New Arrival: Review of Laird Hunt's In the House in the Dark of the Woods

Long-time readers of fairy tales know that it’s a terrible idea to go into the woods. Not only are there wolves in terrible disguises and old women who love their children medium well, journeying into the woods means straying from the path you know and that you know is safe. Sure, Bilbo had a grand adventure, but there were plenty of times he could have died, a victim of his great adventure. In horror fiction, the dangers in the woods can cause not only physical harm but psychological as well. In the House in the Dark of the Woods by Laird Hunt (a short read despite a long title) is a great example of the woods, the antithesis of civilization, being apt to change you in ways you didn’t expect.

The story is told through a woman simply named Goody, a woman in the 1800’s who narrates how she has gotten lost and is unable to get home to her husband and son. From Goldilocks and the Three Bears to The Blair Witch Project, stories like this have illustrated how not knowing your way creates unease and drives the plot. As Goody wanders, trying to find her way back home, she finds assistance, as well as obstruction, from women she encounters on her journey, including the crusty Captain Jane and the effervescent Eliza, doing everything for her from feeding her to taking her on enchanted boat rides. The story, though short, isn’t necessarily a breeze to read through as Goody’s narration sometimes devolves into stream of consciousness and the very strange aspects of the experience means the very underpinning of logic is suspect. Is what she experiencing real? If it’s a dream, Laird Hunt’s sentences make sure it’s a darkly beautiful one.

Like Jeremy Shipp’s home invasion (and mind invasion) novel Bedfellow, this book is not one to be breezed through. The reader, as they accompany Goody on her journey, will start to doubt what came before, who exactly is who, and what exactly is going on. This book is not a book with a neat, tidy ending. This story owes much of its bones to Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown” but becomes its own animal by traversing away from the straight-ahead morality tale and letting itself drift on the currents of a fever dream, becoming a fairy tale more about female empowerment than rather than any hard lesson. The wilds of the forest are all around Goody, and the reader, but they may also be inside.  

Screen to Scream: Krampus and Wraith: Welcome to Christmasland

Ellen Datlow has an anthology of stories called The Doll Collection. The Child’s Play movies features a killer doll possessed by the soul of a serial killer, and that series is getting a more robot-goes-wild kind of remake. I could give more examples of demonic toys (Demonic Toys is also a franchise), and I could also talk about the notion of the uncanny valley and how it relates to a fear of dolls, but in horror, there is always a tendency to take something innocent (a child’s toy, for example) and twist it into something frightening. So let’s hop in Krampus’s magic sleigh, travel past the island of misfit toys with a stop at Christmasland because the Scary Librarian is looking at some twisted toys and horrid holiday celebrations in this month’s Screen to Screams.

Many people are familiar with the Krampus legend, which is basically anti-Santa, about a demonic creature that whips naughty children and then ferries them to the underworld. Michael Dougherty, the director of Trick R’ Treat, offers a nasty nugget of humorous holiday horror in Krampus by having the titular holiday bogeyman terrify a family who were caught without the holiday spirit. Many might think of spending the holidays with family as a sort of endurance test, but young Max is really not looking forward to having his boorish uncle and his family pay a visit, especially as it adds stress to his parents’ fracturing relationship. After a holiday blowup, he tears up a letter to Santa, which invites Krampus to wreak havoc on everyone from his Martha Stewart-esque mother to his gun-toting uncle. If you like holiday horror, this movie has everything from angry Christmas cookies to toys that play way too rough. More funny than scary at times, Krampus is a holiday movie that revels in its zaniness while keeping at its core a relatable family who, despite their obvious differences of opinions, come together to face the horrific nonsense that explodes around them.

