beleaguered by horror novels
Note: In this blog post I talk about a horror novel that involves childhood sexual assault
Okay, I had other plans for the next blog post, but it’s Halloweek so I’m talking about horror (novels) instead. This post also brought to you by the fact that I’m reading yet another horror novel that isn’t good. Quelle surprise.
Before I make an example of Devil’s Creek by Todd Keisling, I would like to say: the cover is sick. Perfect font choice. Colours and art are great. It’s also textured in a way that makes it nice to hold. Thumbs up on the design!
For transparency’s sake, as I write this, I’m about 75% of the way through the novel. I doubt my opinion of it will get better, but it’s definitely possible it will get worse (update: not all the way done yet, but it’s getting worse).
Quick recap: Devil’s Creek is a supernatural horror novel set in the present day in the uber religious town of Stauford, Kentucky. It follows six half-siblings who share a father. Said father was a Christian preacher-turned-satanic cult leader in the 80s who convinced his congregation to worship the devil, and the six protagonists were the offspring he conceived with different women in said congregation. The main plot follows his resurrection and subsequent return to Devil’s Creek.
If you’re familiar with the horror genre at all, you’ll recognize the “haunted town” trope. If you’ve read IT, you have a pretty good handle on the general framework. If you don’t, novels like this almost always have multiple third person POVs and very short chapters, with a huge cast of characters to draw the reader into the town’s story. The villains are often cosmic/supernatural in nature, as a human killer is a lot less able to support the goal of narratives like this: take a lovely town, flip it upside down, expose it (and, subsequently, humanity’s) dark underbelly. In theory (!) I like stories like these. However, a common stumbling block they face is how deeply characterization suffers due to the breadth of the subject matter. You could argue the town is the true protagonist of stories like these, but that doesn’t change the fact that the pillars holding it up are paper-thin and archetypical characters with no nuance or complexity. It makes it very difficult to emotionally invest in a story whose characters are no more than, say: Tortured Artist, Every Man, Nympho Lady, Cool Girl, School Bully, Slimy Mayor, etc.
Speaking of IT, one of my most pressing issue with horror novels in general: why are we all trying to be Stephen King? Money, fame, fortune, I know. But Stephen King is already Stephen King. The position has been filled! I can’t count how many horror novels I’ve read that are blatant King ripoffs. Maybe it’s a pop fiction thing in general, but the blandly descriptive conversational tone of his prose is something I immediately clock when someone else decides to ape it. It’s not a particularly unique style, but he’s famous and prolific enough that any horror author who tries it is going to suffer comparisons. More specifically, the way the villain in Devil’s Creek contacts/possesses/speaks to his victims is so reminiscent of Pennywise in IT that it’s almost laughable. Like, man, way to steal your schtick from an interdimensional alien clown. I’m someone who strongly encourages artists to steal what they love from other artists and use it in their own work, but when we get into the “Can I copy your homework?” / “Yeah just get a few wrong on purpose so it’s not exact” type exchanges I think that’s where some creative reevaluation may be called for.
Something I found very interesting about Devil’s Creek was the content warning at the beginning, something you rarely see in traditional publishing. This novel, unlike many others (GRRRRRR), has an in-depth summary on the back. This novel is also not pretending to be anything other than a horror novel. So, why, exactly, it has a content warning escapes me. If you examine the exterior of the book, it’s pretty clear what you’re in for, even if you don’t know specifics. The content warning, however, almost reads like a breathlessly overdone A03 tags list. The author seems to take pleasure from informing the reader how icky and yucky and horrifying the novel’s contents are, while simultaneously patting himself on the back for his unflinching portrayal of the darkness lurking within us. It’s a strange mix of wanting to have your cake and eat it, too. You get the shock factor of portraying societal taboos like incest and childhood sexual assault without any of the potential backlash, because you pre-empted your novel with a hand-wringing “Don’t like, don’t read” warning. Maybe it’s my years of severely misplaced stress and anxiety over tagging my own fanfiction properly to ensure I don’t cause a single person anywhere ever a single second of disquiet, but I feel compelled to remind readers that when they pick up a novel, they are assuming a certain amount of risk that they will come across content that upsets them. Everything we do involves risk assessment, including consuming art.
