Welcome back to Dissecting The Dark Descent, where we lovingly delve into the guts of David Hartwell’s seminal 1987 anthology story by story, and in the process, explore the underpinnings of a genre we all love. For an in-depth introduction, here’s the intro post.
Even if you haven’t read it, you’ve encountered “Sticks” by Karl Edward Wagner. Wagner’s unusual Adirondack gothic story about cosmic-horror folk art can be seen as an inspiration for works as diverse as Skinny Puppy songs, audio dramas, an “imaginary soundtrack” album, and most notably The Blair Witch Project. While its central image—odd configurations of sticks lashed together with a vague purpose—might be its most iconic element, it’s only a small part of what makes this story so effective. Rather, Wagner’s tight focus on his protagonist’s own mental state and limited interaction with the outside world, his use of more lurid and sudden horror elements, and the cryptic details suffused throughout the work all underscore the horror of Leverett’s predicament and the self-isolation that becomes his own undoing. Using this relatively simple structure, “Sticks” weaves a portrait of trauma, isolation, and obsession every bit as intricate and unnerving as the latticework of sticks Colin Leverett can’t help but obsess over.
Before shipping off to Europe during World War II, a pulp artist named Colin Leverett spends one last day fishing at a spot he finds that’s well off the beaten path. By chance, he stumbles on a ruined farmhouse covered in strange structures made of lashed-together sticks—structures that seem to convey some vague hints at significance despite their apparent haphazard construction. In the basement of the farmhouse, Leverett has a strange encounter with a terrifying undead creature (he calls it “a lich”) that horrifies him to the core. Once back from the war, traumatized by the horrifying encounter in the Adirondacks (and possibly by some further horrors from the European front), Leverett is commissioned to illustrate collections of stories by a reclusive horror writer. When he includes the stick lattices in his illustrations, he unknowingly catches the attention of mysterious forces locked in an apocalyptic struggle far beyond his ability to comprehend.
“Sticks” stays with a single character for most of its length. The horrors are (mostly) inanimate, and there are a limited number of locations and characters. For most of the story’s length, the only person we spend time with is Leverett, immersed completely in his world and thoughts. While there’s mention of other people (and one other on-page character) most of our time is spent with Leverett, his obsession with the unusual latticework of sticks, and the macabre paintings they inspire him to create. Wagner makes the most of this limited scope, detailing the beauty of the Adirondack Mountains and the peace of Leverett’s rural art studio, the disgusting close-quarters struggle in the ruined house, and the confining isolation of Leverett’s postwar life. When the horrors make themselves known, it’s always in a present, lurid, and intrusive way—a counterpoint to the quiet and close sections building up to the intrusion that also builds on the small details of the quiet. Wagner keeps the story tightly focused, and then immediately hits you with not just the lurid horrors of heart-eating, human sacrifice, and walking corpses but their place in the complete picture of the work.
The story needs to be that intimate and build from that tight a focus in order for it to work. It’s a depiction of trauma—not in a present and blatant way, but in a much more subtle, quiet one. The trauma of “Sticks” is the kind that hits you at three AM when your brain dredges up a stray thought or memory that goes the wrong way, as that passing thought suddenly takes root and grows into horrifying clarity as it engulfs you. It’s the sort of trauma that can twist coping mechanisms like solitude into damaging isolation. Wagner spends more time discussing how Leverett acts and looks after the war (and how he’s still haunted by “the lich” in the ruined farmhouse) than discussing his thoughts afterward. It’s felt. His drawings are too horrifying, inspired by the images he can’t let go of. His main method of communication throughout the work is letter-writing, with people even mentioning that he became a “mad hermit.” The nightmare about the stick lattices and their occult significance starts with him drifting emptily through space and end with him confined entirely on his own. There’s a deep sense of alienation and loneliness to “Sticks,” the idea that Leverett is truly all alone, highlighted by the quiet, intimate way he grapples with the images of the sticks and doesn’t even see anyone face-to-face until we reach the story’s final horrifying moments, when it’s too late.
Isolation and loneliness also contribute to those final horrifying moments. If Leverett hadn’t isolated himself so thoroughly, there might have been a chance one of the numerous people who knew more about the weird glyphs and stick lattices could have intervened before the trap closed around him. If he’d looked a little further beyond his own obsession, he might have found something to at least make his defeat less than final. The conspiracy’s mastermind even says as much, telling Leverett that he “almost annihilated them.” By the time Leverett figures out on his own what’s going on, everyone who could have helped him is dead and he’s just woken up with a half-eaten heart clutched in his hand. The end of the story sees him horrified and realizing how helpless he is as his obsessions finally engulf him. It’s disturbing because in that final moment, as Leverett notices more and more things wrong and his mind finally collapses under the strain, there is no one left for him. He is, as he has been throughout the story, almost entirely alone while the cult triumphs.
Which seems like the point Wagner’s trying to make. Leverett cannot handle things alone. His solitude helps him survive for a time against his trauma, but it eventually turns on him. It isolates him from all his potential allies (even as they desperately try to contact him) and drives him into the hands of the vengeful undead creature who used him as a vessel for their conspiracy. “Sticks” might rhapsodize on the pleasures of quiet solitude to some extent (the early Adirondack scenery is gorgeous), but it also makes it very clear that solitude can twist and fester into alienation.
This is illustrated especially particularly well when Leverett returns to Mann Brook only to find that his idyllic retreat is now a scrub-choked expanse full of black flies. It’s further driven home when the Dwellers manipulate Leverett into murdering the last person willing to help him (and possibly induce him to eat the poor man’s heart) and Leverett has no idea who the man he’s killing in his supposed nightmare even is. That same urge toward solitude and isolation is the thing that put Leverett on the Dwellers’ radar in the first place, leading him to stumble through their ritual site, disturbing their occult implements, and (albeit in self-defense) bisecting the brain of one of their key figures. Leverett becomes so obsessed and isolated, consumed by his own trauma, that he is unable to escape it and it eventually dooms him.
Wagner’s tight focus and examination of both sides of solitude—the beauty and peace of being alone with one’s thoughts and the utterly ruinous seclusion when one’s thoughts turn poisonous—are what give the horror in “Sticks” its personal feel. While the Lovecraft references, cosmic significance, and loud, lurid horrors might be the images that stick (pun intended) with the reader, it’s the way Wagner builds on relatively simple elements—a man’s self-isolation, a curious structure made of sticks, a terrifying chance encounter in a farmhouse—that create the full and terrifying portrait. In doing so, “Sticks” presents a twisted but uncomfortably real portrayal of trauma and isolation, one that will resonate with anyone who’s struggled with alienation and fought their own subconscious, perhaps over something as simple as a disturbing arrangement of sticks.
And now we throw it over to you. What’s your favorite work of Adirondack gothic? Alternatively, are there any images from pulp horror that sticks with you the way Leverett’s lich stuck with him?
And with that, it is my duty to inform you that Dissecting the Dark Descent is officially on hiatus until January. Hope your holidays are brighter if you celebrate, and hope you get some quiet reading time if that’s not the case. For those bringing sacrifices to the standing stones, I’d like to remind you that Tupperware is not an appropriate container. We’ll resume in 2024 with Robert Aickman. Prepare to get strange, and see you then!
Sam Reader is a literary critic and book reviewer currently haunting the northeast United States. Apart from here at Tor.com, their writing can be found archived at The Barnes and Noble Science Fiction and Fantasy Book Blog and Tor Nightfire, and live at Ginger Nuts of Horror, GamerJournalist, and their personal site, strangelibrary.com. In their spare time, they drink way too much coffee, hoard secondhand books, and try not to upset people too much.
