Everything smelled like cigarettes, raspberry liquor, and old blood.”
📸 @aprillwoodauthor
Synopsis:
When a stranger comes to town, secrets are sure to come out. New York Times bestselling author Tamsyn Muir spins a twisty—and twisted—short story of revenge and survival.
A fresh-faced newcomer arrives in an isolated, gang-run town and soon finds herself taking a job nobody else wants: bodyguard to a ghoul. Not just your average mindless, half-rotted shuffler, though. Lucille is a dancer who can still put on her own lipstick and whose shows are half burlesque, half gladiator match. But the stranger is no stranger to this particular ghoul. Both women are undercover in their own way. And both have something to lose if their connection comes to light.
There were moth- eaten holes in the abdomen and the neck, and one knee and one hip were fully defleshed. The raspberry lips parted to reveal the dancer’s teeth.”
⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
In a dystopian society where ghouls, gangsters, and people live among one another, a woman with a secret accepts the position of bodyguard to a ghoul, employed by a hardened and cruel woman known as The Widower.
“You want me to— keep her alive . . . ?” Her voice died away at the Widower’s expression. The eyes were perfectly gray and perfectly empty.
“You’re to look after her and to be answerable for her,” said the Widower. “She needs to be entertained— don’t gape at me, girl, she gets bored— she needs to be fed and watered, and most of all she needs someone to keep her handled. She’s put down five handlers already… If you do good by her, I’ll make sure you retire wealthier than any woman in your line of business has ever retired. By God, you’ll be rich.”
Lucille — the undead ghoul who Starr is tasked with guarding, entertaining, feeding, and yes, watering — isn’t your ordinary zombie. She wears red lipstick, is brunette, and still retains some of the beauty she had when she was still alive. She’s also a burlesque dancer / cage-fighter, forced to dance before gangsters by Starr’s boss, The Widower.
“Once upon a time the dancer had been a good- looking brunette— before early decomp and the rigors of undeath had hit. Now she was only parts of a good- looking brunette. The face that peered at her through the mesh was a wild- eyed, idiot, predator’s face. There was something uncomfortably baby doll about it. Heart shaped. The big dull eyes bluish and glassy without much difference between pupil and white. Like you could pop them out and put new ones back in. Right now the mouth was a pursed little parody of a dolly mouth. Some sick individual had painted it raspberry red with a child’s hand, leaving waxy streaks right up to each nostril.”
This dark fantasy with an even darker FF romantic subplot is so twisty! There are several *big reveals* that had my jaw dropping, especially the backstory of Lucille the ghoul, who was not only a dancer, but also a wife. There is an extremely toxic romantic relationship with an imbalanced power dynamic, but to discuss it would give away too much of the storyline, ruining one of the surprises. But if you like darkly romantic horror shorts set in a dystopian world of gangsters and ghouls, I’d recommend giving this horror-short a try!
About the Author:
TAMSYN MUIR is the bestselling author of the Locked Tomb Trilogy, which begins with Gideon the Ninth, continues with Harrow the Ninth, and concludes with Alecto the Ninth. Her short fiction has been nominated for the Nebula Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, the World Fantasy Award and the Eugie Foster Memorial Award. A Kiwi, she has spent most of her life in Howick, New Zealand, with time living in Waiuku and central Wellington. She currently lives and works in Oxford, in the United Kingdom.
In this dreamlike short story told in alternating prose and verse, number one New York Times bestselling author Tomi Champion-Adeyemi weaves a tale of a young woman’s journey to find her mother and uncover her secrets.
Fifteen years ago, Lęina’s mother, Yuliana, went searching for a mythical place called the Garden and never returned. Determined to learn the truth about what happened, Lęina travels to Brazil to search for the hidden realm, with Yuliana’s journal and a local tour guide leading the way. But Lęina soon begins to wonder if she’s looking for answers—or if what she truly wants to find is herself.
Lęina’s mother abandoned her daughter for “The Garden”, leaving behind an old battered journal with pressed flowers tucked between the pages, and old pieces of film, handwritten notes and maps, and other mementos that heartbroken, grief-stricken Lęina believes are all part of the puzzle that is her mother’s disappearance.
