THESE THINGS THAT WALK BEHIND ME

Otherworldly entities and unspeakable atrocities torment the characters in Surface’s collection of 14 horror tales.

In the opening story, “Give Me Back My Name,” Rob has settled into married life with Carrie. But he had a life before her, one he fled two decades ago. When Rob lies to Carrie to keep his secrets buried, his past comes back to haunt him in a way he could never anticipate. The narratives thrive on unease and ingrained fears; the World War II-era “Eyes Like Small Black Stones” finds Cassie and her son Jack staying with her father while her husband fights in Germany. What awaits them at her father’s home is a malevolence—something Cassie may have known was there all along. Many of these tales forgo a tangible evil; even if there’s a monster, it’s often not obvious what exactly it is until the end. Throughout the collection, there are recurring images of “figures” and “shapes” that seemingly represent long-standing or impending dread. That’s certainly the case in “The Man Outside,” in which a figure slowly approaches someone’s home, and in the title story, in which Dean has been seeing eerie “grey people” for years. The text thrums with the author’s crisp prose and a pervading moody atmosphere: “The next moments were a blur -- the piercing shriek of the train’s brakes, the terrible sound the man’s body made when the train hit it. Then the excited babbling of the crowd, the urgent static crackling of announcements on the P.A.” The horrific presences often mingle with grounded, relatable fears; motherhood apparently terrifies Maya in “Angelmutter,” and Jane, a widow living alone in “Little Gods to Live in Them,” worries that a nearby bridge construction will further aggravate cracks in her kitchen’s ceiling.

A first-rate selection of unnerving and indelible stories.