Fiction Friday: Let Gravity Seize the Dead

An evocative and mesmerizing tale from a visionary writer, “Let Gravity Seize the Dead” is an essential read for fans of horror fiction.

You may know the story of author Richard Bachman. He is, of course, Stephen King writing under a pseudonym which King concocted in order to test if he had true talent or if his success under his own name was just pure luck.

Before Bachman could establish a hearty back catalog, a sleuthing bookstore clerk recognized King’s style and went digging at the Library of Congress for publishing records.

Identifying a writer’s style is like hearing the tone of a guitar and knowing it’s Jimmy Page. A writer’s style is their fingerprint. King conceded when Bachman died of “cancer of the pseudonym,” he hadn’t written enough as Bachman to know if he was any good.

Unfortunately for Darrin Doyle, he too could not hide behind a pseudonym, nor would he get past a literary lineup if I was called in as a witness because he has style in droves, and it’s as unique as it is mesmerizing.

I’ve never seen another author who arranges words quite like him. He’s like the Yoda of horror literature: speaks, he does, and listen, you do.

Let Gravity Seize the Dead is Doyle’s seventh published book, being released by Regal House Publishing.

It’s an evocative story about generations of family and the land that has been passed down like a genetic malediction.

Author Darrin Doyle

Set in both 1907 and 2007, the story follows Beck Randall, who has bought the property from his father, who is the son of Lucille, the daughter of the original settlers and builders.

Doyle echoes the 1970s shift, which saw many people move away from big cities and into small, tight-knit, salt-of-the-earth-type communities. It shows just how cyclical human behavior is. But what sets Doyle apart from, say, a novel like Joan Samson’s brilliant, tight, and terrifying tale of invasive transplants, The Auctioneer, is that he’s able to show that the horror at home can often be more devastating than any imagined beast or burden.

Every sentence is a profound poem.

Doyle is the Aronofsky, Fincher, or Nolan who paints every crevice of the screen — whose vision is too defining and worlds too full to fail.

Doyle is so skilled at his craft that he can intimate the plights of young woodland folk (one born into the woods and one thrust upon them) set one hundred years apart as if he had grown up as both of them. He takes those typical adolescent quandaries and weaves a sheet-less ghost story that the unfortunate young folk had no chance of ever avoiding. They were born into this dreadful place.

You may not ingest everything and taste a familiar profile, but keep chewing, and you’ll be rewarded with beauty and nightmares.

Beck Randall’s home is off the beaten path, down a long drive covered in woods. It’s not easy to get to, but it’s worth the hike.