In the murky London gloom, a knife-wielding gentleman named Jack prowls the midnight streets with his faithful watchdog Snuff – gathering together the grisly ingredients they will need for an upcoming ancient and unearthly rite. For soon after the death of the moon, black magic will summon the Elder Gods back into the world. And all manner of Players, both human and undead, are preparing to participate.
Some have come to open the gates. Some have come to slam them shut.
And now the dread night approaches – so let the Game begin.
Author: Roger Zelazny Illustrator: Gahan Wilson Genre: Fantasy, Horror, Gaslamp Publisher: Avon Books Publication Date: September 1, 1994 Pages: 280
October 15th
Snuff continues his attempt to drag the body to hiding, being hampered both by the vicar and his new, crossbow-wielding recruits, and by a new police presence in the area, consisting of an Inspector, constables, and the Great Detective snooping around. Holmes seems particularly interested in the Good Doctor, and Snuff is happy that Jack isn’t a point of focus…yet.
He has to halt in his dragging for rest and recuperation and the day starts to close with him still far from the river and having to hide the body again in order to go into the city with Jack.
They find London a busy place. Not only are the police out in force but the players of the game appear to have chosen this night to party and many of them are in a state of inebriation. The Great Detective is also on the watch, disguised as a street vendor although Snuff quickly sniffs him out. All the noise and bluster and attention makes Jack’s activities more difficult to pull off. He has a successful hunt for wet ‘materials’ but is almost captured, and only evades the police with the aid of Larry Talbot who provides them with an opportune bolthole…and something with which to contain the blood.
So, one last party as the game grows near, with players letting their hair down. The long day ends with Snuff, exhausted, dragging the dead policeman a wee bit closer to the river. This is turning into a Herculean effort and shows us the lengths Snuff will go to to protect his master. He truly is a good boy, even if he is blind to the fact that his master is clearly a monster. Or maybe he’s not really blind. Is Snuff as reliable a narrator as we’ve been believing so far, or is he perhaps hiding something in his telling of the tale? I’m beginning to suspect the latter, although Zelazny has done such a good job of making us like Snuff it would be a bitter pill to have to swallow.
Boo-graphy: William Meikle is a Scottish writer, now living in Canada, with more than thirty novels published in the genre press and over 300 short story credits in thirteen countries.
He has books available from a variety of publishers including Dark Regions Press, Crossroad Press and Severed Press, and his work has appeared in a number of professional anthologies and magazines.
He lives in Newfoundland with whales, bald eagles and icebergs for company.
When he’s not writing he drinks beer, plays guitar, and dreams of fortune and glory.
The Green & the Black — A small group of industrial archaeologists head into the center of Newfoundland, investigating a rumor of a lost prospecting team of Irish miners in the late Nineteenth century.
They find the remains of a mining operation, and a journal and papers detailing the extent of the miners’ activities. But there is something else on the site, something older than the miners, as old as the rock itself.
Soon the archaeologists are coming under assault, from a strange infection that spreads like wildfire through mind and body, one that doctors seem powerless to define let alone control.
The survivors only have one option. They must return to the mine, and face what waits for them, down in the deep dark places, where the green meets the black.
When a Halloween party turns deadly, it falls to Hercule Poirot to unmask a murderer in Agatha Christie’s classic murder mystery, Hallowe’en Party.
At a Halloween party, Joyce – a hostile thirteen year old – boasts that she once witnessed a murder. When no one believes her, she storms off home. But within hours her body is found, still in the house, drowned in an apple-bobbing tub. That night, Hercule Poirot is called in to find the “evil presence.” But first he must establish whether he is looking for a murderer or a double-murderer…
Child’s Play or Child’s Murder? Agatha Christie’s Hallowe’en Party
Mrs. Ariadne Oliver is a kind, if somewhat scatterbrained lady, who loves apples and writes bestselling murder mysteries. Though a delightful person, unfortunately, she has never existed. Mrs. Ariadne Oliver is a literary character, a creation of Dame Agatha Christie who introduced her in her later books as a wry alter ego.
