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Category:
Horror
Publisher: Camel Press
Type: Fiction
Pages: 578
Copyright: November 6. 2005
ISBN-13: 9781603814539
In the sleepy southern town of Lenoir, an evil presence has returned. Moving into his deceased grandmother's home, young Lee Coomb's experiences a series of terrifying supernatural encounters. Down old Seminole Road lies Broaddus Marsh, an abandoned train yard and the antebellum mansion known as Cherry Heights. Each day the evil presence grows stronger, finally trapping Lee, his little sister, and girlfriend between a hurricane and the monster; their only hope for escape, the raging Yalahalla River.
Lenoir, a small town easily recognizable anywhere throughout the South, is the setting for this novel about a boy’s experiences with life and the supernatural. From Patterson’s Department Store to Little’s Ice House and Wrennie’s Dress Shoppe, the genuine flavor of the story’s backdrop recreates a world, both vivid and entirely realistic in every detail. Summertime baseball games, pranks on neighbors, Fourth of July, tubing on the Yalahalla River, and a wealth of local odd characters enhance this tale of horror as the story line follows along with the actual calendar for 1960 including authentic social and historical events.
The principal character is Lee Coombs, a rambunctious and resourceful thirteen-year-old. Just before the start of summer vacation, Lee’s embittered grandmother dies, by default leaving the Coombs family her house on Seminole Road. Along with his father, Ted, stepmother/aunt, Magnolia “Maggie”, little sister, Patty, and pet duck, Flapjack the Coombs family finds themselves nearly alone in a moldering and decaying section of the old town. Just behind their back yard’s fence is the derelict train yard, and north, across Seminole Road, is Broaddus Marsh, a ghostly sinkhole swamp, which fifty years earlier swallowed up the finest homes in old Lenoir. To the east is a condemned housing development destroyed by a tornado spawned by a hurricane, and right next-door, set well back from the road, is the eerie antebellum Ballard Estate.
Lee takes a summer job working for Mrs. Ballard resodding her dying rose garden. Here he learns of the “Little House,” a small sewing room built in the shadows of the main mansion. Below is a 50’s Red Scare era bomb shelter and perhaps something more. The checkered history of the Ballard estate is both mysterious and disturbing. Before committing suicide, Mr. Ballard had all the small limbs lopped off of the expansive groves of cherry trees and the severed stumps sealed with pitch. And Mrs. Ballard, his frail widow, spends all day, oblivious to the terrible heat, shut up in the little house, watching the back door. Richly detailed tales told of an ancient psychopathic Indian and a murderous Union Army captain, both of whom once occupied the site, bring to light enticing hints as to what might really be at the root of an ominous evil presence.
Cute and precocious, Phoebe Carlisle moves in across the street, for the summer, to help her white trash aunt and uncle care for their young family. The afternoon Lee shows her around, they experience their first brush with the supernatural while exploring wrecked train cars, along with a brush with their own youthful curiosity about each other. Their affection grows as life goes from good to bad to worse on Seminole Road. In the final chapters little girls are disappearing all over town, following the death of Mrs. Ballard and the reappearance of her estranged son, Ridley. A powerful hurricane pounds the coast, and amid the violence of that one terrible night Lee’s world comes apart. Confronted by the powerful manifestation of the horror, the kids are trapped between the hurricane and the monster, their only hope for escape, the raging Yalahalla River.
Excerpt
Inside, it was still, so terribly still. The late afternoon air, stifling and hot, weighed heavily against the curls and flecks of dead paint peeling from the four walls and ceiling of the small, single room. All around little grayish–white flecks littered the windowsills and the yellowed linoleum floor, an abundance of the flakes dusting the top of a cheap, folding card table; having fallen unnoticed months, minutes, or maybe even years ago.
Outside, seen through the window’s thick and greenish glass, the sun glared down, washing out all true color and causing the world to appear as if seen in a feverish dream. The windows looked out upon a view of a decaying formal garden populated by an odd collection of weather–stained marble statues posturing gracelessly about the landscape. Reminiscent of an aged old photograph the scene remained deathly still, the presence of the hush hanging in the air so much more than mere silence.
Nothing moved, nothing at all, save for the occasional quick flick or twitch of a leaf when fingered by the passing of an unseen breeze. Forlorn and desolate, the entire expanse of the rose garden possessed not even the saving grace of a single colorful bloom. Just a few burnt and brownish petals remained–– lingering, miserable remnants clinging to the dried up buds like the forlorn leftovers from an unhappy game of, "He loves me … he loves me not." For all it might once have been in some grandeur long passed, the rose garden was now just an overgrown copse of gnarled stems infested with purplish and toothy thorns.
Just up the hill, a wicked tangle of fierce rose creepers enveloped a heavy, white trellis, which formed a porch arbor that swept the length of the back wall of an elegantly–aged antebellum mansion. Mounted to the side of each window were heavy black shutters, and within, white lace curtains added a genteel touch.
A shadow cast off from the high walls and eaves of the big house stretched down and out, spreading across the lawn below. At this late afternoon hour, the shadow almost touched a corner of a little, white frame house. Standing out achingly naked and alone, the little house appeared as though placed in that very spot to serve as the shadow’s marker for the end of day and the coming of night.
She was there, alone in the little house, today, and yesterday, and the day before that. Stolid and stoic as a statue herself, the old lady sat unmoving amid the sweltering heat. Her withered hands folded upon her lap, the sweat rolled down her cheeks, having soaked her corset and dress clear through hours ago.
Enshrouded within the musty, dead air she sipped her tiny breaths, keeping her back to the sun, the window frame’s spidery shadow drawn like a cross upon the center of her back. Her silhouette was a shadow cast upon the back wall of the little house. The object of her fixed gaze a queerly narrow door adorned with a finely cut crystal doorknob, the tarnished brass latch securely closed and locked.
Down below, at the exact moment the shadow of the main house crept up to touch upon the corner of the little house, what lay below became restless and stirred. Suddenly rising up from the pitch–blackness it rushed up upon the stairs, reaching out, rattling and trying the knob. The old woman's lips drew tight as she kept to her silence. She, and she alone, knew what was there.
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