“Whispers In The Dark: Three Stories Of Terror”

Imagine Chico writer N.J. Hanson penning a scary story about a writer penning a scary story about “a man who moves into a new house, one he gets for a very reasonable price, which is also haunted by the spirits of the family that was murdered there.” Imagine further that the writer penning about the spirits finds on a stormy night that he, too, must deal with one of those spirits because of the pen he is penning with.

Hanson’s story is called “Inked In Blood,” one of a triad of tales perfectly pitched for the pumpkin season. “Whispers In The Dark: Three Stories Of Terror” ($6.95 in paperback from Ink Drop Press; also for Amazon Kindle) also includes “Roadside” and “Wingbeats In The Night.” 

“Roadside” is about just desserts, some might say. It begins gruesomely enough: “With a heave and a groan, he threw the body off the bridge and watched it splash in the river below. The concrete cinder block tied to it quickly pulled the corpse down to the bottom, where the dead girl’s arms, legs, and hair listed almost delicately in the current. … The man got back into his truck, the old engine of his ’73 Chevy rumbled to life when he turned the key, threw it in gear, and drove away. It was time to find a new girl.”

It ends, as one might guess, gruesomely enough.

The longest story, “Wingbeats In The Night,” takes the narrator to Mexico “to visit ancient sites of Aztec and Mayan ruins. … I planned a trip to visit the ancient city of the Sun Pyramid.” Big mistake, actually. His guide is a sketchy character but the narrator’s intense interest in the legends of these cultures drives him onward. 

The “bat god of the underworld, Camazotz,” “a human-bat hybrid,” is on the pyramid above the image of “a man held down by his arms and legs across a sacrificial altar, his chest cut open, and his heart held towards the sky in the hands of a priest”—but, this being the diabolical Hanson, it isn’t just ancient history.

Close the shutters and make way for the shudders.

"Unseasonable"

J.R. Henson, a Paradise resident now living in Chico after the devastation of the Camp Fire, has written a series of deeply felt observations about the emotional upheavals of life. "Unseasonable" ($10 in paperback from Valley View Press) comes with an author's note that in the poetry, fiction and non-fiction in the book "readers are advised that there is no necessary connection between the author's life and the experiences represented here."

In more than fifty short pieces, "the writer" expressively responds to events in sections on happiness, sadness, death, anger, fright, and drama, in that order. "Lazy River" in the happiness section recalls tubing on the Sac with younger work acquaintances. Even then there is a feeling of estrangement which the river eventually overcomes. "I'm quietly enjoying the serenity of God's love" which seems most apparent in nature.

The world intervenes, including depression and an addiction to food that seem to undo him (comfort him?) at every turn. In "True Love Is Served On A Plate," his soul touches the soul of the woman he loves ("I release my life's luggage as if I have finally come home from a long trip") yet something goes wrong. Later, alone at home, "my addiction gives me a hug as I pull some pizza from the refrigerator and eat it cold" to "fill the holes in my heart and soul."

After the death of the writer's beloved cockapoodle, Smokey, detailed in Henson's first book, "Reflections And Dark Truths," a "young white poodle, Gabie," tries to fill the void, with only some success. There's another dog, Fazio, in "Goodbye To You," in which the narrator is homeless. There's mention of a slide presentation gone bad, a stay in a mental hospital, and a piece of paper that says "I want to be a better person."

The book provides acute observations about recovery, burning bridges, grief. 

Yet a passion emerges to change a wrongheaded view of nature expressed in "Hole In The Sky": "Instead of having the characteristics of a caretaker, many of us believe that the earth has been bestowed upon us to do as we see fit." 

Here is a fight, unseasonable at times, worthy of a man's energy.

"Spectators: Flash Fictions"

Rob Davidson teaches creative writing and American literature at Chico State University. In 2012 he and photographer Tom Patton presented an "image-and-text collaboration" at 1078 Gallery in Chico. Inspired as well by artists Stephani Schaefer and Sara Umemoto, Davidson has constructed a deconstruction of the "monuments" built by words, the stories we tell ourselves and often settle into. "We love limits," he writes in his new and strangely haunting book, "we feel safer behind an enforced perspective."

"Spectators: Flash Fictions" ($16 in paperback from Five Oaks Press) is a collection of short meditations, some somber, some flirtatious. The book invites reading and re-reading (the publisher has nominated it for a Pulitzer Prize in literature), and each time the reader will see something new. In a way, that's the point.

Patton's photograph of a man taking pictures of the Grand Canyon inspires a mordant observation: "He will not remember the canyon. He will not remember the smell of sage, or the breeze, just slightly cool, wafting up from the riverbed…. He will remember taking multiple shots from different angles…. He shoots again and again, and with each new image he builds another, different canyon, thereby justifying the existence of the first. We are only the stories we tell ourselves."

