This masterful anthology includes the 1999 Darrell Award* winning story, "Until Hell Calls Our Names," by William D. Gagliani.This is a superb collection -- tales of horror, fantasy, SF and mystery -- all set in Memphis, TN! *The Darrell Award is given by the Memphis Science Fiction Association
This anthology also contains great work by Brent Monahan, Scott Nicholson, Tina Jens, George Guthridge, Tom Piccirilli, Steve Rasnic Tem, and many others. Hardly a Memphis theme, legend, or tall-tale goes untouched!
Excerpt
And for my sins I will pay with suffering beyond the pain of my affliction, the relief of which I have long since hastened with a daily fifth of whiskey and a dozen decent cigars. It is dusk as I write, and I shall rejoice to see the morning light once more. The whiskey has dulled enough pain to allow my time-ravaged organs a few more hours' function, but I have seen their faces at the window and their shades out back, near the well, and I know they will deny me the dignity of a quiet death, preferring instead to repay my kindness toward a stranger with vile, degrading death at their wretched hands.
Even as I write, cocked Colt's revolver at hand, the walkers approach -- I hear their shuffling steps on the loose boards, and I know not why they wait. Perhaps 'tis all part of the torture, once meant for someone else.
(From "Until Hell Calls Our Names," by William D. Gagliani)
Professional Reviews
From Memphis Flyer
In "Until Hell Calls Our Names," William Gagliani writes of bluecoat zombies at the close of the Civil War and does so with a confidence to make an Ambrose Bierce sit up
in his grave. [And Guthridge] — together with Gagliani the best of the lot in More Monsters from Memphis...
-Leonard Gill,
MemphisFlyer;
March 29, 1999
From Tangent Online
William D. Gagliani's "Until Hell Calls Our Names" should have closed the section; it's the strongest story in this book. Combining the Civil War, voodoo, zombies and revenge, this double narrative drags every possible nuance of pathos and terror from a fairly limited premise. A Confederate naval officer grievously betrays a voodoo priestess and her curse follows him to war and beyond by causing the war to follow him - literally - the rest of his life.
-Matthew Nadelhaft,
Tangent Online; 1999
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Reviews for "More Monsters from Memphis (edited by Beecher Smith)"
In the end they'll all be dancin'--all them ones that didn't die.... Dance with me in the shadows amidst the lightning and the thunder, and all that nu-cu-lar debris. See the big bang from the other side, and then open that cellar door. Go down into