In 1969, Mrs. Oliver is about to celebrate Halloween at her friends’ house in Kent, UK. As the hostess is bustling around, trying to get everything in order, Mrs. Oliver ponders the difference between squash and zucchini, between Halloween and Thanksgiving, and between life and death:
“It was rather remarkable, seeing so many pumpkins or vegetable marrows, whatever they are… The last time I saw one of these…was in the United States last year – hundreds of them. All over the house. I’ve never seen so many pumpkins…They were everywhere in the shops, and in people’s houses, with candles or nightlights inside them or strung up. Very interesting, really. But it wasn’t for Hallowe’en party, it was Thanksgiving. Now I’ve always associated pumpkins with Hallowe’en, and that’s the end of October. Thanksgiving comes much later, doesn’t it? Isn’t it November, about the third week in November? Anyway, here, Hallowe’en is definitely the 31st of October, isn’t it? First Hallowe’en and then, what comes next? All Souls’ Day? That’s when in Paris you go to cemeteries and put flowers on graves. Not a sad sort of feast. I mean, all the children go too and enjoy themselves”.
The jarring transition from grief in cemeteries to kids having fun captures the essence of Halloween. It is a holiday of candy and ghost stories; of pumpkins and ghouls; of good cheer and deep fear. And in her own inimitable way, Ariadne Oliver – or rather, her creator, Agatha Christie – has captured the deep duality of this strangest of all feasts.
Hallowe’en Party is not as well-known as Christie’s earlier novels, but it is just as accomplished, while considerably darker. Published in 1969, it features indefatigable Hercule Poirot who, by this time, would be around 120 years old. But he is still capable of solving a murder mystery. Poirot is invited by Mrs. Oliver to investigate a series of crimes around the Quarry Garden in Kent. The crimes are atrocious: four murders, two of them involving children, and an attempted murder of yet another child. The ambience is brooding and ominous: a party ending with a corpse; a mysterious sunken garden; a contested country estate.
We could easily imagine the setup as the beginning of a slasher movie. And indeed, the novel generates a sense of dread by constantly hinting at some unspecified demonic forces at play. There are so many references to serial killers, insanity, witches, and ghouls, you would expect the knife-wielding Michael Myers to pop up from behind the bushes and go on a rampage. After all, the first Halloween movie that crystallized the connection between the holiday and slasher aesthetics came out less than ten years after Christie’s novel, in 1978.
But this is not Christie. Though some of her other novels verge on supernatural horror (especially the superb And Then There Were None, 1939), in her Poirot books, the solution is always rational and logical, the horror of violence defused by reducing it to a bloodless puzzle. At the end, there is a logical explanation, justice is done, and the cozy mystery solved. Poirot, the voice of reason, dismisses out of hand any talk of madness, possession, or ghosts. In Poirot’s world, mayhem is only a pretext for ratiocination, a game with set rules, a game even a child can play. And so, despite the gruesome nature of the murders in Hallowe’en Party, the motive for them is neither sexual nor supernatural but a good old-fashioned desire for profit and fear of discovery (spoilers alert!). Poirot’s reasonable explanation for the deaths of 13-year-old Joyce and her little brother is supposed to dispel the horror of their violent end.
But does it? By the time the murderers finally get their just comeuppances (spoilers alert again!), we have been inundated with so many disturbing references to madness, sexual depravity, possession, demonic forces, and the Devil that the tidy ending rings hollow. As a cleaning lady who is reputed to be a witch ominously suggests, the smug upper-middle-class suburb of Woodleigh Common is infested with evil: “the devil’s always got some of his own. Born and bred to it.” When the children of Woodleigh Common are having a Halloween party, is it a child’s play or a child’s sacrifice?
Mrs. Oliver’s stream of consciousness quoted above is, in fact, a pretty accurate summary of the history of Halloween. It started as the pagan feast of Samhain and later merged with the Catholic All Saints’ Day, designated as such by Pope Gregory III in the eighth century. The night before November 1 was known as All Souls, or All Hallows, Eve, which is the origin of the word Halloween, still spelled in Christie’s novel in the old-fashioned way with an apostrophe. Neither Samhain nor All Hallows Eve were innocent entertainment. Samhain may have involved human sacrifices, while All Hallows Eve was believed to be the time when the dead walk among the living. In the Middle Ages, the fear of ghosts and witches was absolutely real, and neither were a laughing matter. Even the carnival elements – dressing up, masking, drinking, and dancing – were linked to fertility cults that warded off death by engaging in sexual magic.
