Name: The Lord Came at Twilight
ISBN: 9781937128876

Daniel Mills (Horror fiction writer)

The Lord Came at Twilight

Bryan Alexander

The Lord Came at Twilight is a superb collection, announcing the voice of a rising young author who could easily become a major player in the horror field. Keep an eye on Daniel Mills, my fellow Goths.

The stories here cover a good diversity of territory, which speaks well to Mills' range as a writer. There's a creepy King in Yellow universe story, a technological horror, and above all historical horror. The Lord Came at Twilight succeeds most in the latter sub genre, combining a rich period sense, psychological depth, an aura of mystery, melancholy, and a potent sense of dread. Most are set in New England, and Mills does a fine job of evoking that territory.

Let me pick out some representative tales and introduce them without spoilage.

"The Hollow": literally backwoods horror, about a young man, his disintegrating family, and a fearsome tree. In a few pages the story changes tack several times, races ahead in time, and achieves an effect somewhere in the land of Hawthorne and Charles Brockden Brown.

"MS Found in a Chicago Hotel Room" takes place in the universe of Robert Chambers' The King in Yellow. This is urban fantasy, as the title suggests, and builds its fear steadily. There's a strong sense of dreamlike surrealism.

"Dust From a Dark Flower" takes us back to the pre-Revolutionary 18th century and a remote New England village, where creepy things are happening around a cemetery and new priest. Mills places us securely in the period with touches of contemporary phrasing, science, and piety. This story does into greater detail for body horror than most in the book.

"The Photographer's Tale" turns on an unusual camera, what it pictures, and the impact on its wielder. The setting feels like circa 1900, with photography being an exciting yet established new technology.

"Whistler's Gore" is the collection's most formally inventive tale, as it consists entirely of gravestone epitaphs from "[t]he old churchyard./ Two miles north of Plymouth, VT" (65). Across these accounts of lives all ending in 1798 stretches a story of violence, religion, and perhaps cosmic terror.

"The Wayside Voices" is also inventive, consisting of short speeches by the dead, overheard in a New England ruin. The story accretes from statement to statement, building into an account of quiet horror and intimate violence.

"John Blake" is a Revolutionary War story, concerning the advent of a scoundrel who takes the war's promise of freedom in a... unique way. Like a Hawthorne tale, "John Blake" sets up social pieties in order to undermine them, cruelly.

"The Falling Dark" takes place in the 20th century and focuses on a young man studying folklore. His studies do not reveal what he expected, neither in terms of content, a romantic interest, nor the structure of the universe.

"Louisa" is the most Poe-like story, concerning a love affair mediated by spiritualism.

"The Tempest Glass" revolves around a magical artifact and teases us with apocalypse. Good use of the Millerite movement and the 1927 Vermont flood.

"House of the Caryatids" is Civil War horror. It begins with soldiers on a looting expedition, introduces southern Gothic, then heads into cosmic terror.

"Whisperers" takes place in Brattleboro, Vermont. Our protagonist visits a friend who seems to have gone somewhat insane. I think Mills reaches here for Melville and Hawthorne, only to pull back at the last moment in the old tradition of not explicitly showing or explaining horror. Lovecraft is also on stage, with characters names Randolph Carter (we only get first or last name, never combined) and Ackley (I hear "Whisperer in Darkness"'s Akeley; don't miss the titular reference, too).

"The Naked Goddess" starts with a problem familiar to many travelers in my state of Vermont: getting lost and a bit disturbed at where you end up. In this story our protagonist stumbles upon a forgotten 19th-century millennial cult. Mills points to a little-known bit of local history, the late 19th-century agricultural collapse of Vermont (191).

"The Lord Came At Twilight" sees Mills tackle perhaps the most innovative horror writer of our time, Thomas Ligotti. This story depicts a mysterious city and its cryptic decline.

Observations of the whole: 
Mills is developing into a fine stylist. I've mentioned his ability to place the reader in historical situations. He also offers well turned, well ground, yet often poetic passages: The snow continued. Nearly an inch had accumulated over the past hour, covering over much and dirtied snow. The clustered roofs and gambrels of the block opposite bore a fine dusting, as iridescent and fine as a poplar's cotton... Soon the city would be covered, first by snow and then by night - all beauty and squalor erased by the whispered sough of white on black. (54)

The ends of the paper curled upward, sloping toward the folds, causing her neat script to circle back upon itself: slouching and coiled, a bathing viper. (178)
I like the way Mills combines classic Gothic with Americana. This is deeply American stuff. For example, a throwaway line: "Placed against the far wall was a rectangular bench that held an assortment of musical instruments. There were guitars and lutes, even a saw." (129)

These are very short stories, with a great deal of content crammed into them. The reader cannot race through them, as there are no extra paragraphs or sentences. Mills is clearly following Poe's model.

Speaking of literary influences, Mills evinces classic dark fantasy and horror writers throughout. Poe, Lovecraft, Ligotti, Chambers are name-checked. I would add Machen and Blackwood, especially for the way many of the stories dwell in nature.

Dark Renaissance did a fine job with this book. The font is really well suited to historical fiction. M. Wayne Miller's art is splendid: moody, dark, and perfectly fitted to each tale.

On a personal note I've had the good fortune to meet Daniel Mills twice, once at a NecronomiCon in Providence, another time at a steampunk gathering in Vermont. Mills is outrageously young-looking, very friendly, and accessible to all comers. His reading of "Whistler's Gore" was a fine performance, combining a steady voice with just enough emotion to get the audience realize what they were hearing.

Strongly recommended to anyone interested in horror or historical fiction. Watch out for Daniel Mills. He should be going places.

The Lord Came at Twilight

Reviews