The narrator of “The Only Thing I Can’t Tell You Is Why” believes her new baby is dead, even as he gurgles and burps. Stories can be brief and impressionistic, leaving the reader with a nagging lack of closure in “Half Sick of Shadows”, apparently caring parents find an apt way to rid themselves of a small child, for reasons unknown. “Things My Wife and I Found Hidden in Our House” mixes the contemporary and folkloric as a couple unwittingly summon up a kelpie. But Big Pop’s secret isn’t just green fingers. A young woman returns to the house of her dead father: “Big Pop, terror of the town, half the teeth smacked out of his head.” The building is surrounded by the sunflowers only Big Pop could get to grow so far north, “their heavy heads like hoods on drooping necks, their leaves twitching like hands”. In “My House Is Out Where the Lights End”, one of the more straightforward chillers, nature exudes a patriarchal menace.
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