Elizabeth Engstrom

So this is another book I accumulated from Paperbacks From Hell, and it’s really two novellas. When I read the excerpt, I was hooked because the first story reminded me of Room, which terrified and captured me. I guess one of my fundamental fears is being trapped in a single room all alone. But this story predates Room by thirty, forty years?

A sixteen-year-old woman is accidentally trapped in a network of caves underneath a farm after a cellar door closes on her. She has no light and no companions. Only brackish water and slugs and fungus to eat. Yet somehow she lives and gives birth to a child and raises it. It’s so eerie and it moves along at a breakneck clip. Can you imagine what Morlocks these people must look like?

The second story is less scary. It’s about a mentally deficient (in the eighties, she would have been called “retarded” but apparently we don’t use that word anymore) woman who slowly starts to recover her faculties (kind of a Flowers for Algernon thing) through the power of… love? I didn’t like this one as much because it’s not scary and it ends abruptly.

These books are great because they remind me of what the horror genre must have been in its heyday when you had Stephen King leading the charge for a ton of great authors and intriguing concepts. But when the eighties left and the yuppies deserted us and the coke blew away in the wind, King was the only one left remembered.… (más)

A 16-year old newlywed, Sally Ann, living on a farm finds herself (accidentally? intentionally?) locked inside an old well complex connected to a vast underground network of caves with underground lakes and streams. Some time later, after she is unable to find a way out, she gives birth to a son, Clinton.

A visitor, whether real or imagined, I do not know, assists with the delivery of her baby.

Some unknown time after she has given birth to Clinton (time elapsed between chapters), she has a conversation with her son about what the world "up there" is like. She has a tough time explaining concepts like "light" and "sight" to someone who has experienced neither, since they live in the pitch black darkness of the caves. Clinton has no frame of reference to conceptualize what she means—except when he dreams. And if you've ever been inside a cave and turned off your headlamps, you know exactly how dreadful the darkness, even temporary as it is, can be.

Even later, when Sally Ann decides to find a way out no matter what, Clinton argues with her, telling her he doesn't believe in "his Dad" or some "world up there". And why would he, when all he has ever known his whole life is the darkness of the caves? In the caves he has everything he needs, slugs and fish to eat, fresh water to drink and swim in? Why would he want anything "up there", assuming "up there" even exists?

What a profound metaphor Engstrom creates in this underground world of darkness. Yes, when darkness loves us, as it has loved Sally Ann and Clinton for so long, people tend to choose the darkness over light.

I look forward to reading more of Elizabeth Engstrom's writing, including the second novella, "Beauty Is. . .", that completes the "Two Chilling Tales" in When Darkness Loves Us.… (más)