"Jasper Dodd's Handbook of Spirits and Manifestations" by Nathan Ballingrud (2019)

I have been a reader of Nathan Ballingrud for several years, and have previously sung his praises here, here, and here.  He is a skilled stylist with a talent for organizing his material: one note prompts another, and before long an entire collection is sublimely reverberating.

"Jasper Dodd's Handbook of Spirits and Manifestations" (2019) is an acute short story. Set in the rural south, it gives us a few days of ten year old Jasper Dodd's summer. The family house is, according to his dad, beset by supernatural enemies. Jasper's dad is the kind of man who writes his sins on scraps of paper and uses them as bait to trap trespassing demons and seal them in Mason jars. 

Before the story begins, Jasper has lost his little sister to bee stings; his mother has left on her scooter for parts unknown. Or so Jasper begins to hope. But in his homemade handbook, he writes questions he fears only the dead can answer.

Ballingrud does a superb job with the natural world in "Jasper Dodd's Handbook of Spirits and Manifestations." 

     It was late August, and the sun still lingered well into the evening. Jasper kept a wary eye on it as he hurried along the empty blacktop toward home. It winked through the leaves, dipping a little further each time he turned away. Shadows flitted through the trees on either side, swelling from the earth. Fireflies drifted in glittering tides. He thought about the feral ghosts, the ones who kept their vigil on the outskirts of the woods, waiting for the protections around their house to fail. He hurried his step.

      Jasper pulled the Hershey bar from his pocket. Mama would have disapproved. Sweetness attracts the devil, she said. But it didn't seem like an evil thing. It seemed like a kindness. He tore off the outer wrapper, gently peeled down the silver paper, and bit the corner from it. He

let it sit in his mouth for a moment, the warm flavor soaking into him, filling his awareness like a sweet and gentle word.

     They'll sniff you out. They'll follow your stink all the way home. That's why you leave the honey out. Evil gonna lap it right up.

     Jasper devoured the chocolate in a few great bites, the guilt of it almost enough to ruin the flavor. He liked sweet things too; was that a sign of wickedness? Could the dark spirits smell him even now?

As with many contemporary short stories, "Jasper Dodd's Handbook of Spirits and Manifestations'' ends abruptly, as though an arbitrary halt is a suitable substitute for a proper conclusion. Endings are hard, which is what makes the finale in Ballingrud's collection Wounds so memorable. It sets off echoes, while "Jasper Dodd's Handbook of Spirits and Manifestations"   collapses in timidity.

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Echoes: The Saga Anthology of Ghost Stories (2019)

Edited by Ellen Datlow