“Dandyclogs came in many shapes and forms. Every generation seemed to have its own idea of what he looked like. Some said he was made of twigs and wore children’s skins stretched tautly over his knotted form. Others claimed he was a gaunt old man, naked as birth, with arms long as branches for snatching boys and girls and dragging them into brambles.” Welcome to the village of Maimsbury, where the children tell tales of a fearful monster, and the adults stay quiet about the real danger that haunts the place – the river Yeelde, demanding sacrifices from the community to keep them safe.
For Gorse, fourteen and concerned mostly with the girl he loves, the ritual of giving an animal to the river each year is part of normal life. This is the year he will discover the truth of the dark pact, and his own family’s role in the ritual. Darren Simpson’s Thirst (Pushkin Children’s, £9.99) draws on folk horror, with its focus on the evil that men do in service of tradition and superstition, and combines it with quintessential coming-of-age quandaries. Gorse must consider the cost of his own comfort and wellbeing when he meets Faye – a girl his own age who perfectly fits the bill for the kind of isolated outsider who might be sacrificed to the river in lieu of “the people we love”. Creepy and thought-provoking.
The outsider figure is sometimes the victim of such unsettling communities, much as with real-life scapegoats, but can also serve as an effective narrator, as in the case of Freddie Kölsch’s Empty Heaven (Electric Monkey, £9.99). New Yorker Darian finds her summer home “charmingly weird”: “There were a lot of strange things I didn’t think about too closely when it came to Kesuquosh, a village full of people who never seemed to argue, driving cars that never honked at each other in the streets.” It’s not until the Harvest Hallow – where her friend and crush is handed over to Good Arcturus, “the scarecrow deity and symbol of plenty” – that the oddness fully registers, and the quest for truth and justice begins.
As with last year’s Now, Conjurers, Kölsch’s second novel slides slightly back in time to the turn of the millennium, which means the early-noughties pop-culture references are (sometimes too) plentiful and smartphones have not yet transformed how people engage with the world. It’s also a chance to explore perennial experiences (nonconformity, exploitation and abuse) within a context that is close to, but not quite our own, reminding us that the words and the frameworks we have for such things are culturally specific. The denouement is a pleasing balance of the supernatural and the personal, offering a hopeful ending amid the horrors.
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[ Monsters are everywhere in these Frankenstein-inspired YA readsOpens in new window ]
Amy Clarkin’s paranormal investigators return for their third ghostly adventure, Where the Shadows Hide (O’Brien, €12.99), which sees the team aboard a luxury cruise ship. The glamorous setting feels like wish-fulfilment at first, perhaps replacing a Doctor-Odyssey-shaped hole in some hearts, but the characters are there to work, and all too conscious of the gap between them and the wealthy, often careless guests. Without resorting to caricature, Clarkin deftly notes power imbalances and points to the ways, minor and major, in which workers are often exploited or dehumanised.
Also striking is the depiction of chronic illness, with Éabha still recovering from the physically wearying events of the previous book. “Tired didn’t feel enough to capture the bone-deep exhaustion that permeated her whole body, how even the smallest movement felt like wading through wet cement, how her brain felt like it was stuffed with cotton wool and filled with buzzing and her vision was covered in gauze. How, whenever someone spoke to her, she would blink for an extra couple of seconds as her brain scrambled to process their words, understand them, and dredge up a response.”
Writing about ongoing health difficulties – and Clarkin explicitly links these symptoms to ME, which she has explored in her non-fiction work – can present a challenge plot-wise. As readers, we are used to resolution at the end of a text – a tragic death, a successful recovery. In a supernatural setting, there’s the temptation of a magic cure of some kind, but that can feel disheartening or frustrating if one is concerned with representing particular experiences in an authentic fashion.
Here, then, the conflict is not quite Éabha versus chronic illness, but Éabha versus other people’s responses to the condition. Boyfriend Archer means well with his overprotective stance and seemingly helpful suggestions (vitamins and yoga inevitably pop up), but ultimately makes “her feel like he thought she wasn’t trying hard enough to get better”. Her journey is not to overcome or positive-think her way out of illness, but to “learn how to exist within the parameters she had now”, which involves hope and grief. This thoughtful representation is moving and empowering.
Another variation on supernatural illness is the idea of superpower as curse, an ability that initially seems menacing but will, with acceptance and management, be revealed as a strength. This is one aspect of Lisa M Sylvan’s debut Dangerous Girls (Scholastic, £8.99), set on a remote Scottish island “where all the girls like me are sent eventually”, in which Imogen’s capacity to make poisonous flowers bloom from her fingertips has led her to view herself as a fairy-tale villain, “one of the strange, out-of-control characters who the villagers should keep away from”.
Here she meets other girls, each with their own gifts, but also inadvertently causes the death of a bird, which makes her the prime suspect when more injuries and deaths begin to occur. The fantastical elements heighten the mystery stakes, with some surprising and delicious twists along the way.
Botanical themes also turn up in the new C G Drews horror novel, Hazelthorn (Hodder, £9.99), which swoops the reader into a dark Secret-Garden-esque set-up. Seemingly an invalid, Evander lives mostly in isolation in a gothic estate, visited infrequently by his rich, reclusive guardian, Mr Lennox-Hall. This man’s grandson, Laurie, is the only person of Evander’s age around the place – but they are not allowed to be friends, or even spend time together. Not since Laurie tried to murder him.
Evander is, nevertheless, “obsessed with him”, because although his hate is “wild and bitter as wormwood on his tongue”, he is also smitten. “He shouldn’t watch for him through his window. Or crave snippets of his voice. Or think about his cornflower-blue eyes and the beautiful shape of his wretched mouth.”
When Mr Lennox-Hall dies suddenly, Evander suspects murder, and teams up with Laurie to uncover the truth. Legal tangles – Evander is unexpectedly named as heir – and greenery-related horrors (this garden demands “blood and bone”) propel the story along nicely, while the enemies-to-lovers side of things simmers delightfully. “Evander has to remember that this boy is the devil with gilt horns under his golden curls and being alone with him is like putting coals on his tongue and wondering why they burn.”
Your mileage may vary as to whether the prose is lush and lyrical or a tad overwrought; for me it earns its dreamy, breathless intensity. The perfect Halloween read to devour, or be devoured by.
