​THE ATROCITIES BY JEREMY C. SHIPP

By Tony Jones 

“A school governess meets the strangest of tutees…”
​

Jeremy C. Shipp has a fair bit of horror and dark fiction to his name on the market and has been published in a significant number of quality horror magazines, but for whatever reason this was my first foray into his work. I was immediately immersed into this neat 112-page novella, published by Tor, and had a lot of fun in the swift couple of hours it took me to race through it.
 
Gothic in style, this haunting (maybe) ghost story had many fine moments and gleefully led the reader up the garden path with its dark haunting descriptions, ominous atmosphere, morbid setting, restrained (and nutty) characters with a quality central plot thrust which (almost) keeps it going to the end.
 
The novella opens with the Ms Danna Valdez on her way to Stockton House a remote country estate, where she is to be employed as the new governess to a little girl called Isabella. The blub gives away too many facts to my liking (avoid reading it if possible), but we quickly realise Isabella may not be a normal child. I don’t want to give away any more spoilers than that. I read the novella knowing very little about the plot and was all the better for starting it relatively cold.
 
Expect strangeness straight from the start… Ms Valdez finds a wallet whilst approaching Stockton House and honestly gives it to her hosts, unknowingly this is a test of her character and is part of her final job ‘interview’ process! This is a very weird family. Her bosses Mr and Mrs Evers are an odd couple, Mrs Evers neurotic, nervous and protective of Isabelle, and her husband a reclusive painter who gives off odd vibes, hiding himself away most of the time. Throw into the mix a housekeeper who expects Ms Valdez not to see out her first day you have an intriguing premise which will have you rapidly turning the pages.
 
The setting of Stockton House is particularly effective and the ‘Atrocities’ of the title are grotesque figures and misshapen statues which dominate the buildings and surroundings. They are so unpleasant they even seem to even seep into the unconscious psych. To the extent that the housekeeper tells Ms Valdez to watch light comedy before bed, that way nightmares involving the Atrocities are less likely to invade your dreams. It’s not surprising as many of these grotesques depict humans suffering creatively appalling deaths and Mr Evers seems to revel in their dark vibes.
 
The novella has some great sequences as Valdez begins to fracture, the Evers get odder, and strange surreal occurrences seem to be normal in the house. Shipp has crafted a tightly constructed tale that uses every page and image for maximum impact and is an excellent take on the classic haunted house story. Because it is so short, some of the events are deliberately questionable on what was real and what was not, another aspect which worked well.
 
The weak link of the novel was unfortunately the ending which was weak, happened too abruptly, and killed a fair bit of the atmosphere from earlier in the story. It had this great build up which seemed to run out of steam in the last ten percent with a “Is that it?” type of ending. I will be surprised if many readers find the ending satisfactory. The fact that the novella concluded at 94% of my Kindle only added an extra grumble as I was gearing up for a big finish which never happened. In such a short piece of fiction a great ending is crucial and ultimately this very entertaining novella was deflated by a failure to close out a tale which it has carefully developed in the first 100 pages.
 
Tony Jones

FILM REVIEW: ​PYEWACKET