The 13th (2009)
Written by John Everson

 

Ritual and blood sacrifice go together in a horror novel like cream in coffee or turkey and Thanksgiving. Cue the candles and hooded worshippers carrying out their dark deeds in the dead of night. Most of the time where there's chanting and nefarious goings on you can pretty much expect to find the always popular and perennial favorite, the Prince of Darkness, as the eager recipient of the adoration. That particular Satan worshipping theme has been done over so many times it’s grown a life of its own. So when I first read the foreshadowing of a ritual in John Everson’s The 13th, I almost cringed. That changed as I continued on and found that this wasn’t going to be the same old formula. This time, John Everson has dug deeper into the age old mythologies of demons and ancient lore to provide us with new dark deities who are as frightening as they are maniacal. He also excels at interweaving sex and blood in a sensuous and primal dance that leaves no one safe from its hypnotic powers.

This was my first sample of John Everson’s work and I was instantly impressed with his ability to create a mood of fear and impending tragedy. In The 13th, the small rural town of Castle Point becomes ensnared in a ritual as ancient and evil as the Devil himself. It will consume everything in its path.

David Shale thinks he will be spending the summer training for the Olympic cycling team but after a chance encounter with a sexy woman in a bar he is drawn into something he can’t explain and ultimately escape. When David and Brenda Bean meet one night at a local dive bar, they share a few beers and one steamy kiss before parting. He wakes up the next day with a hangover and a memory of a woman who, unbeknownst to him, has become the latest victim of a duo of two men who have some dark deeds on their minds.

After several decades of decay and disquiet after the shocking discovery of a bloodbath deep within its bowels, Castle House is alive again. This time it’s been reborn as an asylum for troubled pregnant women. Dr. Rockford the new owner and Nurse Spellman are anything but what they appear, two caring health professionals eager to cure these unfortunate souls. The women being dropped off, unconscious and terrified late at night, are in for a chilling fate.

David and Christy Sorenson, the newest Rookie cop on a force of three, desperately search for answers in the recent alarming disappearances of local women. Neither one is prepared for the demonic force that haunts Castle House Asylum and waits for its loyal servants to carry out the final ritual that will at last compel it into our world. Nor can they know the true extent to which the evil of The 13th ritual has found its way into the very foundations of the town. By the time they confront the unholy Dr. Rockford and his cohort the book explodes into a miasma of blood, lust and death that will leave the town decimated and a trail of bodies that is as wide as Hell is deep.

The book takes off quickly with little hidden from the reader as to the true scope of depravity and indifference of Dr. Rockford. The terror and helplessness of the women grips you from the start and instinctively you know that there will be no salvation for them, though you hope for it anyway. Everson shows no mercy to his characters as they are compelled forward towards an ending dark and bloody enough to soak your nightmares for weeks to come.

Here was the toughest part of the book for me, the excessive slaughter of pregnant women. Perhaps it is my inherent love of horror novels that utilize more of the supernatural element than the visceral or it could simply be that as a woman I found this difficult to read. I think that Everson’s skill at creating mood and character is wonderfully creative and creepy, but as far as choosing victims, I think this compared a bit to kicking a puppy. There got to a point where the bloodletting was as relentless as a tidal wave. I found myself becoming numb to it because it was a bit in excess.

The eventual conclusion is as disturbing as you could expect from a novel that unfolds steadily from a somewhat quiet beginning to a rapid descent into death and depredation.

If your taste in horrors novels runs to those with a strong dose of blood and inventive twists on familiar territories then John Everson’s The 13th is a definite read. This latest offering is only one that he has written, amongst them the Bram Stoker Award winning Covenant, along with several anthologies. Information on all of them is available at his website, johneverson.com.