The ‘better’ is his storytelling, style, unexpected plotting, and startling characters. The ‘worse’ is the depth and complexity he achieves just keeps getting more effective and disturbing with each story.
I’ve been a Nat Cassidy fan since Steal the Stars, the truly re
markable horror/sf podcast that snuck into human consciousness back in 2017. (And I demand to know why there has been no sequel. Stories from Steal the Stars takes up its slow in the podverse, and it’s a nice little platform for serialized sf audiobooks now, but it’s not Steal the Stars. Nothing has been since.)
One of Cassidy’s many great features – you know, besides startling plots, deep deep character development, and terrifying, vivid action sequences that actually make you feel something – is his voice. Yes, I know, I’m obsessed with audio in general; I’m in the process of rewriting one of my own short stories into an audio-performance piece, so I’m currently hyper-aware of that – of how hearing a story is fundamentally different than reading a story, and how much I love it that way. And though Cassidy is totally aware of the difference, in his ‘print’ voice has a cadence, an expressiveness, an ease that is both powerful and unique. Something that makes reading his books (or for that matter, listening to the excellent audiobook versions) uniquely amazing. No, it makes them goddamn seductive.
Past the voice, there’s the story itself. It’s true for everything he’s written: he starts, on Page One/Paragraph One, with what looks like, smells like, a fairly standard horror/thriller premise. A weird alien in an Area 51-like installation gets out of control. A sad and disturbed middle-aged woman returns to her weird hometown and abusive family, where you know things are going to go bad, and fast. An innocent guy walks into a remote convenience store halfway through a long, solitary road trip only to find a slaughterhouse straight out of last week’s slasher flick. Or a nice couple moves into a legendary New York apartment building, a la the Dakota, to find it populated by…well, something like vampires. Or a slowly failing young actress randomly encounters what looks like a werewolf in modern-day L.A., and rescues the little boy it’s stalking. Cue the blood-strewn chase.
See? Tropes. We’ve seen them all. Except you haven’t.
These are just the opening pages – the starting blocks where the sprint begins. Where the story goes after that familiar (and wonderfully written) opening – what happens next, what is revealed, where he takes you is so unexpected, so damn effective, that you almost forget where you started long ago, back at that deceptively familiar opening ‘graph. And applies to all of his stories – all of them, from longer books like Mary and When the Wolf Comes Home, to the shorter novels like Nestlings, and even Rest Stop, which is basically a novella.
It’s the depth of what he’s talking about, exploring, in this pop-cult framework. Yes, yes. I know “literary horror” is a thing now, with an impressive number of writers making names for themselves, like Paul Tremblay and Josh Malerman and Tananarive Due. And though it hasn’t happened enough yet, Cassidy should not only be on that list; he should be at the top of it.
(And it’s worth noting that the horror genre has always had deep literary roots, unlike most of its colleagues. The best of it has always explored larger philosophical, spiritual, psychological and even political issues with depth and power. Though branches of horror fiction have always wandered into the dark and often grotesque shadows of near-parody and goreporn, ‘literary’ horror has always flourished side-by-side with its less – well, let’s say less mature – colleagues. I’m talking Shelley’s Frankenstein and Stoker’s Dracula, of course, but that’s only the beginning. Consider Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend or Jack Finney’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers or Stephen King/Richard Bachman’s The Long Walk or even Courtney Summers’ This Is Not a Test. Cassidy fits right in there.)
Let’s be clear: I use words like “worse” only because I am insanely jealous. I wish like hell I could write half as well as this guy, who is almost thirty years my junior. That’s my only real problem with his work. It’s too damn good.
And sadly, he’s underappreciated. Many of the other ‘literary horror’ writers of recent vintage have been lucky (yes, and talented) enough to have one or more of their books turned into movies; their newest works get noticed outside the (far larger, far more frangible) horror/suspense ghetto. But this guy, this Nat Cassidy, is the real thing. He deserves to be as well-known as any of them.
So read his stuff. All of it. And I’ll let you know when the next one’s coming … which begins, by the way, with his contribution to the collection of new stories set in the world of Stephen King’s The Stand, The End of the World As We Know It. (Coming out in August. Available for pre-order now.)
And however long it may be until his next long-form story, it’s too long. In fact, it can’t come soon enough.
See? Another reason to hate him.
Son of a bitch.