The reason why Halloween mutated from a pagan ritual to a kiddies’ night out had to do with the rise of science and rationalism in the Industrial Age. Folklore and superstition became an embarrassing reminder of the more “primitive” stages of cultural development. The Victorians saw themselves as the adults of history; everything that went on before was childish, immature; in short, a child’s play.
Only it did not quite work out this way. Nightmares turned out to be impervious to the light of reason; science did not dispel the fog of superstition; and irrational evil came back in force during the massacres of the last century. And Halloween persisted in its duality: both a whimsical entertainment and a night of terror; both a child’s play and adult horror; both trick-or-treating and serial murder.
Hallowe’en Party reflects this duality. Some of the customs in the novel will strike the American reader as quaint. There is no trick-or-treating but there is bobbing for apples (lifting apples from a bucket of water with your teeth). No face-painting or masks but mirrors are handed out, so girls can see faces of their future husbands (a practice widespread in medieval Europe and reflected in some spooky German and Russian ballads about a dead bridegroom coming to fetch the incautious bride). No candy but there is the Snapdragon – a dish of raisins set on fire. All these customs descend from ancient pagan rituals: apples are linked to fertility cults; mirrors trap souls; and the Snapdragon recalls the Viking funeral pyre. Surrounded by echoes of the Druidic ceremonies, the murder of a young girl is initially presented as some sort of demonic sacrifice, or perhaps a sex crime perpetrated by a madman.
But at the end it turns out to have been just a game. Christie’s novels seldom leave you with unanswered questions about the nature of evil or the origins of criminality. They are soothing puzzles to occupy your mind; cozy mysteries; precursors to Midsomer Murders. And yet, even as all the loose ends are tied up, there is something darker left unspoken. Next time you want to attend a Hallowe’en Party, remember that at All Souls’ Eve, evil walks, and evil is not a child’s play. Dame Agatha Christie who was knighted by the Queen for her contribution to British culture knows how to have her cake and to eat it; to reassure her readers and to disturb them; to have fun and to teach a lesson. So. let’s have Mrs. Ariadne Oliver, Christie’s ironic self-portrait, have the last word, as she does in Hallowe’en Party:
“’That’s right,’ said Mrs. Oliver in an exaggerated voice, ‘blame it all on me as usual’”
Boo-graphy: Elana Gomel was born in a country that no longer exists and has lived in many others that may, or may not, be on the road to extinction. She currently resides in California. She is an academic with a long list of books and articles, specializing in science fiction, Victorian literature, and serial killers. She is also a fiction writer who has published more than ninety short stories, several novellas, and three novels. Her story “Where the Streets Have No Name” was the winner of the 2020 Gravity Award, and her story “Mine Seven” is included in The Best Horror of the Year 13 edited by Ellen Datlow. She is a member of HWA.
Little Sister — A schoolgirl steps between a soldier and a ravening monster…
1943. Soviet Union is under attack as WW2 is raging. Fighting in the doomed battle of Kursk, Andrei finds himself in a strange city where Svetlana, a girl he has never seen but who looks eerily familiar, saves him from a fist-faced creature. When Svetlana’s family is lost, the two embark on a harrowing odyssey across the snow-covered plain, battling deformed former humans and taken prisoners by the army of black stars. Against impossible odds, they reach their destination where they discover a secret that will change history.
Little Sister is a dystopian historical fantasy set in the Soviet Era. Presenting a richly imagined alternative history world, this is a tale of friendship, survival, and heartbreak. Fans of The Book Thief and The Wolfhound Century will enjoy this striking fantasy rooted in Russian fiction.
In the murky London gloom, a knife-wielding gentleman named Jack prowls the midnight streets with his faithful watchdog Snuff – gathering together the grisly ingredients they will need for an upcoming ancient and unearthly rite. For soon after the death of the moon, black magic will summon the Elder Gods back into the world. And all manner of Players, both human and undead, are preparing to participate.
Some have come to open the gates. Some have come to slam them shut.
And now the dread night approaches – so let the Game begin.
