My Favorite Yacht Rock Band? Hall and Oween: All Hallow's Eve (ed. Ellen Datlow)

                                                                                   

 Being a critic of horror anthologies in a world where Ellen Datlow is as active as she is...well, it's a curse, and a blessing. 

A curse, because no sooner have you tackled one of her books than another one hits your shelves, leaving you in the literary equivalent of the situation in "Something to Tide You Over."

A blessing, because Datlow consistently assembles, whether in reprints or originals, some of the highest caliber writing in the dark fantastic. 

This time it's Halloween, although there's a slight twist: As Lisa Morton points out in her foreword, while Halloween represents a syncretic American reimagining of ancient Celtic traditions mixed with Christian feasts and a lot of consumerism, it's now a global phenomenon. However, the book goes even further than Morton does, because it's not just Halloween as it plays out in America and around the world; there's other traditions too. About a third of the book has to do with similar festivals of the dead from other cultures, and even where there's significant overlap with modern American Halloween, there's often an overlay of other traditions, such as in Lee Murray's (excellent) story. 

"That Hannie Agnes" by Josh Malerman

Synopsis: A schoolteacher traces  antipathy towards Halloween to a mysterious trick-or-treater from her childhood. 

Thoughts: Spoilers.

I like Malerman, but this is the second timIe in a row, after the disappointment of his story in Night, that he's let me down recently. 

Taken as a mood piece, it's not bad, even if it feels remarkably similar to Trick'r'Treat, in particular. And there is a scene in here which did make me suck my breath in with an "oh!" that captures the injection of the uncanny into the mundane which I associate with his best work. 

This would have worked better as a tone-setting poem. Taken as a straight-forward story, it suffers from not being fantastical enough to inspire wonder or fear, and not plausible enough to work as a mildly diverting/unsettling tale of the supernatural. I'm okay with the story not having an explicit threat--I think there are too many horror-adjacent stories which get derailed by the need to placate genre readers and throw some knives or teeth into chew up the main character at the end--but it doesn't have anything else going on. 

The notion that Halloween came over in the checked luggage of an Irish immigrant (still alive in 2004) doesn't make much sense, but if Malerman leaned into a Ray Bradbury sort of exuberance, I'd happily get swept along. It's no coincidence that one of the few engaging paragraphs of the story is when Malerman describes a family watching House of Wax with autumn treats and singing the praises of Vincent Price. If we're going for more celebration of Halloween than outright horror or unease, that's the direction we should have gone. 

"On the Path, Bleeding" by Lee Murray

Synopsis: A gang initiation goes wrong. It's Halloween night, how could it not?

Thoughts: Mild SPOILERS, although this is a stock "someone takes something from the dead and the dead want it back" plot that you've encountered ever since your mom or dad or teacher or camp counselor spooked you silly with "The Golden Arm" or one of its variants as a kid. 

Gang initiations are sort of like drug deals, in that they never seem to go right in fiction (I suppose we could query if they ever really "go right" in real life, either). It is a good narrative framework in several ways because it gives us a character in an intermediate stage of their life and our sympathies. They're going to be young, without much identity, and they're usually caught halfway between "good" and "bad". And, it's a way to discuss community and belonging. 

I know very, very little about Māori culture (Murray provides a glossary at the end, which is appreciated, although I did look a few words up on my phone ), so I don't know under what circumstances, if any, the spirits of the dead are likely to come back. And the mechanism of reanimation is rarely the key point in the "Thing from the Grave" plot that EC Comics and the like polished and perfected. But poor Travis has an explanation:

But something I get a kick out of here is the suggestion that this recent cultural import (Travis notes early on that the Halloween of 2020s New Zealand is a relatively recent American phenomenon) is what's responsible for the old man's spirit coming after Travis:

"The funeral was over and the old man's soul was still here. Why hadn't it departed already, heading to Hawaiki from the jumping-off place up north in Spirits Bay?

Travis clenched his jaw. Because tonight was Halloween, wasn't it? The one night of the year when a ghost might linger close to the living..."

Only. . . well, as Travis notes early on, the Halloween of 2020s New Zealand is yet another import from the United States. The feud that's been the subject of the back-and-forth over the mere (the traditional Māori club at issue in the story) has presumably been going on long before Halloween was a thing in New Zealand--or maybe even in the United States. And yet, the more things change, the more things stay the same. The ancestors of the old man's rival still believes in the need for utu (revenge), but does so as the head of a sophisticated criminal organization that talks about the quarterly performance of their rackets like stock analysts. And it's from within this enterprise that the gang boss gets Travis to steal the mere. But the final syncretic joke, perhaps, is that maybe it's the existence of Halloween, overlaid onto the Māori culture, which provides the mechanism for the old man and his ancestors to score the latest points in this centuries-long feud. 

