Have You Read This? And Then I Woke Up by Malcolm Devlin

 

We trust reality. Or at least we hope reality will always be reliable, that the same rules that governed it yesterday will govern it today and so on. It can be quite upsetting when the little daily bargain you make with reality is suddenly broken. Honestly, if you can’t trust reality, who or what can you trust? That question is what drives this zombie-adjacent novella And Then I Woke Up by Malcolm Devlin.

This story is about monsters and about survivors. After a plague that turns ordinary people into monsters strikes, bands of survivors roam the countryside, stealing what they can and taking out any monsters they come across. These monsters might have been friends, neighbors, lovers, or family, but they are no longer human. Spence learned all these hard lessons as a survivor and he’s killed many monsters, but the plague might be something different and he might also have a different kind of body count on his hands.

Devlin’s book is a quick read, but it’s not necessarily an easy one. This is largely because of how it consistently erodes the trustworthiness of its narrator Spence. Spence’s story might not be what he thinks it is, meaning the reader will start to question what exactly is real in Devlin’s book. About the only answer Devlin gives is that reality is ultimately subjective, but this realization is of little comfort to poor Spence. Fans of shorter works like Sara Tantlinger’s To Be Devoured and Joe Koch’s The Wingspan of Severed Hands should like this particular break from reality.

Graphic Content: Dead Kingdom, Vol. 1 by Etienne Deprentigny

 

A little-known fact about me (at least, I’m still assuming it’s little known) is that I love to play Dungeons & Dragons. Particularly, I love exploring a dark dungeon, gathering up treasure and killing scores of enemies. Also, I love to read stories about said dungeons, treasure, and monsters, not necessarily in that order. As a lover of horror, I am particularly overjoyed when fantasy and horror overlap, where the swords sever lots of limbs and the sorcery is typically used to raise and/or control the dead. This is basically the setup of Etienne Derepentigny’s Dead Kingdom, Vol. 1, which takes the Walking Dead formula and sets it during medieval times.

The story is set in a land that has been torn apart by war. Kain is a peacekeeper and former soldier who has grown tired of battle, but he must once again take up his sword as the land faces a plague of the dead rising and attacking the living. As the bodies fall only to rise again, Kain must make his way across the land, reunite with his wife, and hopefully not die and become part of the undead army.

This world drawn by Derepentigny is not a shimmering fantasy world of shimmering castles and flying dragons that could easily end the zombie scourge with a few fiery blasts. Derepentigny’s world is dingy, full of drab stone walls and muddied, bloody soldiers. When the dead are dispatched, after figuring out that the head is indeed vulnerable, the kills with ax and arrow become a highlight of his book, especially for fans of the Walking Dead. Those fans will definitely see a Rick Grimes template in Kain. Derepentigny, who also writes the book, establishes Kain as a soldier reluctant to fight but is, despite his best efforts, quite good at it. Add in a quest for his wife and this story becomes ideal for fans of both Walking Dead and Dungeons and Dragons, those who wouldn’t mind roving the apocalyptic wastelands while wielding a sword. 

Stream to Scream: Blood Quantum to Zombie Bake-Off

Zombies keep coming after being knocked down, refusing to truly die, and the same could be said of their popularity. From their early beginnings in George A. Romero and Lucio Fulci movies to their cultural dominance in series like The Walking Dead, they’re still growing strong. One big appeal of this kind of undead is the variety of horror stories they fit into, whether it’s blood-gushing free-for-alls where any and all kind of tools and weapons are used to dispatch them or even quieter affairs where the audience watches characters deal with the fact that the dead no longer stay dead. Good stories are able to straddle this line of gory mayhem and emotional moments. Two such examples are the movie Blood Quantum and Stephen Graham Jones’s zombie grudge match novella Zombie Bake-Off.

