Raincoast Macabre

Matt Hartman is a freelance editor and cataloguer, running Hartman Cataloguing, Editing and Indexing Services.

Teece, a librarian, amateur astronomer, and sailor, lists the B.C.
raincoast—the area that includes northern Vancouver Island and the
mainland north of Vancouver—as his most compelling interest. This
baker’s dozen of stories (the author’s first contribution to
fiction) portrays the coast as a sinister bit of geography, full of
shadows and gloom, peopled by spirits and uncertain fates. Teece’s raw
material includes Native legends and stories donated by friends and
acquaintances. He says in his introduction that “these friends and
many others have helped to awaken my sensitivity to the ambivalent moods
of our ancient coastal landscapes.”

In “Puqmis,” a recluse rescues from the rain and cold a beautiful
wraith who appears one night at his cabin door. He falls in love with
her, only to discover that she has drowned some time before. “Winter
Visions” is one of the best-realized stories. A sailor is helped in a
potentially tragic fire by the ghost of the boat’s former owner, who,
when alive, was fiercely protective of his craft. Other stories are less
spooky than grotesque. In “Denny,” a man is cruelly disfigured
during a fire in a paint factory in a town that has long been under
water. “Uncle” is perhaps the most gruesome of the tales. A young
student visits her girlfriend’s family home and discovers to her
horror that everyone on the tiny island is related to everyone else,
with monstrous consequences.

Teece excels in moods and feelings; he is less successful with plots
and characters. Many of the stories (“A Lighthouse Ghost,” for
example) contain inadvertent clues as to outcomes. In others, the
O’Henry-like endings don’t quite do the job. There is hardly space
in suspense stories of 10 to 20 pages to develop a plot at leisure;
better to plant the scare quickly and have it done with. That being
said, the book has some good writing to recommend it, and is frightening
enough in most places to bring a shiver to most readers.