by Dennis Seine & Michelle Souliere
Those of you who know me, also know I read omnivorously. However, the horror genre is my favorite go-to. I cannot quit it!
My friend Dennis is the same way about horror, and he suggested we start doing blog posts about some of our reading. So here we are! I initially called this feature "Horror DM" because it's Dennis and Michelle, and because we are DM-ing you on horror's behalf to let you know what's going on in some of these crazy books. But Dennis was skeptical 😂 so we brainstormed and now it's (207)TERROR because alliteration always wins.
Our inaugural post is about a Maine horror favorite, Rick Hautala. Enjoy!
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Night Stone by Rick Hautala
As discussed by Dennis Seine and Michelle Souliere
Dennis: Rick Hautala is from Maine. Or he was
from Maine; sadly, he passed away in 2013. And because it was exactly a decade ago he
died, fellow author and friend Christopher Golden organized an online
read-along of Hautala’s most famous work: Night Stone,
of which more than a million copies were sold (that blew my mind). And that impressive number is not just because it is one of the
first paperbacks with a hologram on its cover. This atmospheric novel leaves a lasting
impression. It’s hard to shake.
Michelle: Having read a bunch of Rick’s books in the past, I was long overdue to dive back into his bibliography, and what better place to jump back in than Night Stone! Big thanks to author Christopher Golden for instigating what will hopefully be an annual revisitation with Rick during February, the month of his birthday. Rumor has it that next year’s selection is likely to be another iconic Maine horror classic, Little Brothers, long rated a favorite of fans who read it back in the 1980s, if you want to get a head start.
I wasn’t sure what to expect
from this book, dazzled as I was by the fabulously spooky laser hologram cover
(earlier printings have a confusing note inside the cover, referring to Zebra’s
line of romance novels, which in the context of this book is hilarious).
However, once I settled in, the story alternated between comfort and unease. Comfort, because Rick captured the weirdly in-between summer world of southern Maine, quasi-rural and butting up against the seasonal tourist trade, old, with its century-old history already being forgotten, but still nowhere near as ancient as the history lurking unknown beneath its surface. Unease, because from the start there are personal tensions at play, even before you push past them to the true dread at the heart of the story.
Night Stone’s kickoff point is the overriding tension generated by moving several states away from where the family was living (Rhode Island to Maine), and the weirdness of living in an old family homestead that everyone else in the family refuses to live in (renting it out to a steady procession of unknown renters instead).
Dennis: In the book we follow Don, his wife Jan and their daughter Beth as they move into their new, rural home in southern Maine. Don is a handy fellow who is going to teach at the local high school once the summer break is over. During his vacation, he works on the endless list of chores that need to happen. The dilapidated family home is old and spooky, and needs some TLC.
Meanwhile daughter Beth, I’m not sure how old she is but I am guessing about twelve, finds a creepy doll that she gets completely obsessed with and/or possessed by. Always a great sign! And Jan is looking for work. She used to make her money as a realtor back in Rhode Island, where they lived before relocating to the sticks. Turns out the need for realtors in this part of the state is lacking, so she decides to try her luck at a local restaurant as a waitress.
Michelle: I was immediately struck by the first weird about-face in the story – when previously successful Jan can’t immediately break the ice of the local realty market to get hired by a firm, she instead on a whim applies at a greasy spoon with rude tourist customers and an equally greasy I’m-gonna-get-in-your-pants owner. That seems …reasonable? Maybe she’s just a masochist at heart.
Meanwhile, Don throws himself into hard labor, rolling around in an attic full of itchy pink fiberglass insulation on the hottest days of the year. And when that’s done, he enjoys digging trenches for a change of pace.
Clearly demonstrating her masochistic nature yet again, Jan sees that Don is having far too much fun giving himself heat exhaustion, and decides to break ground on a garden for herself, even though it’s far too late in the season to grow anything in Maine. Wait, maybe it’s not masochism. Maybe she’s just not that smart? Also she makes Don do some of the work for her. Wait, so maybe she is smart?