Author: Roger Zelazny Illustrator: Gahan Wilson Genre: Fantasy, Horror, Gaslamp Publisher: Avon Books Publication Date: September 1, 1994 Pages: 280
October 14th
Snuff and Greymalk have a conversation that serves as an infodump bringing us up to speed on the current situation. The vicar has been taking potshots at the players with his crossbow, the Great Detective is prowling in the area and we discover that the players not only have familiars, but each is in possession of at least one magic item; Jack’s blade, Jill’s broom, the mad monk’s icon ( stolen from a Mad Arab…I think I can guess what that must be), the Count’s ring, the Druid’s scythe and so on. The conversation doesn’t just provide us with more depth on the game though, it moves the plot along to the next level when Greymalk announces she has found a body.
We discover that Snuff’s mental map is more magical than we thought, in that in some cases it might allow him to track backwards in time along the lines to find out what was going on in the past. Not this time though; the body Greymalk takes him to see is that of a policeman up from the city. His throat has been cut, his eyes pecked out by crows. Snuff cannot allow it to be discovered so close to Jack’s house and resolves to drag the body to the river and drop in it where it can be carried far away. It’s going to take him a while though, and at the end of the day he has to hide the body in a copse and return home for some well earned sleep. He’s only got halfway to the river.
We’ve had a lot of info given to us in that chapter, all skillfully woven into snappy dialogue to make it palatable. And the death of the policeman means that the stakes have just got that much higher for everyone; the players have, up till now, been mostly minding their own business. I suspect that’s all about to change. We’re into the meat of it now; the chapters are getting longer, the cast are moving about more frantically and interacting more often. I expect some mayhem soon.
Boo-graphy: William Meikle is a Scottish writer, now living in Canada, with more than thirty novels published in the genre press and over 300 short story credits in thirteen countries.
He has books available from a variety of publishers including Dark Regions Press, Crossroad Press and Severed Press, and his work has appeared in a number of professional anthologies and magazines.
He lives in Newfoundland with whales, bald eagles and icebergs for company.
When he’s not writing he drinks beer, plays guitar, and dreams of fortune and glory.
The Green & the Black — A small group of industrial archaeologists head into the center of Newfoundland, investigating a rumor of a lost prospecting team of Irish miners in the late Nineteenth century.
They find the remains of a mining operation, and a journal and papers detailing the extent of the miners’ activities. But there is something else on the site, something older than the miners, as old as the rock itself.
Soon the archaeologists are coming under assault, from a strange infection that spreads like wildfire through mind and body, one that doctors seem powerless to define let alone control.
The survivors only have one option. They must return to the mine, and face what waits for them, down in the deep dark places, where the green meets the black.
I’d originally planned do a review, with my 19 y.o. son, of Train to Busan, which was one of my favorite horror movies watched in the previous year. I’m always a sucker for a good Zombie flick, and this was one of the best I’ve seen in a while. (Go watch it. Keep some tissues nearby for the ending). But I kept getting lured into watching other horror movies, so he and I never got around to watching it again for the purposes of writing a review.
I also thought I might do a review of Midnight Mass, which is definitely my favorite horror film/series of the year and probably cements Mike Flannagan as my new favorite horror director. Yes it was brutal But it was so brilliantly written and acted. It was perhaps the most sympathetic horror story I’ve ever watched. However, the kiddo hasn’t watched it yet, and although I’ve tried talking him into it, he’s been reluctant.
Ultimately I decided to ask my son what horror movie he thought I should watch, and he picked one of his most favorites: The Descent (2005), which you can watch for free right now if you have Amazon Prime. First, can I say how thrilled I was to find out one of my son’s favorite horror movies features a band of totally badass women? It passes the Bechdel Test with flying colors, and while it has tons of gore and brutal fight scenes, it features absolutely zero sexual violence. I’m so proud. wipes proud mom tear from eye. While the movie poster features a quote that says something about it being the best horror thriller since Alien, I can’t quite agree with that statement. But I will say it was worth the hour or so I spent on it.
Here’s a blurb from Amazon: A girls’ trip to explore a [unmapped and “undiscovered”] labyrinth of North Carolina caves takes a terrifying turn in this spelunking scarefest.
