YMMV / The People

• Nightmare Fuel: as full of hope as the People stories are, even they have moments straight out of nightmares, and when they do, it's flat-out horrifying:
  • In "Angels Unaware", Lytha/Marnie barely escapes being burned alive by a fanatic religious cult, but the rest of her family dies as she watches. Keep in mind, all the People are telepathic and constantly in each others' minds.
  • "Pottage" has an Outsider friend, Melodye, assigned as a schoolteacher to the small community of Bendo, a community of People who encountered overwhelming hate and fear from Earth's humans after the People crashlanded, and as a result, have tried to stamp out all of the People's Gifts in their children. In one chilling scene, the kids relive the horrors of the crash and subsequent witchhunt:
    They found a baby under a bush. The man hit it with the wood part of his gun. He hit it and hit it and hit it. I hit scorpins like that. They caught us and put us in a pen. They built a fire all around us. "Fly," they said, ”fly and save yourselfs." We flew because it hurt. They shot us...If anyone finds out we are not of earth we will die. Keep your feet on the ground."
  • In the collection 'Pilgrimage', the framing story introduces Lea, an Outsider who is struggling with deep depression and undiagnosed schizophrenia to the point of suicide. Luckily the People intervene, but Henderson's descriptions of Lea's mental state are extremely unnerving, as Lea's internal voice convinces her to jump off a bridge:
    "Shhh!" the darkness said to the little voice. "Shhh! Don’t bother to think. It hurts. Haven’t you found it hurts? You need never think again or speak again or breathe again past this next inhalation..."