'Slipper' – Catriona Ward (From 'The Best Horror of the Year, Volume Twelve')

Another shortish post for today as I've got a few bits and pieces on; most of it around keeping my kids occupied, the rest of it divided equally between hanging out with the pets and hanging out with the in-laws. It's all good ;o)

While I'm doing all of that (and chewing frantically on a Nicorette), you get a small slice of horror, short story style... ;o) I was rooting around the TBR piles the other day, looking for some horror fiction that my twelve year old daughter might enjoy, and I came across my copy of 'The Best Horror of the Year, Volume Twelve'. She loved 'This Was Always Going To Happen' but I haven't let her read any of the other stories, not yet, not after I had a quick read through Sarah Langan's 'The Night Nurse' and scared myself silly. I wanted to feature something from the collection though and in the end, I settled on Catriona Ward's 'Slipper' (not her actual slipper, the story... oh, you know what I mean). I'd heard a lot of good things about Ward's 'The Last House on Needless Street' and while I have at least a couple of hundred books that I need to tackle first, I did want to see what Ward was all about and 'Slipper' was right in front of me so...

Henry is done with his childhood home of Monkshood and in a few short hours, it will be nothing but an unhappy memory. The ghosts of Monkshood, and what lives below its foundations, won't let go though and Henry is about to realise just what that will mean...

'Slipper' was a tale that I thought would be a quick read before bed and that's that. Shows what I know... 'Slipper' is a short tale (all of about twelve pages long) but is a tale that I suspect will be taking up residence in my head for a good few days yet down to Ward's uncanny ability to spring twists and revelations at exactly the right moment, slowly unravelling a tightly packed tale until it's there for you to wonder at in all it's dark glory. And it is dark... Monkshood is a place where supernatural horror and the evil that men do are tightly bound together, one cannot live without the other and this leaves Henry facing a trial that he should never have had to face and you can't help but feel for him as he relives all of that horror in the face of what is to come. And there's plenty of it. While the big reveal is saved for the end, as it should be, Ward ramps up the tension by giving Henry's memories an honesty that really makes the horror of his childhood leap off the page. It's hard stuff but it's all there for a reason and Ward nails it with her reveal of what lives under Monkshood and just why Henry grew up the way that he did. Poor bastard.

One of the things that I love about a good horror book is how it gives everyone either a shot at redemption or just a chance for someone to stand firm and push back against their worst nightmares etc. Henry's tale is very much a case of the latter and it all makes for a finale that rounds everything off perfectly. Given what we find out about Henry, and his sister, I can't see 'Slipper' ending any other way.

Not a bad tale at all to find then, given how I came to it. If this is what Catriona Ward does on a regular basis, maybe I should just bite the bullet and find some of her longer work (has anyone here read it?)