The Wretched Refuse of Some Teeming Shore

by Tony Fonseca

10/28/2005

Braunbeck, Gary A. Keepers. New York: Leisure, 2005. 339 p.

Great Mother of Exiles, Gary A. Braunbeck has done it again!

Those of you who remember my review of In Silent Graves (originally The Indifference of Heaven) may recall my being bowled over by an intricate, complex narrative that gave beauty to death and disfigurement, that made us see mental disabilities and physical deformities in a new light, both being an organic part of the human condition. With Keepers, this up-and-coming visionary of the most horrifying, darkest recesses of the human heart and mind forces us to discover anew two significant populations that often go unnoticed: huddled masses of mistreated and uncared for animals, and discarded senior citizens who are placed into "homes," and then promptly erased from individual minds and society's collective memory. Here, Braunbeck is again the champion of the discarded, the desolate, and the despairing. And as he did in In Silent Graves, he makes these members of our subculture worthy, dignified, lovable, and beautiful.

But Braunbeck is one of those writers who can take the chance of visiting the same theme in consecutive publications because he is, without equivocation, one of the masters of dark fiction. His characters are always realistic, painted with finely detailed brush strokes that imbue them with a brutal bluntness that makes them seem less freakish; they are indeed "one of us." Thus they are sympathetic and genuine, and typically complex in that they are never completely monstrous nor completely innocent.

Braunbeck's other strength is his extraordinary talent for leading readers through the labyrinth that is the human mind. Through these twists and turns we are as equally surprised by charming vignettes as we are by events that are tinged with surreal horror and a demented, often lurid imagination. Very few horror authors could take what is essentially a Bildungsroman, or "coming of age story," and make it gothic and intricately disturbing, but Braunbeck excels at being unconventional and clever (not one of us who has ever read them can forget those absolutely brilliant stories in the collection Escaping Purgatory). My own personal favorite aspect of a Braunbeck tale is that it is impossible to foresee not only the ending, but the story itself—or I should say the point of the story—until the very end. Reading Braunbeck is like unwrapping a well-concealed gift. You know there's something under that paper, in that box, beneath that gift paper, something that you really want to see, but you cannot guess what it is until you hold the item in your hands. And as with a gift, you will not mind being held in suspense—this I can promise—because you will find no let down when you get to that final word. As with any well-written piece of literature, Keepers is filled with subtextual stories and far-reaching symbols, adding even more philosophical, intellectual, and literary depth to an interesting story.

Where Keepers is different from In Silent Graves is in its pacing. Braunbeck typically creates atmosphere slowly, even in his short stories. In Keepers, we are introduced to a horrific scene of a strange man in a bowler hat being killed in traffic almost immediately, and not too much later, we watch a man being torn limb from limb by Doberman pinchers. The novel then flashes back to Gil Stewart's (the main character) childhood, and from that point on becomes much more evenly paced. The problem, however, is that Braunbeck gets a little too wrapped up in the childhood romance between Gil and his first love, Beth, the novel's other main character—sometimes to the point where you will find yourself forgetting that you are reading a horror novel. This makes this novel inferior to In Silent Graves, but that does not mean that Keepers becomes boring or mundane; to the contrary, Braunbeck's command of sharp, witty dialogue and spot-on characterization will keep the interest level up for readers who also enjoy mainstream fiction. Those of you who like your horror novels scary from cover to cover, however, are going to find this one disappointing.

For the rest of us, the tale of Gil Stewart, the book's narrator who is an ordinary small business owner (he runs a novelty shop that sells old albums and posters), but has a secret self of which he is entirely unaware, is a gripping one. In the opening chapter, he witnesses a gory accident in which a man who looked like he stepped out of a Magritte painting is run down in traffic. Gil, a kind soul, goes to help, and finds himself for some unknown reason handing the man his bowler. The stranger thanks him, and imparts a mysterious message which indicates that Gil has a task—to remember something very important about his true self. He goes home that night to find a mangy dog on his lawn, and the dog crawls under his house to die. Again, Gil attempts to help a soul in trouble, but is sidetracked when he gets a package in the mail, a box containing items associated with Beth, his first love who had disappeared some twenty years earlier.

This causes the story to go into flashback, where we meet Beth; her aunt Mabel, who works as a nurse in an assisted living facility; Mr. Weis, one of the elderly patients; Gil's nephew Carson, who has been institutionalized because of his Down's Syndrome; and the Keepers, funny looking men in bowler hats who seem to follow Gil everywhere. Carson has a weird ability to tell the future from comic books, and claims to have the ear of the first ever creature to inhabit the Earth, a ghoulish combination of just about every animal known to man. This creature, which goes by the name Long-Lost, is the reason for Carson's soothsaying. Eventually, Carson’s gift, Gil's love for animals and discarded humans, Beth's lack of self-worth, and Long-Lost's uncanny relationship with Gil and Carson are made clear to our narrator. Nonetheless, Gil must force himself to remember his painful past to realize why the Keepers are after him, and why the mangy mutt has chosen this night, of all nights, to come to his home to die.

When the novel does finally get done with the love affair side story, we get some of the eeriest scenes in all of horror fiction, as Gil begins piecing together the fragments of his memories in order to discover the secret of Long-Lost, of Carson, of the Keepers, of the Magritte man who was killed on the highway, and of the strange warehouse where the Keepers store animals—in what amounts to the legendary peaceable kingdom. In fact, like In Silent Graves, the main human characters in Keepers discover that mythology has a reason for its existence. While In Silent Graves delineated a history of the fallen angels, Keepers creates a history of mythological half human, half animal creatures (such as centaurs), and other amalgamated creatures (such as gryphons or unicorns). One can best sum up Braunbeck's bottom line, without giving away too much of the story, by saying that this novel is about the interconnectedness of humanity with the animal kingdom, a relationship that goes back to the beginnings of time, both scientific and biblical.

That being said, I must also add that Keepers is one of the few animal rights tracts to don a horror novel mask (see for example, the review of Jack Ketchum's Red), and it is easily the most masterfully conceived and written. It will serve to remind you of the importance of kindnesses to all creatures, even the most wretched—like "throwaway pets" and the unloved elderly stuck in "old folks' homes," and all unwanted creatures that are invisible to most humans of the world. How rare it is to find a horror author who consistently finds genuine ways of challenging readers' minds while touching their hearts. Braunbeck is indeed special in this regard.