Plastic Face and other Weird Tales: Hauntologies, #7

By David Rees-Thomas

5 hauntological tales of the weird set in South Wales
Silver Men in Silver Suits, tells the story of strange and alien weirdness in the stark beauty of West Wales.
Against the Empty World is the story of Stone, a woman on the edge of the end of humanity.
Plastic Face is a mystery, a puzzle of alien loss, and possible redemption.
Everything Everything reaches deep into the depths of the Welsh industrial countryside, and tells the story of the loss of everything, and the strange sounds from below...
Kracynski is a mystery, a time travel oddity, set in the wild hills of Wales
David Rees-Thomas has written many short stories and books in a variety of genres, including horror, mystery, science fiction, and even the occasional literary foray.
He has also worked as an editor and first reader on magazines such as Waylines, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and Nightmare.
He is currently at work on a new mystery novel series, and also writes under other names. This short story collection as well as others, can be found in most online bookstores.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Acid Publishing
• Release date: Apr 24, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201404116

Book preview

Plastic Face

and other

Weird Tales

David Rees-Thomas

Acid Publishing

Table of Contents

Introduction

Silver Men in Silver Suits

Against the Empty World

Plastic Face

Everything Everything

Kracynski

About the Author

Plastic Face

and other

Weird Tales

A short story collection

Copyright © 2022 David Rees-Thomas

Published by Acid Publishing

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.

This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

For the carpet crawlers.

The main thing in my life...is that I really need to go home and practice.

Pat Metheny

Introduction

Welcome to volume 7 of my hauntologies. Inside there are stories of strangeness, and peculiarities which hover on the verge of common sense, before collapsing back in on themselves in their own search for meaning. There is also some cross-pollination of sources and inspirations across these stories.

Silver Men in Silver Suits is a wholly fictionalized extrapolation based around events reported on in The Welsh Triangle by Peter Paget. These purported events took place along the Pembrokeshire coast in South Wales during the 1970s. It’s a fascinating book, and I remember reading it when we were actually visiting that area on holiday one year in the late 70s.

If you’ve ever been to the west coast of Wales, you'll appreciate the sense of mystery which exists there. It’s beautiful, and at the same time weirdly remote and wild. A quiet falls across the area which feels like it could last forever. It’s interesting to sit on the cliffs in June, and watch the sun still hint at its existence along the northern horizon when it’s close to midnight.

I once created some music based on some of the anecdotes in the book. It’s long form sustained drone noise, very niche, and not something the world ever needs to hear. I may have another stab at something musical on this theme though.

Against the Empty World continues my love affair with shortwave radio and the oddities of long stretches of silence. I feel as though Stone has other stories to tell, and there is much beyond this slice of the story world which could be further illuminated. One thing I never really answered for myself though was how she was able to use any of the equipment. Surely, in a world such as this, the power supply would have been cut off a long time earlier. Perhaps this gives us some clues as to the world beyond, and that it may not be as bleak as it first appears.

Plastic Face continues the sense of alien weirdness. In this case, and in many other cases with these stories, we appear to have the themes of return and loss. This seems natural to me, in that it makes sense to lose things, lose people, lose touch with markers from the past, so that the traces of existence become established in a non-binary, never fixed state.

Whenever we return we rediscover a sense of loss we may not have been hitherto aware of. I’ve been listening to a lot of early Genesis recently, and I definitely pick up on this theme in between all the general weirdness of their early music. I find that Genesis grows less interesting for me after the A Trick of the Tail album, but that’s just my personal bias.

Everything Everything excavates yet another small Welsh ex-mining community. Not sure I will ever get tired of it, nor do I want to. South Wales is a complex place which contains multitudes, both for the general public, but also within the psyche of each person who has resided there, grown up there, left there. Like many of the stories I write, when I read them back for typos, not all of which I actually find, I discover the influence of all those British 60s and 70s horror and science fiction films, and TV shows like Dr. Who. I’m happy with this, it’s not a burden. There are some amazing gems of storytelling within those celluloid fantasies.

The title though, comes from a live album by Underworld. I played that album constantly when I worked at W. H. Smiths, and not only to stop Simon playing Ricky Martin yet again. And, Underworld have a Welsh connection, so it seems strangely fitting. If you’ve not heard the album, do yourself a favor. I do remember that we did a nice little dance routine at the back of the store whenever we played Build Me Up Buttercup by The Foundations though…

Kracynski is a weird detective time travel type story. I feel as though there are historical anomalies or inaccuracies, but I also don’t feel like these make much difference to the overall idea of the story, so let’s just go with the poetic license option on this one.

I’m not sure where the idea for this story came from, but the landscape is imprinted in my mind. And, this is interesting, because it’s a landscape of memory, inhabited by traces yet again. This landscape is a real place. It’s out there, thick with soil and grass and trees and swamps. It’s in my head, alive and singing with memories of fresh summer wind, running and tumbling through the ferns on the hillside, the absolute stench of the swamps, and the strange stories of German bombers blasting holes on the common between Cardiff and Caerphilly.

I would like to visit 1970s Caerphilly again, not forever, but for a silent and tender moment, just to see and feel the world as it was, and still is, in the dusty corners of my mind.

Thank you

David Rees-Thomas

Nishinomiya, Japan

April 2022

Silver Men in Silver Suits

Jackson Evans had been hired to conduct interviews. Nothing too exciting on paper, but the person who had hired him was one of these investigative journalists who couldn't be bothered to conduct their own legwork. He shook away the thought, and decided to place his cynicism on hold for a while, take a breather.

What it did mean was that his general ire toward the world at large could be channeled in other, perhaps more intriguing, directions for a while.

He was returning home, and home meant the far extremes of the Pembrokeshire