There are many ways to write horror, but authors generally choose two main paths (which, of course, are riddled with forks in the road): the fantastic and the realistic . For many people, the former is not only the usual one, but the winning one. It's easy to appeal to the reader's fear when using supernatural creatures and attempting to describe the unknown. But the truth is that in everyday life, when we are horrified, it's because of reality .
While taking one path doesn't mean completely abandoning the other, it's noticeable when, in a horror story, the two paths overlap and cannot exist without each other. Sometimes it's done explicitly, sometimes the reading needs to be more in-depth. But the truth is that great horror stories affect us because, no matter how impossible the plot, in one way or another they remind us of the worst of this world.
For example, Frankenstein moves us because at some point we have all been or feared being abandoned by those who were supposed to love and protect us . Or if we appeal to Lovecraft and his horrors, we can realize that the possibility of the existence of R'lyeh and the primordial god who sleeps within it is remote, but the truth is that no one can say with certainty what is at the bottom of the sea . Or if we are readers of Stephen King, surely we have asked ourselves the question: If my son died, wouldn't I take him to a cursed cemetery if they promised me that he would live again?
Examples like the above are abundant throughout horror literature and remind us, to a greater or lesser extent, that the key is to play both notes in a harmony that does not bring us peace , but quite the opposite.
That is what Our Demons achieves, the second novel by Francisco Traslaviña and published by Sietch Editions . With 361 pages, throughout which we delve deeper and deeper into the Curtis family , the story delves into a dark fantasy plagued by demons, rituals, and sacrifices , but without ever ceasing to remember that horror may have the flavor of the impossible, but it never ceases to be just another reflection of reality.
The story
Fred Curtis is a young professor with no great professional prospects. He's lonely, somewhat addicted to alcohol, and filled with the ills of his past. But all in all, his life isn't so bad. Some members of his family are much worse off than he is, and at least he sometimes has the consolation of running into a student taking his creative writing class.
That's how he meets Mara, a seventeen-year-old girl who, in one of his classes, reads a text that moves him. But despite the student's talent, some of her behavior and the marks he notices on her skin make Fred suspect that something serious is happening at home. And he's right. Shortly after, Mara arrives at his house to ask for help because she has just committed a crime.
As if that weren't enough, Fred is forced to confront all his nightmares and bad memories again when one of his sisters calls to tell him that their mother, Karina Curtis, has died. After years away from the rest of his siblings, with the sole exception of Jonah, his twin, Fred has no choice but to prepare to see them, to say goodbye to the woman who raised him, and to return to the mansion where he witnessed so many horrible things.
Accompanied by Mara and Jonah, whom he takes from a mental hospital so he can participate in the funeral and the reading of the will, the protagonist gradually reveals the true extent of what he and his brother went through. Because everything indicates that the statements Jonah made seven years ago, for which he was labeled a lunatic, were not a figment of his imagination. Everything indicates that Karina Curtis really did make pacts with demons and sacrifice children and animals with the help of her servants.
Apparently, the Curtis inheritance involves not only money and property, but a curse.
Family trauma
Our Demons never hides its fantastical side. From the title onward, through the cover and the first pages, it's seemingly clear that the author's path was that of the supernatural . And so it is. Thanks to the perspective of Fred, one of the Curtises who witnessed many of the horrors committed by his mother, readers soon side with Jonah, the family member disowned for speaking the truth .
As the story progresses, these are no longer just a collection of memories, but become real experiences, lived not only by family members. When the Curtis siblings must go to the mansion to participate in the final test their mother left them before she died, several of them do so accompanied by friends, coworkers, the psychiatrist, and, in Fred's case, his student Mara, with whom he is now an accomplice as a cover-up artist.
Thanks to these "guests," the perspective broadens and the conflict ceases to be solely within the circle of siblings, becoming what it always was: a curse that has collateral damage, consuming neighbors, orphaned children brought in the past as sacrifices, friends, and ultimately anyone who comes too close to the family and/or their property.
But one of the most interesting things is the bond between Mara and Jonah , especially when comparing their stories. At first glance, they may seem like very different characters, but a closer look shows how, in a good horror film, the real and the fantastical intertwine.
Mara is a young woman whose life is completely shattered. Her rights violated by those who were supposed to protect her the most, she reached a breaking point where she finally decided to take justice into her own hands . This decision makes her a fugitive from justice, but we see no remorse in her, since when she asked for help, not only did they not give it to her, but they also called her a liar.
For his part, Jonah endured his mother's atrocities for years, until the sacrifice became too great and he attempted revenge . But Karina Curtis's protection network was too powerful, then and later, leading the youngest Curtis to become an outcast to the world and his own family . Locked away in a mental asylum for seven years, he was disowned by all his siblings except for Fred, who, while never completely abandoning him, preferred to lie rather than suffer the same fate .
Both characters suffered abuse from family members and were damaged both physically and psychologically. They were abandoned to their fate by people who didn't actively participate in the abuse, but who also did nothing to prevent it. And both, when they spoke out, were ignored or rejected .
Plagued by demons in the strict sense of the word or human demons, those who walk with us day after day even if we don't realize it, this story shows us the effects of family abuse , abandonment , negligence and evil , which tastes even worse when it is reflected in the faces of those who are supposed to love us.
A novel that takes the path of the fantastic and the real, only to remind us that the worst horror is the one that continues here when we close the book.
Review and analysis: Aileen Pinto
