Good Night, Sleep Tight by Brian Evenson
Read it here in about 10 minutes.
Thinking about why I love it…
I love stories that are divided into sections, and in this particular story we have a division into two sections, although there’s no clear reason why that is (i.e. there are no section titles; the sections don’t clearly correspond with the protagonist’s childhood and adulthood; the divisions do not mark ‘before’ and ‘after’…). I feel that, with no clear reason, the division adds intrigue and a build up of tension as you read. After I finished reading, I pondered the meaning of the two sections, and decided it relates to the protagonist’s realisation about his mother(s) (I mother; II mothers) – I think this interpretation makes it all the more creepy.
This story is a wonderful mix of predictable, in terms of the reveal about the mother at the end, and it is unresolved, ending with the second mother in the doorway about to enter the bedroom of the child, yet it is also unexpected, as the monster does not kill, or eat, or physically harm the protagonist, or his son, or even his wife; instead, the monster seems simply to enjoy causing terror, and creating a lifelong fear of the dark that cannot be escaped, even as an adult. This twist means the predictability and lack of resolution don’t matter, because what stays with the reader after they’ve left the story behind is not the immediate threat of the monster, but the knowledge that this horror will continue.
A few years ago, I wrote about Evenson’s story ‘A Collapse of Horses’, which you can see here.
Mina Ma 