GHOST GAMES

Playing games to conjure spirits and demons leads to horrifying consequences in MacKenzie’s debut short story collection.

In the opening “The Elevator Game,” high schooler Alice tests a Korean urban legend that asserts that pressing a particular sequence of elevator buttons will take a passenger to another dimension. But, as with most of the characters in these tales, Alice isn’t prepared when the activity takes a sinister turn. Each of these eight works feature people playing similar games, such as the popular Bloody Mary myth, which involves repeating the titular woman’s name in a mirror. All supply readers with the requisite rules, and recurring imagery, such as candles and mirrors, appears in many tales. MacKenzie also ties her stories together with profound themes; many of the women characters, for example, suffer from loneliness even when surrounded by friends or family members. Likewise, when characters summon ghosts or demons, the creatures often evoke the summoner’s internal despair, such as a Harvard University grad student’s dark secret in “The Telephone Game.” Some tales include characters that are already well acquainted with the supernatural, such as a girl who lives in a haunted house and a former Wiccan who once had powerful psychic abilities. The author unusually grounds the final tale in realism, asserting that it’s a true account of her teenage years, involving a menacing ghost and a Ouija board. However, the book’s chilling standout is “The Hide-and-Seek Game,” which draws on a Japanese urban legend. In it, a Minneapolis house- and dogsitter plays a game with a creepy, spirit-possessed doll, with predictably unnerving results. Throughout, MacKenzie’s concise prose style generates sharp images; for example, in “Telephone,” which takes place in a pre-smartphone setting, Anna and her friends brace themselves for the scary activity to begin: “Ten flip phones creaked open, and ten thumbs hovered over the green call button, waiting.”

An indelible batch of nightmarish tales.