1927 horror. Dr Daniel Dreeme is working a remote valley in New
England, and it becomes increasingly clear that the people are
Strange.
As a fan of Lovecraft's writing I find it fascinating to see this
work (clearly influential on him) that shares some of the trappings
but none of the underlying mythos. Lovecraft would write these people
as backward and inbred and degenerate; Gorman instead has a reason
for the strange goings-on and what seems increasingly like a
conspiracy against the outsider. What's more, there is no explicit
supernaturalism that can't be written off as hallucination or
hypnosis.
There's witch-cultery and sinister worship in the woods, as well as a
strangely alluring woman, and if the main female roles fall a bit too
easily into "bad sexual woman" and "good innocent woman", that's still
one more type than Lovecraft would ever manage. (And the bad sexual
woman gets away in the end, while the actual villains of the piece are
dispatched.)
All right, I was waiting to see if Gorman would do a Wicker Man and
reveal the whole thing to have been a trap; there were certainly hints
in that direction. I shan't say whether he did.
But meanwhile the description is both lush and effective, not quite
overblown but effectively conveying the way in which normal and
accepted things can come to seem horrid once the mood has started to
turn oppressive.
They had finished eating now. The defeated platter lay in greasy
subjection. The knives and forks reposed upon the stained field of
battle like discarded weapons. The buzzing flies hummed above the
debris monotonously. With a clattering of steel-tipped shoes the
children squirmed from their chairs and fled through the door.
Freely available from Standard eBooks.