Having problems in your marriage? Buying a house isn’t going to solve things. And that goes double if that house is haunted.
‘Tis a lesson Conrad Harrison learns the hard way, in Christopher Ransom’s debut novel, THE BIRTHING HOUSE. He’s married — by a thread, it seems — to Jo, a successful L.A. businesswoman who has always outearned him. That paradigm shifts when Conrad’s father is killed in an accident and he inherits a huge settlement check, roughly half of which he plunks down on an old, Victorian fixer-upper in a Wisconsin small town.
Shortly after moving in, Conrad finds out the home used to be a spot where pregnant young women of another century went to have their babies. Eerily, a photo album containing sepia-toned snapshots from time reveals one of the ladies looks uncannily like Jo. On one of his first nights there, he’s horrified by a vision of a child’s wooden doll come to life.
Jo splits town for an extended work trip, and it’s during that time Conrad believes that the house doesn’t want death, like most haunted abodes, but life. One of his pet snakes in the garage lays a slew of eggs, despite having never been impregnated. And Jo calls with some news that she, too, is knocked up … and Conrad starts doing the math in his head, questioning her fidelity.
While she’s away, he befriends the girl next door, Nadia, a pregnant teen with a no-good boyfriend. Their relationship is a strange one, and he puts the moves on her, seven-month bump be damned. She reminds him of his high school girlfriend, Holly. Whatever became of her? Teasingly, between chunks of other chapters, Conrad reveals the tragic truth as he gradually pulls an AMITYVILLE.
The concept of a house demanding life is an interesting one. It’s not scary, mind you, but interesting, and makes for a sexually charged narrative — one in which Conrad is riddled with explicit dreams that find him waking up with a chafed penis and evidence of expelled breast milk. For me, the climax — ahem — of the book comes — ahem — roughly three-quarters in — ahem — when a flashback details a most disturbing act of love perpetuated by Holly. Teenagers do the darndest things!
Although the ending didn’t quite work for me, elongated as it is, THE BIRTHING HOUSE is something of an unexpected gem. Ransom writes with great verve, where Jackson Pollock becomes a verb and lines of dialogue sing, even when they’re spoken out of cruelty. The novel reminded me of 2005′s underrated Abaddon Inn series, which similarly creeps as its floorboards creak. —Rod Lott
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