Lęina didn’t think there was a way she could sum up fifteen years. From the moment the journal first fell into her hands, she had committed herself to following its path. Its teaching broke through her barriers and lines. For the first time, there was order in her mind. Lęina had vowed to follow its pages to the bitter end. She had spent her nights piecing together the fragments of its secret map. Scribbles her mother left began to merge with the red ink of Lęina’s pen. This journal had taken her life and given her a journey instead.”
The young woman is escorted to Brazil, by a local guide named Angelo, a chestnut-colored-haired-man with unusual feet. More on that later… ⚠ Spoilers ahead about my interpretation of The Garden ⚠
I think I’m addicted to sadness.”
The Garden
This is one of those stories where if you know, you know, and if you don’t get it, consider yourself fortunate. I believe this is a story about grief, sadness, depression, and being lost in your own mind. While reading this story I picked up on several themes related to mental health, and the state of Lęina’s was extremely poor.
I also believe that the local guide escorting her was loosely based on Brazilian folklore, specifically the Curupira, a red haired man-creature who guards the forest and leads people in wild directions, deep into jungles and forests. Above I mentioned Angelo is described as having chestnut curls, which essentially is a hue of red. He also has strange feet and per legend, the creature has backward feet. It’s of my interpretation that the author of this story used this bit of folklore when crafting Lęina’s journey with Angelo through Brazil. Misadventure and possibly a Curupira led her into a dark jungle and with only an old journal of her mother’s, she chases the “ghost” of her mother’s memory.
She could smell sadness like a fragrance sprayed in the air. Something young girls dotted behind their ears. She smelled the way men carried sadness in their chests, always given to them by their fathers, or a girl who broke their heart.”
The Garden
The “Garden” represents what I believe to be a conceptualization of the after-life. Sadly, I think her mother unalived herself and her daughter was walking down the same path, eventually meeting her own end, when she reaches the mythical Garden. (It should be mentioned that the reader isn’t taken this far into her journey through the jungles of Brazil and this is simply my interpretation of the story ending.)
I loved the dark poetry alternating with beautiful prose. Lęina is deeply introspective, inquisitive, and sadly, deeply depressed. She questions her tour guide about his thoughts on curses, ones on objects versus people. Her topics of conversation are bleak, the state of her mind depressed. She reveals a lot about her inner-being with her words. This was not a happy girl on a fun adventure. This was a literal su!c!de mission she felt had to take, desperate to get answers and ultimately pay for those answers with her soul.
⚠ End of Spoiler Warning ⚠
Overall, this story of magical realism mingled with dark fantasy resonated with me. I enjoyed the whimsical writing style and the inclusion of poems. I would definitely read another work by this Author.
“The shadow had definitely come out of the mirror, gone through the young woman and the dog, and disappeared. He stepped closer, trying to see more, but a white spot appeared in the middle and flared, eating into the picture until there was only white light.”
Garth Nix, Out of the Mirror, Darkness
Synopsis:
A cynical “fixer” for a silent-film studio must confront the shadows behind the bright lights in this noir-tinged short story by New York Times bestselling author Garth Nix.
It’s business as usual on the set of another cheap sword-and-sandal production by Pharos Pictures—until the lead actress suddenly falls into a deep, mysterious sleep. Jordan Harper can talk down high-strung starlets and knock sense into stuntmen, but this…this is the kind of uncanny problem that he’d usually bring to Mrs. Hope. Unfortunately, the preternaturally capable secretary is on a business trip with the studio head. Harper must get to the bottom of the mystery on his own before another cast member succumbs—or worse, they blow the budget.
📸 @aprillwoodauthor — The “Great Value” or “Wish” version aka my artistic impression of Out of the Mirror, Darkness. BTW, IG thinks I’m nude in this neck/arm/face close-up. Is IG OK? Someone needs to do a wellness check.
“He fixed things with talk far more often than with force. But what people remembered and talked about was always the action.”
