I finished Shriek, and afterward, by Jeff Vandermeer last year. Okay, yesterday.  I feel so fortunate whenever I find a book that compels me through it  as this one has. It’s one of the stories I love because in some sense, I already know the ending when it starts, and the ending is that damned satisfying.

Out of a sense of duty, I’ll call out spoiler alert, but really Janice’s last word in the novel spoil nothing:

As I sit here in the green light and review these pages, I see what Duncan saw when he wrote in this room — the sliver, the narrowness of vision, the small amount we know before we’re gone — and I realize that this account was a stab in the dark at a kind of truth, no matter how faltering: a brief flash of light against the silhouette of dead trees. This was the story of my life and my brother’s life, my brother and his Mary. {How could you think to tell such a story without me by your side, Janice?}

And, somehow, I have kept separate, hidden away in my mind, one single image of joy before disaster: my father, running across the unbearably green grass. And not what occurred after. Not what happened after.

I want that kind of joy, that epiphany, or a chance at it, at least, even if it kills me. {Must I echo to you your own words? That we are all connected by lines of glimmering light. How many times those words kept me alive, made me see approaching light in unending darkness? As Bonmot used to say in his sermons: “We are vessels of light — broken vessels, broken light, but vessels nonetheless.” Fragments across the void. It’s time to find you, Janice, and see what you’ve gotten yourself into.}

But you’re free now, regardless of what this was — afterword, afterwards, I release you to return to what you were before. If you can.

As for me, it is time to abandon even this dim green light for the darkness. I’ve put as many words between myself and this decision as I can, but it hasn’t worked. There’s a space between each word that I can’t hep but fall into, and those spaces are as wide as the words and twice as treacherous.

Almost time to go: