Survival, Gender, and Cryptids in “Old Wounds” https://ift.tt/knhGPuW
Logan-Ashley Kisner’s debut novel mixes horror with heart and produces a tale about facing old ghosts and transgender survival. Old Wounds opens with trans teens Erin and Max striking out for California in the dead of night, unaware that the road ahead is not the escape from their pasts that they hope it will be. With them comes the baggage of struggles with family and self as well as a complicated history between the two of them: it’s been two years since they’ve spoken, when Max broke up with Erin without any explanation. Erin wants answers, while Max remains avoidant, dead set on reaching their destination in order to finally begin his transition and escape the clutches of his abusive, transphobic parents. Erin herself leaves behind a younger sister, a complicated relationship with her mother, and the memory of a dead father who abandoned them.
Severing the ties proves tougher than either of them anticipates when they are left stranded in rural Kentucky with an unreliable Impala and the watching eyes of the locals. It is here that Max and Erin learn of the Bullitt Beast, a cryptid with eyes like suns that traps the woods and their inhabitants in an endless night every six months. According to the locals, the only way to bring daylight back is to sacrifice a girl to the monster’s jaws. The longer they remain — captured and chased around by a murderous boys’ club centered on keeping the beast’s belly full — the more the two realize that this story is much less fiction than reality. The fight for their own safety ultimately leads to a question that Max asks early on: “would monsters acknowledge trans’ed genders?”
Kisner does a thorough job of fleshing out the two main characters. Erin is the more level-headed of the two with smarts and never-failing empathy. When the possibility of escape comes up, she is the one more dedicated to trying to put an end to the long line of women’s murders. As almost her foil, Max is hot-headed and desperate to escape at whatever cost — regardless of if it’s at the expense of others. Where the novel succeeds is in showing us why each of the two behaves the way that they do and that the answer lies in their disparate experiences of trans adolescence. Between them, Erin has had the easier social and physical transition, while Max has had to scrap and beg for not only his identity, but any shred of dignity.
This narrative does not shy away from the brutality of growing up transgender, but treats its subjects with humanity. Frequently, Kisner’s story crosses over with reality, often paying homage to the very real deaths of trans people in the United States — for one, the story of Brandon Teena is of particular importance to Max. Through this grounding, Erin and Max come to represent the experiences of many modern-day trans teens. Max even says that he sees himself “posted across a dozen different websites, in hundreds of message boards, from kids who will asphyxiate in the bodies they are locked inside of.” Kisner explores this reality with keen attention to its sharp injustice, revealing the true horror at the core of the story.
At times, the story itself feels familiar, complete with regular horror tropes, like splitting up in the dark and religious backwoods villains. Several times, Max and Erin seem aware that they’re making a wrong move for a character in a scary story, but do so anyway, like when Erin hesitantly agrees to ride alone in a truck with a group of strange men at nighttime. Despite these sorts of moments, Max and Erin’s willingness to fight and determination to survive molds them into solid horror protagonists as well as believable teen characters.
Old Wounds is often cognizant of its own purpose: exploring a typical beast-in-the-woods story through the perspectives of trans teens. Ultimately, it comes triumphantly upon a message of hope for trans teens as Erin and Max navigate their way through the blood-spattered night.
FICTION Old Wounds
By Logan-Ashley Kisner
Delacorte Press
Published September 10, 2024
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