Somewhere I heard the expression “teaching the dead to talk with us.” I don’t think, really, that’s quite what was said. I don’t know that “the dead” were involved at all. But the minute I thought it, I knew I had a story.
I’ve been watching shark videos and reels in the way many people watch funny cats or goats in pajamas. I see people who are shark experts swimming with sharks. I admire them.
And I wonder if there are consequences to messing with the order of things.
I don’t have the answers. Just a story. Here it is.
We begin with a quartet of friends — or should I say, Silas and his fan club — trespassing in a cemetery late at night with the intention (Silas’) of stealing a corpse’s tongue for occult purposes. Should I mention the four of them are tripping? I should. Addiction and drug abuse are main features of this story — ah, but not just any drug addiction. A Ghost addiction. Fungi are having a moment…
Silas is low-key obsessed with his dead mother. Erin (the narrator of this haunted foray into horror) is obsessed with Silas.
I don’t want to give away too much of the plot, but be prepared: These ghosts are some of the scariest I’ve ever encountered in literature. You remember how Odysseus fed blood to the ghosts in the Underworld to restore their memory temporarily? Like that. Only worse.
Setting is key. Richmond, Virginia. An old city on long-established ground with a history of past cruelty and enslavement and conquer. A city where the ghosts of the trampled want to be seen and acknowledged. They are hungry ghosts. Insatiable. So, Chapman asks: What should we do with our ghosts?
I don’t think I’d have been friends with Erin. She can be pathetic, needy, spineless. But occasionally, I’ve been just like her. There is something so pure in her desperation, so relateable in her self-sabotage. Because this story, like all the best horror, is about people — about how people decide who they are, and what people will do if you let them.
And I assure you, as horrifying as these ghosts are, they aren’t the worst monster in these pages.
Since setting is so important to this book, I wanted to emphasize setting where I was when I started reading it — by having an exclusive Trout Town Steelhead Amber at Trout Town Tavern in Kalkaska, Michigan, where beer comes with a pretzel!
Epiphany Ferrell 