Maggie, in the final story in ‘Mystery Lights’ by Lena Valencia, observes that ‘With something so impossible [the unexplained disappearance of a child], your brain filled those logical gaps.’ Characters grasp for explanations when faced with the inexplicable: alien abductions, ghosts and visions feature heavily in a collection pulsating with low-level terror. Valencia conjures the uncanny in the most banal of spaces – a restroom, a modern campus – but also opens up wide vistas of horror in landscapes of desert or mountain trail, where the vast sky and endless stars underline puny human existence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In ‘Dogs’, Ruth, seeking inspiration for a film script, goes into the wilds to find that nature is not just indifferent but actively hostile; but fleeing towards humanity for rescue brings its own perils. A mystery prowler dressed as a 19th century trapper supposedly haunts a college campus in ‘You Can Never Be Too Sure’, but what sounds like an urban myth told to titillate freshmen results in actual disapperances. Supernatural being? Or ‘one of those back-to-nature Ted Kaczynski types who just wants his annual shower and co-ed lay’. Bathrooms are spooky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anyone who’s ever been singled out for poor form in a yoga class will know how quickly serenity can curdle into resentment. Pat is on a desert retreat (‘Glow Time’) run by a wellness influencer, and is irritated to find herself sharing a spartan yurt with Celeste, the only other mature participant. Celeste quickly becomes disenchanted with Brooke, the retreat leader, and attempts to enlist Pat’s support to rebel. The book is not without grim humour, showing how easily it is to cloak ethical murkiness in mindfulness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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‘Reaper Ranch’, the nickname for a ‘Senior Living Facility’ is the new home of a self-confessed ‘prickly bitch’ of a widow, who writes down her amusingly caustic thoughts in a diary. The set up, she finds, is ‘a little fascistic’ with friendly but overbearing staff, and endless activities: Grief Group, water aerobics on Tuesdays and Thursdays and a Lifetime Learners session on Great Books on Mondays (she’s reading ‘The Haunting of Hill House’). The atmosphere slowly changes from benignly boring to eerie: a hippyish fellow resident brings a supernatural vibe with her rituals and candles, and sinisterly kind Nurse Gale is always hovering near sick residents. ‘There was something eager, something hungry about her descriptions of death.’<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The narrator has salvaged a telescope from her past life and uses it to contemplate the heavens, just as mysterious and unknowable as existence below. Considering the Shirley Jackson novel she writes: ‘The reader is supposed to question whether the spirits are real or just figments of the character’s imagination. Such a dull question. What’s the difference, in the end?’ Valencia’s strange tales show how each stage of life has its own apt haunting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
‘Mystery Lights’ by Lena Valencia is published by Dead Ink, \u00a310.99<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Maggie, in the final story in ‘Mystery Lights’ by Lena Valencia, observes that ‘With something so impossible [the unexplained disappearance of a child], your brain filled those logical gaps.’ Characters grasp for explanations when faced with the inexplicable: alien abductions, … Continue reading