(Editor’s note: SHORT SHOTS is an occasional feature where I review horror short stories.)
A cursed swing links a young girl to a supernatural entity that leads to traumatic revelations in a tale of domestic horror titled ‘Playing in the Dark” by John Durgin.
Oddly enough, my previous Short Shots review was another domestic horror story with the word “play” in the title called “Play Time” by Kevin Bachar. It also follows a mother and daughter in danger. There’s an extra level of existential dread in horror fiction when mothers and their young daughters are placed in peril. After all, if children can’t trust their parents to protect them, who can they trust? Or more pointedly, who will they trust?
The second question is answered in Durgin’s tale, the title cut from his 2026 collection Playing in the Dark & Other Stories. Durgin is a talented author whose debut novel The Cursed Among Us was featured on the 2022 Bram Stoker Awards Preliminary Ballot for Superior Achievement in a First Novel. His short story writing is just as effective as his novel writing.
“Playing in the Dark” begins as a seemingly quiet ghost tale until it transforms into something much darker – and louder – by the end. The story follows a 7-year-old girl named Jade who’s out browsing yard sales with her mother. Jade’s father was recently killed in a house fire, and Mom is struggling to pay the bills because the life insurance company refuses to pay. The insurance company suspects foul play and suicide were involved in the father’s death. So, cheap yard sale furniture is all they can afford.
At one of the yard sales, a dementia-addled man in his 80s scares Jade with an ominous warning: “You shouldn’t be here. It’s not safe. She’ll take you. LEAVE here now!” The lady who’s running the yard sale tries to soothe Jade’s rattled nerves by offering her any toy for free.
Jade chooses an old swing hanging from the branch of a tree. The lady tells Jade that the swing belonged to her daughter Alicia who went missing three years ago. The lady gives the swing to Jade as a way to move on from her daughter’s disappearance. The swing, by the way, has a mysterious symbol carved in it.
Durgin has now set the stage for an eerie ghost story about a missing child, and he includes all the ghostly tropes. For example, Jade hears the sound of the swing in the middle of the night but no one is on it. She sees a black mass in the tree above the swing. She hears the disembodied voice of a young girl urging her to “come play with me.”
Not surprisingly, the voice belongs to Alicia, a faceless entity at first who reveals her horrific appearance to Jade before disclosing shocking secrets. But are the secrets true? Is this actually Alicia’s spirit? Or is the entity trying to trick Jade?
“Playing in the Dark” ratchets up the suspense in its gut-wrenching climax. When Jade shares Alicia’s secrets with her mom, the story spirals into more stunning revelations. Ultimately, the terrible secrets are the true horrors in “Playing in the Dark.” They will test the sacred bond between a mother and her daughter against an entity bent on revenge.
If you enjoy supernatural horror influenced by Stephen King that features themes of curses, demons, and small-town terror, then Durgin could become one of your favorite new authors if he isn’t already.
Leave a Reply