Haunted MTL Original – Beach House – Jack Wildern
Beach House by Jack Wildern
I lay in bed listening to the wind push itself through the walls. As if the bricks have holes in them. I’m imagining Helen blowing kisses across my face in the dark.
“But she isn’t here is she.”
Laughter greets this. Familiar yet alien. That’s my voice. But it doesn’t belong to me. The anxiety creeps up in my throat.
I throw back the duvet and I’m instantly cold. The house is an ice box. My feet on the wooden floor give me a shock.
The hallway is pitch black. There are no windows. Feeling my way across the wall, half expecting it to open up and swallow me where I would stay, trapped forever.
“Where you belong.”
“Fuck off.”
The spare room door creaks on rusted hinges. Inside is a pale light. The curtains are open. They should be closed. I closed them.
Helen sits in a rocker by the window.
In the corner a cot. I sink to my knees, white knuckles gripping the bars. Black, glassy eyes staring at a wailing bundle.
“Please. Just_”
Singing. Faint and far away. Helen cradles the baby. Soothing, reassuring. The moonlight paints her face a pale blue.
“Hel_”
“Hush. She’s sleeping.”
“I can’t do this anymore.”
The walls close in, suffocating me.
***
I don’t sleep. But the morning light is here. A reluctant grey face weeping tears across the window. No footsteps. No crying. They’ve left me alone. It’s early. If I get out now I can watch the tide come in.
On the beach the waves climb the black, crooked limbs of the pier. Like a spider drowning in a puddle of water. The thought makes my throat run dry. The spray soaks my jeans. I put my face to my thigh. Damp. Salty. I breathe in hard and let it the fabric block my nose and mouth.
In another time and place I’m laughing, chasing Helen. Her brown hair escapes through my fingertips. The sunlight warms our skin as my hands close around her waist. My world fell apart when she smiled. It collapsed around me and I let it go. She rebuilt it for me. A better place than before. We filled it with people, places, memories and a perfect face that stared up in wonder at this new world and the people that built it.
When I open my eyes she is rocking the pram back and forth.
“Why are you here?”
She doesn’t answer. Just rocks and smiles, rocks and smiles.
“Moving here. It was supposed to be a new start.”
She looks at me then. The same look I ran away from.
“I’m sorry.” My eyes glance toward the bundle in the pram. She starts to pull back the blanket.
“No Helen I can’t. Jesus Christ you know I can’t.”
I walk away. Her eyes boring into my back. Watching. Judging.
***
I wake up in darkness with my head resting on the kitchen table. They move about upstairs. Hands clap. Helen’s voice carries a nursery rhyme.
“Listen to how happy they are Jack.”
“Stop it.”
The rain starts to fall. Tiny fingers tap on the windows and build into fists that hammer on the glass. I cover my ears from a scream, vaguely aware that it could be me. The room starts to shake.
Upstairs water runs down the walls. A gale blows through the hallway carrying a stench of sea water and petrol. There is something else too, something sweet and rotten. Screaming from inside the spare room. I throw open the door and headlights blind me. My old ford. Submerged in water. It’s horn blaring.
I go to the window. The water rises. My own face stares back at me, stupid and terrified. In the passenger seat is a rag doll that used to be my wife. Slumped over the dashboard, hair floating in the water.
“HELEN!”
Nothing but darkness again and the moonlight cutting a shard across the damp floor. A sweet song drifting up from the old rocker. I am mad. This is not real. I am not real.
“Look Jack.”
I close my eyes. Shaking my head.
“Look at the life you made for them.”
“Leave me alone.”
“She’s so pretty isn’t she Jack?”
Helen is in front of me. Her face bloated. The bundle in her arms writhes and thrashes beneath the sheet. Water in her lungs. Gasping for air.
“Look at what you did.”
She pulls back the sheet and my world falls apart again. Only this time I fall back into the nightmare. The walls are screaming mouths. The wind breaks my skin and the water washes my blood away. I am a skeleton, a fragment, nothing. I am lost in an ocean.
“Stop it. Fucking stop it!”
I wake up on the floor.
There is no wind. There is no rain. There are no headlights. There is no cot.
“You are alone.”
Jack Wildern is from the UK. He writes short fiction and lives in Hampshire with his wife and two children. Most recently his work has been published in The Book Smugglers Den and Parhelion.
Daisy Johnson’s, The Hotel is a collection of stories that tell the tale of a hotel built on cursed land. Originally written and recorded as a series for BBC Radio 4 in 2020, (you can find the recordings here https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000mrcg/episodes/player )
The fourteen-story collection was released in hardcover in 2021. Johnson’s prose is haunting, weaving together the stories of generations of families who have been tempted, forced, or serendipitously dumped at The Hotel. Most leave the message, “I’ll be there soon,” and many disappear from room 63.