I read a lot of horror. I know what I like and what I don’t. If I make an error in judgement and read something I don’t like, that’s on me. I’m not going to go wag my finger at the author and demand restitution (though I may write a rude blog post about them, as is my RIGHT). However, in our current cultural climate, people seem to take perverse pleasure in doing exactly that (which I’m guessing is what prompted Devil’s Creek’s content warning, along with the general cultural cache of being such a Good Guy that you tagged your horror novel as “horror”). Not horror related, but I once got in hot water because I dared to not tag “Alcohol used as a coping mechanism” and “recreational drug use” (separate instances) on Dean Winchester Beat Sheet. I don’t think the commenters actually gave two shits about the story, they just wanted to call me out for not tagging miniscule things because in their eyes, I was doing crimes and they were tripping over themselves to give me a citation. I bent to the alcohol tag (still a bit absurd, frankly, considering the contents of the source material where Dean drinks like a fish), but couldn’t bring myself to content warn for college students smoking the devil’s lettuce. I’m sure you understand.
So in that sense, I understand a horror author wanting to cover their ass. People make a hobby out of cherry picking you and offering up worst-faith interpretations of everything you write without any interest in the actual content of your work. I’ve been there. I get it. But I think doing such a thing in a horror novel is a bit goofy. You can’t claim you’re writing with unbridled edginess (the author does make a point to say he went balls-out on this one and didn’t pull any punches) and in the same breath sheepishly dig the toe of your shoe into the dirt while aw-shuksing about what a nasty bad boy you are. Own your work or don’t, dude.
The funniest thing about this is that the book isn’t even that spo0o0o0o0oky. Like most “Dead Dove: Don’t Eat” fanfiction, a lot of horror authors think that just checking off the full list of sex/murder/sacrilegious taboos is enough to count as scary, when really, they’re just unpleasant, and not in a fun or interesting way. A lot of horror is edgy but not scary, offering up a whole lot of talking points and phrases that kneejerk generate outrage and upset without any of the necessary substance. For example, the six half-siblings in Devil’s Creek were molested as children while they were still in the cult. Obviously, that’s something that can cause severe emotional issues. The fact that they went to therapy is brought up a few times, but to be honest, it mostly just reads as texture. Just a checkbox to ensure the reader knows how evil and terrible the cult is, without any real care or thoughtfulness dedicated to what happened and how it emotionally affected the children beyond: wasn’t that soooo fucked up! And then my next line of thinking is: okay, then why include it as all? It would have been just as spooky to have the kids not be assaulted— all the other creepy cult stuff was still going on. But then, the author couldn’t have included how one of the female kids grew up to be a slutty incestuous nympho who “seduced” her brother when they were teenagers and can’t wait for daddy to come back from the dead and fuck her! Another funny thing about the trigger warning: the author self-importantly warns the reader about a lot of the disturbing content, but not the deeply misogynistic choices he himself made as a writer regarding many of the female characters. What an interesting oversight.
For fun, I would like to share some of the funniest parts of this novel with you. No, this novel is not meant to be funny. That did not stop me from laughing out loud, multiple times, while reading:
“Tyler had everything he wanted, or so he thought— until the day this beautiful silver-haired queen walked into his life.”
“Tyler tried not to stare but found he couldn’t look away. Even with the imperfections, the wrinkles, sagging flesh, and darkened spots of age, she was beautiful in his eyes… Twenty years ago, the look would’ve set him on fire. Even now, it set his heart ablaze, but this old machine was nearly out of gas.” (This is an especially funny passage because the woman in question is a few months out from dying of aggressive pancreatic cancer, so, like, she’s not looking so good on account of the CANCER, but this guy still somehow manages to make it about how yucky old women are in general with their (!!!) wrinkles (!!!).
