantulas amidst the skyscrapers. Cruel looking helicopters, noses angled low, roamed between the buildings like wasps. When I glimpsed the vapor-lit streets, I saw loose gangs of figures in strange configurations, several lone people scuttling like crabs into and out of crooked alleys. I saw shadows of things maddeningly large and unthinkably shaped where the corners of light met the shadows…I remember being afraid to look at the passenger seat. Someone was sitting there, and it seemed vital that I not look, lest… lest what?And that hasn’t even covered the demonic construction crew working over the pit of dead babies. It’s this section that makes Gateways feel vast, bigger than even the sprawling New England terrain that serves as its focal point, this nightmare like a projection of a future hell where the hallmarks of our modern civilization are viewed through a kaleidoscope of diabolical shades. Look closely, Bartlett says. This is the Abomi-Nation.“the gathering in the deep woods” is the account of a man invited to the titular event by a stranger who carries his own brain into a diner. Bartlett slowly builds the details to unnerving effect, culminating in the man’s journey through the layers of a party from the Underworld that includes blasphemous car top murals, children puking up slithering tumors, and a pile of s*** wearing a party hat.It’s this latter element of gross, impish, and seemingly out-of-place humor that surprises one more than the presence of any insanity-inducing horror. It’s another one of Bartlett’s balancing acts, and for the most part he pulls it off, with only a few entries, like “the first to die”, straining on the stitches of terror and humor that bind them. Readers who are adverse to characters contemplating the portent of their vicious, black stool are advised to practice caution, with “the theories of uncle jeb” being perhaps the nastiest of the lot in its depiction of the skull-faced, gnarl-toed title character opening up his cancerous, smelly navel and inviting his kind relations to beat his diseased penis in with a mallet. It’s a lesson in how much your nose can wrinkle in the span of a story.It seems appropriate that Bartlett’s collection should end with “the reddening dusk”, a beastly man’s wailing diatribe to the dead wife he murdered that finishes with him burrowing into the stomachs of his enemies and screaming in delirium. It’s a tonal high note for the work to go out on, leaving the reader disoriented and slightly traumatized from all the absurd grotesquries that have unspooled from the crackling recordings of Bartlett’s imagination.The author has promised a companion volume for future release to be titled Creeping Waves, a book collecting further chronicles of Western Massachusetts’ haunted airwaves. If you were provoked or enthralled or upset by the contents of Gateways to Abomination, as I was, I can only imagine the “sequel” will have more of the same in store. Which is to say that come the time of its release, my ham radio will be tuned accordingly and I’ll be ready to listen to the voices of the damned once more. But, then again, chances are I’ve been hearing them the whole time.We now pause for station identification.

Matthew M. Bartlett surprised me. I hadn’t read any of Bartlett’s work prior to picking up this debut collection, but a number of friends with impeccable taste had recommended GATEWAYS TO ABOMINATION so I decided to give it a shot. I was a little leery at first; the book is self-published, and most of the stories are just a few pages long. There is a dismaying amount of awful self-pubbed books out there, and I’m not generally a fan of weird/horror flash fiction. Some very short stories have intriguing ideas, but there is usually not enough room to develop those ideas for my tastes.GATEWAYS TO ABOMINATION, though, deftly avoids that pitfall by tying all of the stories together, making them more short chapters than separate works. Bartlett methodically develops a fantastical version of witch-haunted New England that revolves around mysterious radio station WXXT and a intertwining cast of families neck-deep in serious occult activity.Bartlett maintains the same tone throughout the 34 stories collected here. Vividly horrific waking nightmares (or are they) and high strangeness of the darkest sort are filtered through characters like the FCC agent in “the investigator” and the hapless boyfriend in “the last hike,” two of the lengthier tales. At times I was reminded of another excellent book, THE SEA OF ASH. Bartlett is not derivative of the superb Scott Thomas, but both set their stories in New England and include truly odd happenings alongside centuries-spanning horror. THE SEA OF ASH was one of the best things I read in 2014, and I don’t make this comparison lightly. While the presentation is different – bite-size morsels instead of a sumptuous feast – both authors are effective at generating chills and holding my easily-distracted attention.For a self-published book, the layout and design are a cut or three above the norm. I realize this kind of thing is not as critical to some people, but as a layout guy, poor design or too many typos can really pull me out of the story. The general look and feel of GATEWAYS TO ABOMINATION is much more that of a small press than so many other self-published books I’ve seen. While not as beautiful as some professionally designed volumes, the book is easy to read and pleasant to look at.GATEWAYS TO ABOMINATION is a self-published first collection of generally very short stories, and despite the trepidation those conditions inspire in my brain, it is also an absolute win. I would confidently shelf it in the Weird Renaissance section of my local book store if I had a local book store with such a section. I greatly enjoyed these stories and look forward to more fascinating prose from the estimable Mr. Bartlett.

