Hub 140 by Various

Author:Various
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science fiction, Horror, Fantasy
Publisher: Right Hand Publishing

REVIEWS

The Cypress House

by Michael Koryta

Hodder & Stoughton

rrp £19.99 (hardback)

reviewed by niall alexander

If there’s somethin’ strange / In your neighbourhood / Who you gonna call?

Michael Koryta, perhaps?

“The US phenomenon admired by Michael Connelly, Dan Simmons and Dean Koontz” had five more traditional thrillers under his belt before setting his sights on the supernatural in So Cold the River last year: guaran-damnteed the best book about haunted mineral water you’ll ever read. Parallels with the work of a certain Stephen King - you’ve heard of the fellow, perhaps? - were immediately drawn, and for once not without cause. Dark and deft and down-to-earth, So Cold the River had an earnestness to it, and a sense of tension barely restrained which brought the so-called modern day Dickens of the genre to mind. Nor was Koryta’s novel at all diminished by the comparison.

So how’s his second dalliance with the weird and wonderful? Well, I’d say it’s much of a muchness... which is to say, in a similarly silly sort of way as in So Cold the River, The Cypress House is superb. In 1935, so it goes, Arlen Wagner is a CCC man: a veteran of the Great War making ends meet during the depression of post-Prohibition America by helping to build bridges. He and his young companion - allpurpose prodigy Paul Brickhill - mean to take the train to Florida, but as the pair approach their intended destination, Arlen is shocked to see a troupe of dead men:

“They filled the shadows of the car, some laughing, some grinning, some lost to sleep. All with bone where flesh belonged. The few who sat directly under a light still wore their skin, but their eyes were gone, replaced by whirls of grey smoke.” (p.5)

Though his uncanny ability has been in remission for a few blissfully ignorant years, Arlen has seen the dead walk before, and so too will he see such sights again; acid flashes of smoke and bone he understands to be heralds of death in the imminent. God love him, he tries to persuade his fellow travellers to get off the ill-fated train at the next stop, “but men don’t heed such warnings. They won’t let themselves. ” (p.5) Via a devastating hurricane on the Keys, as it transpires, all the passengers but for Arlen and Paul are bound for the next world.

However our man and his boy hitch on, ever onward until they come upon The Cypress House: a hotel which seems to suppress Arlen’s second sight, managed by a beautiful woman Paul immediately falls for. They stay awhile, of course, each for his own reasons. Yet there is more to The Cypress House than meets the eye. Soon enough the twosome find themselves drawn into a ring of fire poised to burn them both - and that, you understand, is but a best case scenario.

There is something almost alarmingly addictive about The Cypress House. Likely you will read it in an evening or two, or better yet, an airy, sun-beaten afternoon in the garden with a couple of beers in a cooler.

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