Order HUNGRY DARKNESS here
(also reviewed)
Order GUTMOUTH here
"I just saw this shadow go by under the boat."
Writing good horror is a little bit like playing poker. It's not about playing your hand as much as it is about psychologically crushing the person in front of you. It's why there is very little efficient horror stories around, but those that are will pummel you into oblivion. Gabino Iglesias' novella Hungry Darkness - published earlier this year by Severed Press - not only understands this subtle concept, but manages to deconstruct it without losing any of its narrative power. It's a novella that mind tricks you into thinking you've been mind tricked when you really haven't. Does this make any sense?
Bear with me.
Nick Ayres is an ambitious adventurer who just received major funding from National Geographic in order to explore Caye Caulkers Giant Cave in unparalleled depth. Nick and his crew do not find the wonders they were looking for in the unexplored part of the cave. Instead, they liberate an aberration that transcends scientific knowledge upon the peaceful population. Gabriel Robles, a local fisherman who knows the waters above the cave better than anybody else, is hired in order to make that homicidal sea monster go away. Robles has no idea what he's signed up for, but he needs to move fast before this thing makes more victim.
I was floored by how different Hungry Darkness was from Gabino Iglesias' previous novella Gutmouth. It's as straight and classically told as it gets. The delivery will remind you of H.G Wells' novels a little bit. That doesn't mean it's not interesting, though. Iglesias uses the conventional setting of Hungry Darkness in order to display his storytelling skills and the guy is GOOD. Sometimes it's not the story that matters, but the way you tell it. Not that many authors have the storytelling gene to integrate unforeseen twists into a cohesive narrative. Joe R. Lansdale has it, Lawrence Block has it and Gabino Iglesias has this rare skill to change the direction on a dime and keep his reader in a state of blissful shock and awe.
A scared diver is a liability, an accident waiting to happen, and he wanted none of that in the cave. If one of them died because they made a silly mistake and ruined his chance at glory, he'd find a way to bring him back from the dead just for the pleasure of killing him with his own hands.
My favorite aspect of Hungry Darkness by far was that the monster actually is a giant octopus and that Gabino Iglesias doesn't try to hide it one second. Tentacles are all over horror, whether they belong to aliens or to Cosmic Gods, but the only place you can find them in reality is, to my knowledge, on octopuses. Hungry Darkness is an exercise in demythologization, but since Gabino Iglesias understands the horror genre so well, it's not any less scary. It's not the squid that's actually that scary, but the ignorance about its origins: is it a mutant? An alien? Are there others? Can that freakin' thing reproduce? Iglesias always keeps the reader in the same ignorance as his characters, which is a key mechanic in scaring people. Nothing scares people better than what's going on in their own mind.
I didn't know sea monsters were still a thing in the 21st century before I discovered Severed Press. Hungry Darkness was particularly great in that regard because it deconstructs the psychological mechanisms that turns a seemingly natural creature into an otherworldly monster. It doesn't hide anything from the readers, yet feeds them just enough information to get their imagination spinning out of control. Hungry Darkness is a classic horror story that manages to avoid the gimmicky pitfalls the genre has been wallowing in for the last decade or so. It also is a strong statement by Gabino Iglesias. He is a standout storyteller and he's only getting better with every book.