Night/Day (ed. Ellen Datlow) Part I: Night

                                                                                    

I like to divide my longer book reviews up into two parts, and it so happens that this Saga Double (in the venerable tradition of the Ace science-fiction doubles) is perfectly suited. We have 18 original horror stories here--9 set at night, and 9 set during the day. It's a fun conceit, and anchored by the exquisite cover-art. And that's one hell of a table of contents--we have a roster of heavy hitters here, so let's get to it. Starting with Night.

I went into Night a bit nervous because, while the lineup of writers was great, "horror stories set at or concerning the night" is like a bingo free space, no? It's like "science fiction stories set in or concerning the future." Sure, a lot of them aren't, but it's one of the first places your mind goes. And, indeed, Ellen Datlow mentioned on an excellent discussion on the Retro Ridoctopus podcast that initially she received more night than day stories; not surprising. For extra fun, we'll be rating the stories by how nocturnal or diurnal they are (even if, as Ellen notes in the same podcast, the themes are ultimately a vehicle for high-quality stories and not necessarily an end to themselves).

Trash Night by Clay McLeod Chapman

Synopsis: An NYC sanitation worker breaks down after discovering a dead infant in the trash.

How Nocturnal Is It? Pretty nocturnal; it mainly takes place during night-time/early morning garbage runs, and the difficulty of seeing clearly in the dark.    That said, all the work that Chapman does of describing the stench of rotting garbage makes me think of the day. And, generally speaking, my mental 'theater' tends to have things well lit.

Thoughts: Reminds me of Dead End: City Limits; besides the urban setting and focus, it has the grotty New Horror vibe.  It's not all lit-ficy; it's just straightforward. It's a working class stiff's horror story that angles into vaguely John Shirley-esque territory, although not quite as crazy as "Ash."  Chapman does a  good job of imagining how this guy's job is just infecting his life.

If I have a criticism--and I do--it's that the suggestion there really are weird trash monsters in the city undermines the power of the story for me. I'd prefer it if it were a little heavier on just the psychological aspect.

We Take Off Our Skin in the Dark by Eric LaRocca

Synopsis: A man monologues to his lover's flayed corpse.

How Nocturnal Is It? Incredibly... Especially nails the way that things in the night seem different in the morning. Sometimes, things don't seem so bad the next day. On the other hand This story oozes darkness and shadows. It doesn't have to take place in the dark, objectively speaking, but the subjective picture LaRocca's painting absolutely does.

Thoughts: It's a LaRocca story, so you can bet that the removal of skin isn't just metaphorical. I do feel like the ending, while trying to go for even darker Barker territory, pulls a little bit of a punch by suggesting something transcendent after all.

The Door of Sleep by Stephen Graham Jones

Synopsis: A ghost story about a family in the early '80s, and the door inside your mouth that lets the shadow people in.

How Nocturnal Is It? Pretty nocturnal. All the major action (and I mean all the major action) is taking place during one night or another. There's another reason, too. . .

Thoughts: An incredible shell game of a story. One of the best things I've read all year; horrific and brilliant and also fun to read, until it isn't.

The perfect magic trick is the one where you're shown everything out in the open and it's all so obvious that the only explanation can be the one you know it isn't. That's what Jones does here; it's easily in my Top Five of This is frustrating because I want to tell you all about this story but you have to go read it, and. . .look, let's make a deal. You all go out and buy this book, and then six months from now I'll do an in-depth blog post about this story and why it's so damn good, okay?

At Night, My Dad by Dan Chaon

Synopsis: A troubled young man is recovering from mental illness and drug addiction. Good thing for him he has his dad to take care of him--even if he doesn't really know what's going on.

How Nocturnal Is It? Very nocturnal, although oddly this could fit in the day section as well. What this story captures is that hazy feeling of being sick during the winter and waking from a nap into the late afternoon. It's dark (or getting there), you have a burst of energy and lucidity just as the world's getting ready to sleep, and everything seems weird.

