Nightmare “Where Things Fall from the Sky” by Ally Wilkes
“Now Will You Listen” by Osahon Ize-Iyamu
“Cadaver Dogs” by B. Narr
“Forensic Analysis of a Body, Still Warm” by P.L. Watts (not genre, not reviewed)
Reviewed by Tara Grímravn
Inspired by the terrible world events of the past year, everything in this month’s Nightmare centers on the theme of loss. Of the four stories on offer, three fall within the genres Tangent Online reviews, while the fourth is a work of creative non-fiction.
“Where Things Fall from the Sky” by Ally Wilkes
David works as a Coal Man aboard a Victorian-era whaling ship. He wants to head north towards the Seven Island in search of coal, but the captain has a different idea. Near the Seven Islands is the site of a meteorite crash, and the area is no longer considered safe.
I like the atmosphere Wilkes has created in this story. It’s appropriately creepy. The one thing that detracts from the story is the few points where a sentence seems incongruous with the rest of the text. For example, while David is standing on the deck pondering a strange ice formation, out of the blue he thinks about his sisters “knitting socks and scarves, saving their pennies for the guy.” What guy? Why is this an important detail? I understand that it’s meant to support the notion that the crew may have passed a point of no return, but the sentence seems so out of place with the surrounding text, it takes the reader right out of the story. And this happens more than once.
Still, it’s a decent story. The slow pace adds to the tension, instead of dragging down the narrative. It creeps forward, much like a ship trying to forge a trail through arctic ice or the slow descent into madness brought on by a cosmic horror.
“Now Will You Listen” by Osahon Ize-Iyamu
In a small Nigerian town, a young man has been warned all his life to stay away from the boys who read. He never understood why, and even now that he’s in university, his mother continues to warn him away from them. Tonight, though, a chance to talk to them, to see why people are so afraid of them, fall into his lap.
This brief flash fiction story is well worth reading. While it never takes a turn into genuine horror, it’s the promise of terror that makes it interesting. As the author himself says, more than anything else, the story is about the guarded longing to experience the otherworldly while remaining cautiously wary.
“Cadaver Dogs” by B. Narr
The children of Mill Creek are disappearing, and no one knows who’s taking them. The killer only leaves behind a pile of teeth and blood. After fear drives the community into lockdown, a group of kids take matters into their own hands. What they find will change them forever.
In “Cadaver Dogs,” Narr brings a unique perspective on the shapeshifter genre to the table. It’s suitably horrific, to be sure, especially once we learn what’s happened to the missing children. I couldn’t help but notice some similarities between the lockdown much of the world experienced—and, in some cases, is still experiencing—and that of Mill Creek.
I would venture to say that it goes deeper than that, though. Much like the story’s protagonist, the real-world horror of the last eighteen months left many of us wondering if it was better to face the fear of leaving our comfort zone or remaining voluntarily rooted in place within our self-made prisons, even if staying wasn’t any less terrible. It’s the same choice our protagonist has to make, and in this way, Narr’s story functions as an example of the genre’s tendency to show us our own reflection within its mirror.