cover image Moontown

Moontown

Peter Atkins. Earthling, $0 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-9795054-5-4

In Atkins's fourth Halloween horror-fantasy (after the 1999 collection Wishmaster and Other Stories), Shelley Campbell, psychic graduate student, uses her gift to help phobic and compulsive patients. As Shelley explores one mind after another, she finds a pattern of supernatural harassment that scares victims to death. Its locus is the dreamlike Moontown, which soon intrudes into Shelley's mind and the real world. This finely written and sharply told tale is a strong example of modern horror, though it suffers from some of the genre's less desirable tics. Shelley doesn't seem to notice the constant sexual threat and objectification her creepy boss subjects her to, but readers will have trouble ignoring it. On the other hand, she's quite capable of rescuing herself, and the kaleidoscope of peril successfully keeps readers guessing and gasping even when the plot thread slackens.