The Grave

“The Grave” is the first fiction I've read by P.D.Cacek, despite her being a Bram Stoker Award winner. Her style can only be described as contemporary dark fantasy, with a touch of horror. Cacek has a superbly twisted imagination. There are many excellent ideas here. Nothing too outlandish, nothing gory or too explicit, not too many explanations. “The Grave” centers around a mother daughter relationship. A school librarian with a domineering mother discovers her maternal side when she unearths the decayed body of a newborn in a ravine. And now an already strained household relationship will become even worse. An effective and enjoyable story of repression and madness if ever I saw one. Cacek doesn't waste time trying to justify the strangeness of her worlds, rather she concentrates on the way the characters act in them. There are some very real people in here.

As the story begins, immediately, the audience knows that something is not right. Gone are the undertones of normalcy usually present in a description of a person's home, and in their place are discordant images of a disturbing tension between mother and daughter. These undertones remain throughout the story, and provide a nagging sense of expectation tinged with fear.

Cacek's use of details and her skillful application of a first person viewpoint certainly contribute to "The Grave" However, it is the author's use of fear that drives the story. She could have chosen among a great many feelings, but terror, being among the most extreme of the identified emotions, is a powerful force, giving Cacek the opportunity to manipulate what we think and feel. Cacek wants her reader to question what would drive a woman to bring home a decayed dead baby. The answer is clear, the abuse suffered at the hands of her mother. While this abuse may not be physical it is certainly present.

However, what makes this story extreme is the coupling of terror with maternal domination. Most readers have experienced being...