“He wasn’t going to fuck this up, no sir, but he still needed to know if he was on his own.” (One of MANY examples of the King-isms that are just fucking rife through the whole novel. Not only that, but more than one character POV uses this quirk of prose, and it’s so distracting, like, yeah, you can be voice-y, but this novel is already a LOT, please, have mercy.)
The phonetic southern accents are a lot. I’m not against all phonetic accents, I think there are ways to do it, but the amount of “darlin’” and “ya”s present are… a lot. And do not convey a particularly “authentic” southern experience, says the very non-southern non-American who definitely knows all about an authentic southern experience.
“Satisfied Genie’s grandson wouldn’t die on his watch, Tyler turned his attention to the bleeding bitch [Genie’s daughter] on the other side of the basement.”
There are sections from a character’s journal, which include newspaper/academic articles, photos, drawings, etc. For some reason, the character who wrote the journal… signed some of her entries. She signed… her own journal entries. Almost as if she was a character in a novel who expected them to be used as a storytelling device… hmm…
“‘Go spread the gospel as you once spread your legs, child.’” (This one really got me, I well and truly LOL’d. The overuse of the word “child” in this novel to refer to religious congregants is so trite and embarrassing, it’s like an actual child trying to write their version of a Grown Up story).
The religious jargon. I sleep. Lamb, hallelujah, amen, son, virtue, flock, sin, lord, suffer, prophet, atone, child, blah blah blahhhhhhhhhhhh none of it means anythinggggggggggggg. I don’t even know if annoying fictional preachers need more or less thesauruses. If I thought the author was using this endless snooze-fest proselytizing to satirize how empty religious doctrine actually is, I would be on board. As it stands, every line of dialogue spoken by the bad guy is just those words shaken around in a hat and plucked out at random. None of it means shit, amen 🙏
This novel was nominated for the Bram Stoker award, if you were curious.
The edginess vs spookiness is one of the reasons I gravitate toward ghosts/the supernatural over other subgenres. Even if the novel sucks, it doesn’t lend itself to edginess in the same way religious/gore/serial killer subgenres do. Kind of the whole point of ghosts is that they’re old and out of touch— the opposite of edgy. That doesn’t mean there aren’t goofballs writing supernatural horror— just that their goofballery is harder to display. Actually, this discussion brings to mind another terrible “haunted town” religious horror novel called Imaginary Friend by Stephen Chbosky (yes, that Stephen Chbosky). The only time I ever wish I still had my Goodreads account is so I can revisit how much I hated a certain book, and YES SIR, I hated that one, too. I should probably quit while I’m behind on this subgenre.
My problem is I really believe that good, hard-hitting “haunted town” horror should be a thing. I keep trying to will it into existence. It’s not a forgiving genre, for some of the reasons described above, and countless others. Placing an identity onto an entire town makes no logical sense. You only have to go to one trendy microbrewery in one trendy city or suburb to know they’re all the same. No matter how quirky the local artisans try to convince you otherwise, Williamsburg is no different than Scmilliamsburg halfway across the Midwest. I feel very similarly to Canada and its desperately crafted national identity— say all you want about Canadians being polite and Tim Hortons and hockey and lumberjacks, Schmanada is never far behind. Also, from someone who’s lived here her whole life, don’t believe it. Canadians are assholes and Tim Horton’s is not worth your money.
I also rebel against the idea that these narratives often push, of darkness lurking just beneath the surface of every person. It’s just not that simple, and this is coming from a certified misanthrope who thinks everyone sucks. What’s funny about these narratives is at the same time, they often suggest that corrupting influences are entirely external (possession, something in the water, some kind of spiritual influence or magic, etc), and have nothing to do with the individual person. Like “bad” is a switch we can flip inside us… just like the vampires on the hit CW show, The Vampire Diaries (but only sometimes, it’s complicated, or just inconsistent, hush).
