New Arrival: Children of Chicago

One of the predecessors of horror, before King, before Poe, and even before Stoker, would be fairy tales. Yes, they contain magic and yes, these tales have been sanitized for children depending on the teller, but they also contain many horrific elements, from child-eating witches to predatory wolves to women turning to foam for another man. Writers like Christina Henry and Daniel Mallory Ortberg realize that fairy tales are great fodder for horror stories. One such tale that deserves its own horror story is the Pied Piper, the musician who rid the town of Hamlin and then of its children. Cynthia Pelayo noted this and used the tale of the Pied Piper to create Children of Chicago, a crime story/fairy tale/character study.

The story follows Lauren Medina, a Chicago homicide detective investigating a shooting with graffiti referencing the Pied Piper from the fairy tale. Finding other instances of this graffiti with messages like “Pay the Piper,” Medina finds that the Pied Piper is a supernatural entity whose influence is felt far and wide, especially by young people who can call him via a method like the ones to summon Bloody Mary and Candyman. Once summoned and like in the fairy tale, the Pied Piper is all about receiving his payment once he completes a service, and he typically demands a life as payment. Before the story is over, the Pied Piper will claim quite a few lives as payment as Medina goes deeper into the mystery that is claiming Chicago’s young people.

Pelayo doesn’t just rewrite the Pied Piper for a new generation here; this is a story that has a great many influences. She borrows from the Candyman universe in many ways. One is the Chicago setting that the movies use. This, however, does not seem to be borrowing from the movies but the author’s knowledge and love of the city. Pelayo, it seems, could write a history of Chicago based on the information and history she presents here, not as much to move the story forward but to create a living, breathing setting where these characters live. Another similarity to Candyman is its exploration of how a myth can also become a living, breathing thing. The Pied Piper, within this city and this story, has his story told through the graffiti his followers, his congregation, leaves behind. He gains strength every time his tale his told and every time a follower asks for a favor, regardless of the consequences.

The most intriguing part of this story, however, is the character of Lauren Medina. People familiar with shows like Law and Order or any other crime thriller will see Medina’s influences, just as they notice her flaws. She is dedicated to the job, but often to the detriment of her own health and even the health of her relationships. She also frequently uses people to help her in her investigation even as she actively pushes them away. She also deals with her father’s passing, and a department that feels her promotion to detective was undeserved. What becomes fascinating about this character, though, is that readers will see that others’ reticence to fully trust Medina is justified. Ultimately, the ending to this fairy tale/crime thriller/devil’s bargain tale doesn’t wrap up as neatly as some might like, but as a character study of Lauren Medina, an exploration on the power of myth, and a love letter to the city she and Pelayo love, it is sure to attract readers as surely as its supernatural villain attracted rats and children.

Screen to Scream: Summer of '84 and Cricket Hunters

The past year hasn’t been the best one, and there are a lot of reasons why. It’s pretty tempting then to go back to a simpler time, where life made a bit more sense. From binging the sitcoms you watched in the ‘80s or buy a few discount parachute pants, there are a lot of ways to do our own limited version of time travel. The pull of nostalgia can easily pull one down the rabbit hole of VHS tapes and slap bracelets, but we should also remember that nostalgia, quoting from Mad Men ad man Don Draper, literally means the pain from an open wound. In a nutshell, the past isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, and the movie Summer of ’84 and Jeremy Hepler’s coming of age book Cricket Hunters are prime examples of this.

Summer of ’84, like its TV show progenitor Stranger Things, draws a lot of inspiration when Reaganomics and horror permeated the American consciousness. The story takes place in Cape May, Oregon, an idyllic small town full of nice houses and manicured lawns. Teenager Davey Armstrong, a fan of urban legends before the Internet, suspects that his neighbor, a well-respected Police officer, is a serial killer responsible for the deaths of thirteen boys. Pulling his three friends and his crush into the investigation, they search for the necessary clues to prove the killer’s guilt to a town full of unbelieving adults. If the plot sounds like something dredged up from too many Hardy Boys books, that could have been the filmmakers’ intention, if only to later subvert them. What starts off as a Rear-Window type mystery soon becomes something much more high stakes and much more terrifying. The resolution of the film should turn that sugary hit of nostalgia viewers were expecting into something more stomach-churning.

This is a similar formula Hepler uses to great effect in his book Cricket Hunters. The story follows Celia Garcia and her friends during an eventful autumn in 1998 and 15 years later, when the kids now adults are still processing what happened to them. Not only is Celia’s grandmother, a bruja, dealing with a sister who is cursed by a rival brujah, but the kids, including Celia’s future husband Parker, must navigate a city full of danger, including a husband stalking his ex-wife, young Abby Powell’s mother, and a nephew of the brujah who cursed Celia’s great aunt. Young Abby disappeared that year and 15 years later, the adult Parker turns up missing. Celia must dig through her past if she hopes to have a future with her husband. Hepler weaves a story that moves through past and present, showing readers how that fateful autumn has affected Celia’s life today, especially as it unravels when she becomes a suspect in Parker’s disappearance. The real joy in this novel is watching Hepler set up our expectations only to gleefully knock them down. This isn’t, however, mere shock value. It merely proves, like Summer of ’84, that the past shouldn’t be looked at through rose-colored glasses lest you miss something important.

