The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All by Laird Barron

Lovecraft’s work, he refers to a time when the Great Old Ones will rise from their eternal slumber and bring doom upon humanity. One of the group has had premonitions of a watery doom at the lake, but even her visions cannot prepare them for the true horrors that await. This was the first Barron story I read, and still one of my favorites! In the Pacific Northwest, a group of aging friends undertake a trip to Lake Crescent in the Pacific Northwest, a deep, cold and remote glacier lake with a dark history. The area is also reputed to be the lair of the devil, however, and the gunmen will find that the prize they seek is not worth its terrible cost. They will attempt to bring down Blackwood’s Baby, a near-mythical stag of monstrous proportions. In the years after World War I, a select group of world-class hunters gather at the Black Ram Lodge, in the remote area of Ransom Hollow, for a unique challenge. All are beautifully written and well-worth reading a few of my favorites are described below.

The Beautiful Thing that Awaits Us All collects together eight stories that appeared in different publications between 2010-2012 and one previously unpublished story, The Jaws of Saturn. I’m glad I finally got to it! Beautiful Thing is another excellent collection of Barron’s, and in my opinion shows his writing is getting even better and more intriguing than it already was. When his next collection, The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All, appeared in September of this year, I purchased it immediately - however, work and life kept me from getting around to reading it until recently! Since I first ran across Barron’s work in the Haunted Legends anthology, I’ve snapped up all of his books, including his first collection The Imago Sequence, his second Occultation, and his first novel The Croning.* I am a HUGE fan of Laird Barron’s work! I haven’t been as excited about an author of horror and weird fiction since I discovered Ramsey Campbell‘s work about two decades ago.

The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All by Laird Barron