In the Fog: The Last Chronicle of Greystone Bay

The last entry in a four-volume series, this grouping of Night Gallery -esque stories is an outstanding anthology of horror, with tales by such luminaries as Robert Bloch, Steve Rasnic Tem and Grant himself. This volume continues to present a number of self-contained yet interconnected long vignettes that portray the residents of Greystone Bay, who are toyed with by a profoundly evil force from 1692, when a witch arrives in search of the Devil, to the present. Not finding her demon, the witch proceeds to bedevil the founder of the colony, Winston Greystone--the events of which are well-captured in Nancy Holder's ``O Love, Thy Kiss.'' From the story of a librarian who seeks identity and sexual companionship, and who is then cursed with an unending stream of both (in Elizabeth Engstrom's unusual, haunting ``The Fog Knew Her Name'') to the tale of a nursing home on an island off Greystone Bay, the existence of which is suddenly forgotten by the outside world (in Kathryn Ptacek's affecting ``The Home''), the demonic force behind the fog continues its 300-year-old ``tradition'' of devouring lives and souls. If there is a fault to be found, it is in the oppressiveness of so many stories of unrelieved madness, purgatorial torture and inescapable horror that characterize this volume, and most of the series, relieved only by Joseph Payne Brennan's thoroughly enjoyable Holmesian roman policier , ``A Heritage Upheld'' (in the first book, Grey stone Bay ). Overall, Grant has assembled tales of true excellence, impressive in this and in any genre. (Oct.)