Richo Reviews: Split Scream Volume 2 by Cynthia Gómez and M Lopes da Silva (Dread Stone Press, 2022)

Another Split Scream, another double-feature - and what a double-feature it is. This time our novelettes (the handy little explainer intro is also repeated in this volume) are The Shivering World by Cynthia Gómez and What Ate the Angels by M Lopes da Silva. The first follows a young woman's struggles with poverty, identity and patriarchy, and the sacrifices required to escape the position she is in, as manifested both figuratively and literally by the story of La Llarona. The second is a razor-sharp exploration of toxicity - within ourselves, within our relationships, and in the foundations and history of its setting, Los Angeles.

There is an acute sense of embedding in both these stories; a feeling that we are really seeing into a character's life, a real tangle of relationships and emotions, daily struggles and internal experiences. Though both writers have unique voices, they are united in their ability to ground the uncanny in affectingly real worlds. In that vein, they both share a strong sense of place, and of characters fitting within a place. This is not to say that they are comfortable within their setting - The Shivering World is centred around characters trying to escape where they are - but that both place and character shape one another, and feel deeply intertwined. The garage-turned-family-home in The Shivering World, next door to a violent neighbour and too far from anywhere our protagonist is trying to get. The La Brea tar pits and the sewers of Los Angeles, reaching out through time to spew bile over and into the city's people.

It's only fair, though, to consider each story on its own merits, and those merits are many. What Ate the Angels effectively uses shifts in perspective to convey the difficult relationship between the main characters, and the ways in which they experience the story's events. In so doing, the novelette contains within its compact word count stomach-churning body horror, clear-eyed social awareness, and a painful, raw evocation of intra-relationship hurts and emotional struggles. It is by turns disgusting, contemplative and hopeful - a potent mixture.

The Shivering World, though less jagged, is no less painful. Gómez's evocation of the both large and petty humiliations of poverty, of racism, of patriarchy, as experienced by a promising student pushing against the crushing weight of social deprivation,  is no less than masterful. Seeing that frustration and desperation firsthand, the reader is startled to find how quickly once-unthinkable sacrifices can be justified. More delicate, perhaps, than What Ate the Angels, this novelette is by no means less powerful.

Split Scream has gone from strength to strength with this volume. Just like with the first, it is incredible that such evocative, moving, and above all horrifying stories can be crammed into a book this size.