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Horror movies were one of the first forbidden fruits in my household. My mother banned them from our home because she was afraid they would give my sister and I nightmares. The poor woman never fully understood what she triggered in her younger son. I don't know why I like to be freaked out by fiction, but I'm trying hard to find and this blog sometimes is a testimony to this quest.
Author Zachary T. Owen is not knocking out of the park with every story of his collection BURN DOWN THE HOUSE AND EVERYONE IN IT, but he sure is batting for way over .300. His predatory and cerebral brand of horror fiction offers its audiences genuinely terrifying moments that have little to do with the gimmicky horror you're being sold by mainstream media today.
The challenge of short story collections is to be cohesive and BURN DOWN THE HOUSE AND EVERYONE IN IT has this Edgar Allan Poe-esque horror/fantasy quality to it that remains consistent from one story to the other. The opening story Sometimes the Closet isn't Big Enough was one of my favorites. It's an atmospheric horror reminiscent of Brad Anderson's best work. Zachary T, Owen keeps the story unpredictable by using the fear of the unknown against the reader. It gets scarier and scarier, and yet the story doesn't give you the complete picture until the very end. Sometimes the Closet isn't Big Enough is a quirky, intellectual pleasure for horror fans.
Perhaps the best, most original and ambitious story in BURN DOWN THE HOUSE AND EVERYONE IN IT though, is a novelette-sized piece titled Forgotten Tenants. It was such a complex, elaborate and daring story that it could've easily been a novella, or even a novel. What makes Forgotten Tenants work so well is the mental health angle. The dandies - who live inside the protagonist's head - are as real as it gets, but the vulnerable, conflicted state of the protagonist who doesn't want to give in to her (symbolic and literal) demons, make the story come alive. It's both a terrifying a moving story, which is a rare combination.
Zachary T. Owen has a strong understanding of what is horror and how to trigger this nameless terror feeling in his reader. I said earlier that not every story in BURN DOWN THE HOUSE AND EVERYONE IN IT works, but Owen actually TRIES a lot of stuff, which is kind of the main purpose of short stories, so while I didn't always appreciated the content, I could appreciate the scope of what Zachary T. Owen attempted. Stories like Favors from Hell and I Know There Are People Who Wander in the Night are also extremely well written and would've worked as well as the the two mentioned above if they were just a tad more subtle. They might be somebody else's favorite stories in the collection, I just thought they went a bit too far for what they were trying to say.
Whether you've feeling bleak because it's Halloween tomorrow or because fall is stripping the landscape of its life, if you're looking for some moody horror stories that don't take you for an idiot, give a try to BURN DOWN THE HOUSE AND EVERYONE IN IT.
