IF ONLY A HEART AND OTHER TALES OF TERROR by Caleb Stephens is a short story collection that explores horror through its most harrowing and vulnerable core — grief. In almost every story, Stephens uses family as a template for unparalleled grief and contorts it with unearthly illusions of the macabre. His thirteen installments investigate themes of trust, betrayal, denial, remorse, revenge, and sacrifice. Stephens succeeds in exploiting our deepest fears of losing a child or parent by conjuring images of ripped-out hearts, snapped limbs, and peeling skin. The success of his collection is due to how Stephens translates our most innate fears into something so gruesomely tangible that it guarantees you won’t be able to finish this book with dry eyes.

The stand-out stories for me were “The Wallpaper Man”, “Don’t Let Her In”, “If Only a Heart”, “You Always Wanted a Garden,” and “You Have to Let Him Burn”. What I love about this collection is that after hearing others’ opinions, there does not seem to be just one stand-out story. All of his stories are powerful in their own way but these few really dug their claws into me.

“The Wallpaper Man”, recently adapted into a film by Falconer Film & Media, is his first tale, setting the stage for the stories to come. After his mom died, Nick, his sister, and his dad move to a coastal house to strip away his mom’s lingering presence in their childhood home. But grief is not so merciful. Grief has followed Nick to his new home but this time in the form of a bony, forbidding ghoul that rips through his wallpaper when Nick tucks into bed every night. The Wallpaper Man needs to feed and gives Nick an option on whom. This story does a wonderful job at conveying how grief can morph into spite and anger, ultimately showing how difficult it is to protect the ones you love most from its consequences.

In “Don’t Let Her In”, Natalie must cope with the loss of her grandmother. When her grandmother was alive, they were very close and Natalie would turn to her for love and validation. But when her grandmother got dementia, that support waned, and Natalie felt a tremendous loss. When Natalie and her mom go on a drive, they encounter someone on the road that challenges Natalie’s memory of her grandmother, showing the pernicious weight and distortions of grief. “Don’t Let Her In” is a standout for suspense and horror, as it exploits Natalie’s love of her grandmother and sense of safety through hair-raising graphic prose.

“If Only a Heart” is Stephens’ titular tale that feels like a never-ending scream into the void. After Paul had to make an impossibly difficult decision that led to the tragic loss of his wife, he decided to go on a camping trip with his daughter, Olivia, to find some solace. When Olivia goes missing, Paul frantically searches for her in the woods, coming across a tree with an anatomical heart etched into it. As he continues, he eventually finds a cabin with the same heart. Certain that Olivia is in the cabin, Paul tries to go inside. Faced with another decision, Paul must do anything to honor his wife’s memory and protect his daughter. But this comes with a cost. “If Only a Heart” speaks to the boundless sacrifices a parent will make to protect their children.

“You Always Wanted a Garden” is a beautiful and heart-rending tale of love and loss. A man is left alone with his 6-year-old son after his wife suddenly dies. In honor of his wife, he starts the garden she always dreamed of having. Their grief grows stronger by the day, significantly aging them. This is one of Stephens’ most poetic stories as it delicately depicts how grief can push people to the edge and how that edge can sometimes feel like a familiar warm hug.

“You Have to Let Him Burn” is probably my favorite story. Let’s just say that I teared up a lot while reading this one. After a fire burns down their home, Evelyn and her son, Bennett, are flying from Boston to start a new life in California. Upon waking up from a nap on the plane, Evelyn can’t find Bennett anywhere. Through the search of her son, this story perfectly depicts desperation in the face of grief in a way that I will not soon forget.

IF ONLY A HEART AND OTHER TALES OF TERROR is not just a compilation of spooky short stories. It cuts down to the bone. It picks at open wounds and pokes at bulging veins. These stories aren’t riddled with gratuitous gore for shock value but rather with candid purpose. After all, grief can feel like someone is ripping out your heart. This collection has fortified my recent love of horror short stories and, if it wasn’t clear enough, I highly recommend it.

IF ONLY A HEART AND OTHER TALES OF TERROR will be released on October 3, 2022, via Salt Heart Press. Pre-order it here.