I’ve never been a particular fan of traditional or mainstream Westerns, but the tropes of scorched plains, dusty towns, gunslingers and frontier justice provide a great canvas for a pulp horror story.

Having read Richard Beauchamp’s superb dystopian “War Born” last year (my favourite in the “Heavy Metal Nightmares” anthology), I thought his textured prose and talent for conjuring unforgiving wastelands would make him an ideal writer to smash these two genres together. Reading Triptych certainly proved that to be the case.

It opens with “The Courier” in which Jeremiah – the titular character – meets a sinister man in a snow-covered tavern. He is tasked with transporting a strange artifact across several states, in time for solstice eve, and delivering it to a known practitioner of the dark arts.

His journey takes him into the harshest of blizzards during which Jeremiah is stalked and attacked by men who try to warn him of what he carries. Townspeople – and even mountain lions – shy away from his presence, and what begins as a professional dedication to his job soon becomes a protective obsession. He regards the strangely-warm package as his talisman, and it seems to keep him going on his brutal journey long after any mortal should surely have perished.

This tale brings the classic setting of the loner traversing the American West on his trusty steed, but slowly morphs it into cosmic and visceral horror. I read it straight through, driven by a hungry curiosity that was masterfully stoked by the author, and the evocation of the frozen mountainous terrain is perfect. An intriguing and compulsive read with a devilish pay off, this is a sterling start to Triptych.

Following this is “Blood Gulch” which is by far my favourite piece of the three. It doesn’t hang around, immediately presenting an infestation of slug-like monstrosities that burrow into people’s spines and control them as hosts. Our protagonist is Maylene, a woman in search of her missing husband who has been taken by the foul creatures – along with countless others – to an ominous subterranean cave at Blood Gulch.

What awaits there is a wrenching vision of hell, and I wouldn’t dream of spoiling the surprise.

Maylene is a brilliant character – a gun-toting, sharp-tongued badass who will stop at nothing to look after herself and her own. Throw her into a story of revolting parasites against a backdrop of boiling sun, alcohol, blood and dust, and you’ve got an absolute winner.

It shines through its storytelling towards a satisfying epilogue, and the plentiful and gritty period language seems authentic, bringing a grounding realism to the sf/horror concept. With shades of Cormac McCarthy’s “Blood Meridian”, David Cronenberg, Calamity Jane and the Aliens mythos, “Blood Gulch” is worth the price of Triptych alone.

“It Comes For Us All” is the finale, co-written with Korey Dawson. Here we find a sharp-shooting indigenous bounty hunter called Sho’keh. He is transporting a dangerous criminal, Tom Dallion, across the bandit-populated desert and frontier towns of the Mojave to where he will finally meet justice.
But the wisecracking prisoner seems to be undergoing a strange transformation, and once the blood moon rises, pandemonium will be unleashed.

“Dallion’s eyes shone in the moonlight, somehow moving in the stillness of his smiling face, like silver coins in the bottom of a disturbed well.”

My complaint with this story is that I kept losing track of who was speaking, especially during the opening scenes, despite only two characters being present. This was mainly due to the overuse of character tags as well as their names (the older man said, the bounty hunter said, the man on the ground said…) which was confusing and unnecessary.

But the characters are solid, the dynamic between the two leads is convincing, and Dallion’s gruff retorts and escalating creepiness is a great foil for Sho’keh’s pragmatic patience. The foreboding tone slowly cranks up throughout their journey, building to a grisly “Splatter Western” showdown.

Richard Beauchamp has definitely climbed up my horror watch list with this release. Triptych brims with exquisite turns of phrase and slick dialogue, and he clearly makes an effort with historical attention to detail. The landscape becomes an integral part of the tales, essential with any quality Western, and the author’s knack for creating an immersive atmosphere is perfectly suited to this kind of fiction.

Merging the spooky eldritch with gore, it should please fans of both camps. As a devotee of both, I had a splendid time.

“Hell comes at High Noon” indeed.

Richard Beauchamp