thread of being, no different than sun rise, tree leaf, or the passing from youth into old age. That the human mind and sensory glands cannot always perceive this "other" phenomena is often blamed on our all-too-human lack of emotional, mental, and physical power.
The best supernatural fictions combine elements of both traditions. The supernatural threat is convincing enough to appear natural (and believable), but still resonates with the mystery and fantasy of unknown spheres. Although graveyard spirit or emotional ghost is convincing as
component of the natural world, there follows with its presence a threat of unnatural, unwholesome danger. The "good fabric" is split, barriers are broken, and because the reader understands the unexpected is broke loose, he experiences thrill and awe. When the seemingly impossible is made threateningly possible, when innocent appearing characters, settings and events are suddenly transformed into haunting experiences of spiritual and
physical threat; the ghost story reaches for both our minds and souls. Threatening beings of external, otherworldly darkness join the internal menaces of our individual fears, guilt, and suspicions, each reflecting and making more ominous the other.
Echoes Of Darkness, by Maynard and Sims, offers us such a deceptive collection of darkness, creating through subtle prose and grande imagination a variety of shadows. There lurks beneath the finely crafted eloquence of their words an energy – a joyfully perceptive rush of power– that combines universal themes with intimate struggles, making the tales both general enough to appeal to the masses while immediate enough to touch the individual reader. Through the sureness of their style and believability of their characters, we're reminded of ourselves. It becomes we who are suffering, reacting to unholy dangers tip-toeing or recklessly charging from demon- infested island complex, haunted well, and past life.
Although the writing is formal in execution, reminding one of the stylistic conciseness of M.R. James, never for a moment is the language outdated or archaic. Maynard and Sims manage to be both stylists and experimental craftsman in their manipulation of language, twisting phrases and descriptions with a freshness that many critics lament in the work of
Victorian and Edwardian authors of the macabre. When reading the tales in this collection, you get the impression that the authors didn't set down and plan their fictions so much as they lovingly summoned, honed, and shaped raw essence into art. Layers of meaning and possibility pulsate beneath the words. So rich and drenched in meaning is the collection, that
each new reading revealed descriptions, suggestions, and word play missed the first time around. It's easy to miss something of the delicate structure, for so engaging and immediately arresting are the plots, themes, and characters that the first reading is greedily completed for the sheer pleasure (and dread) of discovering how people we're made to care about fare against both physical manifestations of terror and the lingering menace of their own personalities.
In a haunted world where darkness of soul combines with supernatural night, magnifying and feeding upon the other, Maynard and Sims, travellers on the night-side of experience, use the recognizable conflicts and flaws of characters to emphasize and compliment occult threat. Half-breed bastard mutants, vengeful spirits, and cursed whistles share the spot light with
abusive relationships, modern estrangement, self doubt, and the day-time terrors of both financial and social anxieties. By interweaving every-day fears with fantastical terrors, the authors create an aesthetic, emotional bridge between normalcy and supernatural. Characters who unknowingly slip between borderlands of soul, mind, or flesh are treated as distinct
personalities– not the cardboard symbols so often used by modern authors to simply instigate plot. The collection continually reveals the relationship between internal conflict and supernatural threat. Characters insecurities, pasts, and personalities mirror the malignant forces gathering against them.
Like us, businessmen, politicians, housewives, widowers, and travellers call for something in the darkness, albeit often unknowingly. Evoking true dread and mortal terror, it's suggested again and again in these tales that attempting to be a "good" person, minding one's business, or surrounding yourself with material illusions of safety is poor protection against evil, often tragic possibilities. Managing to be both traditional and innovative in theme and presentation, Echoes of Darkness bravely explores the grounds of ambiguity. Often, traditional tales of ghostly horror depicted unsavoury things happening to morally bankrupt, largely unsavory people. Such morally fixed allegories (disguised as ghost fiction) whispered to readers "hey, say your prayers, live a good life, and keep your nose clean." More often than not, only "those who deserved it"– characters that had harmed someone or transgressed some spiritual taboo– had need to fear attacks from beyond. Although Maynard and Sims brilliantly offer their share of nasty, self-centered people whose guilt and crimes make them targets for inventive unpleasantries, more disturbing and satisfying are the instances where
moral expectations and constructs are obliterated. It's when more or less wholesome, likeable characters find themselves prey to ghostly and human malice that we fear (and believe) in their fictions most.
Such tales as "Ashushma," "At The End Of The Pier," and "Coming Home," whisper with unpleasant sureness the unfair and un-predictable nature of both natural life and supernatural possibility. The reader is left wondering if we're not all calling out to a deadly, formless darkness. Yes, victims of jealous ghostly lovers and mythic demons tell us, we call out to
the dark. We throw into undefined night our fears and hopes and pain. We call to the dark. And sometimes, the darkness answers.
