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Back When Darkness Loves Us
Chapters (56)
  1. CoverImage
  2. Title page
  3. Copyright page
  4. Introduction by Grady Hendrix
  5. Foreword by Theodore Sturgeon
  6. Acknowledgments
  7. WHEN DARKNESS LOVES US
  8. Part One
  9. 1
  10. 2
  11. 3
  12. 4
  13. 5
  14. 6
  15. Part Two
  16. 1
  17. 2
  18. 3
  19. 4
  20. 5
  21. 6
  22. 7
  23. 8
  24. Part Three
  25. 1
  26. 2
  27. 3
  28. 4
  29. BEAUTY IS ...
  30. 1
  31. 2
  32. 3
  33. 4
  34. 5
  35. 6
  36. 7
  37. 8
  38. 9
  39. 10
  40. 11
  41. 12
  42. 13
  43. 14
  44. 15
  45. 16
  46. 17
  47. 18
  48. 19
  49. 20
  50. 21
  51. 22
  52. 23
  53. 24
  54. 25
  55. About the Author
  56. About the Cover

“Somebody told me writers only have one story to tell,” Engstrom says. “And that’s our story. And we dress it up in different clothes and different times and places, but it’s still our story.”

When she moved to Hawaii, Engstrom had become an outsider, and also a monster.

“You think you’re cool when you can drink more than anyone else,” she says. “And you start to become the monster a little bit. You start to do terrible things to people and you justify that in your mind saying, ‘I was drunk at the time.’ You become the monster, then you justify the monster, then you glorify the monster.”

Both Black Ambrosia and “When Darkness Loves Us” reflect the monster as a creature of both incredible strength and grotesque weakness, but “Beauty Is . . .” goes further. Its main character, Martha, is developmentally disabled and was born without a nose. Her stunted mental capacity and her facial deformity brand her as a monster, but then some local gutterpunks start getting her drunk and it feels like the story is about to crow, “Who’s the real monster now?”

But Engstrom isn’t interested in a simple switcheroo. Instead, Martha is saved from humiliation and finds friends, and a lover, and the more she’s loved, the more her mind begins to heal itself, until she’s reading, and handling her own finances. As she’s welcomed into the community, she sheds her monstrosity and becomes just another citizen. When she’s treated with love and compassion, Martha is a person, when she’s treated with hatred and contempt, she’s a monster. And, like all monsters, she’s a mirror.

Engstrom’s first three stories are full of monsters, not just Angelina, but the man who hunts her until murdering Angelina becomes a cancer that consumes his life. Not just Sally Ann Hixson but her husband who patronizes her, and her son who takes advantage of her inability to say “no” to him. Not just Martha, but her father who rejects her cruelly, and the people who exploit her. If a monster is merely something that goes further than we dared dream possible—stronger, crueler, uglier, more obsessed—then Engstrom’s stories crawl with them. Because in this world there is always a monster. And often, the monster is you.

Grady Hendrix

February 2019

Grady Hendrix is a novelist and screenwriter whose books include Horrorstör, My Best Friend’s Exorcism, and We Sold Our Souls. His history of the paperback horror boom of the Seventies and Eighties, Paperbacks from Hell, won the Stoker Award. You can stalk him at www.gradyhendrix.com.

Foreword by Theodore Sturgeon

FOREWORD

I wish you could have been there. Yes, I mean you. Let me tell you where, and why.