“This is the wrong door,” he says, and she startles. “This isn’t my house.”
“Jack, honey, it’s late. Come back to bed. It’s still dark outside, that’s why it looks so different, but it’s still the same house we’ve lived in for a long time.”
He shakes his head. “No. This is the wrong door. The right one is out there.”
A lot of the time, horror stories are utterly fantastic. For as terrifying as Cthulhu would be to encounter rising from the depths of the sea, he sure is fun to read about, because he’s pure fantasy. That’s one of the joys of reading horror; it gives the reader a sense of control over what would be totally uncontrollable in real life. We know the story will end, and so we bravely trudge on, turning the page. Some horror stories, however, come so close to reality that they reach though the veil and brush it with dreadfully cool fingertips. These are the horror stories someone is most likely to have to set down. They cut too close and the reading is no longer any fun. I suspect Damien Angelica Walters‘ story, In the Spaces Where You Once Lived, is one of those stories for many people.
It’s still Women in Horror Month and I wanted to make sure I highlighted an author about whom I’ve gotten excited. I went back and listened to her interview (Part 1 and Part 2) on the This is Horror podcast and at one point she spoke about how she sometimes gets very emotionally tied into her stories. She mentioned this story as a perfect example, sharing how when she finished writing it, she wept at the end. Normally (at least I imagined so), this kind of response is reserved for the reader, not the creator, and so I was intrigued. I had the story, contained in the excellent anthology “Autumn Cthulhu,” edited by Mike Davis and published in 2016 by the Lovecraft eZine Press, and so commenced to reading it.
Going back over it now, I see how the opening two lines are well-crafted to set the tone, but as of yet, we do not know it. “A doe picks her way from between two trees at the edge of their back yard, keeping to the narrow path, her legs moving with a dancer’s grace. Helena holds her breath, even though she and the deer are separated by a wide expanse of lawn , a deck, and locked French doors.” This is a story about the ravages of Alzheimer’s disease. Helena’s husband Jack has been slowly slipping sideways into unknowing, and the experience for Helena is like that of seeing the doe. So close, but separated so profoundly by the familiar. I haven’t personally experienced the disappearance of a loved one into this diseased twilight, but have known many people who have and their reports are devastating. Angelica Walters captures that devastation in eloquent, sharp prose: “This isn’t my house,” he says, his voice razor-sharp. “I know it isn’t.” “Would you like to watch a movie?” She keeps her voice bright, cheerful. “Stop talking to me. I know what you’re doing, but it won’t work. This isn’t the right house.” If there is anything to criticize here, it is that while this story works as a weird story (why it does we’ll come to in a moment) it almost would work better on its own, without any elements of the weird. But this is a Lovecraftian short story blog and the anthology containing the story is titled “Autumn Cthulhu,” and so let’s get to it.
As the story goes on, Jack mentions things about doorways, the right time, often speaking to someone who isn’t there. He gets up in the middle of the night and wanders around, sometimes out of doors. The doe from the opening lines makes more appearances, and now, it seems to be decaying—a symbol of Jack’s disease process. “There, at the end of the yard, the white-eyed doe. More patches of fur have fallen out; the bare skin beneath holds a strange grey cast.” Alzheimer’s works like this from what I gather. Patches of your loved one fall away, leaving behind a sallow blankness that can turn whip-crack sharp in their frustration.
By the time you reach the end, seasoned readers of the Old Gent will be thinking about Yog-Sothoth, what with all these mentions of doorways, gates, and time. It’s even possible some emissary of Yog-Sothoth has shown up.
Yog-Sothoth knows the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the key and guardian of the gate. Past, present, future, all are one in Yog-Sothoth. He knows where the Old Ones broke through of old, and where They shall break through again. He knows where They have trod earth’s fields, and where They still tread them, and why no one can behold Them as They tread.
- —H. P. Lovecraft, “The Dunwich Horror“
And then, finally, you’ll understand why Damien Angelica Walters cried. It’s not so much that the ending is sad as it is that the whole damned, perfectly titled thing is sad. She brings to life this couple, their relationship, Helena’s tangled skein of grief and love with beautiful words and evocative episodes. We get only a glimpse, and yet in that glimpse we can see those we have loved. I imagine for readers who have gone through what Helena is going through this story will be especially painful and perhaps not at all cathartic. For them and their loved ones, there is no sense of control, no knowing the story will end, and so their bravery in facing each day is heroic. But then again, maybe it will be cathartic. That’s the beauty of fiction. This is a powerful piece of writing by an author whose name deserves to be known. It’s unusual for me to get so lost in a story (with a wife, a dog, and two kids under eight), but when I was reading this, it was as if I was in that quiet forest, following that elusive doe, and the world around me had faded into the background.
When I was listening to her interview on the podcast, she mentioned that one of her writing goals was to appear in an anthology edited by Ellen Datlow. She’s appeared on the list of Honorable Mentions quite a number of times but had yet to break into the table of contents. Well, just two days ago on February 20, 2019, Datlow revealed the table of contents for the forthcoming The Year’s Best Horror, Volume 11, and right there in the middle of it is Golden Sun, a novelette by Kristi DeMeester, Richard Thomas, Damien Angelica Walters, and Michael Wehunt. Congratulations Damien, you deserve it! Achievement unlocked!
That about wraps it up for today my fellow cultists. Remember, when your time comes, do not go gentle into that good night. This review was composed while listening to the Peaceful Meditation radio station on Spotify.
Until next time, I remain yours in the Black Litany of Nug and Yeb,
~The Bibliothecar
The plaintive plea of the wife: “I’m coming Jack. Stay there. Please stay there.”