Thoughts: Good, effective. The horror here isn't as in your face as the first few stories, but this is a chilling and realistic story with no good options. If the narrator's fears and ours are confirmed, then he's trapped in a state of dependence on his dad, who has determined to take care of his son On the other hand, that raises the (vague) possibility of discovery or escape at some point in the future. OTOH, if his dad is acting in his son's best interests, then our narrator is definitely trapped in a hazy unreality with no clear way out.

Reading this story in a house like the one Chaon describes on a day like the ones Chaon is describing, and the radiator's going and it's just incredibly evocative. Not as evocative as the time I watched the unsettling, fourth-wall breaking Ghostwatch in a house with a vocal set of heating pipes, but that was maybe too evocative. There are some stories that take a writer from "oh yeah, I've seen that name before, maybe I've read something by them? I don't remember" to "on my radar screen," and this is that one for me.

The Night House by Gemma Files

Synopsis: A cult survivor tells a support group what happened when her Manson Family-lite crew sets up in a haunted house.

How Nocturnal Is It? Not very. Just because it's called the Night House doesn't make it, ipso facto, night. I guess the support group meetings happen at night, too, but again they don't feel distinctively nocturnal.

Thoughts: The first stumble on the night side, except it isn't, maybe? With the quality in this book, 'stumble' is a highly relative turn. "Cultists squat a haunted house" is a good concept.  The problem here is the first half of the execution. It sort of sloshes and spills trauma all over the place, like the worst excesses of the Elevated Horror movement. And our main character...isn't interesting. The support group leader who doesn't drink but brings a thermos of whiskey for anyone who needs to get fortified during the meeting? Great. The former militiaman whose girlfriend talked him out of a cult and into witness protection? Great. The woman who managed to get kicked out of Falun Gong--yes, I want to know more!

None of the rest of the characters have personalities, except for "Him" and He's just a standard issue Manson-knockoff male manipulator. You know the type. This is the problem--and there are some spoilers here: This story contains a sequence where a dude gets ground up by an invisible force that's part Saw III and part "Jacqueline Ess: Her Will and Testament," but it lacks the emotional stakes of either of those works (that sounds harsher than it is--I really like Saw III).

But: There's a point at the 2/3 mark where Files twists it a bit and it goes from a simple "good for her" (or, in this case, "Her") revenge story into something more nuanced and biting, and I like that a lot. I do wish maybe there were a little less of the set-up phase of the story, because it's basically clear where it's going early on, so cutting a little of that might give the twist more weight.

The Night-Mirrors by Pat Cadigan

Synopsis: A little girl living with her three grandmothers experiences strange nocturnal visitors in the night-mirrors (darkened windows). Could it be her dead parents?

How Nocturnal Is It? Pretty nocturnal! It takes place at night, although it isn't really "about" night per se.

Thoughts: Back on track, mostly! This is another story where the horror aspects that we see are the least interesting or entertaining thing about it. Cadigan's kid is precocious and adorable. I love her playing "drive-in" with her toy cars and so on. The actual 'bones' of the story don't totally do it for me. It isn't bad at all, it just feels straightforward and not particularly threatening. This is more of a cozy night-time horror story, while the others on this end have a bit of an edge.

That's my issue. The opening matter of the story is good and you need something to keep you distracted and entertained while waiting for the horror to kick in. And it's here that you sprinkle in little grace notes, which Cadigan supplies via our delightful little girl protagonist. That said, our main character is perhaps too precocious in a 'writerly' sort of way--nearly every thought she has feels 'precious'. The result is a story that starts off feeling like a rival to the book's early winning streak stories, but fizzles from great to good to okay as it goes along.

It would be a good spooky episode of a horror anthology show, though. Tales from the Darkside would've been a natural for this.

Fear of the Dark by Benjamin Percy

Synopsis: An Alaskan doctor makes a house call to a new patient: A teen girl who requires constant light at all times.

How Nocturnal Is It? Extremely. This story does primarily take place in the light, but it's a light that's at all times threatened, precious, hemmed in.

Thoughts: I'm fond of this story; it reminds me of Dennis McKiernan's story "Darkness" in 999, which inspired me as a high schooler to write one of my first horror stories. It was essentially the same thing as McKiernan's but epistolary and had some pretty bad writing.