Blood Quantum, written and directed by Jeff Barnaby, begins in the Red Crow Indian Reservation at the edge of the world’s end. There are many people living, working, and trying to survive here, including Sheriff Traylor (Michael Greyeyes) as well as his two sons Joseph (Forrest Goodluck) and Lysol (Kiowa Gordon). Then the world is overrun with the living dead, and somehow the people of the reservation are immune. This leads to a flipped script, with everyone else in the world now cast as refugees, breaking down the doors to get into the reservation along with the zombies. Prejudices and resentments soon fester, and everything falls apart. This movie is both gratuitous as well as a social experiment of how a few can ruin it for the many.

Zombie Bake-Off doesn’t have quite the deep social commentary of Blood Quantum, but Jones’s tale of zombies, pro wrestlers, and soccer moms, does show people gathering together for survival. There’s a scheduling mishap at the Coliseum in Lubbock, TX, where soccer moms are showing off their greatest recipes and pro wrestlers like Jersey Devil Jill and Tiny Giant are showing off their penchant for violence, but that’s not the worst part. The worst part is a zombie virus infecting the wrestlers. Then again, there’s also the doors to the coliseum being chained up, and infected wrestlers are stalking the living. There are many examples of violence and mayhem (the grudge match foreshadowed in the book eventually happens) but there are also many instances where the survivors find an inner strength they didn’t know they had. And in both Blood Quantum and Zombie Bake-Off show how good horror is made not through tidal waves of viscera but also quiet moments of pathos.

 

 

Screen to Scream: Pet Sematary

Stephen King is enjoying something of a resurgence lately now that Hollywood has seemed to finally understand how to adapt his stories to the screen (Just ignore Dark Tower because, to paraphrase Jake (name), there are other adaptations than these). There are a few adaptations of King’s material floating around, including some very fine examples from Netflix and Hulu, but they don’t compare to the pop culture phenomenon that is It: Chapter 1, and Chapter 2 will soon be on its way to theaters. While not reaching the meme-worthy levels of Pennywise, Hollywood has another winner on its hands with the recent remake of Pet Sematary. Easily one of the darkest stories in King’s collection, it stands to reason that Stephen King himself has called Pet Sematary the story that disturbs him the most, and one that almost didn’t make its way onto bookshelves. The recent remake isn’t just a rehash of Stephen King ideas; it not only does the book justice, but it actually stands on its own as a terrifying horror story.

Just a quick warning, though. Feel free to recommend this movie/book combo to patrons or partake yourself, but be warned that there should be some time with family and/or kitten videos afterward. For a deeper analysis, and there will be . . . .

Spoilers!

Okay, let’s continue.

Many people are familiar with the basic premise of King’s book about the Creed family discovering that the house they just bought has not only a pet cemetery in back kept up by the local children, but it also has a path leading to a burial ground where things buried there don’t stay buried. One of the core themes of the novel is grief and what we can do in the face of it. Despite how unnatural the idea of resurrecting the dead might seem, and even when told by revenant Victor Pascow that the ground beyond the Pet Sematary is “sour,” Louis uses it to resurrect his daughter’s cat Church and then, in the book, his youngest son after a tragic accident. The death and subsequent resurrection of Church was the gateway with wise, old neighbor Judd as the tour guide to the hellish ground, but it’s the death of Gage, the son, that makes this story a knife in the gut, both the boy’s death and resurrection. By not accepting death, Louis has not only doomed himself but his family as well.

Looking at the remake of Pet Sematary, I think back to people who said that they left a lot of information out of the Harry Potter movies and I would typically reply that to put everything in the movie that the book has would be too long of a movie. The remake cuts a great deal of fat (backstory about Rachel’s parents, about the ground itself, etc.) and is a very lean, mean scream machine. It hits the high points of the book (the death of Pascow, meeting Judd, the death of Church, etc.) but the movie doesn’t spend time elaborating on these moments. Critics have said that this takes away what made the book and even the original movie so great, but there are plenty of scenes that will make theater-goers shriek, relying a lot on characters’ experiencing things that may or may not be real (Rachel’s encounters with sister Zelda are the best of these).

