Horrorween
Orangefield is a small town so named because of its voluminous pumpkin crop which makes it an annual destination for tourists … as well as Samhain, the Lord of the Dead, a dark force who burrows into the minds of citizens and forces them to do his bidding. Al Sarrantonio has spun tales of Orangefield before, notably in 2004’s HALLOWS EVE. The new HORRORWEEN takes another trip into town – three of them, in fact, as it’s comprised of three previously published novellas, loosely threaded together to disguise it as a novel.
The first (and best) story involves a children’s book writer having some problems with his wife, writer’s block and hitting the hooch. Those first two suddenly disappear one day, oddly enough coinciding with a hornet infestation in his basement office. What it all builds to is an end that truly gave me the creeps. Some unsettling imagery also has a hand in the middle story, in which a local child is kidnapped by the “Pumpkin Boy,” a hissing, clunky metal robot with a pumpkin for a head. It, too, is good, if not as successful overall.
Taking up more than half of HORRORWEEN, however, is the third and final story, in which Samhain meddles separately with three people in order to cause some Halloween havoc: a schoolgirl whose father recently died, a mute pumpkin patch employee permanently disabled from a run-in with a Somalian land mine and a mentally unhinged stoner type with a long list of daily meds.
Some may think Sarrantonio is cheating by packaging this as a A-to-Z narrative when it’s not, but I actually much prefer it this way. With stops and starts at unpredictable points, the book keeps you on your toes. He’s got a real gift for this genre, for injecting Americana with the supernatural and putting the evil back in a holiday known today for lollipops and candy corn. HORRORWEEN is even better than HALLOWS EVE, so one hopes Sarrantonio will keep returning to Orangefield to harvest more horror in years to come. –Rod Lott
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OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• FLIGHTS: EXTREME VISIONS OF FANTASY edited by Al Sarrantonio
• HALLOWS EVE by Al Sarrantonio
• 999: TWENTY-NINE ORIGINAL TALES OF HORROR AND SUPSENSE edited by Al Sarrantonio
[...] face with Samhain. They converge, but each practically can be seen as their own, kind of like how HORRORWEEN was comprised of a number of previously written Orangefield stories, loosely – but credibly – [...]