The Twisted Ones

“And I twisted myself around like the twisted ones…”

There is something to be said for stories which have relatable narrators. In The Twisted Ones, I was treated to the inner musings of an editor named Melissa, nicknamed Mouse. Besides needing to resist the temptation to make puns about the cat and mouse action going on in the story (because, haha, I’m a cat), I was able to identify with Mouse.

For you see, I too happen to love a dumb dog and have a habit of slipping on the linoleum.

But we’ll get there.

The Twisted Ones is T. Kingfisher’s take on The White People (not actually a race-related title) by Arthur Machen. For those of you who haven’t reach Machen’s short story, it features a group of youths talking with a hermit named Ambrose about The Green Book, the journal of a young woman who became involved in the ways of the Fair Folk.

One of the ways in which The Twisted Ones stands out is how it manages to pay homage to another tale without drowning in the source material. There are tons of clever nods to the original short story, but they do not overpower the new tale.

So what is this new story?

In short, Mouse is recruited by her elderly father to clean out her even more ancient and recently deceased grandmother’s house. The grandma was the human equivalent of a neutering, and did lovely things like call people up to tell them they deserved to have their dog die, gaslight her elderly husband by hiding his beloved possessions, and keep the same husband from sleeping to the point where he was forced to nap in the woods.

She was also a horrific hoarder and so unpleasant that even the supernatural ‘villains’ of the story refused to come near her.

And that is where the plot kicks off. You see, Mouse’s grandmother was married to her step-grandfather, an elderly individual who just happened to have some of the blood of the eponymous White People in his family background. When Mouse arrives, she soon discovers all of the creepy going-ons around the house are caused by a secret town of hundreds of effigies created by the White People to serve them.

Only there are no more White People, and they are desperate for new masters.

I have seen more than my fair share of eldritch, cosmic, and downright alien horror, and there are some distinct Lovecraftian tropes at play. There should be, seeing as how Lovecraft himself described the original story, The White People, as being one of the greatest literary works of horror of all time.

To count off a couple of Lovecraftian staples:

• There are Eldritch Abominations
• Half-Human Hybrids
• Madness Mantras
• The Fair Folk
• And definitely a Fate Worse Than Death

Like, seriously.

The poor Writer would like to know why so many horror stories involve forced impregnation by monsters?

There’s also an evil deer…thing…and a room full of creepy dolls.

Now, anyone with common sense would have fled once weird things started to happen, but the standard evil-detecting dog is an absolute moron, but lovably so.

Bongo, named after the antelope and not the drum, sometimes knows what is going on but usually doesn’t. This allows Mouse to struggle on her own using the journal her step-grandfather left behind to figure out what is going on.

Conclusion

Overall, a thoroughly enjoyable take on an older tale and many quasi-mythological European themes. I would say it could have used more cats, but I prefer my solitude.

I would give this story 5/5 Paws for fun, creativity, and the ability to nest a story within even more stories.

I wasn’t left questioning the futility of my existence against the grandeur of the cosmos or abandoned to weep in the corner as I went mad from eldritch revelations.

But I did get to watch the Writer visibly cringe and recoil from learning the fate of Anna (seriously, how do you need feel bad for her?), and I now am more suspicious about the deer lurking outside.

I have seen things.

I know.

I know.

I know.