The Harrowing Game

Revoy (Animus) serves up more unnerving supernatural horror in this uneven collection. In a frame narrative, three spooky storytellers gather in the bathroom of a mysterious old house—“In this place, time is all that matters,” a boy lounging in the bathtub explains to a newcomer—to trade tales of terror. Whoever tells the scariest story wins the right to leave this strange purgatory. The stories take readers from modern New England, where animals are stolen from a college museum’s “laboratory of the living” to feed a nefarious pet, to ancient Egypt, where a group of young explorers goes too deep underground. A shared Lovecraftian tone links the tales, as does the presence of Ümic, a demonic entity who offers ill-advised deals to mortals. Revoy’s dense, faintly old-fashioned linework, reminiscent of alt cartoonists like Tony Millionaire but with elements of manga, evokes the feeling of a vintage storybook. He excels at drawing grotesque horror but also renders people, animals, and insects with an exaggerated realism that makes his monsters all the more disturbing. The stories tend to be better at building tension and mood than providing satisfyingly scary endings; the resolutions are often disappointingly abrupt. Even so, fans of sophisticated horror will enjoy soaking in the atmosphere of elegant dread. (May)