One of the biggest changes in the story is that it’s not Gage who is buried in the sour ground but daughter Ellie. The book could get away with having a toddler do what Gage does in the book. Miko Hughes notwithstanding, getting a child to do that would be difficult if not traumatizing. Having an older child be the resurrected one allows for a talking, self-aware child to discuss what awaits after death. After Ellie comes back, Louis gets her ready for bed like he would any other night, ignoring things that show her to be off. Ellie’s also able to say very cruel things to the parents who just happened to let her die after their daughter was cruelly ripped away from them. Due to the movie’s leanness, the themes of death and loss so deeply explored in the book aren’t truly explored, but actress Jeté Laurence gives a great portrayal of both a child and something that isn’t even human trying to be a child.

This current incarnation of Pet Sematary is one worth viewing, however, simply to see the risks the directors take with the story, and for librarians, it will make them familiar with a movie that could easily be a gateway for patrons to get into Stephen King, who has an overflowing bibliography of terrifying fiction. Patrons who read the original and then King’s other works might be relieved to see that King is capable of writing a happier ending.

Screen to Scream: Grace and Pet Sematary

People might remember W. W. Jacobs’ short story “The Monkey’s Paw” (SPOILERS! for this particular story, if you haven’t already read it). The father uses the monkey’s paw to wish for a large sum of money, then his son dies in a factory accident, which pays off the exact amount the father had asked for. The father, knowing and having been shown that the paw’s wishes bring the worse kind of luck, wishes to have his boy brought back to life. The story implies that the son isn’t anywhere close to what he was in life (End of spoilers!).  Jacobs’ story is often used to talk about how you should never make wishes. EVER. But also consider what the story says about grief, particularly of parents, and what devil’s bargains, paw or no paw, parents would make to end that grief, particularly in today’s Screen to Scream pairing.

Look at the cover of the film Grace and you’ll simply see a blood-spattered baby bottle, which already tells the person who’s thinking of bringing this home that they are tackling some very mature subject matter, particularly for parents. Madeline is a young mother that thinks she is doing everything right by her baby, from eating the right foods to going to a respected midwife, but she loses her unborn child. Madeline insists on carrying the baby to term and Grace is born, alive and seemingly healthy. But there is the issue her particular diet of fresh human blood. So begins the metaphor of the vampiric Grace literally sucking the life out of her mother that offers a dark interpretation of motherhood’s sacrifices. Grace discovers what her daughter is by discovering, through typical parental trial and error, just what her daughter prefers for sustenance. Throughout the movie, apart from a bossy mother-in-law, there is no doubt of Madeline’s devotion to grace. Unfortunately, that devotion, a trait heralded among the best parents, actually becomes a tragic flaw.   

That flaw also exists in Stephen King’s Pet Sematary, with some minor differences. Madeline had birthed her child and accepted what it is and to sacrifice Grace would be as painful to Madeline as feeding her. The father in Sematary, Dr. Louis Creed, has pleasant memories of the child he lost. The readers also get to know him. When introduced to what the burial ground beyond the breakfall can do, it is a temptation that tugs at his broken heart and he willingly commits acts such as lying to his family up to burial desecration to try and heal that heart. He has the chance to go on, to try and heal himself, to hold onto his pleasant memories, to grieve, but he cannot bear the grief, which leads him to his bargain with the ground beyond the Pet Sematary and the tragedy that follows.

Both stories deal with subject matter that many of us, parents especially, do not like to think about: the possibility of outliving your children. For some, the scenario is too awful to contemplate, yet these stories have parental loss and grief as a main theme. To actually touch upon those subjects, some would say, should be unthinkable. But horror is often supposed to dramatize and give shape to the horrible, the unthinkable, if only to have the reader appreciate their lives once they close the book or turn off their DVD players. Who knows? Parents, after experiencing both terrifying tales, might appreciate their children more and understand the meaning they give to their lives, particularly if they are forced to contemplate what would happen if that meaning were taken away.