Alice hunts quantum vampires while her friend Jack, a dime store magician, tries to glue together a mysterious girl from various magazine clippings. Can he fix a magic trick gone wrong long ago?
Paul Jessup wrote a a great story about magic, ghosts and vampires without any faux gothic aspirations or Buffy stand-ins. Instead we get quantum physics, beat rhythms and a reference to a Jim Carrey movie (at least that’s what the magazine cut-outs reminded me of). Good stuff.
I’m not sure I understood the story’s ending correctly. I can think of at least two possible interpretations and that’s without having even seen the Alfred Hitchcock presents episode which inspired this story, so I might be missing bits of context. But like with A Word without Ghosts recently, you can sense logic behind the lack of logic, as there are hidden mechanisms to be found behind every magic trick.
Wendy wakes up in an abandoned train station, guarded by a bear who might also be the ghost of her dead brother Peter and maybe also something else. Outside, they’re besieged by a horde of birds. When Wendy is kidnapped by the leader of the birds, who might also be the memory of her mother and maybe also something else, she will have to learn the rules of this strange world she finds herself in.
This is a dark, surreal fairy tale about growing up. It takes its inspiration from multiple sources, I can see some influences from European fairy tales and Native American (or African?) folk tales. Then there’s the fact that the children are called Peter and Wendy, which immediately brings to mind Peter Pan. Fortunately, all these disparate elements come together to form a unique atmosphere while the story’s internal logic remains consistent throughout, making for a great story.