The fears, insecurities, lusts, ignorance, and possessiveness of characters always answer back in this stunning collection of pain and beauty. In seemingly innocent, perfectly normal landscapes and descriptions hide dark miracles waiting to spill over. Like those dark Echoes from the collections title, characters and settings, atmosphere and themes, vibrate off one
another. The author’s ability of suggestion and quiet layering makes the experience both unsettling and credible. What struck me most about these stories, aside from the ability of the authors to make the supernatural appear so natural (if disturbing) an extension of a characters experience, was the ever-present use of suggestion that intensified the tension and dramatic flow of every single tale.
Shadows creep. Characters feel breaths against skin, spot glimpses of shape where none should logically be seen. Minute details of seemingly unthreatening coincidences slowly but relentlessly blossom into waking nightmares. Never do we feel cheated by trite or convenient scares. Never do the authors resort to use of artificial revelations or stock shocks. Warnings of supernatural presences and disaster are cleverly, quietly given to us before hand. Yet so subtle are such warnings, and so very engaging remain the characters, that our minds co-conspire with the authors, making us pay such attention to the complexities of human interaction and transformation that when the Echoes of fantasy materialize into physical,
undeniable threat, we're surprised and titillated despite the fact that we were given hints in advance. .
Maynard and Sims capture the delicious thrill of fireside story telling, investing dark wonder into decidedly contemporary conflicts, people, and settings. Like the teasing, tormenting power of shadows, their malignant shades and mythical dangers are neither wholly real nor imaginary. Indeed, it is to their credit and power that they hover between both extremes,
constantly threatening us with their presence, but never wholly revealing them until characters are doomed.
In "An Office In The Grays Inn Road," a wonderfully chilling tale of hatred and attempted redemption beyond the grave, the authors make satisfying a much used theme that would have flopped in less capable hands. In Joanna Philips is reflected the grief, doubt, and lethargy that accompanies the death of a loved one. A recent widow, Joanna is assaulted by an increasingly venomous spirit, as well as by the terrible knowledge of her husband’s
betrayal. Like many of the other stories, the supernatural danger is sensed at a distance, hinted at by smell and sound and touch. The final confrontation ensues with terrible finality. At the end, we see Joanna still haunted, not by traditional ghost, but by memories.
Transformed by the painful emotional scar of her husband’s infidelity, Joanna has become something of a ghost herself.
"Mallory's Farm," while not a ghost story proper, further exhibits the writer’s diversity, showing how comfortable they are attacking a variety of subjects. Philip, an unassuming young man caught in the throes of a bitter power struggle between his divorced parents, arrives at the decrepit residence of his father and young lover to discover both the people he
truly cares about reduced to husks of their former, vibrant selves. Omitting a grande-gothic feel, the action is fluid, sharp, and relentless, moving with an energy that makes the tension near the end nigh unbearable. To give away the secret of Mallory's farm would be a disservice to the craftsman who made it so truly frightening. In a scene of uncompromising
tension, pale-pink clawed infant hands from "Bastard's Well" try and find access into the farmhouse. From this scene onward, one is reminded of the delicate timing that made W.W. Jacob's The Monkey's Paw so very horrifying.
From Fay-like dangers of cursed woods and sinister whistles to the secrets growing in English gardens, Echoes Of Darkness lovingly uses it's own fears to further instigate our own. Be the threat after thought from grave or an imposter come to steal your identity, never are we left to doubt the originality or compassion of these authors when working their narrative magic. Not content to simply revise ancient lore or occult traditions, Maynard and Sims prove themselves modern mythmakers in their own right, creating believable, larger than life embodiments of evil no less breath taking than the deities found in cross-cultural sacred texts. Perhaps no where is their singular ability of crafting new night terrors from
universal elements of our condition more apparent than in "Moths," a novella deservedly recognized by the horror and fantasy community. Their conceptualization of "The Tashkai," a demon capable of draining the talents from those vulnerable human beings it infatuates with its presence, is as fascinating as it is evocative of people in our own world who do the same,
using sheer force of personality to drain from admirers the very thing that makes them individuals.
In this novella, as well as in the story "Mattie," the danger of losing the internal traits that define us is emphasized. Psychic-like vampires of mind and talent, the "Tashkai" are at once exotically captivating and repulsive. Beneath the refined manners, unblemished skin, and appearance of grace lurks corruption, decay, and the absolute hunger of greed – if one has to foresight or ability to peel back surface illusion and stare. The creatures themselves stir within the reader mixed, conflicting emotions of lust and envy, fear and welcome, mirroring the appeal of the supernatural genre itself, and specifically pointing out Maynard and Sims talent of assaulting us with terror at the very same time that they titillate us with it. I wonder if something of the "Tashkai" doesn't lurk in them, cleverly using our own expectations, fears, and desires to give their fictions such immediacy and lustrous power.
With the lingering persistence of shadow, or the stealthy vibration of echo, the stories of this brave, diversely satisfying collection linger long after the book snaps shut. A pleasure to read, the suspicions and threats aroused by its subtle (and not so subtle) frights may find you
staring into corners of home and mind long after dark, each carefully sculpted tale a reflective echo of your own night-tide fears and doubts.
Without reservation, I recommend lovers of ghost fiction (and dark Literature in general) take this ride into the darkness.
Echoes of Darkness was stoker recommended in 2000.
www.maynard-sims.com
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