That Which Stands Outside by Mark Morris

Pauline Morgan

There is a tradition of horror novels isolating a community or group of people and having nasty things happen to them, often involving rather gruesome deaths. Authors such as James Herbert and Guy N. Smith were very good at this. This technique still works well even when the reader is expecting total disaster but with the mystery of how many and who are the survivors at the end. Mark Morris has taken on this tried and tested format in That Which Stands Outside.

            Like many of these novels, the prologue gives a tantalising glimpse of something uncanny making its first tentative connection with the real world. What is concealed is who the victim is and when the event took place. That information will come later once the reader has become invested in the characters and the situation they have become embroiled in.

            Todd Kingston is having a bad evening. He works in a bar and has had to contend with a drunk trying to wreck the Gents because Todd refused to serve him after hours. Then on the way home he sees a woman being mugged and weighs in, only for them to turn on him and him end up in hospital. The only consolation is that the woman he went to the rescue of comes to visit him. She is Yrsa Helgerson. A relationship develops between them and everything seems perfect until Yrsa’s mother dies and she has to return home. Home is Eldfjallaeyja, a small island off Iceland. Todd agrees to accompany her. When they arrive, he notices the islanders don’t seem very friendly towards her. He wonders if that is because Yrsa had left to pursue a different life. If she’d stayed, her future would have revolved around fishing or farming. Todd’s hope is that as soon as the funeral is over, they can leave.

            Yrsa has other ideas. She takes Todd to a shaft known as the Devil’s Throat. As a child she fell down it and discovered a network of tunnels. Now, she takes Todd down and shows him a slit in the rock deep underground. She says that then she saw a Viking ship in a cavern. As a child she could get through it, but not as an adult. She convinces Todd to persuade his brother Robin to bring a crew out to enlarge the crack. That is when the dramatic horror side of this novel takes off.

            Although there is a lot of buildup to the nastiness of the events, there have been clues, but as an outsider, Todd doesn’t recognise them. He trusts Yrsa even though she is not telling him the whole truth. The beings that emerge from the cavern to attack are named as jötnar. These are not the race of giants that inhabit the world of Norse mythology but small, misshapen hominids that once they are freed aim to destroy humanity. They are not just an underground dwelling race, but have been trapped and have supernatural traits. They are able to mentally control the native population, turning them against the strangers and apparently have some control of the weather as the climax to the novel takes place amid an exceptionally ferocious storm.             This variety of the horror novel with a gentle build-up before all hell is let loose on the unsuspecting characters may be a long-standing format but in the hands of a good writer like Mark Morris there is plenty to satisfy the reader who seeks out this kind of book