More Horror Reading
Nov. 1st, 2018 03:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brigdhBad Man by Dathan Auerbach. The author of the legendary creepypasta Penpal has come out with his first all-original novel – or, since Penpal has itself now been officially published, his second novel. Penpal isn't one of my all-time favorite creepypastas, personally, but it was creepy enough and well-written enough to make me want to seek out more by Auerbach.
Bad Man is the story of fifteen year old Ben who, while babysitting his three-year-old brother Eric, runs an errand at the local grocery store. Ben turns his back for a few seconds and Eric disappears, never to be seen again. There's no record of him leaving on the store's security cameras, no real suspects, and a police search turns up nothing.
Five years later Ben's parents are still lost in grief and Ben himself has become obsessed with finding Eric, continuing to hand out missing-person flyers, visiting any newcomers in town, and constantly harassing the one detective still assigned to the case. This has given Ben a reputation that renders him more-or-less unemployable, and he ends up taking a job as an overnight stock boy at the very grocery store where Eric disappeared, after the owner doesn't recognize him since Ben hasn't been back since that fateful day. This actually proves to be a mixed blessing for Ben: he becomes good friends with the other employees (and I absolutely ship Ben/Marty. Where is that fanfic?), giving him some of his first real connections outside of his family. He also becomes convinced that the secret of what happened to Eric is hidden within the store, as he seems to discover clues suggesting that Eric's still alive and his captor is deliberately taunting Ben.
I enjoyed the book. It's slow to get started – which was surprising, because if there's one thing creepypasta does well, it's getting readers hooked from the very beginning. As with all internet writing, it's a constant battle to keep your readers from clicking away. But Bad Man's sleepy beginning works to set the rich atmosphere of the hot, humid small town in the Southern US where Ben lives, and his claustrophobic existence. The small hints that Ben's narration is not entirely reliable are also very well-done. I gradually found myself sucked into the story; Auerbach's writing was more than suspenseful enough to keep me turning the pages. And there are some excellently creepy scenes of the empty store at night, and of Ben's disturbing neighbors.
On the other hand, I can't entirely recommend Bad Man, and it's all because of the ending. I think I understand what Auerbach was going for and it's not a bad idea for a twist ending, but it ends up not matching the majority of the preceding book. Major plot threads are dropped without explanation, while the explanations we do get just open up more questions. I still think Auerbach has a lot of potential, but maybe his next book will be a better showcase of it.
I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.
In the Night Wood by Dale Bailey. A horror novel that goes more for subtly creepy than gorey and terrifying. Charles and Erin are a married couple from North Carolina with problems: their only child, Lissa, has just died, Charles had an affair, and in the aftermath they've both lost their jobs. Salvation comes in the form of Hollow House, an immense Victorian mansion in the Yorkshire countryside, complete with a huge shadowy forest on the grounds and an estate worth millions of dollars, to which it turns out Erin is the distant heir. Her ancestor, Caedmon Hollow, is how she and Charles met in the first place: he wrote a single fantasy novel (a sort of darker Alice in Wonderland) that they both read as children. Charles, an English professor, decides to revive his career by writing a biography of Hollow using the house's archives. Erin doesn't much care what country she's in, lost in memories of Lissa, overdosing on her prescribed antidepressants, and drinking all day long. As so they both relocate to rural England.
The dense imposing forest that surrounds Hollow House lends an uneasy tone to their lives right from the beginning, but it gets worse once they both begin to glimpse a mysterious horned figure under the trees. There is also a series of young girls who look disconcertingly like Lissa, all missing or dead, all with bad fathers. Fatherhood ends up being a major theme of the novel, fatherhood and the price of parenting a child. I don't want to say too much more, since a great deal of the pleasure of In the Night Wood is just figuring out what's going on, but the book draws heavily on English folklore like Cernunnos and Herne the Hunter, the Wild Hunt, Tamlin, and fairy bargains. The writing is ominous and eerie, and does an excellent job of evoking the fear of being lost in the woods. It's not perfect, but it is a very good Gothic novel for the modern age.
I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.
Bad Man is the story of fifteen year old Ben who, while babysitting his three-year-old brother Eric, runs an errand at the local grocery store. Ben turns his back for a few seconds and Eric disappears, never to be seen again. There's no record of him leaving on the store's security cameras, no real suspects, and a police search turns up nothing.
Five years later Ben's parents are still lost in grief and Ben himself has become obsessed with finding Eric, continuing to hand out missing-person flyers, visiting any newcomers in town, and constantly harassing the one detective still assigned to the case. This has given Ben a reputation that renders him more-or-less unemployable, and he ends up taking a job as an overnight stock boy at the very grocery store where Eric disappeared, after the owner doesn't recognize him since Ben hasn't been back since that fateful day. This actually proves to be a mixed blessing for Ben: he becomes good friends with the other employees (and I absolutely ship Ben/Marty. Where is that fanfic?), giving him some of his first real connections outside of his family. He also becomes convinced that the secret of what happened to Eric is hidden within the store, as he seems to discover clues suggesting that Eric's still alive and his captor is deliberately taunting Ben.
I enjoyed the book. It's slow to get started – which was surprising, because if there's one thing creepypasta does well, it's getting readers hooked from the very beginning. As with all internet writing, it's a constant battle to keep your readers from clicking away. But Bad Man's sleepy beginning works to set the rich atmosphere of the hot, humid small town in the Southern US where Ben lives, and his claustrophobic existence. The small hints that Ben's narration is not entirely reliable are also very well-done. I gradually found myself sucked into the story; Auerbach's writing was more than suspenseful enough to keep me turning the pages. And there are some excellently creepy scenes of the empty store at night, and of Ben's disturbing neighbors.
On the other hand, I can't entirely recommend Bad Man, and it's all because of the ending. I think I understand what Auerbach was going for and it's not a bad idea for a twist ending, but it ends up not matching the majority of the preceding book. Major plot threads are dropped without explanation, while the explanations we do get just open up more questions. I still think Auerbach has a lot of potential, but maybe his next book will be a better showcase of it.
I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.
In the Night Wood by Dale Bailey. A horror novel that goes more for subtly creepy than gorey and terrifying. Charles and Erin are a married couple from North Carolina with problems: their only child, Lissa, has just died, Charles had an affair, and in the aftermath they've both lost their jobs. Salvation comes in the form of Hollow House, an immense Victorian mansion in the Yorkshire countryside, complete with a huge shadowy forest on the grounds and an estate worth millions of dollars, to which it turns out Erin is the distant heir. Her ancestor, Caedmon Hollow, is how she and Charles met in the first place: he wrote a single fantasy novel (a sort of darker Alice in Wonderland) that they both read as children. Charles, an English professor, decides to revive his career by writing a biography of Hollow using the house's archives. Erin doesn't much care what country she's in, lost in memories of Lissa, overdosing on her prescribed antidepressants, and drinking all day long. As so they both relocate to rural England.
The dense imposing forest that surrounds Hollow House lends an uneasy tone to their lives right from the beginning, but it gets worse once they both begin to glimpse a mysterious horned figure under the trees. There is also a series of young girls who look disconcertingly like Lissa, all missing or dead, all with bad fathers. Fatherhood ends up being a major theme of the novel, fatherhood and the price of parenting a child. I don't want to say too much more, since a great deal of the pleasure of In the Night Wood is just figuring out what's going on, but the book draws heavily on English folklore like Cernunnos and Herne the Hunter, the Wild Hunt, Tamlin, and fairy bargains. The writing is ominous and eerie, and does an excellent job of evoking the fear of being lost in the woods. It's not perfect, but it is a very good Gothic novel for the modern age.
I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.
