The Scare Salon

As I usually say, I’m not going to spoil the ending of the book or any big plot twists, but I will be talking about the plot in some detail, so if you’d rather know nothing at all about the story going in, then please read the book first and then come back here for the discussion.

At the beginning, there’s a bit of a prologue-type situation written in the second person, where we’re following a man (whose name we later learn is Toby Finnegan) giving a sort of spooky history or ghost tour around a town called Oak Hollow. He’s adamant that he doesn’t want to hype up any of the supernatural tales that have sprung up about the place, and about one “haunted” house in particular; he likes to stick to just the facts, which he feels are eerie enough on their own. This character disappears for a long time after this introduction, but he will play briefly into the story much later on.

After that, we start to follow a handful of characters who will be important to the unfolding events; each chapter switches back and forth from one character to another. I saw some reviewers who didn’t like this, but it honestly didn’t bother me one bit; there really aren’t that many major characters to follow along with, and it’s good to get new perspectives on what’s happening with each new chapter.

The long and short of it is that Oak Hollow is a dying town. The main company where many of the locals worked shut down long ago, and the area has become severely economically depressed. Many of the families who live there have been there for generations and love the place, and thus are reluctant to leave, but there’s no denying that the town is clearly circling the drain and at some point, most of the residents won’t have much choice if they still want to have a job or money to live.

One of the people who adores the place is Shawn, who grew up in Oak Hollow and wanted to live here forever. He’s married to a woman named Katherine who’s from out of town, and the couple has three kids. At the beginning of the story, Shawn has lost his job and is beginning to lose hope of finding another one, and a huge argument ensues when his wife tells him that she’s actually gotten a well-paying position in another state and that maybe they all need to move or work something else out, since she has no attachment to Oak Hollow the way her husband does.

While Katherine and the kids are out, Shawn has a dark-night-of-the-soul moment and makes preparations to hang himself in the basement of the family home, thinking that his wife and children will be better off without him. Just before he does the deed, though, he has a change of heart, wondering what the hell he was thinking. However, it seems that some unexplained force overcomes him and compels him to go through with it, despite him no longer wanting to. Katherine finds him dangling from a beam when she comes home, much to her horror and despair.

We’re also introduced to an older guy named Walt, who lives alone with his Great Dane named Cowboy (don’t worry, the dog is fine) and is something of an introvert. He was very close to his dad, but his dad passed away several months before the events of the book, and he’s still having a hard time dealing with his grief. He also has a pronounced love/hate relationship with Oak Hollow and can’t imagine leaving it, although he’s in a better position than Shawn because he’s retired and his house is paid for.

One of Walt’s busybody neighbors is Shawn’s cousin, and she tells Walt sort of casually that Shawn has committed suicide. Walt is shocked by this; Shawn was his friend, and he’d had no inkling that things had gotten that bad. The woman also tells Walt that maybe Oak Hollow’s future is looking up, because a new business just opened in the supposedly haunted, abandoned house on Asher Street that’s been sitting empty for twelve years. When Walt asks what kind of business it is, she tells him it’s a funeral home, which doesn’t seem like much of an economic harbinger of forthcoming prosperity to Walt.

We learn more about the funeral home when we start to follow Shawn’s new widow, Katherine. Shortly after she finds her husband’s body, she gets a phone call from the proprietor of said funeral home, a seemingly kindly old man named Lloyd Mnemic. He offers to take care of everything for her free of charge, as he’s independently wealthy and wants to give something back to the community, even though he’s only just moved here. Katherine, still in complete shock at her husband’s death, goes along with Mnemic’s magnanimous offer, relieved to not have to deal with things, even though her spidey senses are telling her something might be ever so slightly off.

The strange thing about the funeral home (well, one of the strange things) is that on the outside, the house still looks like the abandoned shithole it did before, but on the inside, it’s been entirely renovated into an elegant, modern funeral parlor. Walt in particular, when he attends Shawn’s funeral, starts to wonder why Mnemic opened the place if only the inside was ready, and how he was able to open the business so quickly, given the amount of regulation there is in running a funeral home. Because of Walt’s aversion to people, though, he mostly seems to not want to get involved.

There are two other main characters who have several chapters written from their perspective. One of these is Myrtle, a mentally ill woman in her eighties who lives in a hoarded-up house by herself with only her doll collection for company. She has become obsessed with the daughter of a neighbor, who she believes is her own long-lost daughter Rosita; over the course of the story, she also comes to suspect that the girl’s mother is a literal demon who must be destroyed.

And then there’s Preston, a young man who also has some severe issues in the sense that he’s very clearly a psychopath. Although he hasn’t killed anyone (yet), he has had violent urges his entire life, and fears that he will no longer be able to hold them off. He has various ways of trying to stave off his “inner shadow,” as he calls it; among these are working out at the gym, and breaking into people’s houses to collect their hair out of the shower drain so he can chew on it and rub it on his genitals. But it’s just a matter of time before his sick urges are going to drive him to murder.

As the tale unwinds, it starts to become obvious that something very bizarre is going on at Mnemic’s funeral home, and that Mnemic himself is not what he appears to be. All of the characters’ stories begin to intertwine in interesting ways as the truth about Lloyd Mnemic and his plans for Oak Hollow are slowly revealed.

This was a great ride, with Walt in particular being a great, sympathetic character to follow parts of the story through. The lore surrounding Lloyd Mnemic and the weird funeral parlor is cool and unique, and although it’s not gone into in a massive amount of detail, there’s enough there to get the gist of what Mnemic is and what his goal for the town is. There’s also ample gore and a fairly high body count, if that’s your bag.

Another damn good read, and one I’d recommend if you’re into Stephen King or Ray Bradbury, or like horror stories about small towns being inundated by an ancient supernatural force.

Until next time, keep it creepy, my friends.