Out of the Mirror, Darkness, by Author Garth Nix, is a noir-styled horror about a slumbering starlet, Miss Celine, and stunt dog, Ellsworth, who both cannot be awakened. This is a huge problem for “The Fixer”, Mr. Jordan Harper, because the show must go on! And he’s struggling with finding a solution to his problem, that may or may not be supernatural in origin.
“But the mirror was not reflecting the sunshine. It was dull and kind of greenish, probably from a layer of verdigris on the bronze.”
I’ll admit, it wasn’t until nearly the end that I realized Ellsworth was a dog (help me) and you wouldn’t imagine my confusion about all the sniffing! When it dawned on me that Ellsworth very much was a dog, I laughed out loud.
“When night falls, Ellsworth will seem recovered,” continued Mrs. Hope. “But he will not be. He will be under the sway . . . he will be controlled by . . . the monster that is within him…”
Overall, I enjoyed the themes and characters of this short story and the mystery behind what was “consuming” Miss Celine’s and the dog’s energy was fascinating. However, my mind wandered quite a bit while reading this, and my interest in the story didn’t pick up until the end when it was deep into the mystery. So, I have mixed feelings about this short story, but overall I liked it so I’m rating it 3 stars.
About the Author:
Garth Nix was born in 1963 in Melbourne, Australia, to the sound of the Salvation Army band outside playing ‘Hail the Conquering Hero Comes’ or possibly ‘Roll Out the Barrel’. Garth left Melbourne at an early age for Canberra (the federal capital) and stayed there till he was nineteen, when he left to drive around the UK in a beat-up Austin with a boot full of books and a Silver-Reed typewriter.
Despite a wheel literally falling off the Austin, Garth survived to return to Australia and study at the University of Canberra. After finishing his degree in 1986 he worked in a bookshop, then as a book publicist, a publisher’s sales representative, and editor. Along the way he was also a part-time soldier in the Australian Army Reserve, serving in an Assault Pioneer platoon for four years. Garth left publishing to work as a public relations and marketing consultant from 1994-1997, till he became a full-time writer in 1998. He did that for a year before joining Curtis Brown Australia as a part-time literary agent in 1999. In January 2002 Garth went back to dedicated writer again, despite his belief that full-time writing explains the strange behaviour of many authors.He now lives in Sydney with his wife, two sons and lots of books.
She could hear Fogg River’s dead now, whispering under the crash of the water on the struts and the stones.”
What the Dead Know
Book: What the Dead Know
Author: Nghi Vo
Series: Into Shadow Collection, 4
As she looked down into the water, Maryse saw an arm flung up from the waves, the curve of a round dark shoulder and the flash of a pink palm rising from the froth before sinking away from sight. “Water women,” Vasyl said. “They have them here too.”
“They have them everywhere,” Maryse said absently, looking for others. “There’s never a shortage of unlucky girls who end up in the water.”
Synopsis:
A woman posing as a medium who can channel the spirit world comes face to face with the truth in this short historical fantasy by Hugo Award–winning author Nghi Vo.
The Fogg River Seminary, a girls’ school in a small Illinois town, is supposed to be just another stop on Maryse and Vasyl’s endless travels. They’ve made lucrative use of Maryse’s “foreign” looks in their melodramatic séance act—and an act is all it is. Then, during their performance, a blizzard sweeps in and cuts them off from town completely. In the freezing halls, there’s a voice speaking the secrets of the dead, and Maryse has no choice but to listen…because this time, the voice is real.
“She is far away, so deeply in the trance of her ancestors that she will not be wakened by conventional means.”
Genre:
Historical Fic
Fantasy > Paranormal
Horror
Short Stories > Collection
Tropes & Themes:
“I see dead people”
Forced Proximity > Blizzard > Seminary School for Girls
The Con > Scams and Money Making Schemes > Silver Tongue
Paranormal > Seance Performance
Ghost Story
Time Period: 1899
Multicultural
Rating: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
“How lucky we are, then, to know what the dead say.” They didn’t, of course they didn’t, but it was a living, and thus better than a dying…”
What the Dead Know
Maryse and Vasyl are travellers, onto their next town to perform their morbid yet fascinating seance act, and quite the performance it is:
“Silence!” Vasyl boomed, and they quieted like startled children, taking in the view in front of them: Vasyl in unrelieved black with his pale hair glowing like a halo in the dimmed electric lights, Maryse on the table doing her best impression of a corpse.”
