Dark collection takes Winnipeg as a grim, grisly muse

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This article was published 04/06/2016 (3422 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

One of the best pieces of writing in the weird-fiction anthology The Shadow Over Portage and Main is a short, unattributed poem at the back of the book. It speaks of bleak and empty streets with “dregs discarded by denizens of dim Winnipeg.”

With a preface by Jonathan Ball and afterword by David Annandale, the anthology contains 15 pieces editors Keith Cadieux and Dustin Geeraert selected to represent the dusty gothic sensibility used by local writers and other creative types to fuel their art.

Ball writes, “Winnipeg is fate. It dooms its artists to obscurity, to failure, before they have begun.” He contends that this sense of having nothing to lose or to win drives people to create — not for commercial success, but to remain true to their personal visions.

All but one of the writers whose work is featured in The Shadow have lived in Winnipeg for varying times and so should be familiar with our distinctive landmarks. However, only a few of the pieces selected for the anthology directly reference the city, its history and people.

In Annandale’s Body Without Organs, the protagonist hurries through wintry streets to his apartment 20 stories up on Wellington Crescent. He details how the -30 C weather assaults your lungs when you first step outdoors. Trent’s shadowy ghost possesses him against a backdrop of snow falling and winter wind howling, providing a chilling finale.

Cadieux’s story tells of a young boy forced to have his photo taken seated next to his mother’s corpse. As the family’s fortunes falter, Henry’s father is determined that his son have a memento of his dead mother, and places the grisly image in a frame next to his son’s bed. While the boy tries to outmanoeuvre his father, he can’t escape the memory and sensation of his mother’s rigid grip on his warm hand.

Winnipegger Christina Koblun grew up in Thompson — an even darker winter location than Winnipeg. Her personal experience of the mental struggle and even physical anguish caused by winter’s short days and long nights is clearly reflected in her story The Darkness. As her heroine is gradually overcome by shadows, she issues this warning: “Please, look to the shadows. Look closely. The darkness is waiting.”

Geeraert’s Past the Gates is a rambling tale that mixes reality with the powerlessness and inevitability of a nasty bad dream. He uses depictions of littered apartments and old buildings with secret hallways to highlight the emotional chaos experienced by his characters. One striking image is a basement in an old house that has a floor of ice with broken furniture, toys and other debris frozen within it. As the story progresses and the characters become drunker and more deranged, Conrad is forced to revisit this eerie location with a man he believes to be the devil.

While the collection is an enjoyable read, it was somewhat disappointing that it doesn’t include more stories that are purely Winnipeg. Ball writes of Guy Maddin’s film My Winnipeg, which depicts The Forks — where the Red and Assiniboine rivers meet — as a magical, dangerous spot. There are many creepy locations within the city that could well serve as sites for horrific deeds.

Bloody images and unearthly beings are staples in horror stories, but perhaps it’s trickier to turn a walk through the Winnipeg Square concourse to the Richardson Building or Fairmont Hotel into a trip that will turn your blood cold.

Who knows what might await you around the curved hallway while flags flap in all directions beside the pedestrian-free fabled Portage and Main junction directly overhead?

Andrea Geary is a reporter with Canstar Community News.