Horror is highly subjective. What scares one person won’t scare another. In this case, the horror relies a lot on claustrophobia. I don’t necessarily have a nagging fear of enclosed spaces, though. In fact, I’ve explored quite a few caves over the years and always marveled at the experience in a positive way. But I think it’s fair to say that particularly element went over well (or dreadfully) with my son. There’s also the fact that he was born in West Virginia (mountain territory) and spends a lot of time there with extended family. He has intimate experience with old, abandoned mines and such and gets a kick out of exploring them for the horror thrill of it. I talked to him more in depth about this movie after we watched it this past weekend, and here’s what he had to say:
Me: Why is The Descent one of your favorites, and what about it, in particular, makes it scary for you?
D: The reason I like decent is because it’s a breath of fresh air.
Me: In what way?
D: I feel as if it’s similar to horror movies of that time but mixes physical horror with psychological horror. You have cramped areas, no map, no one knows we’re you are…
Me: So, it’s like the perfect storm of bad luck, and that type of construct is also kind of believable.
D: And growing up visiting mountains a lot makes this story scary because these things come up to hunt, and yeah that was a great way to put that storm of bad luck. Like, could they hunt you?
Me: What would you say was your most favorite scene or element? Or what one thing really stood out to you in this movie, where you were like: Oh that was cool! Or, That was especially scary! (WARNING: HIS ANSWER INCLUDES A SPOILER)
D: My favorite moment was when the main character is fighting the girl creature in the pit and has to kill it with a tooth bone. It shows truly how desperate she is to live plus how badass/resourceful she is.
Me: Oh yeah. That was a great (disgusting) scene.
D: Yeah, that’s why it’s my favorite. LOL.
Me: Anything else we should say about this movie?
D: If you like two badass women kicking creature butts, watch this movie.
Me: LOL. That’s perfect, actually.
Ultimately, the movie didn’t really scare me because the claustrophobia factor, a big element, didn’t elicit as strong of feeling of dread in me as it did for my son. I also felt the “monster” factor could have used a lighter touch, particularly in building suspense in the beginning. I would’ve liked more teasing, more suspense. I think the monster element could have happened more subtly over time until one big shocking reveal and the fight to stay alive and escape thereafter.
I can’t say, however, that the idea of trapping a group of women in a cave that has no obvious escape route, and then sending a ravenous horde that has evolved to thrive in the underground gloom after them, isn’t a great recipe for a horror film. It was, and it’s not a bad way to spend a Saturday afternoon this Halloween season. Besides, as I said before, horror is subjective. This movie might be the one that perfectly tickles your horror bone.
Boo-graphy: Karissa Laurel lives in North Carolina with her kid, her husband, the occasional in-law, and a very hairy husky named Bonnie. Some of her favorite things are coffee, dark chocolate, superheroes, and Star Wars. She can quote Princess Bride verbatim. In the summer, she’s camping, kayaking, and boating at the lake, and in the winter, she’s skiing or curled up with a good book. She is the author of the Urban Fantasy trilogy, The Norse Chronicles; Touch of Smoke, a stand-alone paranormal romance; and The Stormbourne Chronicles, a YA second-world fantasy trilogy.
Serendipity at the End of the World — Serendipity Blite and her sister, Bloom, use their unique talents to survive the apocalyptic aftermath of the Dead Disease. When Bloom is kidnapped, Sera is determined to get her back. Attempting a rescue mission in an undead-infested city would be suicidal, so Sera forms a specialized team to help retrieve her sister. But unfortunate accident sets Sera teetering on the edge of death. She must fight to save her own life, because surviving could mean finding family, love, and possibly a cure.
You can find it on Kindle Vella New episodes come out every Saturday
Reviewing Horror Novels: Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson & NOS4A2 by Joe Hill
I was working on an interview post for Meghan about Halloween, and that got me in the mood for a good horror story. Since I listen to way more audiobooks than I can afford to buy, I often rely on my library to supplement my Audible diet. When I went searching on my library’s audiobook app, I stumbled across The Hunting of Hill House. While I’m familiar with Shirley Jackson and the story on which a terrible 90s movie and a pretty good recent Netflix series is based, I’ve never actually read the source material. So, I decided it was time to remedy that.
