Weaving together elements of American blues folklore, urban fantasy, and extreme horror, Kristopher Triana creates something entirely captivating and unsettling with Gone To See the River Man.
Lori is a middle-aged woman who cares for her brain-damaged and childlike older sister. She’s also a middle-aged woman who’s developed the same unhealthy obsession with an incarcerated serial killer we see in real life whenever and wherever one looks. The difference here is that she is sent on what seems like a simple quest by the killer, to retrieve a key and deliver it to The River Man. Nothing is quite so simple, though.
As the story continues, it becomes clear that Lori has an exceedingly disturbing past. The narrative we find ourselves caught up in becomes progressively darker and more uncomfortable as things become increasingly surreal and nightmarish in the real world as well as within Lori’s mind.
As we approach the end, we find ourselves wondering how we could have expected it to end any other way, as we experience the heartbreak for ourselves that no one within the story is human enough to feel.
Domus Necrophagous 