Still zany but a little darker is Charlie Manx’s version of Christmasland. For those of you who’ve read NOS4A2 (I recently did a review about it), you remember Charlie Manx, the ruler and creator of Christmasland, but there was a time before he had his fateful run-in with Vic McQueen. Fans of Joe Hill’s Locke and Key graphic novel series will enjoy his prequel story/graphic novel The Wraith: Welcome to Christmasland. The story begins with a prison break with Charlie driving his very famous getaway car, and the escapees do indeed get away to Charlie’s magical land and get to see some of the children-turned-monsters he has brought there. This story has an emotional core as one of the prisoners, a father who’d just lost his son, is one of the few among the ragtag group Charlie takes that has a heart and that heart hurts for his lost son, who helps him stay ahead of Charlie’s minions. One of the great things about this being a graphic novel is actually seeing Christmasland thanks to the disturbing artwork of Gabriel Rodriguez and Charles Paul Wilson III. Prepare to see in all their sinister glory the monster-children-turned-Manx-minions in costume and a moon with Manx’s face whose massive size alone is terrifying. The graphic novel even presents the origin of Charlie Manx and how Christmasland came to be, injecting a syringe full of tragedy into Manx’s character.  Both stories are a great method of catharsis after a stressful holiday, allowing you to both laugh and scream.

Have You Read This? Review of NOS4A2

Around this time of year, people may have noticed that there are a lot of movies featuring homicidal Santas (Silent Night, Deadly Night and Santa’s Sleigh are two examples). There’s also, believe it or not, more than one movie about Krampus, the dark side of the Santa legend, a monster that punishes the bad rather than reward the good. Christmas, it seems, is fertile ground for horror, but the most unique take on a Christmas-themed monster is Charlie Manx from Joe Hill’s NOS4A2. Not only does Hill use the Christmas backdrop in an originally frightening way, but he also adds his own spin on the vampire mythos.

The book’s title comes from the license plate on his car, a 1938 Rolls-Royce Wraith. The car is linked to Charlie Manx as well as the device he uses to feed: it is his main mode of transportation throughout the novel, the key to entering a world of Manx’s own creation called Christmasland, and the talisman used to drain the children he takes to Christmasland, turning those children into monstrosities as twisted as Manx. Christmasland not only serves as a lure for the children Manx takes there but it’s also the “stomach” he uses to digest their goodness. The stolen kids practically have the run of Christmasland, but their ideas of fun and games have degenerated into games like “Scissors for the Drifter.”

Enter Vic McQueen, a young girl who, like Manx, has a power tied to an object. She has a bike that can allow her to go virtually anywhere in the world. Unfortunately, that power brings her into the path of Charlie Manx. Though she survives the encounter, she is traumatized by the event, prevented from living a normal life by Manx’s children. The stakes are raised even further when Manx, who wakes after a long coma, discovers Vic has a son and a potential candidate for Christmasland. Vic McQueen is a compelling character, a woman who tries to ignore her gift but ultimately finds the strength to confront Manx thanks to the unconditional love of her son, making her a hero to root for. However, it’s hard to compete with Charlie Manx, who is such a unique villain, one who claims that he is “saving” his victims, very much like an adult Peter Pan.

The descriptions of Christmasland could easily be a neighborhood in the North Pole where Santa is afraid to park his sleigh. Think about Santa Claus, Indiana abandoned for the night, where the rides might work but there are monsters hiding beneath them, in alleys. Eventually, you notice there are a lot of places to hide, lots of dark alleys. The rides are distracting and you find yourself turning just a little too slowly to catch something moving in your peripheral vision. Hill takes a Christmas-themed amusement park and adds his own monstrous twists to all the attractions, including the children brought there to play forever.

Like his father Stephen King, Hill definitely knows how to create a strong emotional core to underpin his horror, and Christmasland and Charlie Manx and every other twisted bit of lore he incorporates works because of that underpinning. That’s what makes this story a delight not just during the holidays, after the kids are in bed and the egg nog’s all drunk, but all year round.

New Arrival: Hark the Herald Angels Scream

We are told that the holidays are a festive time of year, one full of joyful celebrations with friends and family while also being offered a taste of childhood nostalgia. Many people have fond memories of getting up on Christmas morning, not really sleeping due to being so wired, the anticipation building until your parents finally allowed you to get up and you bolted downstairs to open what Santa brought you. But Christmas isn’t always happy and horror, as a genre, has been all about peeling back the shiny wrapping paper, the glittery veneer, to see the darkness churning underneath. That darkness and more is revealed in Hark theHerald Angels Scream, an anthology edited by Christopher Golden, which features some well-known horror writers and some fun explorations of very familiar horror tropes set against the backdrop of the holidays.

