I’ve been on something of a horror kick lately. At the time of writing I’m midway through Manon Steffan Ros’s excellent novella, Hunllef (as far as I know only available yn Gymraeg, sorry non-Welsh-speaking folks), after finishing the second book in Stephen Graham Jones’s Indian Lake trilogy, Don’t Fear the Reaper, of which more some other time.
I also finally got around to watching Midnight Mass, the 2021 Netflix miniseries directed by Mike Flanagan of The Haunting fame.
Spoilers ahoy.
Midnight Mass does some things I like very much – it’s an interesting twist on vampire mythology, and the suffocating sense of small-town claustrophobia and decay is expertly built – but after the final episode, I found myself a touch dissatisfied. It’s not that the ending failed to provide closure; quite the opposite, in fact.
The show follows the dwindling, struggling population of Crockett Island as they’re infected with vampirism. By the end of the last episode, everybody on the island save two innocent kids is dead, dying, or a vampire. As the sun rises over the island in the final scenes, the infected islanders join in a chorus of “Closer My God to Thee” and willingly face their end. Families are reconciled; wrongdoers repent. One of the principal villains reveals that he did it all for love, while the other receives a well-deserved comeuppance. Almost as one, the islanders face the sun and choose a natural death over the unnatural youth and vitality bestowed by the vampire. Order is restored.
It felt a little too neat, as though conceived with one eye on the internet and a horde of commenters waiting to jump gleefully on any plot holes, and I couldn’t help thinking of it when I listened to a recent episode of the Rite Gud podcast, which talks about “gentrified” horror. The podcasters talked about a desire for neat resolutions and explanations – for, as Andrew F. Sullivan put it, “a solved story” – that ends up being antithetical to what horror as a genre tries to do, to the discomfort and uncertainty it wants you to dwell in.
That’s something that I intuitively agree with, though perhaps it’s as much a function of my personal tastes as anything else. The classic weird fiction I spent years of my life studying is less interested in explaining its monsters than using them to expose how much of the world humans don’t understand. The two books that have scared me most in my life are Robert Westall’s YA novel Urn Burial and Michelle Paver’s Dark Matter. Both novels bring their terrors to some sort of end, but in both books the protagonist’s understanding of the universe and his place in it has been irreversibly shattered, and there’s no solving that.
So, what does it look like when writers (or filmmakers, or artists) really commit to the ambiguity, the unanswered question?
It might look like last year’s Alex Garland film Men, starring Jessie Buckley and Rory Kinnear. The trailer, when I saw it in the cinema, made me think, “What the fuck?”, and the film does nothing to elucidate matters.
Buckley’s character, Harper, has come to a countryside Airbnb to recuperate after the death of her abusive husband. In and around the old house, she encounters a series of threatening male figures, all played by Kinnear. The movie starts out with a meticulous, teeth-grindingly stressful buildup of sexist microaggressions and the kind of creepy moments that get brushed off all too easily as no big deal. It’s a masterclass in building tension, but the film’s scariest moment is also one of its least explicable.
Out walking in the countryside, Harper finds an old tunnel that echoes her voice back to her when she sings. It’s only after she’s amused herself doing this for a few minutes that she realises someone is lurking in the shadows of the tunnel, watching her. There’s something overwhelming about the clarity of the sound and the intensity of the greenery in this ostensibly peaceful countryside scene, so that it’s almost a relief when you realise, yes, something sinister is going on, after all. We don’t yet know what’s scary, or why, but it’s far more effective than the chase scene that follows.
The film’s bizarre, hallucinatory ending refuses to tie anything up, or offer any explanation, which is perhaps why it got such mixed reviews, but there’s something satisfyingly cathartic there that wouldn’t have been served by Harper simply whacking the offending men in the head with a hammer. In the village, she lives through a series of small horrors that are explained away by those around her – an experience survivors of domestic abuse go through on a daily basis. There’s a kind of relief and vindication in seeing something so fucked-up and weird that it can’t be explained or smoothed away, and therefore can’t be denied.
The other thing I’ve come across lately that did something similar was Ian Muneshwar’s Nebula-nominated short story “Dick Pig” (possibly not one you’ll want to read while your nan’s looking over your shoulder, though I guess it depends on your nan). On one level, it’s a home-invasion story, but it’s one where the invader – whatever he, or it, is – has been there all along, and the protagonist finds himself slowly seduced by the impossible things happening in the house. He starts out looking for rational, human explanations, but they quickly run out.
What’s going on becomes less important than how it’s happening – the inevitability, and the sense that the weird is right under our feet, or above our heads or in the walls, the whole time. The story wants to make you go “WTF?” and it doesn’t particularly want to answer you, and actually, it works. I think this is where horror’s at its most effective and most destabilising – where it refuses to tie up its expansive terrors in a neat bow. In my own work, I’m drawn to endings that gesture at more going on beyond the space of the story, not in the sense of laying the groundwork for a sequel, but giving the sense of a wider and more complex work, but it’s often not particularly intentional. These kinds of endings are something I want to draw on more consciously in future, particularly in my horror writing.
March has been a fairly quiet month, writing-wise. The main thing that's happened is that
He Bears the Cape of Stars
, a masquerade-themed anthology from Duck Prints Press which includes my runaway fairy prince story, "Give Him a Mask", is now available to buy from the online store.
You can grab a copy
, if you feel so inclined.
April, however, has a bit more going on. I have three -- three! -- new stories coming out, which makes it seem like I must have written them all really fast, but no, that's just how publishing works sometimes. Nothing for ages, and then everything happens all at once.
The first one is "Water, Word and Flesh", a story set in Cardiff during a rather Lovecraftian apocalypse. This one had a long and sometimes tortuous journey to publication, after the anthology it was initially accepted to fell through, and I was almost convinced it was too odd and too Welsh to find a home. But
Kaleidotrope
magazine took a chance on it, and I'm very grateful. It's going to be in their April issue, out tomorrow on
.
There are also two anthologies I've contributed to out this month:
, from Wonderbird Press, and the second Hidden Villains anthology from Inkd Publishing,
My story in
Murderbirds,
"Sing Me to Sleep", was (very) loosely inspired by the Second Branch of the Mabinogi, and is about a young woman trapped on a space station and struggling to accept the loss of her brother, with help from an enchanting simulation. "Vintage Fur", my contribution to
Hidden Villains: Arise
, tells the story of a selkie who comes to the human world to save it from environmental destruction, but soon finds her illusions shattered.
I'll also be speaking at a 'meet the author' event as part of Abergavenny Writing Festival this month, along with three other authors who will be talking about their writing journeys. It's taking place in Abergavenny Library on April 21st at 10 AM. If you're in the area, please come along and say hi.
That's all from me for this month. Take care!
Jess