Find this together with Gregory Nicoll's masterpiece ,"55-Gallon Drums Along the Mohawk," in my new non-existent micro-anthology, The Bourjaily Book of Horror Stories of Indigenous Would-Be Gangster's Initiations Derailed by Supernatural Elements of Indigenous Mythology.  

"Good Kids" by Rich Larson

Synopsis: Halloween is the Devil's Night, and much too sinful for the members of Noel's church. Surely a sleepover with a friend will be more wholesome! a sleepover at his friend's house reveals se

Thoughts: My favorite story in the collection; a squirming, uncomfortable tale with nasty implications and insinuations slithering around like gross centipedes in an unfinished basement. It reminds me of Elizabeth Massie's stories, both in the willingness to investigate unpleasant subject matter such as religious mania and abuse committed both by and against children (sometimes, on each other! whee!), and the very important fact that none of the upsetting content seen or implied (and almost all of it is implied) feels gratuitous. 

I don't want to give away too much here, but what makes this story so damn good is that there are at least two, possibly three, and maybe even more different horror stories at work here. We've come in after the end of one of them and we're coming in near the beginning of another. Very bad things have happened and very bad things are likely going to happen soon. We're left wondering what precise form these polymorphous pathologies will take, but all of the possibilities are bad. 

A low-key masterpiece.

"Treats" by Clay McLeod Chapman

Synopsis: Last Halloween, 13 year old Jordan killed himself. This year, his heartbroken parents are trying to shut out the grief, and the holiday. But one persistent trick-or-treater keeps coming back. . .

Thoughts: SPOILERS SERIOUSLY SPOILERS DON'T READ THIS YET UNLESS YOU'VE READ THE STORY I MEAN IT; EVEN IF YOU'RE LIKE ME AND DON'T CARE THAT MUCH ABOUT SPOILERS MOST OF THE TIME TRUST ME.

Ok.

I was wondering whether Chapman would return to the food-horror well (maybe pantry would be a better metaphor), and I've been split over whether I wanted him to. On the one hand, he's already written a Halloween food horror story in "Sweetmeats", which I enjoyed, and while there's surely plenty of white space still in the Halloween candy theme (knowing what the man's done with candy and baby carrots, I feel like candy corn would be an appropriate subject for him.

Instead, we have a grim story, similar to Charlie Grant's "Eyes" and especially Jack Ketchum's "Gone"--and, in an equally moving but kinder vein, William Simmons' "The Halloween Boy."  It's also an effective "Monkey's Paw" variation that's very true to an underappreciated dilemma at the end of the story. After all, we all assume that the second wish brought the dead son back as a mangled corpse, but we don't know that. And, even if we assume it is what had happened, since we never see him, it's hard to imagine that his mom will easily forgive her husband for wishing him away. And that is the real cruelty of the otherwise quite effective third wish--surely the old man has done the right thing and protected them from the horror of the undead, but can he convince his wife of that? And, as time passes, will he not come to wonder about it himself?

Chapman's story zips into this horrible space and expands on it, leading to the rarest of treats: An ambiguous ending where both possibilities are satisfying. 

This is the king-sized chocolate bar in the trick or treat bag. 

"The Levels" by Livia Llewellyn

Synopsis: A college student who's terrified of being left out goes to a weird house for a weirder Halloween party.

Thoughts: Spoilers.

 On the heels of the last two Llewellyn stories I've read being the suburban sleaze masterpiece "One of These Nights" and the challenging, intense "Volcano," I'm coming to this story with unreasonably high expectations. This is the least strong of the (arbitrarily grouped together) three Llewellyn stories we're covered on the blog to date, although it's least strong in the same way that an Olympic bronze medalist is the "least" of the three athletes on the podium at the end. By which I'm saying, this is high-class stuff!

This story more than any other feels like autumn and Halloween, as well, and I got an additional nostalgic kick out of the loving descriptions of the 1970s suburban den that cast a long shadow over the childhood experience of the 1980s and 1990s. This isn't kitschy nostalgia; Llewellyn's got the aesthetic and its strange appeal dialed in.

