Cassandra Khaw’s Nothing But Blackened Teeth is a short horror novella dealing with the classic setup where a group of friends go to a haunted house. It is an old storytelling tool, but one that has proven effective time and time again. Still, it is often the oldest and most well known bits of horror storytelling that find new life most easily. While not an old hand at this genre, the author’s past work should make this idea most interesting.
Some friends, funded by a particularly rich one of their number named Philip, take a trip and stay in something of a mansion to celebrate an upcoming wedding as well as their general friendship. Even as they arrive, the narrator discusses the nice mixture of old grudges and affections in the group.
The house is a huge mansion in Japan, and it is not long at all before this scattered group of college friends start to discuss the idea that the venerable building might be haunted. It is quite a small movement from this to deciding to tell horror stories and ghost stories, bringing up an alleged old tradition among samurai to that effect.
It is, predictably, not long after this that the house seems to attack them, lights going out and the figure of a ghostly pale bride with jet-black teeth appearing to the narrator. It might be nothing, yet it is not long at all before a number of other people involved in the incident managed to spot her and the existence of the supernatural is a complete and horrifying reality. Stacked on top of the long existing grudges and disagreements between these friends, it is only a matter of time until tragedy strikes.
Khaw has certainly shown her share of talents, and with this book again serves to prove that brevity can very much serve as an aid to quality. This is quite a brief volume, the stories within the story skipped over, and even flashes of the myriad and strange elements of the group’s personal histories are told in implication more than flashback or detailed explanation.
There is a fair amount of reference given to old time horror and slasher movie tropes. While not a metafictional story, this set of comments, largely about who is and isn’t likely to survive a situation, help to illustrate the difficulty in acknowledging well known information about the material and genre in which a story takes place. Similar to the question of using the word “zombie” in movies and stories featuring those monsters, this work goes in favor of admitting that the concepts would be known.
Nothing But Blackened Teeth is a dark and disturbing little tale featuring the mixture of classic storytelling told and a unique authorial skills which allow for a quality new spin on the material. While not likely to convert many readers to horror, it can nonetheless be easily recommended to those who have enjoyed Cassandra Khaw’s previous work. It is also easy enough to recommend to readers who need a chilling little story one eventing, something just familiar enough to make the reader’s style in place.
(Nightfire, 2021)
