THAT WHICH CANNOT BE UNDONE

This collection of Ohio-based stories, edited by Landry, revels in the macabre.

The collection’s 18 writers offer a wide range of creepiness—a growing boy’s fixation on snatching people’s teeth; a woman’s repeatedly dying in others’ bodies; and assorted monsters. Megan E. Hart opens this book with a punch. “In the Clearing” follows struggling addict Becka’s hopeful turn as a surrogate mother. The intended parents’ generosity, however, is quickly overshadowed by their unorthodox methods and increasingly grim behavior. Some of the other opening stories are scary but mere teasers for the true terror. War veteran Luis Gomez in Weston Kincade’s “Every Good Deed...,” for example, waits at a hospital for news on his sickly wife, but he stays calm by fidgeting with a grenade. Likewise, young Amanda of Gary A. Braunbeck’s “When Daddy Was All Fixed-Up and Everybody Was Happy” wants somehow to fix her well-known horror writer and psychologically disturbed father. The book’s real star, of course, is Ohio, the state of “fairly friendly” cities, ice cream shops, and wide-open countryside. These tales, however, show what may be hiding underneath, from ghosts at the Ohio State Reformatory to the unsettling figure a housekeeper spots in a cabin in Hocking Hills. Each author writes well, dropping believable characters into fearful or outright terrifying situations, and most readers will knock out (and relish) this book in an afternoon. The collection’s final entry, Lucy A. Snyder’s darkly humorous “Avocation,” takes a slight but welcome detour; a woman on a first date recounts the worst thing she’s ever done. Her buoyant narration (“No, I don’t do threesomes. May I finish my story? Thanks”) stays charming even as she gets closer to confessing her sin.

An assembly of refreshing horror tales that unnerve with panache.