Book Review: All These Steps Lead Down
Collections and anthologies have always been a bit of a mystery to me. Whenever I came across a short story, I always felt like I was rushing through it, constantly trying to check it off on my way through the next one. I had a difficult time giving them the same attention I might give a novel, letting the story unfold in my mind into a complete picture. Eventually though, I learned to appreciate the economy of words, the punchiness of the plots, and the jolt of satisfaction that comes from being able to buzz through an entire story arc in one sitting.
The turning point, I think, that let me see the forest for the trees when it came to short story collections was learning to appreciate the craft of editing anthologies—choosing a selection of stories and ordering them in a way that brings a larger theme to life. Anyone can scoop up a number of different pages, bind them together, and call it a collection, but to shape those stories into a cohesive “whole” really helps a book stand out.
In Nelson W. Pyles’s forthcoming title, All These Steps Lead Down, due just in time for the thinning of the veil on October 29 with Cold War Radio Press, the care and attention of making the collection flow as carefully as the stories themselves is readily apparent. The works that Pyles brings together vary greatly in tone, format, and length, but one common thread, which the title alludes to, is how the stories stitch together a descent into darkness—a journey into the abyss with stops along the way that feel vaguely like a version of Dante’s Inferno. The characters and narrators within these pages aren’t representatives of the damned (not all of them, anyway), but as the book progresses, it’s as if you can feel the light growing dimmer.
Muerte Con Sabor a Fresa
The book’s first story, “Muerte Con Sabor a Fresa,” tells of an experimental nutritional supplement gone awry. What starts as a tale that could easily be taken as a riff on The Stuff (1985), “Muerte” swiftly devolves into an unsettling Lovecraftian terror, as the experiment threatens much more than the health and safety of the test subject and researchers involved. The story is followed by “Mrs. Morrison’s Pie,” which slows things down substantially after the frenetic finale of the opening chapter. Possibly inspired by the character of Hob Gadling in Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman, who fends off the advances of Death by his will to live, Mrs. Morrison’s annual check-ins with the Grim Reaper are much more sympathetic. Where Hob stays his judgment for purely selfish reasons, Mrs. Morrison’s reason for living is more relatable and heartfelt, making it a fitting first stop in our hike into the depths.
As the book continues, Pyles has a chance to show off his range, treating readers to the first-person confession of a serial killer, a radio play that feels torn straight from the pages of The Twilight Zone, and even a piece of a spy thriller in which “De Vermis Mysteriis” appears—that elusive grimoire first imagined by Robert Bloch, and which has been threading its way through American horror fiction for nearly 100 years.
By the time you reach the eponymous story, rooted firmly in the center of the book, you’ll have undoubtedly recognized the heartfelt humanity that makes Pyles’s characters feel so redeemable. They’re complicated—and while their troubles often have family at their core, none feel like a re-tread over any other. In “All These Steps Lead Down,” Pyles takes an even darker turn. Unlike the prior stories, Jerry is not a likable character; he’s not even a sympathetic character, which makes him the perfect victim for the liminal horror that awaits him. “All These Steps…” is a fitting flagship story for the collection because it (literally) anchors the stories that come before it and those that come after to a tale of hitting rock bottom.
From there, Pyles slowly brings readers back to the surface, starting first with an essay about Blade Runner that would feel at home in any sci-fi journal, then returning to fiction with some relatively lighter fare—flash fiction, unicorns, and a grisly werewolf romance all make an appearance. After, Pyles includes a “Stories About the Stories” section—a series of reflections on what inspired each of his stories, the process of writing them, and what they mean to him. It’s a welcome addition that goes beyond the simple acknowledgments, and is a joy to read. It punctuates the care the author took in compiling his work in this volume and the passion he had in writing it. All These Steps Lead Down is an entertaining, twisty ride with plenty of dark corners to be wary of. And it’s well worth the wait.
Article by Ande Thomas
Ande loves the intersection of sci-fi and horror, where our understanding of the natural world clashes with our fear of the new and unknown. He is an independent member of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies and a supporting member of the Horror Writers Association. He writes about monsters and foreign horror and can also be found over on Letterboxd.
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