Have You Read This? It Will Just Be Us by Jo Kaplan

 

The popularity of shows like Netflix’s The Haunting of Hill House and its sequel The Haunting of Bly Manor show that the public still has an appetite for spooky ghost stories. When bringing up these and other haunted house tales, it should be noted that there is more to these ghosts than just how they look in a flowing white sheet. Ghost stories are all about memories and hurts buried deep until they come screaming to the surface. This idea is especially evident in Jo Kaplan’s haunted mansion and haunted people novel It Will Just Be Us.

The book follows the story of the Wakefield family, namely protagonist Sam Wakefield. She has just moved back with her mother into the family’s haunted mansion, but what haunts this mansion doesn’t wear a sheet or rattle chains. Wakefield Manor is where different moments in the house’s history constantly replays for its tenants, showing Sam the lives of her ancestors as well as traumas she’d rather forget about. When Sam’s pregnant sister Elizabeth moves in following a fight with her husband, a new specter appears, a faceless boy who wants to play with Sam in the worst possible way.

Kaplan inserts a lot of different horror tropes and plot points like a plate spinner constantly adding one more plate to keep spinning, always with the threat of the whole thing crashing down. While some of those threads seem to dangle, Kaplan’s story crosses the finish line with a complete, even heartbreaking, ending. She also demonstrates a deep understanding of how fully-realized characters, not moaning and creaking doors, draw readers into these stories. She creates very believable relationships and motivations, like the sisters’ love/hate relationship and the mother’s alcoholism, which everyone is forced to watch and relive over and over again. Like any good ghost story, It Will Just Be Us is a character study of people who cannot escape the gravitational pull of events that have them repeat or compound mistakes that could lead to their downfall. Like many haunted house stories, Wakefield Mansion can represent the minds of these women, both familiar home as well as prison where each hallway and stairwell only lead to locked doors. If ever a show deserves to be in the streaming pantheon of haunted house shows, hopefully this book will join them. Until then, people should just read and enjoy the book.

Screen to Scream: Crimson Peak and Mexican Gothic

There are so many haunted house stories out there, I wonder if, in these horror universes, there isn’t a subdivision of real estate that deals specifically with haunted homes (The realtor, smiling, says, “this house is located next to some great schools, the mall, and there’s a convenient Hellmouth in the basement”). That said, there are still people getting more mileage out of this trope, even doubling down into the trappings of Gothic storytelling: large, imposing mansion; odd, secretive characters that may or may not be antagonists, and bad weather (fog, rain, etc.). Guillermo Del Toro’s film Crimson Peak, for example, leans heavily into its Gothic roots, complete with that Del Toro aesthetic, but there are also books like Silvia Moreno-Garcia’sMexican Gothic that are willing to take the Gothic haunted house tale in new and exciting directions.

Crimson Peak is a visually breathtaking film, a literal Gothic tale come to life that can be genuinely scary. The story of Edith Cushing, a young woman who falls for an marries young eccentric Sir Thomas Sharp, is one familiar to many fans of the genre. All the basics are there, from an obtrusive, menacing sister who resents Edith’s presence to a notable physical location, the eponymous Crimson Peak, a mountain stained by its red clay (symbolism). Add a decrepit mansion with a hole in its center (MORE SYMBOLISM!) and you have all the ingredients there, but focused through the lens of Del Toro’s vision, such as his depictions of the ghosts that haunt this place, the movie becomes a sprawling, gorgeously odd movie.

Mexican Gothic is a different kind of story. Yes, there are the basic elements: slightly naïve but plucky heroine, sprawling family mansion that’s mostly isolated, creepy and off-putting family. However, Moreno-Garcia doesn’t rely on a visual aesthetic to draw readers in, instead using well-developed characters and descriptions to captivate readers. Noemi Taboada is more than just a heroine who finds herself suddenly over her head in a mansion far from her social circles. Noemi is a young woman with her own motivations and fears, one who realizes that her status as a woman and a socialite often has many of those she encounters pigeonholing her, even as she slowly discovers who she is and what she is truly capable of by delving into the mystery of High Place. High Place itself becomes more than just a house as Moreno-Garcia’s descriptions go beyond making High Place a metaphorical antagonistic setting and actually cast it as a living, even malevolent, organism. Both movie and book are familiar with the Gothic tradition, but they both find their emotional power by upending these traditions.

