More Frightening Than Any Monster

by June Pulliam

01/17/2005

McCrann, Michael. Midnight Tableau. Ontario, Canada: Double Dragon Press, 2004. 178 p.

McCrann's particular type of horror in Midnight Tableau focuses on something more frightening than any monster: the frailties of individuals and the desperate situations they are cast into because of these weaknesses. Some of the stories are humorous, such as "Forever Isabella," which is about Harry, a painfully shy college student who has not been successful with the opposite sex, let alone being able to get a date with Isabella, the girl of his dreams. This changes when Harry is able to concoct a highly effective aphrodisiac and administer it to Isabella.

"The Pledge" is yet another of McCrann's humorous stories. Rodger will do absolutely anything to join Sigma Phi, whether it's eat an olive that has been crammed through the anus of another pledge, wear women's underwear for a week, or commit felonious assault in order to bring his brothers proof of his loyalty. In both stories, the desperate and lonely protagonists learn the meaning of the old saw "be careful what you wish for," as the desired end turns out to not be what it promised, but instead, something unspeakably horrible.

"What Needs Doing Will Get Done," and "Awake" are examples of the weird tales in this collection, those hard to define stories whose plots are, for want of a better word, strange. In the former, Jack Murphy is desperate as his six year old son has been plagued all of his brief life with daily bouts of inconsolable weeping for no apparent reason. Jack and his exhausted wife have tried everything from consulting doctors and psychiatrists to changing their son's diet, to moving to the suburbs, all without success. Then one day Jack discovers a creature that lives in the town's storm drains whose depths are unfathomable. When the creature is fed living beings, things go well for whoever provided its dinner, which is all well and good at first when the "snacks" are relatively small. However, anyone wishing to continue to be on the receiving end of the good fortune brought about by this creature must continue to satiate it's increasingly vociferous appetite.

And one can easily imagine "Awake" as a script for a Twilight Zone episode. During World War II, John has been captured and brought to an enemy island on the South Pacific where his captors keep him awake in order to extract information from him. They are amazed when John not only endures this punishment, but remains awake longer than any prisoner on record, and when his sleep deprivation becomes the gateway to another world and gives him special powers.

These special powers developed out of adversity are something John has in common with Nancy Callahan in the final piece of the collection, "Coven of the Unwanted," a novella whose ending is reminiscent of Lord of the Flies. As director of the Pine Grove School, Nancy Callahan is responsible for reforming juvenile delinquents mandated to stay there by the court. However, in truth, Nancy realizes that her institution is completely unable to change for the better lives that have been on a downward trajectory since birth. At best, the Pine Grove School can only delay its inmates's inevitable fates: drugs, jail, abusive relationships and early death.

A second, more sobering thing that Nancy and her coworkers realize is that there are far more inmates in this remotely located facility than there are people able to contain them, and it is only through a sort of psychological slight of hand that their charges are prompted to obey the rules to a degree sufficient to maintain the institution's balance of power. All of this will change with the admission of Jessica, a new inmate, a girl whose sexually abusive father burned her so badly that she no longer has any lips, and her teeth and tongue are exposed, setting her face into a permanent snarl. Nancy allows the pity she feels for Jessica to cause her to ignore the advice of the police officers in whose custody she arrived that she is too dangerous to be contained in Pine Grove and should be sent to a more traditional facility meant to contain violent offenders. That is unfortunate, as it is this girl who will ultimately be the cause of the Pine Grove School staff running for their lives.

And as in all of McCrann's stories, this event is fated to happen due to the frailty of the individual. Well educated and over six foot tall, one would think that Nancy would have both the mental and physical attributes to easily persuade others to do her bidding, or at any rate, be able to assess whether or not a new inmate is enough of a security risk to warrant detention in a more secure facility. But Nancy is unable to use her size and education to her advantage, and thus, it is inevitable that she will be the weakest link in the puny chain of personnel tasked with controlling a much larger number of juvenile delinquents who are extremely pissed off, at being told what to do, at begin incarcerated, and most of all, the latest in a string of adults who are either unwilling or unable to protect them and teach them what they need to know to live in this world. Thus the ensuing mutiny is inevitable, and the school's remote and rural location means that it impossible to call for help, so Nancy and some of her staff are hunted through the thick woods that were meant to protect the inmates from outside interference. However, not surprisingly Nancy's ordeal causes her to discover strengths she didn't know she had. In this regard, she is more fortunate than some of the other characters in this collection.

Midnight Tableau will appeal to readers who prefer psychological to supernatural horror in that even in the most fantastic of stories, the would-be supernatural element could possibly be a matter of perception. However, McCrann's ability to carefully craft characters and situations that are believable in spite of the stories fantastical elements will win him fans among more mainstream readers as well.