Open City. 276 pp. $14

Like Joyce Carol Oates and Stephen King, Brown tells tales that are a morbid pleasure for those fond of both schadenfreude and horror stories. In them, the citizens of Vaughn, a brutish backwoods hamlet, are caught in an existential permafreeze that has twisted and frozen their souls.

Against backdrops of ice and wind-choked hills, they leave one another to die of exposure. They abandon their maimed lovers. They fell ancient forests for spite and some money. Those unable to do physical harm simply wish one another ill in the creepy corners of their minds.

That malice is relatively benign so long as it lacks real power - and Brown excels at showing the impassioned nastiness of small-town teens without the means to do in their rivals. One waits patiently by the finish line of a marathon because "I wanted to see my sister Melissa not run the big race. This was an important day for me because I was a mean person who wished that bad things would happen to those I loved."

But at other times, the evil coiled within a choked life finds a way to strike, and Brown seasons those tales with delicious understatement. In his disturbing story "The Lake," a girl sees a man fall through the ice, but fails to go for help. Assessing her character later with a pen pal, she allows that "she was maybe not so interested in people."

Drowning is a popular pastime in Vaughn. When the town's residents fail to plop by chance into the frigid depths of the Kennebec River, they throw themselves in over failed love, throttled ambition or simple boredom: Anything to enliven things a bit.

Those left feed off the deaths. The downfall of neighbors is the truest pleasure in Vaughn, while happiness leaves the whole town aggrieved. In the opening tale, "She," a housewife - irked by the love shared by two local teens - "growled, as if the creature itself had risen from her dreams to take over her kitchen. She gripped a package of spaghetti as if it was a club and stared at the wall, paralyzed by the idea of them out there."

When the embittered adults of Vaughn aren't salivating over the sexual ruin of a young girl in town, their sons are busy leaving their fathers, their fathers are failing their sons, and their surrogate sons are desperate for a drink.

In "A Fair Chance," an injured logger who once abandoned his son suffers the same treatment when the boy, now grown up, drives away from their job site to visit a bar, stranding him on a mountaintop. " 'Where's Doug?' " he asks his assistant, as a sleet storm bears down on the two. " 'He never came back,' Pete said as he started to shake. The rest of their clothes were in the truck, with Doug and the matches."

Pete goes for help. An unlikely hero - he's dumped his disfigured girlfriend following their drunken car crash - he now ditches AA meetings to drink. "fter the third time people stopped coming up to him. . . . They looked away when he walked into the room."

But of all the characters in this collection, Pete comes the closest to being a prodigal son, as he possesses both regret and self-knowledge. In the face of life's challenges, Pete takes stock of his soul, and he finds it desolate and wanting.

The perverse thrill of Brown's stories, however, is that they fail to trace a redemptive arc between failure and triumph, and they rarely pair kindness with gratitude. Instead, they treat human cruelty and shame, and they show that absolution should be sought, but not given.

Pete senses this when he pretends to be the logger's son, and asks for the freezing man's mercy. " 'I'm sorry,' he said. His voice echoing through the dark woods even sounded like Doug's, and for a moment he felt as if he were Jack's son returning to offer forgiveness and be forgiven."

Such a conclusion is unlikely, though, for this is a Jason Brown short story, and - lucky for his readers - the devil chose New England for his work. Hurtling toward town, Pete tries to rouse an immobile Jack. " 'Wake up!' he yelled," adding this afterthought - "as if it wasn't too late."