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Author’s Note:
The first game I ever beat was Resident Evil. I started playing that before I hopped on the Pokémon and Final Fantasy wagons, but the genre stuck with me. Once I hit my teens, I discovered games like Fatal Frame, Clock Tower, and Silent Hill, and while those games are fun and scary, they also ended up desensitizing me a little; the gory scenes and sudden jump scares affected me less and less, and I started to notice the stories. It changed the experience from “Whoa, that’s scary,” to “Wow, that’s an amazing twist,” and I started to appreciate the genre even more. I wanted to write my own stories for games, but that’s kind of a niche market, so I’m sticking with books for now. The question is, how does a person so used to horror know if a book is actually scary? Since my fascination comes from the stories themselves, I started to research, applying bits and pieces of history I learned about on the way. I found elements of Buddhism to be exciting: the concepts of hungry ghosts, Naraka, and karma all amazed me, so I packaged them all into my own little fiction. Now sitting before you is a chaotic trifecta of Buddhism, history, and ghost-zombies in the form of a novella, written by an insomniac college senior fueled by black coffee, tequila, and Cradle of Filth.
Reviewed by Divine Zape for Readers' Favorite
Eternal Victim by Dexter Morgenstern is a short horror story that will send chills down the spine of any reader, a book about a woman with unusual and dangerous nightmares. But who is she and why is she haunted by images of vicious serial killers with their fettered victims? Why does she share memories with serial killers and their victims, and what part does she have to play in them? She is on a dangerous and difficult mission to connect victims with souls who can help them, and that could be the only way to wake her from the nightmares. The only problem is that it’s become a vicious circle, because new victims come in a manner that is endless. Can there be any redemption for her, and how about the victims?
Here is a book for fans of real horror. The narrator is the protagonist and the narrative is wonderfully done in the first person, arresting the reader. The protagonist is in an awful mental state, because she is aware of the nightmares and even wonders why she should be having such dreams. When the narrative begins, she can barely walk, locked up in a dark place. She says: “The only thing harder than trying to move is trying to invoke a single memory. My name…” The paranormal experiences that accompany the nightmares are like dying in the body of another person.
The narrative is suspenseful, fast-paced, and emotionally intense. From the very beginning of the narrative, the reader becomes engrossed with the question of whether the protagonist can wake up from her nightmares and, as the tension builds, they begin to care for her and the fate of the lost souls, the 'preta'. Dexter Morgenstern’s writing is excellent and it evokes powerful and frightening images, allowing readers to follow the horrors of this tale easily. Eternal Victim will leave the reader not wanting to sleep with the light off. It’s engrossing and imbued with a unique sense of originality. A riveting story that explores the themes of murder, evil, and redemption.
