Book Review: "It Waits in the Woods" by Josh Malerman

“There was a truth she was trying to deny, listening again for that pleading: no matter how much a family has grieved, if their missing loved one had not been found, alive or dead, there was always hope.”

- It Waits in the Woods by Josh Malerman

I remember reading the book Bird Box shortly before that show/film came out (I didn't watch it, I wouldn't know) and honestly, I didn't really think too much about it because it seemed a bit predictable. But when we look at the short story It Waits in the Woods, we see Josh Malerman really come into his own, telling us backstories and giving us atmospheres. It weaves its weird fingers around us and gives us a very gripping narrative.

All in all, it feels much better than others in the 'Creature Feature'. This is story number three. Number 1 is The Pram by Joe Hill which was awful, and then Grady Hendrix's Ankle Snatcher which was the most boring horror story I have read in a very, very long time with the most uninteresting protagonist in the history of blandness. I am glad I didn't give up before I hit gold.

This is a story about two girls names Brenda and Amanda. They are the Jennings sisters and they live in Michigan. More than often, they like making movies together with Amanda starring and Brenda directing and filmmaking. They are both these perfectly normal teenagers and then one day, Amanda disappears. Seemingly carried off without a trace, rumours start to circulate about a murderer or a psychopath, one though seems to stand out: it's name is Opso.

Opso is an old legend about a woodland creature who seeks out faces to replace its own. It waits beyond the normality of the woods and manages to hide between the realms of real and fantasy in the forest. The bridge that leads to nowhere and apparently, a monstrous entity that once ravaged and almost complete ate a man several years' before. As years went on and after Amanda disappeared, Brenda finds herself blamed by her parents on national television for not keeping an eye on her sister when they were both with their friends at the time.

After not really finding any answers, Brenda decides that the only thing that she can do is go back to the place where her sister vanished and look for Amanda herself. She straps up and she knows that she is looking for a strange bridge before looking for a strange creature because a murderer might be out there, but she honestly believes that the creature's story might ring with more truth than anything else. As she goes on her journey, she tries to record all she can.

One thing that I liked about this story is that there is ample background before we get into the narrative related to Brenda and Amanda. Normally, a story like this would start with the idea that we need to be 'tricked' into thinking it is a person and then the big reveal is that it isn't. I think this story, starting off with the background to the Opso legend, made itself different and made itself sound like a local legend that has been around for years and years. It made itself almost folkloric. And you all know how I feel about folklore. I love it.

Another thing I love about this story was the fact it was mostly set in a forest. The forest atmosphere seems to be underrated in horror fiction nowadays with writers more than often believing that it is 'generic' and doesn't have the 'American Psycho' quality of a cityscape. There is something so naturally haunting about woodlands that there is not much work to do to make them frightening. Think of how difficult it is to make something like a cityscape scary. Woodland horror is normally more frightening just because it is set in a woodland. I really respect this writer for setting his story in such a place. It allows all the folkloric horror to be drip-fed to the reader.

All in all, I thought that this is by far the best story from the anthology so far but I still have some more stories to go. I'm holding out hope for the story by Paul Tremblay because I usually love his stuff.