These elements, while strong and entertaining, have an odd relationship to the plot and more obvious themes of the story.  If I had to guess a meaning for the story, it's a look at how Beryl's life since childhood has been one of being left behind missing cues she didn't know to look for, and the rooms of the house suggest the early childhood elements of her "levels" of life. 

More good stuff, and another Llewellyn banger.

"Forever Again" by Michael Marshall Smith

Synopsis: A man makes a hellish journey through a wasteland to a nightmare castle. But what's going on in the land of the living?

Thoughts: I haven't read any Smith in a while, but when I was getting back into horror 15 years ago, he and Douglas Clegg were two writers I discovered and feasted on. "More Tomorrow" is the best story about the then-nascent Internet Age, and many of his other tales ("The Man Who Drew Cats" and "What You Make It", to name two) have lived with me for years. I haven't read anything very recent by him, I think, but it's good to see that he's as great as ever.

Oh, spoilers. . .sort of. On paper, this tale probably demands a spoiler warning more than the rest of these, but that very fact means it's sort of spoiler-proof because even a minimally diligent reader with some familiarity with how morality plays works should figure most of it out immediately. However, this is much less of a story for the plot vs. a story of a journey. And what a journey! Smith gives us a patient, thoughtful catalog of the miseries involved in an endless trudge through Hell to a horrible castle. It reminds me of Gormenghast in its wide, grotesque sweep. Very strong stuff, and pleasantly grim. 

"The Devil’s New Year" by Stephen Graham Jones

Synopsis: A damaged, self-destructive young woman turns over a new leaf after availing herself of a supernatural do-over. But a few "members of the community" seem to remember the old her. 

Thoughts: Essentially an animal-based (well, mostly) version of the Tim Robinson skit about how babies can detect whether you used to be a piece of shit. Not that it's a bad thing. 

There's something to piss everyone off in this story, which Jones acknowledges, faux-defensively, in his contributor bio. And, while I tend to think people get a little too precious about animal-violence squeamishness, some of this stuff is nasty. 

In fact, the actual down'n'dirty elements of the story are great, almost Lansdalian (the skinny-dipping bit especially; I read some online pearl-clutching about this segment of the story as well; oh well). And, I like the suggestion that random acts of violence might actually be people trying to cover up something that nobody (or almost nobody) realizes they're covering up. I also like the ambiguity as to whether our protagonist's actually been found out by the handful creatures that notice her, or if it's her own paranoia that's leading her to this. 

This is a good 'un. 

"Merciless Feast" by Linda D. Addison

Synopsis: A community's sacrificial festival, as told by that year's willing sacrifice.

Thoughts: A poem, from one of the leading practitioners of dark and weird poetry, but also an effective vignette. As a narrative, this is deliciously nasty, tapping into the folk horror spirit while delivering a mean twist. As a poem, it's great--if you read it aloud, going line by line, there's a gravitas that gives the piece a weight of history, almost as though it's a tragic character's monologue. Short but sweet. 

"Or So the Story Goes" by Christopher Golden

Synopsis: A young Romanian woman and her grandmother live in a cottage in the woods

Thoughts: SPOIIIIILERS

My second favorite story, which is impressive because I tend not to be a big fan of the "retold dark fairy tale" subgenre, even if Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling made a cottage industry (enchanted cottage industry?) of the books in the 1990s along with their many contributions to fantastic fiction at that time. I've said it elsewhere, but when I was a budding horror fanatic in high school, the word "fantasy" combined with the Tom Canty covers for the Year's Best Fantasy and Horror series scared me away from 

Anyway, I was all in on this story when I thought it was just a retold fairy tale, because Golden keeps it interesting, even when we threaten to veer into what I believe polite society now calls "monsterfucker" territory. Coming to this story right after Addison's poem, I was primed to really pause and go on a sentence-by-sentence reading of this story, and I'm glad I did. Otherwise, I might not have caught a particular nuance in the ending. 

And that sentence-by-sentence reading is what convinces me I have the ending right.

After a harrowing night, Jacheline decides to stab her future werewolf-husband, despite the fact that i) he fought off some other supernatural assailants and ii) she seemed at least intrigued by him as a romantic prospect. Why? 

It's a clever subversion on top of the already subverted fairy tale situation. Because Golden's writing is so precise, we can feel safe invoking one of the canons of textual interpretation: Every word matters. There's one word here that ties it together: father. After disposing of the werewolf, Jacheline burns her home and "all her belongings, except what few things she carried in a leather satchel that had once belonged to her absent father." Why, exactly, does it matter that the satchel was her father's? Why put that detail here?