- ‘The British literary heir to Stephen King’ Johanna Thomas-Corr, Sunday TimesA triumph of contemporary horror from the Booker Prize-shortlisted author, this collection of short stories will haunt you long after you turn the final pageA place of myths, rumours and secrets, The Hotel looms over the dark Fens, tall and grey in its Gothic splendour
- Built on cursed land, a history of violent death suffuses its very foundations –yet it has a magnetism that is impossible to ignore
- On entering The Hotel, different people react in different ways
Last update on 2025-03-17 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API
The Plot.
The Hotel tells the stories of the people who are drawn to The Hotel, or, more accurately, the ground the hotel is built on. The first story explains what we know about the hotel, its tendencies, moods, and … hobbies. We are then introduced to Mary Southgraves, ‘The Witch’, who comes to live with her husband on the land on which The Hotel will be built. The villagers in the pond drown her for predicting a sickness that takes the village children, (no this is not a spoiler she tells you she dies on the first page of her chapter.)
The proceeding chapters build upon this story. We meet the workers who are brought in to fill the pond to begin construction. A child of a guest in 1968 who meets another girl who may or may not actually be there. A maid who takes part in séances and Ouija board sessions. The stories progress through time into the present.
Highlights.
The haunting prose of The Hotel does the majority of the heavy lifting for this collection, which makes sense since it began as a podcast series. Johnson’s prose leans towards poetry, albeit more Poe than Keats.
The repetition of specific characters and family names throughout the different stories was intriguing, giving the stories links. These links trigger a sense of recognition for the reader. There is also a sense of anticipation, knowing what has happened to these families already, we wonder how much more they can withstand. The Hotel is like a curse following these families, but I think Johnson is commenting on lineage and the consequences of past actions. The sins of the father and all that.
- Fifteen highly original and darkly unsettling supernatural stories, performed by some of Britain’s finest actresses ‘This is what we know about The Hotel
- It is bigger on the inside than on the outside
- Do not go into Room 63
Last update on 2025-03-17 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API
Drawbacks.
These stories can get confusing at times and I think this is due to the briefness of the stories. It’s hard to keep track of a character that you have spent four pages with and remember them three stories later. I found myself having to stop and turn back to check if that person was who I thought they were. This pausing to turn back interrupts the reading experience. It pulls you out of the story and destroys the atmosphere that Johnson has worked to create.
The Final Take.
The Hotel was an interesting read. Johnson is a talented writer who has published a collection of linked stories that will keep the reader turning pages if only to find out the final fate of these families. That being said, it is obvious that the stories were initially written for a podcast. I’m not sure if it’s the way they are put together or… I don’t know, there’s just something ‘podcasty’ about them. As such I would recommend listening to the audio episodes (see the link above) over reading the book.
(3 / 5)
On Halloween in 2016 Josh Malerman, author of Bird Box, released A House At The Bottom Of A Lake (gosh this is a hefty title!). Last week, I picked this slim book up off my library’s Adult Horror shelves, not knowing what to expect. What I got was a novella that should have been shelved in the teen lit section. Perhaps it is the rather weird underwater sex scene that precludes it from those shelves.
- From the New York Times bestselling author of Bird Box and Malorie comes a haunting tale of love and mystery, as the date of a lifetime becomes a maddening exploration of the depths of the heart
- “Malerman expertly conjures a fairy tale nostalgia of first love, and we follow along, all too willingly, ignoring the warning signs even as the fear takes hold
- ”—Lit Reactor The story begins: young lovers, anxious to connect, agree to a first date, thinking outside of the box
Last update on 2025-03-10 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API
The Plot.
When James asks Amelia out on a date during summer break, canoeing was the last thing that she expected. Borrowing his uncles canoe, James hopes he can show Amelia an exciting time, because he really likes this girl! The date starts well and the conversation, if stilted at times, is banter-ey and cool.
They head out on the first lake, but James has an idea that they might have a better time on the lake that joins to this one. It is quieter, no speed boats to show him up, they’ll be able to eat their picnic lunch in peace and quiet. When they arrive, though, they notice a tunnel, that may lead to a third lake. Eager to show Amelia that he is an exciting kind of guy, James heads through the tunnel.
Lo and behold, it is another lake! Albeit, a bit murky and deserted, but that’s alright. That is until they notice that beneath the bow of the boat is a tiled roof. Beneath that tiled roof is a whole house. What ensues is a summer of falling in love and exploring a sunken house that may not be as empty as they thought.
Highlights.