This is not a collection of short stories. It's a fractured, discombobulating novel. And I loved every minute of it. This is a rule-breaking book. Weird things happening to weird people in weird places. Bartlett doesn't offer much in the way of footholds. This isn't Stephen King's ordinary people facing extraordinary events. And it isn't extraordinary people attempting to navigate the ordinary (a la Dennis Etchison, Steve Rasnic Tem etc). On the whole, this kind of fiction tends to flounder and fail, largely because it attracts a particular kind of writer: the lazy individual who wants to get the horror imagery that's bouncing around their head out onto the page but lacks the skill and discipline to do it effectively, and independent horror is littered with such writings. Bartlett, however, has skill and discipline to spare. It may be horribly misshapen, but his writing has a spine. It might not even be a human spine, but it's there and it's doing an admirable job of keeping everything painfully aloft. It's probably a lazy comparison but I'm going to make it anyway: Bartlett's work reminds me of David Lynch (or even William Blake) in that it's impossible to know precisely what's going on (overall and, often, at any given moment) but as a reader you have no doubt that the author knows exactly what he's doing and why. A great, great book.

Incredible read.Original.Transgressive.This DIY release is what punk rock looks like in 2015.

Gateways To Abomination is a deeply unsettling collection of short stories all set in the New England town of Leeds. Some of the stories here are almost self-contained narratives, whilst others are vignettes adding atmosphere and depth to the setting. And the setting really is key to this book. Leeds is a place of devilry, strange crimes, fetid secrets. The corruption is in the air-literally, as in story after story Bartlett’s protagonists stumble across the strange, infectious voices of WXXT, a local Leeds radio station…The power of the book is thus one that builds cumulatively as you read; unlike most short story collections this is one that demands to be read from front to back rather than cherry picking if you want to get the full effect. Reoccurring imagery, characters and themes link the stories together but Bartlett cannily ensures things don’t dovetail together too neatly. The gaps and caesuras, the static between the voices on the airwaves, do just as much to build the dread as what is present and audible.Bartlett’s narrative voice is matter of fact as he presents his horrors, which makes their ambiguity all the more effective. There’s some disturbingly effective imagery here but this is no gore-fest, it’s more restrained and frightening than that.A fine horror book then: weird, distinctive, creepy and darkly humorous. If you want to tune in to Gateways To Abomination you can do so here

Wow.This is a relatively short book, but manages to pack in a lot of disturbing imagery. There are recurring characters and themes of witchcraft and decay, all emanating from the local radio station WXXT if you're unlucky enough to find the right place on the dial. More than once I felt like I needed a shower after setting the book aside, but was too afraid of what might spray from the showerhead in place of water.Matthew M Bartlett's work is uniquely involving and he's created a wonderfully disturbing local mythology here. It put me in mind of how I felt reading Laird Barron's earlier stories for the first time, which is obviously a compliment.I'll definitely be checking out Mr Bartlett's other books soon. After a suitable period of psychic convalescence of course.

I purchased this book as it came up through Amazon as a Recommended Purchase based on previous purchases. A great read, full of grotesque images and hallucinatory visions centered around a fictional radio station. It reminded me of a beat poet writing horror if that makes sense.The only thing that I would hesitate about is that I like books that have some form of conclusion.I felt this book didn't really end in any way. The closing chapter was, as usual, brilliant, but didn't seem to wrap things up. Having said that, there's another book about the same radio station so I might just have to pick that up as well. Also, I could easily be missing the point of the book!