We come at least the final story, about a caving expedition that goes wrong and the personal impact of it. Rounding out the collection is the Epilogue which fills in one gap while reminding us the themes of the collection.
Two post-docs at the end of their school days journey into Hell to try and bring back the soul of their mentor, Professor Jacob Grimes. Along the way, they discuss paradoxes, depictions of Hell, the many sufferings of grad school, their personal failings, and the many different ways great people can have failed legacies. It works best when it is smart and funny (and alas Kuang abandons this combination for a fair chunk of the novel’s center) and seems a quite important book, just one as flawed as the book’s characters.
A small acting troupe is launching a play in an old disco hall. Dripping water sends one of the crew up to investigate where he discovers something otherworldly. The most meta of the stories, and one of my favorites though the ending might irk some.
A luxury yacht adrift at sea. When a fisherman volunteers to help see the craft back to port, he encounters the darkness which left it abandoned in the first place.
A fairly satisfying horror story about a quick sailboat excursion brushing up against something darker. It spends little time on speculation and more on the social awkwardness of the situation, which is perhaps what makes it work so well.
Hiroyuki is a miserable man. Miserable in his life. Miserable to be around. A fisherman, Hiroyuki is abusive to his son and his wife. Though successful in catching eels, he feels trapped by his family. One day he wakes up and his wife is gone and he feels a strange fear of getting back out on the water.
The second story in the Dark Water collection is a lesser tale — perhaps the weakest in the collection — but there is a sense that there is perhaps something underneath.
A divorced mom navigates a sense of dread as a series of strange coincidences lead her to suspect something sinister is going on with the water in her apartment building. A subtle horror story about the growing weight of old generations.
With the recent death of Japanese horror author, Koji Suzuki, I thought it might be nice to revisit one of my favorite horror anthologies and do a bit of a deep dive over the next seven days.
A nunsploitation horror that belts out several gross notes and moments of fairly extreme cruelty but which still manages to tell an engaging story. Only for those who are ok with the harder edge of horror, but when it hits it hits.