Well, her father is the one who lives in the city and has abjured the world of magic and superstition for modernity and rationality (it's not clear, I think deliberately, exactly when this story is). So taking her father's bag is telling us, I think, that she's rejecting this entire world of fairytale fantasy which has brought her little but trouble so far, and promises to do so in the future. By aligning herself with her father's bag, she's suggesting she's going to take his path and leave the woods. 

What's brilliant is that it makes this point explicit without stating it explicitly; it's telling by showing.

"The Kuker" by Alma Katsu

Synopsis: On the first Halloween without her husband, a widow finds herself haunted by the grotesque Bulgarian costume he purchased years ago. 

Thoughts: Spoilers! 

The world has a seemingly inexhaustible number of festivals and traditions involving scaring away evil spirits with scary costumes. Last year, after reading Chris Golden's great "The Importance of Keeping a Tidy Home" (which is all about the Schnabelpatchen), I went down a rabbit hole of European masked festivals, and they're all great. 

For all their fearsome appearance, though, the kuker dancers and the like are the good guys, banishing evil spirits. And that's the role the kuker plays here. This isn't a horror story; it might not even be a fantasy tale: Maggie keeps sensing how the kuker costume responds to her own feelings, but it's entirely plausible that she is in fact just projecting everything onto the costume (Maggie, and by extension Katsu, raise that exact possibility but imply it's something separate). It is nice, though, and I enjoyed it. Not everything dark has to be mean and scary. 

"Ankou’s Night" by Brian Evenson

Synopsis: In Brittany, young Judoc's nasty grandfather has finally kicked the bucket. His parents claim not to be superstitious, but they still leave food out for when Ankou the grim reaper comes to collect the old man's soul. That night, Judoc sneaks to the dining table and. . .

Thoughts: Another European setting; we're in Brittany among the Bretons--descendants of the Celts who fled the Anglo-Saxon invasion of Britain and wound up in Northwestern France. And, what the hell, more SPOILERS.

The most interesting thing in this story, besides the Breton setting, is the ambiguity in the conclusion: Judoc tells us that he sees his grandfather's face and spirit in his father, and while he certainly believes that grandfather is possessing his dad, I'm not sure we're supposed to. It's a Goodnight Mommy sort of scenario, but it gets to maintain the tense ambiguity longer. Unfortunately, it then ends, without any resolution. I suppose Evenson might say that the resolution is that this unpleasant situation is going to continue, and end one way or the other (and might point out that I praised the Larson story for the same reasons I'm criticizing this one). Maybe, but the difference is that in "Good Kids" we're left with at least two live wires spitting out sparks right now; in "Ankou's Night" it's just a frayed cord. Sure, it's going to be a problem eventually, but we'll deal with it when we get there. That's what Judoc's attitude seems to be, anyway, and it doesn't leave me feeling scared or satisfied.

"The Hungry Grass" by Siobhan Carroll

Synopsis: A Royal Navy officer assigned to the Irish Famine relief effort contends with misery everywhere--and a mysterious, insistent young woman. 

Thoughts: The last stop (for now) on the European Tour section of the book, 

Carroll is a strong writer, and a keen history buff; she uses part of her contributor bio to confess poetic license in playing with the timeline for the famine relief efforts; she is amply forgiven.

Similar to John Langan's story below, this story suffers slightly from the fact that the supernatural elements are less interesting than the "mundane" elements. And, I get that this is the point, here: Carroll is demonstrating the vampiric nature of the colonial system, in how it hollows out the substance of the people and the land. In addition, the vampire (whether the undead monster or the British Empire), like any parasite, depends on its host. In the case of the British, this means that there's no ethical means of survival--if they try to untangle themselves from the extractive agricultural economy they've created in Ireland, where cargos of food are grown for export to England while the Irish waste away, then the famine may spread across to England and cause devastation there.

Carroll's depiction of the famine (taken, she says, from eyewitness accounts) is masterful, and her main character is a good set of eyes through which to see it all. I also enjoyed the references to Stoker and Le Fanu, two writers with Irish ties who between them created most of the modern vampire image. 

It's just too bad that the vampire in this story isn't particularly effective when everything else is. 

"Saturday" by Chịkọdịlị Emelụmadụ

Synopsis: A misbehaving child finds himself at a nightmare school with a strange set of playfellows. . .and an even strange game-master. 

