Short Horror Story Review – Jaine Fenn – The Sky Weeps, The Earth Quakes

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Mammoth / Robinson’s Press 2015 – Spoiler alerts. An inquisitor serving the Spanish Conquistadors interrogates an Inca tribal chief, hoping to find the location of the fabled El Dorado, a city of gold. The Chieftain has not given in to torture and this Inquisitor is brought in to try to reach the Inca leader by philosophical reasoning. He finds that he likes the Incan and slowly begins to take on his beliefs rather than converting him to Christian teachings. He discovers that the prisoner has a gift for predicting or perhaps even causing earthquakes after taking part in rituals involving gold dust bathing ceremonies. The inheritance of this power leads to predictably tragic consequences. The story is written in letters but with shifting points of view and details the narrating letter writers should not be aware of are added to, which spoils the effect of a clever but easy to anticipate story. Arthur Chappell