Sometimes you think no fiction can unnerve you. You have, after all, been in this game for some time. As a writer, as a reader, you know the ropes and the tropes. A sinister tale could really haunt you when you were a child but now the thrill is gone. Just occasionally, however, and this very rarely, a story can still crawl under your skin. Your tedious impulse to anticipate a twist, to look for the card up the author’s sleeve, is not always up to the ingenuity, or the technical skill, of a really effective writer. Alison Moore is one of these. Her stories are lean, polished – perhaps you should say whetted – and disquieting. This particular piece makes very skilful use of the second person narrative. At first, you assume that you, the reader, are being invited imaginatively into the action. This is what those choose-your-adventure books in the eighties did. (‘You meet a goblin holding a bag of gold. Do you speak to the goblin? Go to page 73. Do you cut off its head and steal the gold? Go to page 102.’) But this is not what’s going on here. Gradually, you realise that there is a narrator who is also an antagonist. As you get deeper into the intrigue, you come to understand the significance of what you have already read. Small details and episodes come into new focus. You are in terrible peril, and for some time you have had no inkling of it… The second person point-of-view is hard to sustain unless you, the writer, have a very good technical reason to use it. Alison Moore has a very good reason. Which is also a very nasty reason. You have read this story in writing workshop, and it’s quite a thrill to watch the class as the penny drops. Is it a profound work of literature? Perhaps not. Has it etched itself into your memory? Most certainly. And that is why it sits at the end of your personal anthology.
First published in The Screaming Book of Horror, Screaming Dreams Press, 2012. Collected in The Pre-War House and other stories by Alison Moore, Salt Publishing, Norwich, 2013
A Personal Anthology 