I’m glad I did. Hill House is clearly a foundational story in the horror genre, particularly the hunted house sub-genre. You can see Jackson’s inspiration in so many stories that came after hers. Stephen King openly admits Hill House was a big influence on The Shining, for example. Eleanor and Danny Torrance have a lot in common. So does Hill House and Overlook Hotel.
If you know nothing about The Haunting of Hill House, here’s a blurb: “It is the story of four [paranormal activity] seekers who arrive at a notoriously unfriendly pile [abandoned mansion] called Hill House: Dr. Montague, an occult scholar looking for solid evidence of a “haunting”; Theodora, the lighthearted assistant; Eleanor, a friendless, fragile young woman well acquainted with poltergeists; and Luke, the future heir of Hill House. At first, their stay seems destined to be merely a spooky encounter with inexplicable phenomena. But Hill House is gathering its powers—and soon it will choose one of them to make its own.”
The main protagonist is Eleanor, who has an extremely sensitive connection to the house. Jackson, however, leaves what the house actually is, and what the haunting actually is, very much up to the reader’s interpretation. Read carefully from here on… my discussion will contain spoilers. For me the fact that Jackson made a point of mentioning Eleanor’s childhood “poltergeist” experience (an avalanche of rocks rained on Eleanor’s childhood home without any clear source or reason) meant it was Jackson‘s intent to show that the “haunting” at Hill House wasn’t entirely inside Eleanor’s head. Plus the book clearly states the other members of the party were witnesses the haunting events (beating on doors, vandalism of Theodora’s clothes, writing on the walls in what seemed like blood, a frigid cold presence that sucked the warmth out of rooms). Whether Eleanor is the poltergeist herself–she might be some kind of telekinetic–or is highly psychically sensitive to those kinds of energies is what’s so wonderfully ambiguous in this story. Ambiguousness plays a big part in heightening the story’s sensations of terror and dread, and it’s often my most favorite tool in horror.
I decided that, for me, I believe Eleanor was psychically sensitive to the energies of the house, which had a history and reputation for malevolence long before Eleanor’s arrival. Those energies manipulated her specifically because of her vulnerabilities and sensitivities.
The arrival of Ms. Montague (Dr. Montague’s wife and a self-proclaimed spiritualist/psychic) seemed to underscore this—she was the embodiment of dramatic irony. She was so insistent that the others in the party had no psychic ability. However, when she worked with “planchette” (as in a Ouija Board planchette), all the information Ms. Montague received from it had to do with “Nell” i.e, Eleanor, which proved how physically sensitive Eleanor was and how obtuse Ms. Montague actually was even, although she believed the opposite about herself. This irony was one of my favorite devices in the story. The results from Ms. Montague’s consultations with “planchette” were yet another clue that the things happening to Eleanor were not completely in Eleanor’s head. Yet, it also served to further muddy how much of what happened in the house was Eleanor’s doing and how much was the house itself.
In the end, it’s my belief that (BIG SPOILER) Eleanor’s spirit becomes a part of the house’s energies along with those of the others who died there before her. I think before her death, Eleanor was already starting to become a part of the house’s sentience, as if the house were absorbing her and vice versa. The house is basically an amalgam of all the people it victimized over the years.
I can’t believe it took me this many years to finally get around to reading this book, but I’m glad I did. It’s such a cultural touchpoint, I think it should be expected reading as much as Dickens or Shakespeare or Faulkner or Steinbeck, etc. It’s also interesting in its themes of female sexuality. It’s definitely ahead of it’s time and such a masterful portrayal of the “human condition”. I’ll fight anyone who says genre fiction can’t represent the human experience as well as literary fiction. Haunting of Hill House should prove all genre naysayers wrong.
After finishing Hill House, which was indeed very literary in tone and style, I was still in the horror mood, so I went back to my library app and found N0S4A2, which has showed up repeatedly over the years in lists of “best horror novels”. The book is by Joe Hill, who is Stephen King’s son. It’s written in a much more commercial and accessible style, and Hill is clearly influenced by the works of his father. So, if you’re a King fan, which I am, you might enjoy Hill’s books, too.
Again, for those who may be unfamiliar, here’s a blurb (with which I have taken great liberties):
Victoria “Vic” McQueen, a deeply flawed woman who spends most of the novel in a state of perpetual denial, has an uncanny knack for finding things using a Raleigh Tuff Burner bike and a magical covered bridge. Joe Hill is, as I mentioned, Stephen King’s son, so it’s no surprise this story is set in New England, and what is a New England story without a covered bridge?
