'We Pass Under' by Gary Budden (from Uncertainties IV)

After the previous story from this Swan River anthology, which was a vignette of three pages (see below) we move on to a longer and more 'realistic' offering in Uncertainties IV. Realistic in the sense of narrative and characterisation - we have a coherent story that can be pieced together and a fairly reliable narrator. That said, this Gothic tale has enough strangeness about it to make the cut, and carries considerable political freight.

Yes, political - one of those 'modern' stories, complete with the urban 'miserabilism' of ghosts inhabiting the far from pleasant environs of London's river Brent. Some might reject the idea of the ghost story as a medium for serious social commentary. They are wrong, I'm glad to say. A good story can be about anything. In this case, it's about victims of toxic masculinity, women killed by men in various ways - domestic violence, so-called 'honour killing', and so forth. 

This might sound sound bleak, and it is, but Budden's prose is restrained, intelligent, and evokes a sense of resigned weariness. It is an oddly beautiful story, in fact, as our ghost recalls her mundane life on the perfume counter at Brent Cross shopping center, the moments of love and beauty she found before her life was snatched away. I doubt that it will appeal much to the trad/pastiche fans, or the visceral horror brigade, but it's not supposed to. It's supposed to work as short fiction, and it does. And there is even an original (to me) entity, the Commare who recruits the lost women to the subterranean world.

So far so good. More from Uncertainties IV soon, I hope.