A horror anthology edited by the genre’s greatest, Ellen Datlow, with one side featuring stories about what haunts the night while the other side showcases the terrors that can exist in the light of day in this new addition to the Saga Doubles series.

This anthology contains stories from some of the most evocative and bestselling writers of horror and speculative fiction.

Dark bleatings, my dichotomous tribe! You might already know that the only thing I love more than a horror anthology is a themed anthology, so I’m delighted to be talking about this book today. Night and Day, courtesy of editor-extraordinaire, Ellen Datlow, is in two halves. We’ve got daytime themed tales, and night time horrors. Let’s go right ahead and dive into the stories…

DAY

Merciless Sun: Tales of Daylight Horror

The Bright Day by Priya Sharma

Oh, I just love Priya. A self-sufficient couple live in a compound, where they flourish at night and hide behind black-out blinds during the day. The sun is dangerous, but there are other dangers in the world that now go with it…

I loved this within the first few lines, when strangers knock on the door panicked because the sun is about to come up. What a great inversion on what we expect from the typical safety of daylight.

Faire by Rachel Harrison

Another of my favourite authors, back to back! I don’t know how she paints characters so completely within just a few lines, but she always does, and it’s particularly effective here because the setting is a Ren faire. Colourful, fun, silly, a bright, lovely day out. Well, not for the protagonist of this sordid sunny tale, but….

Masks, costumes, a continuous performance…the theme is really brought to life. Love it!

Trick of the Light by Brian Evenson

One of my favourite short story writers! This is the anthology that just keeps giving. To my delight, this story really scared me. Imagine a shimmering, terrifying figure that follows you through patches of sunlight…

One Day by Jeffrey Ford

The light of day is extremely threatening because of a being we know as Mirage, that seems to have made a mission out of disintegrating all it crosses. This one had me thinking that if ever daytime went bad like this, I’d have to tape the windows up in my house just to make sure the curtains don’t fail me!

The Wanting by A. T. Greenblatt

This one is so interesting and I love how daylight was used more to illuminate a personal horror, rather than create one (though this is maximum weirdness, rest assured!). In the night time, people swell – literally – with their wants and desires, but one day, this starts happening too early and our protagonist is caught off-guard.

Hold Us in the Light by A. C. Wise

Ooh, this one is a little folky! A sibling bond, something old and religious buried beneath…what could possibly go wrong?! (Everything!)

Dismaying Creatures by Robert Shearman

A couple are honeymooning in a place where the sun won’t set unless certain things are done, and this is my own personal nightmare because I am much more of a night person. The long days of summer just bother me, I crave the cold and dark! Anyway, this is for sure the oddest story so far, and odd in a way that only Robert Shearman can offer. The way he writes really tickles me, his stories are always such fun.

Bitter Skin by Kaaron Warren

This is the darkest story so far. Our protagonist has a particular talent for seeing ‘bitter skin’, only visible during the daytime. I don’t know how to describe this story without giving too much of it away, but’s it’s a gradual, slow-burn and I found it (subject matter) a difficult read.

Cold Iron by Sophie White

I was really excited the second I saw the word ‘Sidhe’ because I love stories about changelings – they’re are one of the scariest things in horror to me. My skin was crawling as much as my nerves were as I read this story of a woman who just dies over and over again but always comes back.

NIGHT

Dreadful Dark: Tales of Nighttime Horror

Trash Night by Clay McLeod Chapman

This is….I’m a bit speechless. It’s horrible. But also, I think it’s a very fair portrayal of a possible immediate outcome of PTSD. A trash collector encounters something unimaginably awful on his route, and just can’t shake what he saw. I feel pretty disturbed by it.

We Take Off Our Skin in the Dark by Eric LaRocca

I love this author and, as usual, was delighted with their contribution. Our protagonist believes there’s something divine in the one they love, and sets about…er…freeing it. It’s LaRocca’s brand of dark and thoughtful, and is very restrained by their usual standards, in terms of visceral gore. Transgressive but not totally stomach-churning.

The Door of Sleep by Stephen Graham Jones

Good heavens! This story plays around with form and tense a little, and is a disturbing, first-person, “here are some stories within this story” type of narrative. How to even summarise it? Trauma, fears, story-telling, a continuously building dread, it has it all.

At Night, My Dad by Dan Chaon

Ooh, this is addiction with a twist. I don’t know what to say about this other than it seized all of my emotions. I think it’s horrific but there’s something beautiful about the way it’s written.

The Night House by Gemma Files

This is one of my favourites of the Night stories. A cult survivor talks about their experience of abuse growing up in such unusual circumstances, only what she’s telling them doesn’t quite sound believable….

Heart-wrenching and quite scary.

The Night-Mirrors by Pat Cadigan

A little girl who lives with her three grandmas is obsessed with the living room window at night, because the glass becomes like a mirror (she calls it a night mirror), hence the title. She starts seeing differences to what’s in the room in that reflection though, something that heralds potential danger! This is a great, cosy horror story, and one of my favourites in the whole book.

Fear of the Dark by Benjamin Percy

A doctor of sorts is summoned to help in a very distressing and unusual case involving a teenage girl who has found herself in some bother. Some horrific, violent, supernatural, seemingly inescapable bother. It’s very tense and dark!

The Picnicker by Josh Malerman

A couple that know they’re going their separate ways find a dead man on a picnic blanket, which gets them thinking about all sorts of things. Of course, this is horror, so there’s more going on here (and it’s very creepy…).

Secret Night by Nathan Ballingrud

This made my skin crawl and for me personally, is the scariest story in the book. I do NOT like that uncanny valley thing when it comes to people, so this freaked me out. Vicks, a cop, stops at the site of an accident but the car is empty, so he goes looking for the people who could be injured. He finds…something. Eeeeesh.

So, what do we think overall?

It’s fabulous, is what it is. I am used to reading stories set at night or in the dark, so I was most excited to read the DAY stories. However, I found that the authors in both sections did a great job of subverting expectations, and there was a really good mix across the board in terms of subgenre and tone. Some authors went in a more literal direction with their theme, while others used it to emphasise the emotional state of characters and/or weave metaphor. It’s a really great read.

If you’d like to check out the book or the editor, I’ve popped some links below for you:

NIGHT AND DAY

ELLEN DATLOW

Bleeeeat!