In previous years, Tim Lebbon has contributed several highly effective novelisations to the hardy ALIEN and PREDATOR sci-fi/action/horror series, and he brings a similarly high-paced drive to events here; even the relative calm of the opening scene takes place while running.
The first section of the story coalesces around a single location, with three individuals entering what initially feels like a haunted house yarn. The trio vacillate between the kind of foreboding anyone might feel when contemplating a space that may or may not contain fearful unknowns, and the kind of spirit-raising laughter that any group uses to dispel tension. There’s a duality to the joking too, given they’re persistently laughing at the commonplace tropes that we, the readers, would expect in the context of a spooky building.
BB is along on this rural exploration at the behest of his girlfriend, Jodi, with Matt, his lifelong best friend, accompanying them. While BB is besotted with Jodi and Matt would never leave his friend alone on such an endeavour, both men also have more tangible financial motivations. While all three characters seem to live precariously close to the poverty line, their close bond forms the most precious element of their lives, the thing of greatest worth to them.
Or, at least, that is true of the two men. From early on, Jodi emerges as the motor driving the story forward and it becomes increasingly clear to her companions that they’ve been pushed into exploring this abandoned property at the behest of someone whose personal reasons are unclear and obscure to them. Their curiosity at her actions turns to rising concern in line with the similar tension felt as a reader.
And then the fourth character in this tale, Lem, arrives at the derelict home and the whole story turns, the drip of humour dries up entirely, and the tale locks into its dark true path. From the moment he appears, this grim figure gives off a miasma of what Mike Tyson in his prime referred to as ‘bad intentions’.
Maintaining this focus on the tight knot of four protagonists, we build a depth of empathy with them, even those with the darkest roots. Exposition takes place mostly within each character’s mind, cutting them off from one another’s truths, leaving each of them to face events alone, locked into their interior echo chamber. It’s a deliberate decision to leave things this fractured where the reader might have sympathy with a character, but they can barely comprehend, let alone feel for one another, because they are not sharing or being honest.
It’s inevitable that Jodi and Lem will collide, two people who have consciously chosen to allow the ghosts of their past to dominate and control them utterly. Certain details subtly push the correspondence between them: Jodi recalls her father’s body left hanging ‘like a witch tied to a wooden stake, the cleansing fires rising to consume’, while Lem has been warped by tales of a witch with his family, earnestly believing that her malevolent will from beyond the grave holds complete sway over their fates.
The horror at the core of Lebbon’s story is how susceptible we all are to the wilful loss of agency and control. It is a telling detail that Jodi and Lem are so fixated on their respective missions, on fulfilling whatever cruel legacy they feel life has bequeathed them, that neither spares a thought for the future. Life, essentially, does not exist outside of the mission and they both willingly push toward this final threshold where, even if their wishes are granted, the nihilism inherent in their chosen paths means that, regardless of success or failure, there is no future.
This is a strong tale of how humans can cut themselves off from hope or salvation by refusing to accept that they have the power to actively focus on and pursue the better angels of their nature. In the final encounter between Matt and Jodi, he responds to her with righteous anger, making clear that she has sacrificed the humanity that could have kept her in this world, that BB’s love for her should have been enough but, like Lem, she built her life around her worst day rather than around softer, kinder emotions. Jodi must go to face her fate alone having chosen the dead over the living, her world cadaver-cold for having refused the comforting warmth of human contact.
WRITER
Tim Lebbon
PUBLISHER
Titan Books
RELEASE
26 August 2025
