In The Dark Of Night
John Saul
390 pgs
Ballentine Books
The lake was calm. A complete contrast to the torment this poor man was fighting within himself while in his rowboat. The voices were screaming at him, but he had to finish what he started. It was hard for him to see in the dark, but he got the rope tied tight. He lifted the cinder block to throw it over…
The Pines is a summer spot for the uppers of the city. Situated around a picturesque lake, Eric Brewster wished his mother Merrill would finally cave this summer and they’d get a house there. His best friends since kindergarten, Kent and Tad, have been going for years. Last summer he got to spend a weekend with them and had a blast. The three families are all very close friends and Kent and Tad’s moms are trying to convince Merrill. The problem? Merrill is a borderline panophobic, she worries and is afraid of everything!! His father Dan finally makes the final decision and it’s on! The whole family, ten year old sister Marci, Tippy the cat and the Moxie the dog will be going.
Eric is stoked. He’ll be spending the summer meeting hot girls, jet skiing and fishing. The house they’ve rented, Pinecrest is huge! It belonged to a Dr. Darby, who worked with the criminally insane. He mysteriously went missing seven years ago and no one knows what happened. Of course this bit of info adds to his mothers worry, putting her in a tizzy. She just keeps looking for reasons to scrap the whole thing.
While trying to find fishing equipment, Eric pokes around in the carriage house. It’s filled with gobs of antiques of all kinds. He feels this inexplicable pull and goes into a sort of daze. He finally comes out of the carriage house to his father screaming at him. “Didn’t you hear me?! I’ve been calling for you for 30 minutes!” Eric is stunned, he thought he was in there for only five, ten minutes at the most. Of course this has him intrigued, coupled with the odd sensation of being “pulled” back to the carriage house. He enlists his friends in the exploration and they all soon find that time passes oddly in the carriage house. They find a hidden room that’s been bricked up and is filled with more odd objects and antiques plus a ledger showing how much Dr. Darby paid for each item. As they pass their fingers over the items they get odd jolts through their bodies. There’s also this indistinguishable murmuring of voices that they can’t quite make out.
They have opened an evil can of worms that has been waiting to be let out. Very bad things start happening, beginning with his sister Marci’s cat Tippy being eviscerated. Couple that with the town’s hateful bully, who has decided he hates Eric and friends, and tortures them every chance he gets, and slowly they are becoming terrified.
Well, I wasn’t even a little scared : ( While I wasn’t bored once I realized where it was going I thought it was a bit silly. I can’t say anything had me on the edge of my seat. The one thing I do wish is that someone would’ve tormented the crap out of the scaredy cat mom. She just annoyed the crumbs outta me and so did his little sister. Someone shoulda clubbed her on the top of the head while they were at it too! I was also disappointed in who the killer turned out to be. It wound up being very anticlimactic. Oh well, what can you do, two books into my horror challenge and I’ve still not been scared outta my pants! Again, while Saul is good with his words, this one was just so so.
2 ½ cannolis
Oh bummer! I hate it when a book doesn't do it for me. I recently read Shocking Pink by Erica Spindler and that, "ehhh"....
ReplyDeleteoh yes, i forgot, my hubby is in your neck of the woods this week. Yes last week, west coast with me, then back here pretty much as far east as one can be in the US and then back out there today (if his flight takes off). Poor guy.
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