The book: Shoebox Trainwreck
The story: “Long Fall Into Nothing”
The review:
Horror, despite what detractors may tell you, is a diverse genre. It is more than serial killers and zombies, it is more than the latest Stephen King opus on the paperback rack at Wal-Mart. Because horror is an emotion and not a plot element, most genres of literature have a vein of horror running through them, from gritty war dramas to science fiction dystopias. I consider this “horror-adjacent” fiction: not something that would likely be shelved in the slim horror section of a bookstore, but certainly the type of story that would appeal to the sensibilities of the horror enthusiast.
Which brings us to John Mantooth, and his short story collection, Shoebox Trainwreck, published by Lethe Press. Mantooth is no stranger to the horror community: his books have been blurbed by Laird Barron and Paul Tremblay, and his first novel was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award. And yet, most of the stories in Shoebox Trainwreck are not horror stories in the traditional sense. Mantooth eschews monsters (at least supernatural ones); instead, he peoples his stories with two-bit drug dealers and alcoholics, scarred kids and broken men fresh out of second chances. In “The Water Tower,” two young teenagers trek across the blasted landscape behind their trailer park to escape their lousy home lives. The main character in “This Is the Way the Road Ends” tries desperately to stay ahead of his own sin-riddled past. “Halloween Comes to County Rd. Seven” finds a washout father trapped in a violent confrontation between two drug dealers. These are not stories of horror so much as stories of hopelessness, broken dreams and cloudy futures.
Most writers (just like most musicians) remind me of somebody else. I know it’s reductive as hell to define someone by who they sound like, but I can’t help it. Mantooth reminds me of Ed Gorman, whose crime and suspense stories were filled with a similar mix of menace and heartbreak. Just as Gorman could make his midwestern locales and people seem real, Mantooth does the same for rural Alabama. Mantooth also has more than a little bit of Shirley Jackson in him, and his ability to mix mainstream, horror, and crime elements is something Jackson was a master at.
“A Long Fall Into Nothing” is a good example of Mantooth’s “horror adjacent” work. The main character is an troubled teenaged boy, haunted by the suicide death of his mother. He falls in with Larry, a sociopathic teen who begins riding the school bus with him. At first, our protagonist (he is never named) finds Larry’s apathy and capacity for violence appealing, but it takes a sour turn, culminating in an act of violence on the bus that is both shocking and seemingly inevitable. Mantooth captures what it’s like to be fifteen years old, what it’s like to live in a nowhere town with a nowhere future.
In traditional horror fiction, the supernatural beasties and psycho slashers often serve as a metaphor for our fears and anxieties. In the best stories in Shoebox Trainwreck, Mantooth jettisons metaphor entirely. This is us, he says. This is what we deal with, if you’re willing to look closely, to truly see. Time and again, these stories find the pulse of horror that thrums through our daily lives. To me, that’s scarier than a whole army of zombies. Much scarier.