Contents
Columns:
Monsieur by David Gentry ? Call of the Wild by Joel Lane ? Electric Darkness by Stephen Volk ? Japan?s Dark Lantern by John Paul Catton ? The Dodo Has Landed by Allen Ashley ? Case Notes by Peter Tennant
Interview:
Phil Rickman interviewed by Andrew Hedgecock
Fiction:
SS by Nathan Ballingrud ? A Drop of Ruby by Cody Goodfellow ? In the Family by Scott Nicholson ? Going the Jerusalem Mile by Chaz Brenchley ? The Return by Conrad Williams ? The Sixteenth Man I Killed by Martin Simpson ? The Western Front by Patrick Samphire

The Spring 2005 issue of The Third Alternative brings us more horror stories that are very different from your average spooky tale. The best is the last story in the issue. ?The Western Front? by Patrick Samphire is set in Ypres during the summer of 1917. Captain Stark arrives there full of confidence that the Germans can be broken. This is not just a ?horrors of war? story. What he finds is his real battle is truly unusual.

The other stories in the issue are well worth reading, too. ?SS? by Nathan Ballingrud tells the story of a young boy having to deal with his invalid mother and the attraction of a white supremacist group. This was a chilling story, even though it has no real supernatural element.

In ?A Drop of Ruby? by Cody Goodfellow, a doctor must deal with how a child survived being locked in a basement for ten years. This is not a quiet story and is extremely nasty. ?The Family? by Scott Nicholson concerns a young man who wants to keep running the family funeral home business. How he does it makes for a good tale. In ?Going the Jerusalem Mile? by Chaz Brenchley, we get a story about a woman who tries to work a miracle to cure her infant son?s non-responsiveness. This is a very interesting story although I wager the practices described are not really part of Anglican tradition. As I read ?The Return? by Conrad Williams, I thought I was just getting a story about a man wandering around in a listless state. The end made it a very different story and well worth reading. ?The Sixteenth Man I Killed? by Martin Simpson is probably the most conventional story in the issue. A hitman is haunted by his sixteenth victim, warning him about number seventeen. Again, the end is something you?re not expecting.

If you like stories that are VERY unconventional, then The Third Alternative is for you.

(Source: TTA Press)