Got a Black Magic Woman

by Tony Fonseca

02/08/2006

Massey, Brandon. Within the Shadows. New York: Kensington, 2005. 357 p.

I first ran across Brandon Massey's fiction a few years ago, when I picked up a wonderful crossover YA/adult horror novel entitled Thunderland (2002). In it, Massey introduced readers to a young boy named Jason, the son of a workaholic father and alcoholic mother. Jason reacts to the abuse from the latter by producing what is in essence an adult alter ego named Mr. Magic. As any proper adult would, Mr. Magic helps Jason deal with his abusers, but becomes overprotective and, well this being the world of horror, we can all pretty much predict what happens to anyone who then even looks at Jason askance. It is not difficult to imagine that Within the Shadows' thirty-one-year-old Andrew Wilson is the grown up version of this boy. And being this is a much more adult adventure, Mr. Magic has been replaced with a powerfully erotic seductress/protector named Mika.

Massey borrows a few ideas from various Stephen King novels in Within the Shadows.¹ Like the protagonist in Bag of Bones (Massey reproduces King's refrigerator magnet scene), the main character here is a novelist. Wilson writes occult adventure stories under the pseudonym Mark Justice, and like Mike Noonan of King's novel, he is visited by otherworldly spirits, and eventually finds himself in a tug-of-war between two supernatural presences. Like King's novel, Within the Shadows begins rather modestly, with an everyday scene: Wilson and his estranged father, Raymond, are returning from a few rounds of golf in one of their continued attempts to get to know one another. But soon, their ordinary world is shattered by a mysterious force that causes the father to veer off the interstate, taking a supernatural road less traveled. An accident occurs, and Wilson finds himself confronted with a strange mansion, which he enters, changing his life forever.

The novel then moves back into the natural world, and we meet Wilson's friends, an old neighborhood pal named Eric and a long-time platonic female buddy named Carmen, for whom Wilson harbors a secret love. Enter into this bucolic paradise Mika, a gorgeous vixen that immediately becomes possessive of Wilson. Faster than you can say "steamy sex scenes," she has decided that Andrew Wilson is her soul-mate, and she becomes his personal stalker. Add to the mix three crazed Russian Blues (anyone who has ever owned one of these cats knows that all they have to do is sit and stare at you to seem evil) and the spirit of a young boy named Sammy, who likes to communicate via Microsoft Word files and Scrabble boards, and you've got yourself one eerie little novel.

Unfortunately for Wilson, he did not pay enough heed to the old Richard Pryor routine about why black people, unlike white people, do NOT stick around when faced with a haunted situation. Almost any reader can figure out pretty quickly that Mika is not your average woman. In fact, she comes across as being superhuman in many a scene. Understandably, a pragmatist such as Wilson would dismiss something a tad amiss about a situation as having some kind of logical explanation. However, if my friendly MS Word spirit were to tell me that I should beware "her," and then say "she's hear" right before a certain woman rang my doorbell, I would be rather inclined to think that this particular woman harbored some kind of dark secret, and had some connection to a world beyond the one I inhabit as a normal, practical human being. And then if I watched that woman single-handedly throw across a room a table top that me and my best friend had to both carry and balance on its stand, well, I'd start thinking that just maybe this woman ain't exactly just a woman.

But this isn't the only example of Wilson's thick-headedness. He dances around the truth of his feelings for his friend Carmen (who also secretly loves him) for the entirety of a book, a plot scheme which more than one reviewer found annoying. I was inclined to agree with these people. Finally, he avoids telling his father anything about his problems, which is truly unfortunate since his father possesses information which could help him out of his otherworldy plight. Of course, we find out that pigheadedness is hereditary.

Despite the problems I had with Wilson as a character, I found myself enjoying this novel, especially after having read the very similar version of the same story recently by Richard Matheson (Earthbound). And I have to say that I found Matheson's television writer, David, much more annoying than I did Massey's novelist. Perhaps this is because Within the Shadows is not as claustrophobic. At least half of the novel chronicles Andrew Wilson's interactions with his friends, family members, and incidental characters (such as a Research Librarian, kudos to you, Mr. Massey). This to me shows the progression of a good writer—gravitating towards a less introverted main character. I would go so far as to say the best parts of this novel are those scenes between Andrew and Carmen, Andrew and Eric, and Andrew and Raymond.

As such, Massey's "ghost story" is very much in the traditional M. R. James/Oliver Onions camp, with the spirit world slowly encroaching on what we consider the real world, ultimately taking center stage near the end of the piece. In my opinion, that is good horror writing, for it forces readers to see the possibilities of horror in their own safe little worlds. I gotta tell you, the scene where Raymond opens a briefcase and finds infinite darkness there, closes it quickly, and then goes into his living room and kitchen, turning on televisions and opening refrigerator and kitchen cabinet doors to make sure they do not have infinite darkness behind them is just plain creepy. It’s good, send a chill up your spine horror.

Of course, some readers will have a problem with the novel's pacing, finding that it starts off much too slowly. Granted, I have much more patience than most when it comes to reading. In fact, those of you who read this zine often have probably figured out by now that I'm the reviewer most likely to use the word “subtlety” as being synonymous with “quality.” Needless to say, I would recommend this novel for those of you who prefer your horror to be subtle and creeping as well. However, for those readers who prefer a quick bang, I would say give this particular Massey work a chance. If you can get through the setup, you will not be disappointed with the climax.²

¹Echoes of Carrie abound in Mika’s childhood story near the novel’s end.

²And speaking of, I would be remiss to not point out that Within the Shadows is probably the sexiest novel I have read since Jeanne Kalogridis's Children of the Vampire (think chandelier sex).