Deathwatch

by | Aug 4, 2013 | Reviews

Lisa Mannetti may be the most stylistic and intellectual horror writer I’ve ever read.  Her ‘acquaintance with letters’ is outstanding, stimulating, and at times evocatively romantic (not to exclude downright sexy!).

Deathwatch contains two novellas, both written after penning her Stoker Award winning novel The Gentling Box.  Deathwatch compliments The Gentling Box with its nod to the novel’s supernatural styling and period fiction, but both stories Deathwatch are its superior in my opinion in terms of narration and edge of your seat horror.

‘Disillusion’, the first novella in the collection (and a Bram Stoker nominee)  is a turn of the century piece that evokes horrific mental images comparable to scenes from The Modern Prometheus, Lolita, and Ghost Story.  Stuart Granville is a disgraced medical student who had been suspended from school due to alcohol abuse.  He accepts a job as a tutor for the young twin daughters of a doctor on a country estate, hoping to dry himself out and collect his thoughts in the process.  When Granville arrives at the doctor’s home he discovers that he has been deceived.  It seems that the twins are physically joined together at the hip and the doctor has hired Granville to assist him in an attempt to separate them, an operation that as of yet has never been done sucessfully.  Granville also discovers that there is a supernatural presence at the estate. The twin’s dead mother haunts the grounds looking to return to the living, and she is more than willing to use her daughters in any way it takes to insure that happens.

‘Sheila Na Gig’ is the follow up novella and it too is set at the turn of the century, but in a setting that is much more humble and decrepit than ‘Disillusion’.  Tom Smith lives on a farm in Ireland with an extended family that includes his aunt, cousins, and grandmother. Tom falls in love with his cousin Ellie, and she too is smitten with the young man.  But we soon learn that Ellie is a victim of sexual abuse by Tom’s father, resulting in her leaving the farm.  Tom’s grandmother, Rose, is a witch, an evil sorceress who uses her abilities to control the family into doing her bidding as well as tormenting them for amusement.  Rose promises Tom that she can bring Ellie back to him if he brings to her small stone carving of a woman with her legs spread wide open.  The carving is called Sheila Na Gig and it is buried near a church.  Despite his hate for his grandmother, Tom has to decide if he is going to dig up the Sheila Na Gig and bring the love of his life back to him.  Without giving away spoilers, I will say that Tom’s decision results in a living hell.

Both stories in Deathwatch are nightmarish, horrific; and while both plot lines involve supernatural intervention, the most affecting horror derives from the decisions made by the main characters themselves.  Both Stuart Granville and Tom Smith have opportunities to escape their fates by taking the morally high ground when executing their decisions.  Instead they succumb to the basest of human instincts, lust and revenge, and as readers, we couldn’t be any more shocked and entertained as a result.

Mannetti knows how to get under a readers skin and deep into their head by first lulling us with prose that is at turns literary and spellbinding.  Her settings are rich in period detail and her characters true to the times.  Her aim is to engross us with her stylish narrative and she succeeds brilliantly, so we are unprepared when the story turns dark and spine chilling.  When she peppers her narrative with scenes of graphic language, carnal activities, and gruesome action, we can’t help but be shocked.  And when she lets us into the minds of the characters to feel the terror they are experiencing, we are all too willing to feel their fears as our own.

I highly recommend you pick up Deathwatch.  (Collectors of Mannetti take note, there will be a new edition of Deathwatch coming at the end of this year from Nightscape Press).

 

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