The magic bridge eventually takes Vic to Charles Talent Manx, a soul sucking vampiric creature-person who drives a cool old Rolls Royce Wraith that’s a lot like Kit from Knight Rider if Kit were possessed by a demon. Or, you know, kind of like that evil 1958 Plymouth Fury in Christine, a book by Joe Hill’s dad. Anyway, Charlie Manx likes kids but not in that “kiddie fiddler” kind of way that everyone wrongly accuses him of, and he kidnaps and takes the kids to a perpetual childhood in “Christmasland” (Hint: Christmasland isn’t as fun as it sounds). Helping him is the “Gasmask Man”, a simple-minded, childlike man who really, really hates women, especially “Mommies,” and does everything he can to torture and abuse them throughout the book. Fun times.
Manx sees Vic as a threat and tries to do bad things to her, but Victoria manages to escape and spends decades dealing, poorly, with the emotional trauma of her magical abilities and her near-death run-in with Manx and Gasmask Man. She has some good times, even manages to fall in love with a wonderful cinnamon roll of a man (seriously, Lou is the best character in the book), and she writes some successful children’s novels (that sound so cool they should exist in real life), but literal demons from her past haunt her into near insanity, and her life starts falling apart.
Eventually Vic, Manx, and Gasmask Man have their final showdown when Manx, still pissed that Victoria got away from him all those years ago, comes to seek his revenge. She puts on her big girl panties long enough to get stabbed, burned, beaten, and broken a whole lot before she finally goes Grinch all over Manx’s Christmasland.
I’m not going to lie. I struggled with this book. There was a time when I had more patience and tolerance for horror that used misogyny as one of its elements. That the misogyny was presented as an evil thing that came from the “bad guys” who may or may not meet justice for their violent hateful ways isn’t enough justification for me anymore. I don’t have much stomach left for premises that are predicated on violence against children and women (mothers in particular). I feel like we’ve been victims in media far too long, and I’m just so tired of that trope.
That Vic, a woman and a mother, turns out to be a righteous hero (somewhat of an anti-hero at times) was perhaps a redeeming element. She’s a complex character, written well. She and Lou, a great gentle giant of a man who was a great contrast to the woman hating violence of Manx and Gasmask Man, are what made the book worth finishing. There were more than a few times when I wanted to give up on it, but Lou and Vic were worth rooting for.
I might read The Haunting of Hill House again in the future. It’s the kind of book that will, I suspect, stand up to re-reading and will reveal new secrets and themes and elements upon future study. For me, N0S4A2 has none of that. Not that a good entertaining book needs to be deep or literary to be worthwhile. The kinds of books I write don’t stand up to long term scrutiny either. But as far as horror goes, phycological terror always appeals to me more than bloody violence and gore. For that reason alone, I definitely recommend The Haunting of Hill House over N0S4A2. But, I think any well rounded reader, especially ones who are fond of horror, would get something out of reading both.
Boo-graphy: Karissa Laurel lives in North Carolina with her kid, her husband, the occasional in-law, and a very hairy husky named Bonnie. Some of her favorite things are coffee, dark chocolate, superheroes, and Star Wars. She can quote Princess Bride verbatim. In the summer, she’s camping, kayaking, and boating at the lake, and in the winter, she’s skiing or curled up with a good book. She is the author of the Urban Fantasy trilogy, The Norse Chronicles; Touch of Smoke, a stand-alone paranormal romance; and The Stormbourne Chronicles, a YA second-world fantasy trilogy.
Serendipity at the End of the World — Serendipity Blite and her sister, Bloom, use their unique talents to survive the apocalyptic aftermath of the Dead Disease. When Bloom is kidnapped, Sera is determined to get her back. Attempting a rescue mission in an undead-infested city would be suicidal, so Sera forms a specialized team to help retrieve her sister. But unfortunate accident sets Sera teetering on the edge of death. She must fight to save her own life, because surviving could mean finding family, love, and possibly a cure.
You can find it on Kindle Vella New episodes come out every Saturday
Meghan's House of Books 