Horror novels so often rush to brand themselves as adult content due to their graphic nature, when in reality, their perception of the world is entirely without nuance, rendering them deeply immature and uninteresting. Religious novels especially seem so deeply unwilling to engage with the complexities and personal nature of spirituality that it’s like… what’s the point, dude? Devil’s Creek is convinced it has something to say because the majority of the townsfolk are very religious and conservative, and they hate anyone different than them (classic Us vs The Other). This is explored through two main channels: racism (the town has a history of KKK activity) and… being a punk. I don’t think I need to explain the impact of the racism part. Being a punk, however… well, there actually is a lot of pain in a world where you grow up as an emo goth myspace loser in a square town. I’m making light of the concept, while at the same time acknowledging that with the right story and author, a teenage punk feeling confused and out of place in a world defined by rigid social roles who rebels against them as a result is a compelling narrative, if done right. Any narrative can be compelling… if done right... if ya write it good. Devil’s Creek just reads like prose written by a fully grown adult who got teased because he wore a shirt with a skull on it to math class when he was fifteen.
I haven’t written a lot of horror, but I’ve written some. It can be a powerful genre to write, and powerfully cathartic. It’s like a good rant or a good journaling session or finally plucking out a bad splinter. It feels good to get the bad out. Unburdening yourself like that does not leave a lot of room for nuance, not when you’re so lost in the sauce and exorcising the demons of your past (or present). Am I going to be even-headed when unloading years of nightmares and traumatic experiences into a Word doc, or am I going to puke it up in one great heave like I just overindulged on deeply discounted November 1st Halloween candy? To me, it’s going to look like a Van Gogh; all that pain, that I am intimately familiar with and have spent years nursing, on display! But, vomit is vomit. And if your agent/editor doesn’t have your back? Or if your target audience has terrible taste? Finger meet uvula, here we go again.
(Speaking of editors, the editing in this novel is terrible. I don’t know what the hell is going on in publishing the last few years, but, much like a haunted town horror novel, SOMETHING must be in the water, because so many editors absolutely suck at their jobs. This novel alone forgot italics multiple times, has incredibly repetitive sentences, is way overlong and samey, and in one memorable instance, left a random, stray letter ‘z’ at the end of a chapter, like someone sneezed while they had the final draft open and accidentally hit it.)
I’ve written before about my own journey on overwrought emotionality and the concept of Muchness. As I allude to in that post, this concept has proven very important to me in my understanding of the horror genre. More of something— more blood, more gore, more murder, more sex, more general nastiness— is not always good. It’s not a simple equation where “1 blood + 1 blood = 2 bloods and > blood = > scary”. It’s not necessarily scarier for a character to get murdered with ten axe swings as opposed to two.
If I may, (and I will, because I can), allow me a comparison. In Devil’s Creek, after all the “apostles” (townspeople) are forcibly infected by the devil’s goo (ichor? sludge? who cares), they parade in the street, get naked, and start bangin! They do other stuff, too (infect others with the devil’s gooichorsludge), but a great deal of attention is paid to the fact that full grown adults are, like, having sex. Some of it is rape-y, but at the same time it’s confusing because they’re also all in evil rapture about it? It’s weird in the sense that when you think about it, the book is basically saying… sex between adults is bad? I get you don’t want to see adults having sex in public, and you certainly don’t want to see non-consensual acts being performed in public. But sex, on its own, is just sex. Also, the devil preacher calling women sluts and whores, but also condoning incest and public orgies (and homosexuality, weirdly enough? The devil doesn’t mind if you’re gay, but if you’re a woman? Fuck You.). I’m confused. I think the trick is as long as you hate women, you’re clear? What the cult actually believes in this novel is incredibly ill-defined, especially for how much page space gets wasted on marshmellow-mouthed religious mumbo jumbo.
