“I remember feeling shocked that there was still so much sunlight outside, that the sky hadn’t turned black already.” There are uncountable undercurrents of illumination within David Surface’s stories, moments where rippling light penetrates disfigured shadows, affording readers a reflective glimmer before the glow dims, obliging itself to darkness.

These Things That Walk Behind Me (Lethe Press, 2024), his second, may serve as an ideal entry point for Surface’s evolving body of work. There’s a continued reliability in quality his fans can trust—a trust that has been fostered following praise of his 2020 collection, Terrible Things (Black Shuck Books), not to mention the literary fidelity of his newsletter project, Strange Little Stories. As a tale-teller, his dependability and writerly precision is why we come here to his work—“to be focused. And to be haunted.” (I’ve appropriated the previous line from his story, “The Man Outside,” which, in its climactic scene, contains an unsettling sequence, a depiction that lingers with electric irreality.)

With an introduction by John Langan, the fourteen pieces within These Things That Walk Behind Me are a stylistic and compassionate dissection of loss, duality, severance, and responsibility. And though Surface’s stories certainly compel readers to glance over their own shoulders—a curious inspection at the things that walk behind each of us in that familiar darkness—it’s best to keep one’s eyes on the page.