Dimas Rio’s WHO’S THERE? is classified as a horror collection, but it doesn’t belong on the same shelf as the slash-and-gores. Characters in these stories are murdered, sometimes gruesomely, but the real agony is psychological. In the title story, thirty-year-old, pill-popping Adam is taken to task by his best friends, a couple who have accompanied him to an island resort for his wedding, after having had a drunken fight with his fiancé, Gita, the night before. The “anxiety, shame and fear” Adam suppresses with his heavy drinking are connected to what happened after the fight—a gruesome secret that waits for Adam alone in his hotel room. “At Dusk” follows a high school student sent to interview a mystery writer for the school paper, who tells him a terrifying story from his childhood about a creature that sucks the blood from children just as the sun sets. A young office security guard with an even younger pregnant girlfriend is the central character of “The Wandering.” Resorting to stealing to combat his new family’s mounting medical bills, he finds a series of mysterious letters that call up his forgotten past—along with a vengeful ghost. In “The Voice Canal,” a young university student in Scotland, under stress from working on his dissertation, turns for reassurance to calls to his father…who died months earlier. The final story, “The Forest Protector,” told from the perspective of both Alma, a mother with a cutting habit and Rafa, her eight-year-old, comic-book-loving son, gradually gives light to where the missing father is.

Excellent characterizations, good details, and memorable images are hallmarks of all of the stories. The violence doesn’t feel exploitative; this is no brute’s fantasy. Endnotes define a few words and phrases unfamiliar to some readers. For example, “Magrib” is defined as “The time for sunset prayer, one of the five obligatory daily prayers performed by Muslims.” One quibble is with the length: the stories are too short to truly build suspense, yet they all convey a strong mood.

WHO’S THERE? is a short sampler that demonstrates author Dimas Rio’s deeply-felt intelligence and promise as a writer of suspense.

~Michael Quinn for IndieReader