Your Shadow Half Remains: To look is the one forbidden thing

Your Shadow Half Remains by Sunny Moraine

2024’s Your Shadow Half Remains provides a seductive and disturbing journey of psychological horror, as we visit the mind of an isolated young woman in a post-apocalyptic world, where one look into another human’s eyes can kill both of you.

Your Shadow Half Remains is plainly inspired by Josh Malerman’s Bird Box, only in Moriane’s work, the thing you must not look at is a human face. We follow a young woman named Riley, who has left the city to huddle in the small house her grandparents owned, somewhere in the country. While lots of humans have died—more accurately, killed each other and themselves—there is enough infrastructure left that she can order groceries via her computer. When the story opens, Riley throws her still-functioning phone into the lake. She herself isn’t quite sure why, except for a feeling that there is literally no one to connect with.

A few days later, when Riley walks down the drive to her mailbox to pick up her delivered supplies, she encounters another human, Ellis. They look at each other’s feet as they talk. Riley can’t remember the last time she’s spoken out loud to a human being. Ellis seems friendly, and careful, but as soon as he shows up, Riley starts having strange experiences in her house, and she fears someone is watching her, someone she might look at. And see. And go mad.

Sunny Moraine

The plague-condition Moriane conceives of is zombie-like. Infected people tear other people apart with teeth as often as weapons. Still, weapons are popular. Riley’s grandmother stabbed her husband to death with a kitchen knife, which is Riley’s defensive weapon of choice. No explanation is given for the outbreak that has driven everyone inward, although there are theories. Ellis wants companionship. He is polite and respectful, but, in Riley’s opinion, not careful enough about avoiding an accidental glance. Neither is she. This entire book is written in a beautiful and quiet style, but my favorite part was how Moraine manages to poise Riley on the knife’s edge of danger and intimacy. Each move, each touch is a literal life-and-death risk, beautifully described.

Away from Ellis, Riley finds the terror at home rising. She is sure someone has been in the house looking at her while she sleeps. Her computer is sabotaged, and the word LOOK—the one thing that is forbidden– is carved into her wall.

The book peels the onion of Riley’s experience with deliberation, connecting the dots gracefully. I was not surprised by the ending, but I was satisfied.

While the echoes of Bird Box are hard to miss, I’d say this story harmonizes with them nicely. The other obvious inspiration, almost too obvious to mention, is the mass experience of isolation we have all shared. “Pandemic book” is a cliché already. This is probably a “pandemic book,” but Moraine finds the real horror in the echo-chamber of the isolated self. If you like good prose and psychological horror, this will make a good, creepy autumn read.