#TeaserTuesday: Church People

 The following post contains spoilers for Lord Have Mercy Part Four: Big Son, which you can grab here:

Kindle/Paperback

Nook

Kobo

You can also snag the complete novel, all four installments compiled, for Kindle and paperback:

Lord Have Mercy: The Complete Novel

It was quiet in the way of all churches, steps careful, voices hushed. But inevitably loud because of the sheer scope of the place: the high, vaulted ceilings and all its secret nooks and angles trebled each tiny sound into a constant wall of not-unpleasant white noise. A pair of old, stooped women were lighting candles. Two pews ahead and to the left, a young man sat with his head bent and his hands clasped, lips moving soundlessly in what looked to be fervent prayer.

Aidan had thought about praying, when he first sat down, but only because he’d been bowled over by the beauty of the place. Its blue-and-white check marble floors; its gold-set frescoes; its gleaming organ pipes as tall and awe-inspiring as the tubular towers of Oz. There was something…reverent…about the air in here. It smelled of candlewax, and linseed oil, but something rarified, too, that spooked him a little. Like when he was a kid, and Maggie had taken him into a fancy store, and told him, sweetly but firmly, not to touch anything. His boots had left muddy scuffs on the tile, and he was half-tempted to get down on his knees and mop the streaks up with his sleeve.

But he didn’t know how to pray. Other than a few desperate mental declarations of oh God at moments of crisis, he’d never called upon the man upstairs. Had never been to bible study, nor learned any of the hymns. His people were not church people – “church” meant club meetings, in his world. Mercy was Catholic, and doubtless could have offered guidance, but Mercy was still at the hospital, battling an infection.

Maybe it didn’t matter. Sitting here, resting in this place, was clarifying in a secular way, too. He hadn’t known when he first entered that his heart was pounding, but knew it had been now, as he felt it slow and steady in his chest, his breaths even, and deep, and unencumbered. 

In outlaw MC culture, official club meetings are called "church," and they take place in a special meeting room dubbed the "chapel." Throughout the Dartmoor Series, the fate of the club has been decided in a series of quiet, out of the way meetings between only a handful of members, but voted into practice at church. It's fitting, then, that Aidan hears three versions of the unvarnished, apolitical truth of the club, and his father's role in it, inside an actual church. 

In this scene, which is one of my favorites of the novel, Aidan entertains three visitors. Ghost, obviously, and necessarily, because this scene is about them, and the fragile, newborn attempt at something like an honest relationship between men - of equals - rather than father and son. But I didn't want to start with Ghost. 

I like the caution and intricacy of Ghost being three steps removed. Ian notifies Ava, who in turn notifies Ghost: Ghost knows he's made a mess of everything, perhaps irrevocably, and he's come to slink in quietly. Ava's perspective here was necessary, because she's the only other person who knows what it's like to be Ghost's child. She's always been more resilient than Aidan in that regard, but she's also colder by nature, and grew up with both parents; she doesn't have the maternal abandonment issues that have always plagued Aidan. 

Ian's presence is necessary, too. He loves Ghost, but his perception of him is wholly different than that of any Lean Dog. His line to Aidan is one I've been wanting to use for a long time. 

“Our perceptions of people are all relative, I suppose.” His gaze, though soft, drilled straight into Aidan with a force that left him wanting to sway backward. “It’s all about perspective. Ghost is perhaps not a good man, but he’s the best man I’ve ever known personally.”

#ReadingLife: Horror Movie

It's spooky season, and that calls for spooky reads. My most recent is a new release from a popular, but new-to-me author: Horror Movie by Paul Tremblay.

In short: yes, I would recommend it for horror fans. It's brief, punchy, and manipulates the timeline to best effect to keep you curious and engaged and turning the pages. It also manages to build dread toward a certain turning point, and then completely subvert expectations when the promised scene finally arrives.  

But it's also very meta - as in too meta. The narrator's self-awareness borders on navel-gazing, and, while I believe this to be deliberate, that we are supposed to empathize, but not sympathize nor like him, I had my Jeff Winger moments while reading. 

I look at horror through two broad lenses. The horror is either the culmination of a character's actions and choices, or the horror is something external, an event or an affliction that happens to the character, and then drives the narrative from a reactive point of view. For an example: remember that old movie The Blob with Steve McQueen? The blob that falls to earth in a meteor is an external horror that preys upon the film's victims. Compare that to The Fly, where the horror is the direct result of ambition, hubris, and human error. 

