THE CENTURY'S BEST HORROR FICTION #78: A review of "Within the Walls of Tyre" by Michael Bishop

http://www.georgiacenterforthebook.org/Assets/Author-Images/Mike_Bishop_cropped.jpg


Lithopedion. Do you know the word? Probably not, as it is a very unusual word. By the end of this review, you won’t forget it.



Marilyn Odau is a middle-aged woman with a lot of history, and it haunts her to this very day. While she tries to go about her business keeping books for a mall boutique, she tries her hardest to forget a young man named Jordan Burk. Back in the ‘Forties, they’d had a romance that ended when he was killed in a World War II, but not before they’d consummated their relationship.


Here’s one of the most interesting parts of this story: it works more effectively when read with modern eyes. Even back in 1978, women who fucked out of wedlock and gave birth to bastards had a stigma on them. Bishop alludes to just such an incident, and when Marilyn feels ashamed of herself and calls herself a freak, the modern reader can’t help but think she’s being too hard on herself, that Bishop was just using the feelings of the time to express a point. It’s so strong that the modern reader would then dismiss it as such and would never suspect the ace Bishop has up his sleeve.


Lithopedion. We’re almost there.


Enter Nicholas Anson. He sells novelty items, and he’s interested in selling something called Liquid Sheers to Marilyn’s store. It’s kind of a paint-on version of ladies nylons. Marilyn is unimpressed, thinking it to be a rip-off of a similar product used during the nylon shortage of WWII. She is, however, rather taken with Anson, or at least with his appearance. He’s actually a dead ringer for her beloved Jordan. In fact, if their son had survived, she thinks he would be about Anson’s age.


The feeling is reciprocal, and before long, Anson manages to get her to go out with him a couple of times (if you can count lunch at McDonald’s as a date). The second time, she gets to know him a bit better, and after dinner and drink, they fuck. It isn’t until she wakes up in the middle of the night to find him gone that she gets worried. She looks around and finds him in what was going to be her baby’s room, where an empty bassinet sits.


Well, it’s not empty. It contains something called a lithopedion. SPOILER ALERT: Jordan did, indeed, get Marilyn pregnant, but she didn’t find out until about twenty-five years later. Her fetus got stuck in her fallopian tube, where it grew instead of in the uterus. This caused the tube to explode, and the fetus wound up in her abdominal cavity instead. This caused symptoms that nearly killed her, but the doctors still didn’t figure out what caused it, not until years later. Her fetus calcified in her belly until it was discovered twenty-five years later and removed. The result is a stone fetus, also known as a lithopedion, and it is so rare there are only a few hundred noted throughout all of history. It is this that has plagued her for years.


And now it’s time for Anson to make a confession: Jordan Burk was indeed his father, but his mother is a complete stranger to Marilyn. In fact, Jordan was married to Anson’s mother, and that had resulted in Anson being born, but Jordan felt the need for a little stray, so he hooked up with Marilyn. Anson had memories of his mom driving him by the boutique to get a look at the woman who stole her Jordan away from her. He swears he didn’t do this for revenge, but he had to admit to being very curious.


As if there aren’t enough twists in this tale, Bishop has one final surprise for us. At the very end, after Marilyn has pushed Anson away, she goes out to the mall and finds that every store is now selling a new novelty, and it drives her stark raving mad.


In every store window, she sees a replica lithopedion being sold, all perfect copies of her fossilized son. END OF SPOILERS.


While it certainly is one hell of a ride, there are a couple of weaknesses. Bishop takes too much time to get started, wasting precious pages on unnecessary exposition. This story should begin with Anson’s arrival in Marilyn’s life. Secondly, there doesn’t really seem to be a point to this story. As awesome as it is, it seems to exist solely to torment its protagonist and nothing more.


But make no mistake, this tale should not be missed. There aren’t any like it, and its sadness and lunacy will stick with you for a long time. Lithopedion. If nothing else, you’ve learned a new word today.


[This story first appeared in WEIRDBOOK and cannot be read online at this time.]