Zombos Says: All the numbers add up to imaginative terror.
If you thought you had a fear of math, wait until you get a load of these numbers, courtesy of the well assembled selection of authors and terrifying themes in Arithmophobia: An Anthology of Mathematical Horror, neatly curated by Robert Lewis, to make sure its unfortunate characters find too many lethal numbers are out to get them. From Lovecraftian inklings to multi-dimensional unknowns to the evil math teacher down the block, this anthology is an elegant and delightful sampling of abstract and more concrete plot-theorems; and you do not even need to be a Poindexter or use a pocket protector to enjoy the terminal numerical terrors popping up in each story.
The two stories you should read first are short and long in length, respectively, and refreshingly elementary in their plots and execution. Martin Zeigler’s Trains Passing, the shorter story, is like reading a script from one of the Alfred Hitchcock Hour’s episodes. A teacher and a stranger meet aboard a high-speed train for the trip of a lifetime. The teacher is fulfilling her dream of solving one of those mind-numbing algebra speed and distance problems by experiencing it. The stranger becomes her reluctant but smart student to be lectured. Cue the wonderfully shocking revelation at the end and go to Hitchcock (in your mind, of course), summing up the story with his usual sardonic wit. Short, and building the textual blocks to the point they are toppled over with a jab in your eye climax, this one is a standout in this collection of standouts.
The longer story is like watching a 1950s science fiction movie directed by Bert I. Gordon, but with a better script, acting, and budget. They’ll Say It Was The Communists by Sarah Lazarz starts with the nice Leslie Keyes, being situated at her new station by the oily and lugubrious, toupee-topped, Mr. Elliot. Transferred, like other promising ‘computers’ from various departments, she is now tasked with solving problems more difficult than integral calculus. More challenging than that, however, are Mr. Elliot’s toupee, which moves when he does not, and that foul-smelling odor coming from the division where the best computers are invited to go. Where Leslie eventually is invited also. With an array of thematic integers, figuratively speaking, seen in movies like Quatermass 2, Enemy From Space, the dialog, pacing, characterizations, and careful building of suspense, all make for a traditional science fiction treat.
Now you can turn to the opener, a tidy terror that is lean and mean. Very mean. One-Two, Buckle My Shoe by Elizabeth Massie is centered around Janie, whose infatuation with counting is certainly nowhere near normal and not to be blamed on watching Sesame Street. Minutes, hours, steps, you name it, she’s counting them. Her mother would prefer she did not. Massie misses no beats and keeps her words precisely counted too, leaving Janie’s mom in a difficult position and a theme of revenge as coldly statistically calculated as all those numbers.
Darren and Alice have a bigger problem to deal with in Manifold Thoughts by Patrick Freivald. Think Lovecraft with a quantum computer, a hook up to Q-Supes, and a Calabi-Yau manifold shoggoth (yup, do not ask me, look it up yourself). This excerpt explains the setup best:
“…So I think if we network them, the new quantum computers could run a full simulation and we could actually, like, talk to it. Or at least listen. See what it has to say.”
Bad move, there, but imagine a sponge dipped in water and you will get a sense of the horror waiting beyond, nicely building to a climax equivalent to hanging off the side of a cliff by your fingertips.
Another terror just beyond reach, almost, is to be found in A Presence Beyond the Shadows. David Lee Summers brings us a bit of William Castle’s 13 Ghosts with a special pair of goggles that can see through dimensions. Nick and Barbara think their house is haunted so of course he tries the goggles for ghost-hunting. As he explores the rooms through the augmented lenses that cast a weird other-worldly, almost psychedelic, landscape over the familiar articles, he sees the shadows and translucent ripples where flat surfaces should be. The larger shadow by their queen-sized bed catches his attention. Electromagnet in nature? Funky wiring? And what are those odd orbs he sees in the shadow? For him, finding a ghost or two would have been better. If you have seen 1986’s From Beyond movie I dare you not imagine its imagery as you follow Nick around, to see what lurks beyond. With a simple premise and a lot of atmosphere, Summers increases the suspense to its creepy conclusion.
Brian Knight’s A Strange Thing Happened at the Coffee Shop has Carina wide-eyed more than her pumpkin spice latte and social media scrolling could ever do. There’s a mysterious book, a mysterious stranger, and a lot of mysterious calamity that repeats itself. Carina gets caught up into it first, but will she figure it out? No; and neither will you. More dimensions are crossed and parallel parking becomes impossible in front of that coffee shop as things wink out of existence, reset, then go to hell again as parallax errors abound. Knight creates a video game scenario pasted onto a Matrix-like world whose seams are fraying, first for Carina and then for Amber. Amber’s luck is a bit better though. Sonic booms, crumpled people, and weird voices yelling about fatal errors, do not affect her. But something else does. Moving along, Kenny, is soon caught up in all the chaos, leaving Alice pondering the dichotomy between quantum mechanics and classical physics, in the coffee shop where a well-worn notebook next to a pencil stub is found. It’s like déjà vu, all over again. Knight presents a wild, intentionally convoluted story that will keep you thinking about it the next time you are in a Starbucks sipping your latte.
There are more misadventures to be found, each expertly written with judicious use of scientific jargon—just enough to tease you—that perks up each theme with a scientific wrapping around a tasty horror filling. Rober Lewis and his smartly selected range of authors have succeeded in turning all their unique mathematical expressions into imaginative supernatural terrors, providing a near-perfect collection that makes arithmophobia and math trauma something we can all, finally, enjoy.
This book review first appeared in The Horror Zine.