Gary Fry treads similar territory in Lurker that he visited in his fantastic Novel ‘The Conjuring House’ also published by Dark Fuse. A move to the Moors, an imbalanced relationship and a missing child. Only this time it’s a miscarriage. This novella also journeys into the realm of cosmic horror, though with its feet firmly planted down to earth.

The author tricks you into believing you’re simply following a plot, stitching together clues and trying to understand the importance of the backstory. What he’s really doing is reaching into your mind with tentacles of fear that wriggle and scratch when you turn out the lights. Fry has the ability to set ancient monsters abroad in your imagination with terrifying precision.

We’re never sure if the protagonist Meg is still cloistered in the suffering of loss or if the terrible things she witnesses are real. But when a visit to a shale mine rattles unseen monsters beneath the earth and the ghost of a missing girl appears on a cliff we know we’re in for scary ride. At times the story meanders between Gothic and surreal. It slaloms through poles of a midlife crisis lament and dogmatic observation. This book is about cuts in many ways, political, personal and rational.

The coastal setting draws a line too, between the sea and the land. It’s this cliff edge between worlds that Fry makes us walk as we read the story. The firm ground beneath is only one slip away from a drowning. Meg walks that thin line throughout.

While she tries to figure out her new life, her altered perspective and whether her husband is cheating, she stumbles upon a horror that makes it all seem insignificant. The gnawing fears that reside in the hollow her baby left behind are soon filled with much darker events than a fragile lifestyle. Something may be cutting through the shale and cutting up the dead. Where the monsters lurk is not always in the dark crevices, often they are in the darkness when we close our eyes at night. You’ll have to discover for yourself whether something corporal is reaping the harvest of destruction in Lurker by taking a stroll along Gary Fry’s landscape of terror.