Thoughts: The details here are all wonderfully culturally specific, but the fundamentals are familiar and universal: We have a story that's a cautionary tale for children, mixed with some elements of a trickster story (I enjoyed Chibuzo's clever manipulation of the playground games and the game-bound nature of the ghosts). 

The story feels like something you might read to children, in fact, and while that works thematically, it does leave it all feeling a bit thinner than some of the other stuff here. In most ways, that's a good thing--generally, you want a mix of story styles in an anthology unless you're explicitly trying to capture a particular effect or school of writing, and I never want to accuse a story of being too straightforward--it just means I'm a little less likely to revisit this particular story in the future. Not that it's too thin--the description of the other children is good, and there's one great moment that's heartbreaking in retrospect, where Chibuzo gets a special treat for his morning breakfast.

"Give Me Something Good to Eat" by Theresa DeLucci

Synopsis: May, a teen girl recovering from reconstructive jaw surgery, ventures out of her solitude to meet some new friends. They all accept her and everything's happy and, ha, no, this is a horror book, remember?

Thoughts: Back in the good ol' USA, and back in spoiler-land! This is the second time we've encountered DeLucci on this blog; the last time was also in an Ellen Datlow anthology. I don't like this story as much as "Cavity", because while this has some of the same flashes of brilliance that one had, it isn't a wholly satisfying narrative. In contrast, I didn't always like how the litany of death in "Cavity" formed itself into a narrative, but it had a clear arc.

The themes here are good and nuanced (more nuanced than "Cavity" in my opinion). There's a feminist angle, again, focusing on the scold's bridle and the silencing of women. The story is good too, with poor May's attempts to go as her hero Dana Scully falling flat, and her new friends actually being quite cruel. There's a nice irony as well in that two of the three villains here are women and that they are, in their own way, replicating some of the circumstances around the Grace Duncan murder of the 1970s that will serve as the blueprint for their own demise. 

But the elements are all over the place, and they don't cohere that well. And, for all the build-up, is it too much to ask for a little on-screen bloody retribution? Certainly DeLucci can deliver the gory goods--there's a scene with peanut M&Ms in particular that will satisfy anyone looking for a grotesque Halloween candy fix. But the ending here is like getting a toothbrush in your Halloween bag. 

"Her Mother’s Business" by Garth Nix

Synopsis: Phyllis Barbone's a reluctant accessory to her mother's fake spiritualist grift. It's a lucrative one, especially in the in the wake of the Great War and the Spanish Flu, but things 

Thoughts: "Fake medium accidentally taps into something real" is a well-worn plot, but it's one I tend to enjoy. This didn't really do it for me, though. 

A lot of the fun with this plotline is the buildup, and the particulars that Nix does give us are fun. I like, for example, having the fake 'butler' double as a heavy in case things get rough, and the description of the fake spiritualist table is good (as is the scheme involving international car theft). But we blow past all of the setup too fast. 

This is more personal response than actual criticism--9 times out of 10, I think that cutting to the chase is the best result, and I have similar views on denying generic expectations. And, on paper, it's a good idea: Usually, this plotline ends right around the time the spirits show up and send everything to hell, so I appreciate Nix continuing it further, with a band of wise women chanting to keep the spirits at bay. And, I get a kick out of the secret to keeping the spirits at bay being anything related to courage and bravery (leading to an impromptu recital of "Casabianca").

For so much action in so little space, it feels static. I think that's because Phyllis is a fundamentally passive character--she's told what to do the whole time by more interesting characters--first, her mother, and then the cadre of benevolent women. In place of a character arc, we get an invitation to join a secret society, which makes this feel like the first chapter in a YA series.  That's not surprising, given Nix's YA catalog, but it does not a satisfying story make. 

Also--points off for repeating the phrase "a rich hunting ground" twice in consecutive paragraphs.

"The Thinning of the Veil" by Jeffrey Ford

Synopsis: A group of friends handing out candy reminisce about their departed friend, an affable screw-up who stumbled into an untimely death. Say, who's that coming down the front walk?

Thoughts: This is a fun surprise (a trick of a treat!): Ford sets up the story like a standard "back from the dead" supernatural tale and then swerves us into a goofy crime caper. Maybe a little too goofy--we go from the detailed verisimilitude of the first few pages into a very fast-moving story without quite as much detail.   