In a moment on the lips (the anti-famous MDZS horror fic I wrote a few years ago), sex also plays a huge role. I would argue that sex playing a huge role has a reason beyond “sex bad” or “sex societal taboo”. Wei Wuxian has had very specific sexual experiences in that fanfiction that haunt, and, well, bedevil him a bit, and drive much of the plot. His trauma from his time in the Burial Mounds is explored, lending depth and meaning to his actions after he finally emerges, manifesting as hypersexuality, misogyny, disordered eating, etc. Obviously, those are generally modern concepts to apply to a story that takes place in a fantasy period of far-flung history, but I like to think I did an okay job melding everything together regardless. I was very intrigued by the idea of writing something hard and unpleasant, but not without merit. Not to fluff myself up too much, but a lot of horror misses the “merit” part of that.
I also find the baldness of horror quite interesting. You see it in other genres, but I think it rears its shiny head in unique ways in the horror space. Writing plainly may seem exactly that, but it’s not that simple. Barren, stark prose has its place. It’s punchy, meaningful, rustic. Bluntly writing something like:
“‘You should drug me so I can’t move at all. So that I’m barely conscious. And you just fuck me. Is that your plan? I couldn’t escape or say no. You just rape me so hard, and I have to take it. Because I’m weak and you’ve kidnapped me.’”
Was a very specific stylistic choice I made for Wei Wuxian in this story. On the face of it, this isn’t so different than, “Go spread the gospel as you once spread your legs, child,”. Dialogue so blunt you can only laugh. However, I would say the main difference here is how this baldness is paid off. Wei Wuxian’s endless stream of nastiness is a) a spin on how he runs his mouth in canon, b) a product of his trauma, and perhaps most importantly, c) a projection of his trauma, as much of the reason he speaks like this to Lan Wangji is a result of hallucinations/experiences he had with an evil facsimile of Lan Wangji while he lived in the Burial Mounds (the existence of which Lan Wangji isn’t even aware of… aw). Preacher Go Spread is just like… a bad guy. He’s just a bad guy swanning around being bad, hating god, loving the devil. Depth of a teaspoon, that one, just like the rest of the characters.
There’s more to writing than good characters. There’s more to writing than complexity. According to the pull quotes on the Devil’s Creek covers, this book is the scariest book you’ll ever read. According to the little awards emblem on the front, this book was good enough to get nominated for a fairly prestigious genre award. Sometimes… I just don’t know, man. Maybe I’m a born hater. But I do like some things! And a lot of the things I like aren’t even objectively (or subjectively, lol) that good. Maybe the truth of the matter is I’m just really, really good at working myself into a tizzy over random things that don’t matter, and then mediocre novels like Devil’s Creek just happen to be in my line of sight at the time.
Or maybe, unlike the characters in Devil’s Creek, I’m a complex person who can’t be summarized by my character archetype alone.
***
Hey, happy Halloweek! In honor of the season, it’s time for some drive-by horror movie recommendations. These are specifically geared toward scaring the shit out of yourself, so if that’s not your preferred type of scare, KEEP OUT!!!!!
Insidious
The Conjuring
Ouija: Origin of Evil (I know, trust me)
Grave Encounters
1408
Hell House LLC
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (if you want to feel deeply unsettled and bad inside)
The Poughkeepsie Tapes (also if you want to feel deeply unsettled and bad inside)
Despite my grave existential misgivings about the genre as a whole, I do love horror. There is something incredibly delicious about going to see a horror movie in theaters, sitting through the previews, and the moment the opening credits start, sinking down into my seat and asking myself, why… have I done this. Just to feel something, anything at all? Maybe. No need to interrogate it too much.
I don’t tend to celebrate Halloween beyond watching scary movies, and I will proudly be continuing that tradition this year, but it’s actually more like I’m doing nothing special at all because I can’t bring myself to scrape the bottom of the horror barrel anymore. The amount of half-watched z-level horror movies in my various “continue watching” lists… there’s the true scare of the season. I have rewatched Grave Encounters and the Hell House LLC series already this year, but I haven’t watched 1408 and daydreamed about having the same job as John Cusack’s character in a while…
anyway. I have three more horror novels in my stack from the library, so I guess cross your fingers for me? They won’t be good, because they never are, but they might not be so bad they fill me with the wrong kind of despair! Tyler’s life may have been changed by a silver haired queen, but he’s got nothing on my silver linings.