Review: Ryker Begs Us To Stay In The Light!!
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 09 26, 2013
My childhood home was an old Victorian house from the 20s that creaked and popped like an old church pew. The worst of those sounds always seemed to come at night, anxiously waiting for the time that my Mountain Dew would seek a running escape from the confines of my tiny bladder. That seemingly endless walk to the hall bathroom took me right past dangerous hotspots of paranoia...the foot of the bed, the hall closet and the bottom step of a gloomy staircase that would rarely suck a few rays of moonlight down its black chasm. It was this path of darkness that seemed to heighten my hysteria of an unknown baddie emerging from the shadows to pull me into whatever black envelope said baddie lurked in.  To complicate my small bladder's requested release of late night anguish was a fourteen page story that I read at the tender age of twelve.Stephen King's "The Boogeyman".An adult, an educated and famous one at that, put pen to paper and suggested, if not outright proved, that a lurking baddie does exist in the shadows. This "boogeyman" preys on kids and has the audacity to murder under the watchful guard of parents. The horror of it all!At age thirty-seven that story still scampers into my brain on those late night bladder runs. Mountain Dew unfortunately has changed to beer creating that soft thirty something middle. The idea that a lurking baddie exists behind my shower curtain is still horrifying but pales in comparison to a "boogeyman" in an upstairs hallway plaguing my own child. Twenty-five years shy of my meeting with King's closet fiend rears another story that magnifies the terror of dark spaces.Alan Ryker's "Nightmare Man".Much like "The Boogeyman" in addressing late night visitation, Ryker steps into the darkest recesses to paint his character's night terrors. A black shape in the corner, footsteps in the closet and that lurking baddie at the foot of the bed are all utilized effectively as Ryker's shock tactics. "Nightmare Man" is soaked in a dreadful atmosphere yet inspiring as we watch this middle aged father struggle with family turmoil. His "Nightmare Man" could be a by-product of his night terror ailment, or, frighteningly enough, something that has indeed come to consume his child. It is this question that readers will be asking as they navigate the dark bedrooms and long hallways of Ryker's nightmare.  We scurry to the light only to find Ryker has inconveniently moved the light switch further into the darkness. It is this tension and panic that makes "Nightmare Man" outstanding and one that should plague full bladders for years to come.