In a long-ago American village, an ordinary place settled by people with Anglo-Saxon names like Patterson and Abernathy, spirits occupied unlit corners of dank basements. Some of them trolled for sex. They picked out village daughters whose extreme niceness grew from fear of rejection. Slithering past intact hymen, the spirits entered the girls, impregnated them. They talked in false confidence with select villagers and conspired to divide friends. Some, they followed at a distance. They whispered, were heard by strangers and inspired fear, then turned dramatic; they allowed themselves to be felt and seen for moments at a time. What follows is, for a reader, Frankenstinian dread.
So it is that Ted Morrissey, in his new book, embeds us in a community of Germanic Midwesterners, a group that is function-oriented, studious and politely Christian. These are people who would covet a set of nice tools and then hope no one found out. The earliest generation of villagers revealed by Mr. Morrissey complies strictly with their town’s rules on how and when to quarantine Plague families. The town fathers commonly torched the homes of Plague victims, bodies sealed inside. Morrissey follows those who think they’ve seen ghostly movements in windows while houses were being consumed. Did some get burned who weren’t yet dead?
Continue reading
Recent Comments