Two books that have captured Halloween 'spirit'
- Brett Hiner: A Work in Progress
- October 28, 2021
- 1266
It takes quite a bit for a book to give me the heebie-jeebies. Stephen King has done it a few times: “Salem’s Lot” and “Pet Sematary” come to mind, as well as Larry Underwood’s long walk through the dead-ridden Lincoln Tunnel in “The Stand.” It is hard not to imagine what one would do walking that mile and a half, enveloped in complete darkness, aside from the few remaining headlights kept alive by fading car batteries. It is a chapter that only takes up about 30 pages, in a 1,400-plus page novel, yet we are left with images and feelings that stick with us well beyond closing the back cover.
So I was pleasantly surprised when, just in time for the creepy-crawly season, a few new books managed to keep me up at night.
First up is Richard Lange’s “Rovers.” In what might be the oddest sentence I will ever write, imagine if George and Lenny from John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men” were vampires, and you have an idea what this surprisingly good yet bleak and gritty novel is about.
The book is set in the Southwest in the 1970s and follows three unique sets of characters, some vampires, some not, all headed toward a unique and satisfying confrontation.
There is Charlie Sanders, looking for his son's killer, someone who killed and bled his boy dry. His first-person journaling to his wife, and discovery of the fact there are nonhuman entities in the world, is filled with the kind of authenticity most vampire novels lack (and perhaps intentionally pays homage to Bram Stoker in the process).
“I learned there are monsters that pass as men and that the night nurtures unspeakable crimes,” Sanders writes to his wife. “You’ll think I’ve gone crazy as you read what I’m about to set down — I’m having trouble believing it myself — but Wanda, baby, every word is true,” he concludes.
We also follow two sets of “rovers,” the term used to refer to those nightly beings forced to wander from town to town/state to state to cover their bloody trails. One group is the “Fiends,” a motorcycle clan who kill on order — the Bad Guys in a book filled with bad guys. And the second, more likable rovers, are Jesse and Edgar, who are brothers connected by familial history and guilt. They become the emotional soul of the novel as Jesse, the thinking vampire, does everything within his power to keep his hulking, intellectually challenged brother, Edgar, out of trouble. Steinbeck would be flattered.
The strength of the book and Lange’s storytelling is it would be pretty difficult to place a label on the genre in which it fits. He does not get bogged down in vampire lore, letting the actions of his characters, alive and dead, tell a refreshingly original story. The book would slide quite nicely into the horror section of a local bookstore but would not feel out of place amongst crime or western or even mystery shelves either.
Secondly comes Scott Carson’s “Where They Wait.” Carson, the pen name for a NY Times best-selling author, sends us on a journey with Nick Bishop, a former war correspondent who, down on his luck, returns to his hometown to write a profile on a local app entrepreneur.
The app is called “Clarity,” designed with white noise and guided meditations that foster serenity. But for a limited few, like Bishop, they also hear “sleep songs” and the hauntingly melodic voice of a woman who warns, “Far, far down we go/Fearless though we are prey/Nothing ahead that we know/But all behind we must flee.”
Deep sleep follows for our protagonist, but so too do the nightmares involving ghosts and the keen realization he might be the only person to have heard the sleep songs and still be living.
Like “The Chill,” Carson’s other supernatural thriller, “Where They Wait” is a slow build. He does not put the reader ahead of the story, allowing the discoveries and the creepiness to unfold with the main character. As a result we become as intrigued with Bishop’s backstory, mostly surrounding his mother’s struggle with Alzheimer’s and her neurological work prior to suffering from the disease, as we do why he was chosen, unknowingly by him, as a test subject for “Clarity.”
Subtle jabs at our obsessiveness with technology and apps take the back burner to the hauntings from Bishop’s past, all leading to a conclusion I promise you will not see coming.
And one must appreciate Carson’s writing, in that for every page that gives us a jolt, we get a lyrical sentence that beautifully summarizes the human condition: “There was a gap between us (the narrator and his wife), and eventually in a long-term relationship you ride up against the chasm, judge its risk and reward, and make the hard choice: try to make the jump on faith, or retreat?” It is a balanced mix of scares with literary fulfillment.
Vampires, ghosts and monsters have flooded the fall bookshelves. Do not say I did not warn you if you find yourself up late into the evening this Halloween season, reading with every light on in the house with one of these two gems. Maybe we should be thankful turkey day is just around the corner.
Brett Hiner is in his 25th year of teaching English/language arts at Wooster High School, where he also serves as the yearbook advisor and Drama Club advisor/director. If he’s not at work or doing something work related, he is typically annoying his children and/or wife. He can be emailed at workinprogressWWN@gmail.com.