The ending is clever, although I could imagine some readers being upset with the ending seeming to contradict the "rules" established earlier. But that's on them--if you pay attention, what seems like a throwaway joke midway through is a sort of Chekhov's Gun. 

It's clever, though, and along with Murray and Langan's stories makes a fun triptych of Halloween crime-horror stories. 

"Dare Me" by Richard Kadrey

Synopsis: Tommy really wants the older boys to accept him, so he goes along with their Devil's Night pranks: Gate-stealing, church desecration, graverobbing, and that's just getting started. . .

Thoughts: A good, straight-forward horror story. Mid-century small-town Halloween is territory that's been trod by some of fantasy's best, but Kadrey's story never feels derivative. In fact, it never even feels like a 1950s period piece, aside from the sectarian politics of the town. 

The ending is a problem. There's a natural ending spot 5/6 of the way through the story, and it would be pleasantly unpleasant, but it's also the sort of ending that you and I and probably Kadrey have all read before. So he does something different. I applaud that, but the final sixth of the story has problems: It goes on too long, it seems a little implausible, considering what's just happened by this point, and it doesn't add much to the story that we haven't already established. Still, that doesn't take too much away from an entertaining story.

"On the Night of the Welcome Stranger" by Nathan Ballingrud

Synopsis: The unlife and times of Henry and Gertrude Bloodgullet, ghouls, in the ghoul-friendly town of Hob's Landing.

Thoughts: This is so much fun! This is actually a follow-up to Ballingrud's earlier story "Skullpocket," which provides an origin story for Hob's Landing and the Skullpocket Fair, although I didn't know that until after I read this one. You can read "Skullpocket" here, by the way, and it's worth your while.

There's elements of Ray Bradbury and Tim Burton and Charles Addams, although what the story reminds me most of is the work of Gahan Wilson. This story (and even more so, "Skullpocket") have the jocular and macabre avuncularity that I associate with Wilson's work; there's a bit of Al Sarrantonio's whimsy in here, but Sarrantonio is rarely as laugh-out-loud funny as this story.

A Gahan Wilson cartoon is also the right way to approach the level of realism in the world-building--there's surely no way that the integration between the two societies would last (even in "Skullpocket," where the ghouls appear to have the supernatural upper-hand, they still have to worry about the threat of human mobs, and that's surely more so here). But, this isn't a realistic view of things; it's a fun, grotesque cartoon. 

There's so much more, too, including a clever injection of a whole other horror subgenre into the world of the ghouls towards the end of the story, but I can't spoil all its wonders. This is a dark fantasy masterpiece, one that oozes the spirit of Halloween. In a way, for those of us who like the horrific and and the bizarre, the Halloween season is our own Hob's Landing as a time instead of a place, one when we can lean into the dark without too much opprobrium from the rest of society.

"The Auld Woman with the Broom" by John Langan

Synopsis: It's Halloween, and Scottish mobster Michael the Viper has just gotten out of prison for the murder of another thug. A murder he spent very little time in prison for, comparatively, thanks to the intervention of his son-in-law, Henry, who happened to be the first constable on the scene. 

Thoughts: It's a tremendous crime story but it struggles in setting up the horror part. The set-up and the characterizations purr along like a powerful black car, and are a joy to read. Langan also gets a little bit of splatter on, taking a bludgeoning death which might read as "dull" to the jaded horror fan and showcasing its depravity. The family dynamics are compelling. The ending is good. 

It's just that the middle stretch that's the bulk of the story is just a conversation (really more of a monologue), and even if you allow that, there's still the fact that Michael doesn't seem like the type to listen politely (or even somewhat impolitely) to his son-in-law's prattling about occult crime. Once you get to the end, you realize there's a second problem, which is that for all the insight we have into Henry's interiority, we're not privy to the thoughts which would surely be foremost on his mind considering what he's about to do. 

"So, okay, smart guy," I asked myself. "How would you fix the story?" I'd get rid of Michael going to prison. That's what has to go, because it's what keeps you from telling the story sequentially without either too much additional writing or a disorienting time jump. It's simple to get rid of the prison sentence, too: Have Henry's testimony somehow exonerate Michael entirely. Then you can show us and not just tell us about the interactions between Henry and his family, and then have Henry go off and investigate a lead that brings him to Billy Sylvester. Then, and only then, have Henry go meet Michael somewhere, and carry on as written here. 

Because if there's one thing that sure doesn't need changing, it's that dynamite ending.