Nightscript Volume 5

Nightscript #5

by C.M. Muller (Editor), Patricia Lillie (Contributor), David McGroarty (Contributor)

An annual anthology of strange and darksome tales, which this year profiles the work of 19 contemporary scribes: Patricia Lillie, David McGroarty, Shannon Scott, Samuel M. Moss, J.A.W. McCarthy, Sean Logan, Sam Hicks, Simon Strantzas, M.K. Anderson, Dan Stintzi, Tracy Fahey, M.R. Cosby, Mary Portser, Charles Wilkinson, J.C. Raye, Brady Golden, Casilda Ferrante, Adam Meyer, and M. Lopes da Silva.

Genres: Horror

243 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2019

About the author

I live in St. Paul, Minnesota with my wife and two sons—and, of course, all those quaint and curious volumes of forgotten lore. I am related to the Norwegian writer Jonas Lie and draw much inspiration from that scrivener of old. My tales have appeared in Shadows & Tall Trees, Supernatural Tales, Vastarien, and a host of other venues. In addition to writing, I also edit and publish the annual journal Nightscript. My debut story collection, Hidden Folk, was released in 2018.

Reviews

[Bill Hsu · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have to say I'm usually very concerned when I see a word like "darksome" in a blurb. But I'm impressed with the unsettling ambiguity of the endings of the earlier stories, even when I am not completely satisfied with the execution. I'm wondering if there's some kind of editorial guideline from Muller. I'm not familiar with many of the contributors, and will be keeping an eye on quite a few of them.

Patricia Lillie's "Mother Sylvia" is a lovely warped little fairy tale. The arc is not surprising, but there's plenty of exquisite tension, clever touches, and a lovely ending. I'm looking forward to her upcoming collection. Sam Hicks' "Mr. and Mrs. Ketts" also has an unsurprising arc, but the young girl's narrative voice is nicely done, and the whole thing has a kind of smeared dreamlike quality. Not to mention another exquisitely open final paragraph. I also enjoyed Sam Moss' "The Plague Victim", with its economical scene-setting, the strange non-resolution of the climax, and the little reflective coda that answers no questions.

I thought David McGroarty's "The Brambles" could have developed a little further. Instead of the mysterious neighborly events being explained to death, we get a couple glimpses and fragments; I appreciated the ending, even though I was hoping for a little more:

She never saw the day again, but neither did she dream of her old home in London, nor of an alternative suburban home, like the one she had always dreamed of before, a place of dappled sunlight and gentler air. Her sleeps were only ever dreamless, or vaguely troubled, and when she woke she turned her face to the wall, away from the bare window, and everything that was on the other side of it.

Similarly, I don't think Shannon Scott's "American House Spider" quite works for me, but I admire the ending that just cuts off.

Dan Stintzi's "The Border" starts off like an abstract spy thriller, with touches I'd associate with Robbe-Grillet or Evenson. It sags dangerously in the middle, but just as I was wondering "are we there yet?", it picks up again and heads straight for an unsettling close. The body horror of the ending probably compromises the carefully controlled paranoia and identity confusion earlier, but I enjoyed and admired this enough to be looking for Stintzi's other work.

M.R. Cosby's "Paradise Point" was a frustrating experience for me. There are certainly interesting ideas (I love the whole ferris wheel setup), but I thought it was way too longwinded. And so much of the verbiage is spent emphasizing how hysterical the pregnant narrator is. (Maybe I'm just in a bad mood, but it really doesn't help that all this stereotypical flailing is coming from a male author.)

I did feel a significant dip in quality in the later stories. But this is overall quite worthwhile.

[Des Lewis · Rating 4 out of 5]

That, for example, this end story was also written as a coda for this book without knowing what was in the rest of this book before its author wrote it, and now there emerges a square in the knots of the wooden floor as a Pareidolia trapdoor, under which this Nightscript book has resided all the time till eventually lifted out by faith in fiction. The wolf at the door, too. Or grumbling just beyond the yet doorless wall of belief? By the way, this end story also brackets the whole book with the Hansel and Gretel one at its beginning.

The detailed review of this book posted elsewhere under my name is too long or impractical to post here.
Above is one of my observations at the time of the review.