Three siblings (who are triplets) reluctantly return to their hometown after many years away to attend their estranged father’s funeral. The three of them are confronting bad and unwelcome memories from back when they were first-graders--when the children in their class (themselves included) were coerced into lying about their teacher and her adult son, which resulted in destroying two lives. This short story was on the dark and depressing side, but it held me captivated, nonetheless. Well-written and atmospheric, this made for a good quick read. ( )

Mass Confirmation Bias
Review of the Amazon Original Kindle eBook edition (July 2019)

This was a effective creepy story about the mass haunting of a small town as a result of their own persecution of a family. There is no specific true-life basis stated, but it does seem inspired by the notorious McMartin Preschool case.

Loam is 1 of 6 short stories/novellas in the Amazon Original Disorder Series. Stories that get inside your head. From small-town witch hunts to mass incarceration to exploitations of the flesh, this chilling collection of twisted short stories imagines the horrors of a modern world not unlike our own. ( )

Three siblings travel back to a hometown they’d left far in the past, glad to forget it except in nightmares. They’re going to bury their father and handle his estate. But before they even get into town, they find themselves confronted with horrors from their childhood and with the guilt of what they had done all those years ago.

Loam is one of those stories that starts out reading like some slice-of-life family-drama sort of thing–relatively innocent and safe for the most part. But as the story proceeds and the author starts unpacking the skeletons in this particular family’s closet, the horror element begins building gradually, atmospherically, until by the time you get to their childhood home, you’re ready for something horrific to jump out at you. Nothing ever does quite jump out, which is almost worse, leaving a slimy feeling that it might at any time. The ending is kind of like that, too–open-ended enough that we don’t know if the horror is actually over or not. I’ve heard some people complain that the story “just ends abruptly,” but I liked the way it left things open for interpretation rather than tying everything up nearly, which I honestly think might have killed the story. Also of note, the author does a fabulous job of giving us a lot of backstory early on, so we’ve got context, without making it an info-dump. There’s a lot of detail woven seamlessly into the story in such a way that it’s just picked up on without even realizing it sometimes. The author also employs an interesting use of flashbacks mixed with the main storyline to give us more information and build the tension. The use of potentially faulty memories adds an interesting sense of uncertainty to the atmosphere as well. I will say that Loam feels like a story that would generally fit better in a short story collection than as a standalone novella, but it was still an enjoyable, eerie read. ( )