Swanky hologram cover in action!
Dennis: While digging around in the garden, Don finds a severed hand, possibly Native American. He becomes absolutely obsessed with not just the hand, but the enormous stone slab he discovers in the yard. This displeases Jan. Actually, everything the somewhat eccentric Don does seems to displease Jan. This does not discourage Don, who calls in a few academic experts to help him. But his main sidekick is a neighbor with a Native American heritage, Billy, who helps him dig up the colossal stone. Great idea, Don! Go dig up an ancient burial ground!
Michelle: Meanwhile, young preteen daughter Beth is exhibiting weird behavior (even beyond her obsession with the tiny decrepit homunculus she’s carting around) which her parents are either a) completely oblivious to, or b) choose to pretend hasn’t happened. In an unrelated plot twist, Beth really, really, really wants a horse, so Don finally wears down Jan into letting her keep a horse in the small barn beside the house. They find a lovely dark young mare named Dobbin and buy her, and Beth promptly renames her Goblin. NOTHING CREEPILY PORTENTIOUS ABOUT THAT AT ALL. Nope.
And did I mention…? Ever since they’ve moved into the house, Don has been having vivid, unsettling dreams which involve him repeating over and over to himself in shock, “No! Not blood!” But why would you tell anyone about that? Don shrugs and goes on with his hard labor days.
And all these things just
make up the start. There are plenty of
incidents, omens, and warnings to ignore (yes, ignore – why would you pay
attention to a direct warning?) peppering the story as it gears up to its
bloody, explosive ending. And yes, don’t
worry – there are plenty of moments in which to scream at the page, “WHY are
you DOING that?!! Are you a FOOL???”
Dennis: Is the book a homerun? It wasn’t to me. But I had a great time reading it, even though Hautala or the editors at Zebra books could’ve easily shaved off 200 pages of this 600 page clunker. The characters are as vivid as they are flat: Don is not the sharpest knife in the drawer and Jan is, well, kind of an asshole, to be honest. Plus there are a few scenes with a voyeur that seem completely pointless.
The mood is key here, though. While reading this bona fide page turner, it was hard to stop or to think about anything else. From page one there is an impending sense of doom that runs throughout the book. This meticulous and steady buildup of the events was phenomenally spooky. And the claustrophobic ending? Absolutely terrifying.
Michelle: As part of the celebration of Rick via a group read of Night Stone, Christopher Golden also arranged to host a Zoom gathering at the end of the February, in which we all got a chance to sift through the detritus of this book from back to front.
During the discussion, some repeated themes were brought up, such as severed hands, and a particularly shocking dream image (Don had a lot of dreams!) which reappears later in the real world. After listening to us muse over these patterns for a bit, Christopher spoke up and illuminated something for us. Rick had told him that these barbed, stick-to-your-brain elements of the story came from one of his own dreams. In the dream, he had encountered a horrifying corpse, strung up and with its hand severed, decayed and unavoidable. The corpse, swinging from its noose, turned to reveal its face to him, something pouring out of its mouth as it did so. Write what you know! Yikes.
So yes, as Dennis says – while the story is a bit of a hot mess, and overall not subtle, there are elements in it that have a cumulative, increasingly creepy effect on the reader, and linger long after one puts the book down. I also really enjoyed the way Rick wove his Finnish heritage and bits of the Finnish language throughout the book, creating some of the spookiest bits.
All in all, it’s a perfect example of the best of the “Paperbacks from Hell” phenomena. Weird, entrancing cover art, lots of bizarre story elements, lots of chances to yell in outrage at the characters, and lots of fun.
If you'd like to read more about Rick, here is a post I did shortly after his death in 2013.
http://strangemaine.blogspot.com/2013/03/rip-rick-hautala-lifetime-is-not-long.html
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