Fiction Friday: Split Scream Volume Five

Volume Five of the “Split Scream” series offers two gorgeous and immersive tales of women fighting to overcome horrific obstacles.

Tenebrous Press, the award-nominated publisher of “New Weird Horror,” has released the fifth in their Split Scream series. Each book in the Split Scream series is comprised of two novelettes, and Split Scream Volume Five pairs Scottish author Lyndsey Croal’s seaside horror story The Girl with Barnacles for Eyes with Bitter Karella’s supernatural Western The Ballad of Horse Girl.

The Girl with Barnacles for Eyes

The Girl with Barnacles for Eyes delves into the unusual relationship between Evie, an embattled young woman living with her cruel and overbearing mother, and the Girl, a beautiful sea creature who does indeed have barnacles for eyes.

She’s unable to see and is dependent on the Curator, a man who keeps her cloistered inside the museum exhibit aboard his boat. It’s an exhibit that Evie often visits to escape her luckless home life. Evie is intrigued by the Girl, even as her mother warns her of the boat museum, calling the Girl a monster. (Evie defends the Girl, saying, “She’s not a freak. She’s amazing and beautiful.”)

Evie is not deterred by the Curator’s menacing presence, even when “the sight of him and his smile that seems to split his face in two, makes her insides squirm.” She’s drawn back to the Girl again and again.

The Girl is trapped with the Curator, who mistreats her. Like Evie, she feels disgusted by him: “When he calls her ‘sweetheart,’ it makes her skin crawl, the way his voice curls the syllables like he’s savoring the taste of them.”

Aside from Evie’s visitors, the only true company the Girl has is Otto, an octopus who is being similarly taken advantage of by the curator.

Croal does a wonderful job of bringing readers into the characters’ environments, as unpleasant as they may be.

She describes the Girl being held in increasingly tighter chains; the abusive Curator told her that “she has to be locked up… so no one would be tempted to steal her away,” falsely spinning his imprisonment of her as something he’s doing to protect her.

Throughout the story, the undercurrent of violence from the Curator jeopardizes the safety of the Girl and Evie.

They are both trapped—Evie by her mother and threats from the Curator, the Girl by her barnacles and the Curator—but feel an otherworldly connection with one another.

Thinking about the Girl, Evie imagines “how alone she must feel when she’s on her own, how awful it must be when the Curator is there. It’s no kind of life to lead, trapped like that, between such options.”

Evie herself is in much the same situation. Croal deftly connects their two plights when Evie sees the Curator mistreating the Girl: “Evie feels an anger build inside her—the way he speaks to her, the way he tugs at the Girl like she’s nothing. It’s the same way Ma speaks to her.”

The Girl and Evie draw closer to one another, linked by a supernatural thread, as the story progresses, and it becomes possible that they might be able to find salvation together.

The Ballad of Horse Girl

Just as The Girl with Barnacles for Eyes embraces the watery images and the overpowering wonder of the sea, Karella’s The Ballad of Horse Girl drops readers into the arid desert with its special kind of alien beauty.

Horse Girl travels across the dry land with a mysterious companion in a casket strapped to her back. Karella describes her journey among the cacti: “The prickly pears watched her pass, silent sentinels under the shimmering red sun.”

These prickly pears are thought to grow where blood (in this case, native blood) has been spilled.

Horse Girl is on a quest to kill a man known as the Hangin’ Judge – ironically, he has survived being hanged twice since he struck a deal with the devil, which ensured a man birthed by a woman could never murder him. The Judge is drunk with his power, and he has turned the town of Santa Diablo into a place dependent on the production of snake oil and horse paste.

As the Judge’s wife, Sugar & Sache, walks through the town, she notes:

“Santa Diablo was just a few dusty streets lined with snake oil vulcanizing facilities and horse paste grinderies, smokestacks towering above the gray wooden frames of the factories and belching black smoke into the sky. Beyond them, Sugar & Sache could see an endless expanse of snake oil derricks pumping, pumping, pumping.”

The stomach-churning grossness of the town, which is due to the destruction of the environment and the murder of dozens of horses, shows the depth of the Judge’s evil. Horse Girl, who grew up with the horses of the plains, wants to end the Judge’s diabolical reign over this territory.

Karella’s gorgeous writing seamlessly blends the pitch-perfect descriptions of the desert towns (and quirky townsfolk) that Horse Girl encounters on her hunt for justice with the horrific backstory of what Horse Girl and Sugar & Sache have had to endure.

Karella also adds subtle humor to give lightness to a story about the real-world tragedies of settlers’ destruction of the West and the unforgivable treatment of native people.

(While dealing with a panicked parson, Horse Girl tells him, “Sit down and stop embarrassing me. A man of God such as yourself should be familiar with shit like this. Don’t they teach ya anything in seminary? A man’s gotta meet his maker eventually. I should think you’d be jumpin’ at the chance.”)

Sugar & Sache (who shares a mysterious connection with Horse Girl) has lived under the Judge’s thumb for years. She “had quietly accepted all the humiliations he had visited upon her” and “did not complain because she knew what it meant to complain, and she knew how much worse it could be if she complained.”

Like the titular Girl in The Girl with Barnacles for Eyes, Sugar & Sache is trapped with an abusive man. And like the Girl’s connection with Evie is the catalyst that can change her life, Sugar & Sache’s connection with Horse Girl may be the only thing that can set her free.

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Each novelette relies on life-changing relationships between two women to overcome terrifying situations. Both Croal and Karella portray the strength and complexity of these relationships, holding readers in suspense throughout the book.