from "Motel Hell" The second post that I ever wrote for Madness Heart Press, way back in March of 2019, was a review of The Best Horror of the Year, Volume 10 , edited by Ellen Datlow. It’s an excellent collection that is well worth picking up. It’s the venue in which I first encountered a short story called “West of Matamoros, North of Hell,” by Brian Hodge. There were many top-notch exercises in horror in Best Volume 10, but “West of Matamoros” is the one that has stuck with me the longest – haunted me, you might say. In particular, I often think of one sequence in which a very frightening, violent fellow has a conversation with another person (I won’t spoil the story for you – you ought to read it for yourself), a calm, seemingly-rational conversation about, and I quote, “the mask behind the face.”