What the Dead Know
After five years of claiming to be a Medium and Spiritualist, Maryse has never even once actually heard the dead speak. However, after a performance with a little extra ✨ razzle dazzle✨ Maryse’s ears are wide open to spiritual communication — much to her absolute horror.
When a snow blizzard hits and she and Vasyl, (and attending guests), are forced to stay overnight at the Fogg River Seminary School for Girls, Maryse gets an earful of what the dead have to say. Knowledge she wished had stayed hidden in the shadows of her brain, now that she has no choice but to listen.
What The Dead Know, oh how I love thee!
This ghostly, historical fantasy surprised me in the best way possible. I absolutely loved Author Nghi Vo’s lyrical and poetic writing style. Spooky and atmospheric, Vo crafted a unique and magical story about a pair of travelers who swindle and con their way across America, and despite this, they are extremely likeable.
I only wish this read wasn’t so short because there were a lot of themes in this horror-short that I would have loved to see explored further, especially that absolutely intense, read-it-again-and-again-AND-again, Kindle-highlight of an ending.
Great story. I would recommend it to fans of paranormal horror, set in a historical setting.
About the Author:
Nghi Vo is an American author of short stories, novellas, and novels. Vo’s fantasy novella The Empress of Salt and Fortune has received acclaim and won the Hugo Award for Best Novella and the IAFA Crawford Award.
A teenage nobody crosses a line that will change her life forever in this short coming-of-age story by number one New York Times bestselling author Lev Grossman.
Ever since her dad disappeared five years ago, Persephone has quietly walled off the feelings she’d rather not feel. There’s no room for pain or anger when you’re just trying to get through the hell that is high school. But one day, the crush of taunts and disappointments is finally too much—and a power breaks loose inside her that she never knew was there.
It’s short for Persephone, a goddess who went out picking flowers one day and wound up married to the god of death because she ate some pomegranate seeds. My parents either read way too much Greek mythology or not nearly enough.”
Persephone: A Short Story
Rating: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
I’ll admit, this cover stunned me with the gorgeous pomegranate, referencing Greek Goddess Persephone, and other lovely whimsical elements, like the moss, twigs, butterfly, and more!
I’ve always had a fascination with Greek Mythology, Gods, and Godessses, and the intensity of their stories. I just had to borrow this read from Prime, reading the Into Shadow collection out of order, (as per usual).
Persephone is a less-than-popular high school girl in contemporary society who has a gift, or possibly even a curse — she’s not sure, and before her father disappeared, he hadn’t made that clear, either.
Unlike me, he always believed in me. He always told me I was special, that I had a gift, and I just had to wait till I grew up to find out what it was.”
Persephone: A Short Story
I didn’t ask for much. All I wanted was a part in the Winter Plays, even if it was an old- lady part. And I wanted a book bag without any rats in it. And I wanted to know where my dad was.”
Persephone: A Short Story
As mentioned, this is a coming-of-age (or rage) story and although this is a short read, I was disappointed that her magic was never truly explained; it just happened like a thunderclap headache and she was whisked away in a hush, hush / nothing to see here fashion. It’s unfortunate this wasn’t drawn out further.
I still didn’t know if it was a gift or a curse, I didn’t choose it, but it was mine, it was who I was. No returns. No going back.”
Persephone: A Short Story
I liked the FMC, Persephone, and the setting of Lexington, Massachusetts! As a Massachusetts resident myself, I enjoyed seeing my state represented. Definitely saw that sarcastic sense of humor representative of the North East in Persephone, making her a likable character and even a little bit relatable.
But I would be free, and I would be myself. Show me those f_cking pomegranate seeds, I thought. Come on. I’ll eat every last one of them.”
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