A tale of a Native American family, this is a slow burn horror that digs through the tragedies that can strike when people are pulled between past and future.
Junior's father died when he was very young, leaving him, his mother and his younger brother, Dino, to make a life for themselves, eventually off the reservation. Their life is hard, and only getting more so, as Dino begins to show an increasing susceptibility to seizures, linked to a neurological disorder leaving him with impaired mental faculties.
Late one night, having undergone one of his frequent sleepwalks, Junior detects the hint of a shadow, in the form of a man dressed as a Fancy dancer, something Junior believes his father wanted but could never have. This leads to Junior's mounting obsession with his father's return from death, as a ghost sneaking through their lives, with unknown motive and ambition.
Some of the best horror in this comes from Junior's own attempts to contact his father, with the use of various ligatures in order to induce "dead feet", so that he can dream walk into the world after this one. I've always found this sort of self-damage rather creepy, so it added a couple of layers of nastiness.
It's a rather thrilling read, with more than a couple of twists and turns, which I won't spoil here, but the book ends up very far away from where it started, and occasionally has you questioning what aspects are real and what aren't. You can read it two ways, and both are nasty. Absolutely worth the short time it'll take you to read it.
Tagged: Book Horror Horrible humans Novella Print