[REVIEW] Nightfall and Other Dangers by Jacob Steven Mohr
This year is shaping up to be the hall of fame of short stories and Jacob’s collection is among the best I’ve ever read. There was not one single story that I disliked and several that I loved so much that it was incredibly difficult to pick my favorites for the highlight below. Many of the stories have what I like to call a “found footage touch” to them, meaning, they’re written in the form of emails, letters, and confessions, which makes the tales more interesting and engaging. The pace of the majority of the stories was fast but none of them felt rushed or confusing. They cover a wide range of times and places; from the Old Wild West to a 19th-century boy’s home, a small town in the early 2000s, and a contemporary house in the suburbs.
The best way for me to explain how much I enjoyed this collection is to describe the context in which I read it. I started this book at 9p.m, intending to read only a story or two before going to bed but it did not happen. Instead, I was blessed with the best kind of reading experience, the one where you become so transfixed by the stories that you can’t put the book down. These tales gripped me so hard that I forgot about sleep entirely, I just kept reading and reading and reading until it was almost 2a.m and the book was finished. This collection gave me the thrill of being 12 years old and staying up way past my bedtime because I was too caught up in the joy of reading. I highly recommend this to both horror and short story fans alike.
Nostalgia - This is the shortest story in the collection, not even half a page long, and yet I adore it so much that it’s hard to put into words.
The Panic - Think found footage excellence, but instead of footage, it’s emails. I love stories that are told through different pieces of media, i.e: e-mails, letters, “audio transcriptions,” documents, news clippings, pictures, etc. The Panic has all of those and it’s about a conspiracy theory, so it’s no surprise that this was my favorite story in the collection (1855 is a very close second though).
Mister Mickenzie - If you liked the story of the “babysitter who finds a clown statue in the kid’s room and the parents tell her to flee with the children because they have no statue,” you’ll love this. It’s told in the first person by an unreliable narrator that you can’t help but believe their narrative. This also further solidified my view that children are terrifying and that we should all be a bit wearier of seemingly innocent childhood “games.”
1855 - Here we have a tale of suspicious fires, possession and an orphaned child told through a (desperate)letter. The best endorsement (and spoiler-free description)I can give is that this story actually had me scared of, not only, going to sleep but of my own bedclothes. It’s a remarkable thing when an author is able to take a symbol of comfort and safety; the sheets that we pull over our heads to protect ourselves from the dark and what hides there, and make that symbol become the source of the fear.
