“Haunting Screams” deals with a young girl who is vacationing with her parents and two strange, rather superficial cousins. She is trying to forget being jilted by her boyfriend back home who has taken up with her best friend. She hears screams coming from a distant island at night and eventually discovers the two cousins have the power to make someone forget the past. The question becomes whether it is better to forget the past or remember and learn from it. The consequences of both seem genuinely scary (especially for a young girl who wants to become a writer): both the character and readers ultimately have to make that choice.

The next story has some fun with this by changing perspective on much the same plot. This time we see things from the standpoint of the girl who steals another girl’s boyfriend. Oh yes, she has no memory of this, but in fact seems visited by the boy’s ghost when she thinks she is moving to the area as a new comer. By this time we are at the mercy of an author who can interchange reality and dream, distort the past and the present, keep secrets from us, surprise us and peak our curiosity so we keep turning pages late into the night. Her the endings of chapters in her short multi-chaptered stories often keep us guessing though at times the endings to the stories themselves are of the “its only a dream” variety (plus a heavy-handed moral). But there is no denying, when she speaks to issues, such as betrayal, alienation and hypocrisy, that would be of real concern to her audience, this writer has our full attention.

“They’re Coming” has an interesting premise. A school, which too often in real life can seem a world in itself, suddenly becomes isolated from the rest of the world. The students go out of control attacking one another, raiding the cafeteria and having sex openly (while teachers are robbing student lockers). However the idea that a band of Christian students is somehow above all this stretches credibility (as least based on my experience attending a Christian school and later teaching at a public one). With the final story about a girl stalked by a creepy young man with strange artistic abilities, we are back on track (though I had a hard time buying the last page. It’s one thing to impose (religious) values upon the material, but another if these become a tack-on substitute for an ending that should flow from the story itself). Despite some minor shortcomings, Ann Russell is a talented writer. Her dialogue, action sequences and choice of situations are great.

What is scary? Self-deception. Isolation. The Unknown. What can save us? Self-realization. Caring. Belief. Forgiveness. Understanding the meaning of those words is one thing. Experiencing them through these stories so much more.