Anyway. . .Percy's story is better than McKiernan's (and, of course, mine).

The set up takes a while, but it pays off well. The backstory is good, too--it gets into a Winter's Bone meets Flatliners meets Carnival of Souls vibe. It has that edgy '90s New Horror feel of a story about broken outcasts on the edge. I like it, and there's some entertaining and shocking gore.

I think the end is the right one, and a litmus test for whether or not you're an optimist or not (I confess, for all my love of cruel endings and soul-withering bleakness, I always opt to believe the optimistic version of an open ending).

One thing I would change is that I don't think the protagonist needs to have a traumatic backstory; I get that it reinforces Percy's idea of Alaska as this peninsula of misfit toys, a sort of permanent frontier where people fleeing the past all pile up together, and it gets into themes of broken people supporting each other. But it feels like a bid at adding character depth that doesn't really get paid off enough to justify it here. 

The Picknicker by Josh Malerman

Synopsis: High school sweethearts go out to the meadow to have the senior year break-up talk. But they're not alone. . .

How Nocturnal Is It? Somewhat nocturnal, in that it takes place at night. But there could be a fine daytime version of it as well.

Thoughts: Malerman usually delivers (more like Mailerman!), and there's a version of this story that keeps what's good (the dynamic between the couple, which is well-drawn) and adds some teeth. Instead this feels like a defanged Richard Laymon story. I can imagine the directions Laymon would've taken this, with the young couple running into a lovelorn zombie and it would have been tawdry fun. But, there are any other number of ways this could go if you didn't want pure sleaze (but why wouldn't you want pure sleaze??). Malerman instead just goes for an almost treacly angle. I want to like this, because it sets the scene up well, and it promises fun, but it feels beyond hokey.

Secret Night by Nathan Ballingrud

Synopsis: A state trooper investigating a car accident finds himself lured into a nightmarish world from his own traumatic past.

How Nocturnal Is It? It takes place almost exclusively at night, and is mainly concerned with the nightside of the world. So--very. 

Thoughts: Another "less than the sum of its parts" tale, although the sum of the parts here is very high. And, after the rare Malerman misfire of the previous story, we have something scary.

This is a three-acter: There's the first half to two thirds of the story, which takes place the night of the car wreck. This is familiar--it feels like any number of X-Files cold opens, with a cop in the middle of nowhere getting in way over his head during an investigation. What sets this apart is that Terry, our protagonist, isn't the oblivious, by-the-book expendable meat that populates these scenarios. He's aware of how wrong it seems, but not in a quippy, fan-service 'genre savvy' bit of faux-pomo "I've seen that movie too" dreck, but because his personal background includes not just trauma but the fear of being a "chicken." He carries on not because he's unaware of the danger, but in spite of the danger, and at no small effort, for the dual motivations of overcoming his past cowardice and the fact that, well, this is his job. He's a cop, there's been a car wreck, and people are lost and hurt and crying for help. This is his duty.

Next, there's the aftermath of the incident, including Terry's department-mandated psych assessment with an off-putting strip mall psychiatrist (probably the best part of a story full of good parts). This is maybe the creepiest scene in the entire collection, and it doubles as efficient exposition.

And then it comes time to wrap it all up and it falls apart.

My problem here is that as a standalone story about "something" luring people to their doom, it would be competent but unoriginal. So, there needs to be something else here, and the traumatic backstory is a good one. However, I think there's just too much uncertainty here about what it is, and it's because at the very end Ballingrud pours in twists and fillips and wrinkles. Some of these are good on their own merits (there's a detail about a cat that's profoundly weird in an unexpected way) and some feel like left over elements from The Machinist, or worse. The result isn't as much to make us wonder what's real and what isn't, as much to convince us that it's all arbitrary weirdness.

I do like, though, that the end of the story has a possible element of hope--it doesn't seem like it, but the circularity of the story and the themes about Terry's responsibility as a protector in the first act of the story suggested to me that maybe he is the one to carry the light in this new dark world. As I said, I'm an optimist.

And, on that nice note, we'll come back next week for Day.