Small Spaces

Small Spaces

By Katherine Arden

After suffering a tragic loss, eleven-year-old Ollie only finds solace in books. So when she happens upon a crazed woman at the river threatening to throw a book into the water, Ollie doesn't think--she just acts, stealing the book and running away. As she begins to read the slender volume, Ollie discovers a chilling story about a girl named Beth, the two brothers who both loved her, and a peculiar deal made with "the smiling man," a sinister specter who grants your most tightly held wish, but only for the ultimate price.

Ollie is captivated by the tale until her school trip the next day to Smoke Hollow, a local farm with a haunting history all its own. There she stumbles upon the graves of the very people she's been reading about. Could it be the story about the smiling man is true? Ollie doesn't have too long to think about the answer to that. On the way home, the school bus breaks down, sending their teacher back to the farm for help. But the strange bus driver has some advice for the kids left behind in his care: "Best get moving. At nightfall they'll come for the rest of you." Nightfall is, indeed, fast descending when Ollie's previously broken digital wristwatch, a keepsake reminder of better times, begins a startling countdown and delivers a terrifying message: RUN.

Only Ollie and two of her classmates heed the bus driver's warning. As the trio head out into the woods--bordered by a field of scarecrows that seem to be watching them--the bus driver has just one final piece of advice for Ollie and her friends: "Avoid large places. Keep to small."

I do think that children's stories (and children, really) have a better grasp on visceral horror.  Yes, it's terrifying to be chased by a masked killer, but you know what will scar you for life? A man with hot dogs for fingers, with the ends split out.  Just ask me and my brother, courtesy of Nothing But Trouble.  It's like what the Counting Crows asked: We were perfect when we started/I've been wondering where we've gone" - the answer is Nothing But Trouble, my friend.  Even thinking of it today makes me want to vomit.  Now that's horror.  Or, conversely, a scarecrow skinning an old farmer. Shoutout to Harold!  Adult horror is about real things, twisted, or targeting you.  Children's horror is about that stomach-churning feeling you have before the figure turns and you realize that the person's hand you've been holding isn't your mother after all.

That's the good thing about it.  However, it can be hard to sustain for long periods.  I do think that the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark series is the apex of children's horror, as they manage to get in, get the job done, and get out in like, ten pages or less.  Books are much harder to keep tense for that length of time, although I do think there are some recent good ones: Boneshaker, which is definitely more children's than YA, and bears some similarities to the classic Something Wicked This Way Comes, as it plays on the fear of the carnival (and come on, who isn't scared of carnivals?  I once got extremely ripped off by a carny, and frankly was lucky not to face worse).  In the older category, I think The Diviners created a bogeyman that felt like he hadn't been created by Bray at all but stolen from our collective imagination.  I don't think the sequels were as successful in that, though.

Anyway, three paragraphs in, maybe I'll finally start talking about Small Spaces.  It's good!  It is a horror story, or a ghost story, but not a horror ghost story, because it's also about grieving and accepting that sometimes, it's just better not to raise the dead.  (With all due respect to Stephen King and Buffy, at least Ollie has the sense to figure that out before the dead get raised).

I really like Arden's work in the Winternight Trilogy, which I've reviewed here earlier, and Small Spaces is also well written and spooky.  The biggest hurdle is keeping the tension up throughout the entire book.  It's about two hundred pages, and the first half is a lot of set up - Ollie's mother's death, Ollie's frustration with the school system and her fellow classmates, her taking the book and getting wrapped up in it, and then increasingly concerned during the school trip to the farm.  I don't know if the pacing is entirely successful, although I don't think a longer book is the answer. It was very nicely atmospheric (can't go wrong with fog and scarecrows, as Harold knows) and would be a fun read on an autumn night.  The messages on her watch also allow Arden to keep her characters moving forward without forcing too much guesswork or unrealistic knowledge on them - the obviousness of the deus ex machina somehow makes it more palatable.

I also don't know that it quite coalesced at the end - she poured some water on the scarecrows, and that turned them to dust, but then it also started raining?  It's a little glossed over, while I need everything spelled out.  It also wasn't clear to me why this one particular family kept running afoul of the Man even though at the end it seemed like he would do a deal with anyone, and if anyone would be reluctant to make bargains, you'd think it would be the descendants of the ones who had already faced him and lost.

 On the whole though, it's a clever, well-written addition to the pantheon of children's horror.  It's also (as you'll see in other reviews) a lovely coming to terms with grief and letting someone go, and finding joy in life again. Ollie's mother's death haunts Ollie, but as everyone could stand to learn as a child: just because it's a spook, doesn't make it bad.  Embrace your inner demon!

36: A Ghost Story