With anthologies to which many authors contributed, the quality can feel inconsistent, but there are also a lot of hidden gems that are sure to chill you, even as you roast chestnuts on an open fire. This collection has a Joe Lansdale ghost story, “The Second Floor of the Christmas Hotel,” that’s almost unrecognizable as vintage Lansdale. Rather than throwing a tidal wave of insane action and fast-talking protagonists, he offers a quiet ghost story that should remind readers of The Ring, of Mama, of basically any of the ghosts they might have seen on a movie screen. Whatever your horror preferences are, this anthology has even more solid stories to read while the wind howls outside and the snow keeps falling (or rain, if you live in the Southeast). If you like Jacobs’s “The Monkey’s Paw,” try James A. Moore’s “Mistletoe and Holly,” a tale about a grieving wife and mother whose dead husband wants to see his family and no distance or grave can hold him. If you prefer your horror less supernatural and more psychotic, there’s John McIlveen’s “Yankee Swap.” Like your horror by way of fairy tales, give “Fresh as the New-Fallen Snow” by Seanan McGuire a go. Want something cuddly? Snuggle up with Thomas E Sniegoski’s “Love Me.”

This anthology is a holiday horror buffet without the bloat afterward. Within these pages full of tinsel-strewn tales may just be your next favorite author, one that’s bound to have a bibliography that may contain your next great read. Maybe even your next favorite book. And that is a better Christmas gift than any sweater, ugly or otherwise.

Screen to Screams: Bird Box and A Quiet Place

Sometimes just facing down a vampire or a haunted house just isn’t enough to frighten some people. To beat vampires, you just have to wait till morning. And even the most haunted houses have doors that lead into bright sunshine and restaurants that serve chili-cheese fries. Some people aren’t frightened until they are faced with the prospect of no escape, when everything and everyone on earth has become a potential threat. Whether it’s caused by zombies, Lovecraftian monsters, carnivorous spiders, the end of the world has always been great fodder for horror fiction. In these stories, though, the threat is never just the monster but from those who have realized that society has broken down and the rules governing human behavior and decency have changed. Look at Josh Malerman’s Bird Box and Jon Krasinski’s movie A Quiet Place to see examples of what humans become when everything they once known has collapsed. People, these stories say, either become better or devolve into something worse.

In apocalyptic fiction, there are moments at the beginning of the story where the reader/viewer gets acclimated. They begin to learn the specific rules of this universe where the social order that we here have taken for granted is no more. In A Quiet Place, at least in the beginning, there is not the swelling, menacing soundtrack that is part of many horror films. The characters themselves make very little noise, using American Sign Language to communicate when outside. When Lee, the father, is forced to take away a toy that makes noise, it confirms that sounds, any sounds, are deadly. What dwells within this new reality are creatures that can hear well and move fast, meaning any sound that you make, from a whisper to a scream, could be your last. The family, each and every one of them, must constantly focus on surviving, but there are also moments where the family, especially the daughter shouldering the burden of her own guilty conscience, is able to reflect on what they have lost even as they concentrate on living another day.

Bird Box, Josh Malerman’s debut novel, also features a unique creature that has overtaken the world, but how this creature operates also changes how people view their new surroundings (or rather don’t view them, in the case of Bird Box). The story begins with Mallory and her two children Boy and Girl. There’s an early glimpse into their routine where the children wake in complete darkness. The readers also find out the windows are sealed up. Sight has become potentially deadly because all it takes is a look at the creatures that inhabit Malerman’s universe to become insane, potentially harming yourself and others. Like Place’s lack of soundtrack, Malerman describes the closed-off windows and ritual for things requiring leaving the house in a way that adds to the tension and to the claustrophobia. The reader, thanks to a double narrative involving the family’s exodus from the house and a pregnant Mallory discovering and then losing friends within the house, is also shown the dangers of seeing these creatures and what it does to the mind. Malerman easily transitions between these two narratives, one ultimately leading to loss and the subsequent gaining of fortitude and the other leading to the discovery of something akin to home. That is usually the running theme of many apocalyptic stories: the rediscovery of something lost when everyday becomes a battle to survive until the next.

The recent zombie explosion has produced great stories like the Walking Dead series, but readers can also look for monsters that aren’t of the undead variety, as well as a reminder that humans can be just as fearsome as monsters while perhaps realizing they also have the potential to be angels, regardless of the situation.