Caitlin Kiernan: Agents of Dreamland

[bibliogramma]

Caitlin Kiernan’s novella Agents of Dreamland begins with two ... agents? Operatives? Spies? Covert law enforcement officials? Something like that, anyway ... meeting in the town of Winslow Arizona to share information about some unusual deaths that may have ritual and cultic connections. And other odd things too, that require specialists in disciplines like mycology to handle the forensics.

The cult is run by a person known as Drew Standish, who lived with a community of people he has.... chosen? Saved? Brainwashed? Something like that, perhaps ... in a place called Midnight Ranch. The place where people died. He calls his people the Children of the Next Level. Part of the narrative is told in the voice of one of his people, a woman named Chloe.

One of the agents is referred to as the Signalman, the other uses the name Immacolata Sexton. Part of the narrative follows the Signalman as he investigates Standish and his community. Part of the narrative follows Immacolata through various point in the past and the future where ... aliens? Demons? Lovecraft’s Elder Gods? Something rather like that ... have intersected with Earth.

In Agents of Dreamland Kiernan has written an unselling piece of dark speculative fiction, something that hovers in the border space between science fiction and horror. Something terrible is on its way, and whether it is the Great Old Ones from outside of space, or a race of colony entities more like a fungus than anything else we understand, Kiernan dies nit make clear, and it is in that lack of clarity that the horror resides.