Malerman writing the internal monologue of an angsty seventeen-year-old on a first date is one of the most authentic things I’ve read for a long time. Even down to James worrying about revealing that his dad owns the hardware shop he works in. Scared that Amelia will think that is all he is going to do with his life.
The ending (which of course I cannot discuss here) was well done, although a little contrived and predictable. It felt as if it had been almost tacked on the end as an afterthought. Perhaps Malerman finished the story without the final chapter, but was encouraged to add that last bit to give readers some closure
- “A book that demands to be read in a single sitting, and through the cracks between one’s fingers
- There has never been a horror story quite like this
- Josh Malerman truly delivers
Last update on 2025-03-10 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API
Drawbacks.
Malerman is a good writer, we have seen this in the many novels he has released since Bird Box. A House At The Bottom Of A Lake did not meet the usual standard. There are many reasons I say this. The first is a lack of creativity in descriptive passages in this book. They all felt pretty drab and began to become repetitive by the end of the story. I don’t know how many, times Malerman compared the way that James and Amelia were moving under the water in their scuba suits as ‘Astronaut-like’ or ‘Astronaut-esque’ or ‘ Like he was walking without gravity’, but really can you find another comparison please because this one is all used up!
As I mentioned in the intro, this did feel like a YA novel. Not only because both of the main characters are seventeen, but the prose is a too simple to be engaging. A House A The Bottom Of A Lake might be marketed differently in Australia (where this humble reviewer lives), perhaps making it to the YA shelves in the US or UK, but this is definitely not adult horror.
The Final Take.
Josh Malerman is a favorite of mine. I tend to pick up his books, blurb unread, because I will generally enjoy what he is putting out there. The exception to this rule is A House At The Bottom Of A Lake (if I never have to type that title again I will be pleased!). It just didn’t hit the way his other novels have and I was disappointed.
(2 / 5)
Imagine this. You’re home alone, waiting for your partner to return, when you hear a knock on your door. You answer it to see a family of five, bundled up against the cold. The father, a kindly older gentleman, explains that he used to live in this house as a boy. And he would love to show it to his family.
Do not let them in.
The story
Released in June 2024, We Used To Live Here is author Marcus Kliewer’s debut novel. It tells the story of Eve, who just purchased a beautiful house with her partner, Charlie. Their plan is to flip the house and sell it.
One night, while waiting for Charlie to come home, Eve is surprised by a knock at the door. It’s a man named Thomas Faust and his family.
Thomas explains that he grew up in the house and hasn’t been in the area in years. Would Eve let them in so that he can show the home to his children?
Against her better judgment, Eve lets them in. She regrets this almost at once when Thomas’s daughter vanishes somewhere into the house.
What worked
I always appreciate a book that allows you to play along with the mystery. And this book does that better than just about any other I’ve seen.
Pay close attention to the chapters, to the words that aren’t there. To everything about this novel.
This is mostly down to Kliewer. This is ultimately his work of art. But the production value is also fantastic. I don’t want to ruin the multiple mysteries, so I’ll just say this. There are clues in this book that require some specific artistic choices in the page layouts in this book. And I loved that.
If you’d like to experience another horror book review, check out this one.
We Used To Live Here is also the kind of story that makes you question everything right along with the main character, Eve. Eve is a great main character. But she might be an unreliable narrator. She might be experiencing every single horror described, exactly as it’s described. Or, she might be having a psychotic breakdown. Through most of the book, we can’t be sure. And that is so much fun.
Finally, the weather plays a large part in this story. There are several stories in which the weather or the land itself could be considered a character. Even an antagonist. This is certainly one. The winter storm is the thing that traps the family in the house with Eve. It also makes escaping the home difficult. Reading this book during the winter was especially impactful. Most of us know what it feels like to be shut in by a storm. I’ve personally lived through some of those storms that are just referred to by their year, as though they were impactful enough to claim the whole 365 days for themself. And that was with people I liked. Imagine what it would feel like with strangers. It’s a staggering thought and one that we explore in depth in this book.
- Get Out meets Parasite in this eerily haunting debut and Reddit hit—soon to be a Netflix original movie starring Blake Lively—about two homeowners whose lives are turned upside down when the house’s previous residents unexpectedly visit
- As a young, queer couple who flip houses, Charlie and Eve can’t believe the killer deal they’ve just gotten on an old house in a picturesque neighborhood
- As they’re working in the house one day, there’s a knock on the door
Last update on 2025-03-08 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API
In the end, We Used To Live Here is a fantastic book. It’s the sort of story that sneaks into your brain and puts down roots. And if this is just the first book we’re getting from Kliewer, I can’t wait to see what else he comes up with.
(5 / 5)