All horror is most effective when it preys not just upon our instinctual, automatic fears of our environment, of oddities and the uncanny, but our fears of ourselves as well. Our insecurities, and jealousies, and personal failings. Short tempers, and prejudices, and past traumas. That's why I've never cared for slasher films: the horror is entirely external; terrifying, yes, but the internal horrors have to be manufactured by a false sense of security, or lapses in judgement: teenagers having sex in a car, turning down the wrong road, failing to look behind them. It's a senseless sort of violence - which of course is naturally occurring in real life, but which, in fiction, fails to provide satisfaction or something upon which to ruminate. 

Horror Movie is a story within a story: a script for a film within the story of the film's making, and the transformation from boy to monster unfolds in both narratives. It's a transformation that is wonderfully effective. It's a clever book, though it perhaps revels in this too much; in places, it's anything but subtle. 

The plot runs along two concurrent timelines, past and present. In the past, our narrator is a young, broke graduate in need of a job, approached by a college friend and her creative partner about a mostly-silent role in the indie horror movie they're filming. In the present, uploaded clips from the original, never-released movie go viral online, and a Hollywood reboot is in the making, set to use the narrator, in a few scenes, as his original "Thin Kid" character. The original script tells the tale of a group of four high school friends, one of whom is the Thin Kid. At the film's opening, his three friends lead him through the woods to an abandoned school building, where they take him to an empty classroom, put a mask on him, and force him to stay put. Over time, through rituals of bullying, dehumanizing, and even a little blood magic, the Thin Kid becomes an actual, physical monster, and seeks his revenge. 

It's a direct, and easily translatable metaphor, but the script includes the twist I mentioned earlier. The narrator recalls a particular scene that he describes as "wild," and context clues leave the reader with the assumption that it's a scene of wild violence. Monster carnage. I won't spoil it, but it instead is the cleverest scene in the whole novel. It breaks the fourth wall in a way that really works, and leaves us reflecting on all the ways in which we consume horror; to such a degree that it left me squirming and delighted at the same time. 

The main character's present-day voice is the narration of an audiobook, a conceit that seems absurd at the end of the novel, and leaves me asking - again, effectively - is this supposed to be an actual audiobook? Was it narrated from a prison cell? Or merely in our narrator's head? Does the final transformation take place in a real, physical sense? Or is it more masking? In that sense, the one-two punch of a revolting scene alongside an ambiguous outcome at the novel's end checks every horror box. It elevates the novel from a sequence of uncomfortable and unsettling events to an outright scare. 

While I liked the book, I can't say I liked any of the characters - and that's okay. In fact, I'd argue that's beside the point when it comes to horror. Sometimes you come across a horror novel in which you fall in love with the characters, but horror's main objective is to establish a sense of intimacy; to help you know the players in the novel, whether or not you like them or loathe them. And the thing about expertly-fleshed out characters we loathe...we usually find at least some kernel of our own truth within their stories. Be it a passing thought, or an action, or a reaction, every character in a horror novel offers us glimmers of the things we don't like about ourselves. That, then, is the most horrifying part of all. 

LHM: Beautiful

The following post contains spoilers for Lord Have Mercy Part Four: Big Son, which you can grab here:

Kindle/Paperback

Nook

Kobo

You can also snag the complete novel, all four installments compiled, for Kindle and paperback:

Lord Have Mercy: The Complete Novel

Relief washed over Mercy as elation, and with it came the ugly dizziness of blood loss. He turned, and carefully lowered himself to sit on the edge of the dock, boots dangling over the edge. He lifted his arm – lead-heavy, no longer painful, only dragging, which wasn’t a good sign, he knew – so that Ava could sit down beside him, and tuck herself beneath it. She was shivering as though cold, despite the hot, sweaty feel of her cheek when she pressed it down on his shoulder.

“Good job, Mama.” He tried to pat her waist, but his hand didn’t want to cooperate.

In the water, Big Son had begun his death roll.

“You, too.” She turned her head and pressed her lips to his shoulder before resettling, her warm, familiar weight better than any drug against his side.

Mercy’s head felt cotton-stuffed, dry, and floaty, like he’d taken morphine. But it was pleasant. Dreamy. “He really is beautiful, isn’t he?”

“He is, baby,” Ava agreed. “Like you.”