Fear Across the Mersey VI: The Man in the Underpass | review by Rafe McGregor

Fear Across the Mersey by Ramsey Campbell

PS Publishing, hardback, £25.00, August 2024, ISBN 9781803943701

This story is narrated in the first person by Lynn, a ten-year-old girl, and Campbell captures her voice perfectly, maintaining suspension of disbelief from beginning to end. As the title suggests, the narrative revolves around an underpass, specifically an obscene image painted by graffiti artists, and is driven by another young girl’s obsession with the pre-Columbian deity it depicts. The plot thickens when someone splashes what might be red paint or human or animal blood all over and the police are called. What elevates the tale to the sublime, however, is the atmosphere in which cause and effect take place, which is infected by parental neglect, casual violence, animal cruelty, sexual predation, and an all-too-human predilection for embracing evil in any form it takes. Having already learned to expect the unexpected from Campbell, I wasn’t completely surprised when the identity of the man in the title wasn’t what I anticipated…