FEAR ME by Tim Curran

As if the idea of being stuck inside a maximum security prison wasn’t terrifying enough, imagine if a bloodthirsty monster was locked up in there with you. 

In this novella, a prisoner at Shaddock Valley Penitentiary seems to be a meek victim for the more hardened cons, but hides a secret that will lead to more than just a prison yard shanking. Author Tim Curran does a great job of setting up the oppressive atmosphere in the prison, a hopeless place that brings out the worst in people and the darker side of humanity. But then, when prisoners begin dying in the night, the tension gets ratcheted up like crazy. The way that Curran describes what happens after lights out is pretty chilling. And even though it did get a bit repetitive at times, I appreciated how damn creepy it was. 

GRADE: B+

PUPPET GRAVEYARD by Tim Curran

I'm really curious to find out whether or not this story was written very early in Curran's career. Because it reads like it. It feels like it was written as a first draft in a college freshman writing class. Not only is the prose messy with too much telling and not enough showing, Curran also doesn't seem to have much of a grasp of his main character Kitty Seevers (Seavers/Seever). He doesn't even keep her name consistent from page to page. There also doesn't seem to be much consistency even in what little personality is there, and she seems to mostly exist solely because of the need to have a protagonist. There's a big jump in the tone of her character halfway through this novella that was so jarring that it distracted me throughout the whole last half.

And this is sad because there's potential here, with the creepy subject of a ventriloquist doll, and the fact that some of Tim Curran's other work is great, such as The Underdwelling. So it seems like I'm in the minority here, but this one really didn't work for me. It really needed a few additional drafts to make it more polished.

GRADE: D

THE UNDERDWELLING by Tim Curran

Setting and atmosphere is so important in many horror stories and this book has that in spades! This novella by cult favorite horror author Tim Curran is about a young miner who is excited for his new post on a graveyard shift team to work the bottom levels of the Hobart mine, because it means extra dough that'll help with his new baby on the way. But on his first night, a new, deeper section of the mine is revealed and because he's all macho and shit, he volunteers with a group to explore it. And what they find is a horror that's been hidden for thousands of years. 

This one is actually even better than the previous novella I've read by Curran, Blackout, mostly due to his skillful rendering of the environment: the absolute, claustrophobic darkness deep beneath the earth and the way it can break the mind, the smells, the sounds that shouldn't be there, and the hopelessness of being trapped. Curran is great at setting a scene and maintaining mood.And points for a chilling ending that's even more fucked up than I expected...

If you enjoyed The Descent, that tense, heart attack of a movie about a group of badass women discovering horrors underground and directed by my buddy Neil Marshall, you should give this novella a spin!

GRADE: B+

BLACKOUT by Tim Curran

GRADE: B-

These DarkFuse novellas are like tasty little gummi bears that I munch on in between the bigger meals. So far, they've all been fun, quick and easy reads that I can get through in a day or two. This latest one is by horror writer Tim Curran and in it, a science teacher wakes up to an immense blackout and his wife missing. He groups up with his fellow neighbors on what is usually a quiet neighborhood street and try to figure out what's happening. Then the shiny, black tentacles start dropping from the sky...

The story is fast-paced and told from the point of view of an everyday guy that could be any one of us, trying to make sense of the chaos. Even though I got the sense that the author was making up the story as he went along (with a bungled third act and the rules of the creatures not being entirely consistent), it's still an enjoyable book and reads like an homage to H.G. Wells's War of the Worlds laced with Stephen King's incredible The Mist.