I came across this classic - it won the 2016 Bram Stoker award for Horror Novel of the Year - via one of my favorite Youtube Channels - Top Five Scary Videos. This one featured The Top Five Scary Cosmic Horror Novels You Need to Read.
First, what is cosmic horror? Well, it is best expressed through the works of Algernon Blackwood ("The Willows"), Arthur Machen ("The Great God Pan"), Stephen King ("N.," and "Crouch End"), Neal Patrick Burke (Sour Candy), and the man who popularized it, H.P. Lovecraft (pretty much everything he wrote, but try At the Mountains of Madness and "The Call of Cthulhu").
The premise is something like this - this world is just a veil. The are more powerful forces behind this veil that is our reality. The might be considered 'gods.' In fact, primitive people often based their gods off of the powerful deities who are banished to another reality (the reality just beyond this one) and are always plotting to get back here. In some instances, there are even others trying to punch a hole in the veil through which these elder-gods can return.
Second, The Fisherman was long in getting published. The horror publishers didn't want to publish it, for they considered it to be too literary. The main stream literary publishers didn't want it, for they dubbed it too horrific. But finally, in 2016, Langan was able to publish this classic.
Third, The Fisherman is a classic, story-within-a-story tale. The frame story is that of Abe, the narrator, who has lost his wife to breast cancer just a year in to their marriage. To overcome his grief, Abe takes to fishing. It becomes his obsession. Before long, one of his coworkers, Dan, who is married with twin boys, loses his family in a terrible car accident.
Abe knows what Dan is going through, so over time he invites Dan to come fishing with him. Soon Dan agrees. They spend a summer fishing, but Abe worries that when winter arrives, it will be too much for Dan, who is grappling with the loss of his kids and wife more and more each day.
The next spring, though, Dan surprises Abe by suggesting they go fishing at an add place called Dutchman's Creek. It's not on many maps, but with some close searching, Abe finds it close to an old reservoir.
Sure enough, Abe and Dan pack up and head out but not before stopping at one of their favorite breakfast spots. It is at this diner that Abe mentions to Harold, the cook, that they are headed to Dutchman's Creek. It is at this point where the second story comes in to play.
Harold warns the men to NOT go to Dutchman's Creek.
Who not?
Well, that is the long story that Harold regales the men with. It focuses on Lottie Schmidt, whose father, Rainer, was a disgraced German scholar (he sought 'forbidden knowledg' - another hallmark of Cosmic Horror - and was kicked out of his university). They come to America to escape her father's shame. He finds work as a stone mason helping to build a huge damn that will flood the valley where they are staying in order to provide water to the ever-growing east coast.
While working there, something terrible happens. The wife of the richest man in the valley, Cornelius Dott, dies. Despite Dott being able to bring in the best doctors in the world over the course of her years of ill health, no one can save her. Enter a strange man, only known as The Guest, who must have answered a desperate plea from Dott to try to save his wife. Yes, Dott practices Black Magic (another hall mark of Cosmic Horror). Sure enough, soon Dott is seen walking with a figure at night who everyone believes to be his wife, even though she has been dead several days now.
Eventually, Dott dies and - shockingly - leaves his mansion and his fortune to The Guest. No one sees anymore of The Guest and life goes on. Until a man's wife is killed in a horrible accident.
You guessed it. This man is so overcome with grief, he begs The Guest to do for him what he did for Dott.
You guessed it. He does.
This horrifies everyone in the village. Over time, worse things happen and Rainer is called upon to help them deal with The Guest. Rainer (also a dabbler in forbidden knowledge and black magic - hence the reason he was kicked out of his prestigious university in Germany) and several other men track down The Guest. But they discover something horrible - he has punched a hole in the veil. Behind this world is another world. This one filled with horrible creatures, monstrously strange cities, and a horrific black ocean which features the gigantic Leviathan (of the Old Testament). It seems if The Guest can hook and reel in The Leviathan, he can channel its power.
The Guest is close to doing that. Luckily, Rainer prevents this from happening and the men escape (well, all but one) with their lives and leave The Guest trapped and tethered to The Leviathan.
Hence, Harold tells Abe and Dan, that is why you should avoid Dutchman's Creek, which runs out of that very same reservoir that covered over Rainer's and Dott's and The Guest's old village.
Abe and Dan, though, are undeterred. Especially Dan. Soon Dan reveals how he really found Dutchman's Creek: he was given his grandfather's fishing journal. Apparently, his grandfather was a stickler for detail. He chronicled where he fished, what he caught, bait used, weather conditions, and anything of note. For instance, in one entry, he noted that the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. It is another note in the journal, though, that draws Dan in. He discovers beneath the entry for Dutchman's Creek these two words - "Saw Eve." Now Eve was Dan's grandmother, who had been dead five years by this time.
It doesn't take Dan long to hope that if they fish Dutchman's Creek, he may just see his dead family. Never mind that his grandfather never mentioned anything more other than "Saw Eve" and it was the last time he ever fished Dutchman's Creek. (The inability to resist temptation is another hallmark of Cosmic Horror).
Sure enough, once the friend venture into the woods far enough soon Dan does find his family. Worse, Abe finds his dead wife. And so much more.
I won't ruin the rest. But I will leave you with this excellent passage from Abe early on in the novel -
"I’ve stood on the shore of an ocean whose waves were as black as the ink trailing from the tip of this pen. I’ve watched a woman with skin pale as moonlight open her mouth, and open it, and open it, into a cavern set with rows of serrated teeth that would have been at home in a shark’s jaws."
And horror like that is just the tip of the iceberg in the most excellent novel, The Fisherman, which is by far the best horror novel I've read since Sour Candy.
Up next - Summer reading book #3 - The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek.
No comments:
Post a Comment