We Feed the Dark: Tales of Terror, Loss & the Supernatural
William P. Simmons kindly provided me with an ARC of this work.
The foreword begins by explaining just how autobiographical the works in this book are, the author's need to write to keep the darkness at bay, and unfeigned fear and experience with horror and the supernatural. Simmons outlines a personal experience of having had a heart attack from something otherworldly he'd seen... and it is extremely unsettling. It sets a sinister tone for a terrifying embrace between reader and author.
Here's the deal with these stories. If you are an author and you write something and it doesn't scare you, then it probably won't scare the reader. William P. Simmons must have been gibbering in a corner by the time he was done writing these stories. They touch on so many instances of domestic disharmony, child abuse, and the terrors of losing loved ones to disease, apathy, and death. It hurt me to read some of them. In particular, Telling Stories in the Dark, Daddy's Little-Bitty Pretty One, and The Cleaning.
My favorite story was The Dead Boy in the Walls. It was oppressively melancholic and offered vivid imagery of decomposition. It was filled with loneliness and had an ending that was somehow comforting and bleak.
I also found They Never Come Back quite interesting. It was a disconcerting tale that brought to life the frightened thoughts of children who are worried their parents will send them away for being bad, or simply not being enough.
I felt like Simmons ripped his own heart out and let bleakly relatable human insecurities and fears drip down into the mouth of the aghast reader. I sometimes felt like crying from all of the atrocious and brutally real situations presented in these stories.
By the surreal end where he wraps the book up with Feed the Dark, I didn't know if I was a character in his stories or just doomed to live their contents. I couldn't distinguish Simmons from the 'protagonists.' I couldn't tell if what this author felt was catharsis from writing or that there was a ticking time-bomb around his neck, waiting for him to hesitate, put the pen down, and lose himself.
Whatever (or whoever) is keeping William P. Simmons going as an engrossing and harrowing writer, it sure as hell is working.
Don't sleep on this - pick up a copy September 2021!
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