One ought not put too much store in one's words and yet "the world without words is the world unmade." "Author's Note" distinguishes Davidson the writer from Rob the ordinary bloke, the married man with two kids and a day job at the university. This Davidson guy "steals from me. From my memory." Yet in the fictions Davidson creates "I see myself most clearly." A fiction is a way of listening.

We can't help being spectators but we can also be shaped by a Buddhist understanding of presence. "The mistake most commonly made by those asked to wait is to focus on that which has not yet happened…. There is only the waiting itself, for which there is no wait."

"There is inside us," Davidson writes earlier, "a child's wish that the world would yield to our demands. Yet it's only when we stop to listen that something unexpected opens, like the ear of a parenthesis."

"The Pilgrim's Ladder"

"I will not forget what I have seen. How can I forget such terror? How can I forget such joy? How can I forget such beauty?" Micah is a climber inexorably drawn to the White Mountain and a vision of the summit, whose "dark night of the soul" is recounted in a moving and profound allegory, "The Pilgrim's Ladder" ($9.99 in paperback from CreateSpace).

Author Ryan Montoya is the 23-year-old University of Colorado Boulder student, and Paradise High School graduate, who survived a 1500-foot fall down the face of Pyramid Peak near Aspen, Colorado, dislocating his elbow and fracturing his pelvis. Though newspaper accounts reported what happened, Montoya's novel explores the deeper call of the mountains, why a bold young man would seek to touch the summit.

The words of the Elder of the valley echo throughout the novel. "Beware the long journey," the Elder tells young Micah, desperate to know about the northern mountains, "beware The Divide. Though along it you may find your answer, remember that by pain are its answers revealed."

The chapters in the four sections ("The Valley," "The Divide," "The White Mountain," "The City Of The Gods") are titled with a single word, such as pride, courtship, pain, atonement, most of which begin with an observation about the "seeker."

"The seeker is but a novice to love, for he has spent his life in the wilderness. As a child he was curious, for he had wonder. As a youth he was determined, for he had powerful desire. As a man he feels love, for his passion points to purpose. But the seeker has not yet found his purpose. … Passion and purpose, these are the seeds of love."

For Micah, and his sometime climbing companion Zachary, the mountains are almost living beings. The Twisted Peak, pridefully reaching for heaven, is punished by the gods with a kind of "malicious energy." What hope is there for a mere man to reach the summit?

Yet if the gods will, the man will live. "I will live as a man should," Micah says, "not in the realm of the gods, but in the lands far below. But … I will not forget…."

"Railroad Ties: Broken Hearts And Mended Lives"

Luana Lundquist-Rowland is a licensed Jungian-trained marriage and family therapist. The Burlingame resident lived in Oroville from 1949 through 1970. She's written a fictionalized autobiography of her early years that aims to recapture the spirit of her irrepressible brother--before the darkness of alcoholism sets in.

"Railroad Ties: Broken Hearts And Mended Lives" ($26.95 in paperback from Outskirts Press, outskirtspress.com; also for Amazon Kindle) presents the ups and downs of an American family, visiting relatives by rail, during World War II and on into the 1950s. The story begins with Luana, five years old, born in 1937, and Jimmy, born a year later. Jimmy is "a needy, fussy, and irritable infant," and such traits continue to manifest themselves throughout Jimmy's life. For the author, there's a kind of fate at work here.

Eventually the family moves to Oroville. Tragedy strikes on March 4, 1950 when a group of girls from the Y hike to the upper Thermalito Bridge, then down to the water. One of the girls slips and falls, and she is pulled out by Deanna. But then "Deanna is caught in an undertow; this whirling surge of water sucks her down below the surface." There is no news  until August, when Deanna's remains are discovered. "That summer, Jimmy loses faith in a God that answers prayer."

Time moves on. Luana prepares to attend Chico State College. Jimmy is popular in high school but he can't resist the alcohol provided by the older boys. His addiction would become his demise.

In an Epilogue, the author writes of Jimmy that he "is born a rascal," but he also "plays the brother and the life teacher of a sister that becomes a better person for having known him in all his multiplicities of character."

In the end, the story isn't about Jimmy's destiny "as a seemingly bottomless, hopeless and incurable alcoholic." Rather, it's about "a shared childhood and a love between a brother and sister that never falters, no matter what."

Luana Lundquist-Rowland will be at the Book and Wine Pairing, Saturday, November 19, from 2:00-6:00 p.m. at Purple Line Urban Winery, 760 Safford Street in Oroville; for details visit http://bit.ly/2e8lJqe.