Have You Read This? Boneset & Feathers by Gwendolyn Kiste

 

Many readers are familiar with the “coming-of-age” narrative, but there is a different narrative that is typically prevalent in the superhero genre. I like to call it “coming into power.” That power can be the ability to move objects with your mind or cause them to spontaneously combust, but it is also a realization of one’s identity, one’s agency in their own fate, and one’s responsibility to others. A modern superhero example is Spider-Man, who went from pro wrestler to superhero after his inaction helped cause the death of his beloved Uncle Ben. A similar plotline moves through Gwendolyn Kiste’s latest book of witches and self-discovery Boneset & Feathers.

Just to clarify, the story has nothing to do with superheroes. The main character Odette is a witch, but she’s not the kind that flies to places on brooms or casts fireballs at her enemies. In truth, Odette seems very afraid of her magic, not just because of what it can do but what it can attract. Odette’s world if full of Witchfinders, men who make those involved in the Salem Witch Trials seem like choir boys, and Odette escaped them last time only because she did not burn. The rest of her village wasn’t so lucky. The village she used to call home now fears her and the magic she refuses to use is demanding to be used, and this coincides with the Witchfinders returning to Odette’s village to finish what they started.

It’s tempting to call this book a historical fantasy novel, but it almost takes place in another world, one where witchcraft and forest spirits are more prevalent and sometimes malevolent. However, the main theme of this novel is familiar for those fans of books like X-Men, where the protagonists discover the powers they have are not necessarily curses but can be channeled into positive pursuits, including helping others. Other appeal terms that this novel brings up are “female empowerment” and “self-actualization.” One of the big appeals of this book is watching the young witch Odette learning about the power that lives within her and coming to terms with it. Many readers, I think, will want to observe Odette make this journey of “coming into power” as well.

Have You Read This? The Southern Book Club Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix

 

The vampire has been used so many times in fiction that it probably deserves its own section in Barnes and Noble (at the very least, it deserves a few displays). What began with Varney and Dracula has now expanded to the vampire infecting different genres from action to westerns to romance. Heck, there's probably an Amish vampire novel out there somewhere. So to take the vampire as your story's main villain and make that story stand out is an accomplishment, one that Grady Hendrix has done in his latest The Southern Book Club Guide to Slaying Vampires. 

Patricia Campbell is a housewife who has devoted herself to her family and her household, but she had found fulfillment in those to be lacking. With her ungrateful kids and distant husband, the only comfort in Patricia's life is a bookclub focusing on true crime. So when a stranger enters their neighborhood, and strange things start happening in her neighborhood, Patricia begins to suspect this stranger, charismatic James Harris, is cut from the same cloth as Bundy or Dahmer, but the truth is much more sinister and his grip on the community is much more difficult to pry loose. 

I can imagine the elevator pitch for this book being, "Okay, it's Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but replace the Scooby Gang with the cast from Steel Magnolias." However, Grady Hendrix has shown time and again that he can create a truly resonant story out of a pretty wacky premise. Yes, this book has some gory moments, some funny moments, and even some comedic gory moments, but Hendrix never forgets the emotional core of this story, the friendship that unites these women. And James Harris is more than just the slavering monster; Hendrix makes him not only evil but also magnetic. It doesn't take him long to burrow into the community and make himself at home, even as the deaths pile up in a low-income area that borders the book club's. The book manages to discuss disparity between classes, suburban banality, and dreams deferred thanks to adult obligations, all in a story about Dracula invading a Southern suburb. 

Have You Read This? Night of the Mannequins by Stephen Graham Jones

There are some works of fiction that defy mere summary. These kinds of works are so outlandish that

summarizing them for the benefit of someone unfamiliar with the author’s work is liable to raise some eyebrows. It is also one of the great things about speculative fiction. A story can have completely unreal elements as long as its grounded in some reality. Joe Lansdale demonstrated his understanding of this when he wrote "Bubba Ho-Tep," making his mummy-fighting, rest-home-dwelling Elvis a deeply nuanced protagonist. Stephen Graham Jones also understands the grounding within reality, as demonstrated by his novella Night of the Mannequins.

I am hesitant to go into details about the actual plot of this tale because half the fun of reading this is trying to wrap your mind around the sheer lunacy of the plot. I can go into some detail about what this book includes: mannequins (a given), slasher films, sacrifices, kaiju-sized monsters, coming of age. The story focuses on a group of friends whose relatively innocent prank involving a mannequin goes way out of control, leading to death, destruction, and the collapse of friendships.

The book is narrated by Sawyer, a very entertaining but unreliable narrator, who tells the tale from introducing his friends, to the prank that was the first domino, to the aforementioned death and destruction. Reading this made me wonder what talking to Stephen Graham Jones is like. Not so much when he narrates his fiction, but when he just tells a story, sitting in a bar, recalling what happened to a cousin’s cousin or a great aunt’s friend. He displays a definite gift for description in an almost stream-of-conscience way that creates a truly unique literary voice. This tale owes a lot to slashers and Godzilla but you don’t need to be an overwhelming fan of both genres to appreciate the craft Jones brings to this story.