“It Will Be Here Soon” (1979)

[spoilers] I’m still not sure what to make of Dennis Etchison. I can’t say I like all his stories a lot, but I can’t say I don’t like them either. I like the sense I get of a very careful writer, but he may be just too restrained, or subtle, for me. After what the movies did to horror in the ‘70s and ‘80s—including shifting the emphasis from short stories to novels, and never spare the gore—I certainly understand the impulse and maybe even the necessity for keeping the work quiet, emphasizing suggestion over excruciating detail. I like the title of this story, the sweeping blank affect of passive voice a certain trademark of Etchison’s. Compare “We Have All Been Here Before” and “You Can Go Now.” According to ISFDB, this story is part of a Jack Martin series—the first, in fact, so not many worries here about continuity issues. Jack is a grown man, in his 20s or 30s, visiting his quasi-estranged father. Jack feels guilty about neglecting him. It’s a familiar situation between parents and grown children. His father has developed an interest (and/or obsession) with listening closely to blank recording tape, thinking he finds strange voices and messages there. For Jack it’s something he didn’t know about his father, but in many ways it only makes him think the old man is a bit of deluded fool. On that point Jack seems likely to be right. The story seems to be mostly about the alienation between parents and children. In the end Jack is seen recording whispered nonsense syllables for his father to find—an act of kindness, on one level, perhaps, but obviously on another level belittling, manipulative, a cruel deception. The best-case scenario is that his father will think he has found something to support his strange ideas. He will be happy but he will be conned. I don’t see it very much as an act of kindness. His father and stepmother—really, the whole situation—reminded me some of the documentary 51 Birch Street, which is also about parents and grown children and even has a stepmother too, though a much happier person than the one here. That might be more about Jack’s attitude. I didn’t think this was one of Etchison’s better stories, but I’m also not sure I’m the person to judge.

Dennis Etchison, Talking in the Dark
Story not available online.