Nightmare #120, September 2022
“The Gold Coin” by Clara Madrigano
“A Girl of Nails and Teeth” by Hannah Yang
“Concerning the Upstairs Bathroom” by Keira Lesley
Reviewed by Geoff Houghton
The first new story in the September issue of Nightmare is “The Gold Coin” by Clara Madrigano. It is set in present day suburban Pennsylvania and is actually two almost entirely separate stories, rolled together into a single text. The first is an unsettling murder, made more chilling by the perpetrator’s close proximity to our Point of View character, and by the killer’s age. This segment of narrative occurs entirely in the mundane world and could easily find a place in an anthology of crime stories outside of the SF/fantasy/horror genre.
The second is the magical tale of a Gold Coin that can just be seen in a single place, only upon certain occasions, and even then is tangible solely to its intended recipient. The human who is considered worthy to pick up the coin becomes a ruler amongst the faery folk of the forest, although the powers granted by this elevation are clearly insufficient to protect the beneficiary against human malice.
Both narratives are competently written and could be worthy stories in their own right, but the juxtaposition of the two in one text feels uncomfortable and the author’s intent in merging the two remains uncertain.
“A Girl of Nails and Teeth” by Hannah Yang is a piece of flash fiction. The time and location of this brief story is not detailed, but it is probably somewhere in the Western World within a lifetime either way of the present day. However, an unspecified horror stalks this world. Some force or power is stealing all the female children for purposes unknown. There appears to be a surprising absence of official reaction to this, but one mother has her own plan to save her daughter.
The quiescent acceptance by this world’s Governing Authorities of what would rapidly become the end of the human race may lead the reader to postulate that the horror is actually all in the protagonist’s head and that she is actually barking mad, but the author cleverly leaves enough doubt that the reader can draw their own conclusion.
The second full-sized short story is “Concerning the Upstairs Bathroom” by Keira Lesley. This is set in a present-day suburban townhouse and takes the form of a letter left by the vendor for the attention of the new homeowner.
The first person narrator calmly and matter-of-factly informs the buyer that there is a demon trapped in the spray hose of the shower cubical. The letter’s author details the varied and futile attempts to dislodge this demonic presence and thoughtfully leaves enough instruction to allow the new owner to protect himself from an immediate and horrific end. However, he also entirely abandons the issue of how to resolve this ongoing problem to that unfortunate purchaser.
One of the most intriguing aspects of this tale is the question of how you would react and what you would do if you were the recipient of this letter.
Geoff Houghton lives in a leafy village in rural England. He is a retired Healthcare Professional with a love of SF and a jackdaw-like appetite for gibbets of medical, scientific and historical knowledge.