The name that shows up the most in the Books of Horror group on Facebook is unsurprisingly a famous one: Stephen King. However, while this project of mine is taking me through the many other books that get mentioned there a lot, this is the one that took over from King as the key focus of the group for at least a month, maybe a couple. Everybody there was talking about an amazing indie book, 'Stolen Tongues' by Felix Blackwell, and you just have to check it out. Some weren't happy with the ending, but everybody loved the prologue and most loved the book. It creeped them out, they said, even some of those readers who don't get creeped out by books.

I'm one of those and I doubt I'm going to have any trouble sleeping tonight, but I will certainly acknowledge that it's a very creepy book indeed and not in the ways that some extreme horror books are creepy. This doesn't break taboos and it has no interest in icking us out. What it does is to unsettle us in the ways that classic horror novels tried to do, to make its world seem just a little off and to do it so effortlessly and accessibly that maybe it'll creep into our own world too and we'll start noticing how that's just a little off too. In other words, let me hold back my note about sleeping tonight until I wake up tomorrow.

While it is very creepy indeed, what impressed me most was how original it is, even though it's wearing a lot of clothes that we recognise. It starts out literally as a cabin in the woods story, a trope that's been done to death. There's a lot of the possession story here. And the mythology story, with Native American characters whose wisdom is sought. It moves into the science story with sleep disorders like sleepwalking and sleeptalking, which prompt much of the creepiness. Eventually it becomes a psychological story, constructed on suppressed memories.

My point is that horror fans have read all of these stories before, many times, but Blackwell is able to manouevre a path through them that seems original at every step and that's quite the coup, especially for an indie author publishing through CreateSpace. No wonder this touched a lot of nerves and freaked a lot of readers out. No wonder it got talked about so much at Books of Horror. No wonder even Stephen King took a back seat for a month or two for Felix Blackwell to take over conversation.

That cabin in the woods is on Pale Peak in the Colorado Rockies and it belongs to Faye's family. Faye herself hasn't been there since she was fourteen but she's grown up now and engaged to PhD student Felix, so it seems like a plan to spend some time there. Blackwell has a masterful voice, making everything seem real and vibrant, especially through dialogue and interactions. Given the names of the characters, I wonder if he based the leads on himself and his fiancée or wife or whatever the real Faye is. The little rituals of their lives feel so real that they probably are, the pet names and friendly ribbing.

What else seems real and vibrant shouldn't be. Faye suffers from night terrors and they flare up in the cabin but both Faye and Felix hear and see things when they're awake too. That's the voice of her Grandpa Alfred calling for help outside, but he's long dead. That's his mum calling, even though she's clearly not there. Felix almost follows his naked wife into the woods before he realises that it's not her because she's back at the cabin wondering what he's doing. These are freaky scenes indeed and the first huge surprise of this novel is that they are rescued only a quarter of the way in. That rarely happens. Aren't they supposed to stay there until they die?

As great as this first part to the book is, the prologue before it is even better. We experience a haunting through the words of a parrot, which is original and eerie and somehow renders the feeling every more deliciously off. It's bad enough for someone like Felix to wake up during the night to find his wife apparently talking to someone in her sleep, very possibly about him, but to experience that through a parrot too is a stroke of real genius. It's often said that animals can see things that we can't and I have to suddenly wonder why nobody in horror applied that to one of the few animals who can talk before.

Part II takes them away from the cabin, initially to her parents' house in Avonwood, Colorado, then back home to Northern California. Unfortunately, whatever happened up there on Pale Peak is apparently still happening because the local rangers tell them about a break in, but is also here with them now. It followed them. Here, I was reminded of another novel that's much talked about, Josh Malerman's 'Incidents Around the House', up for a Stoker this year, but I'm not particularly fond of that one and would recommend this much higher to anyone who wants to read about a haunting that isn't of a place but of a person, maybe people. After all, we don't know if whatever it is wants Faye or Felix or both.

I mentioned Native American mythology and that's because the local tribes have old stories of the mountain and the bad things that happened there in the past. Felix talks to Tíwé over the phone and, while he's open to what he's told, he needs to consult with colleagues. That's such a nice touch I can't emphasise it enough. In Native American mythology stories, the token Native American comes in and explains everything. Sure, Tíwé knows more than Felix and Faye do but he doesn't remotely know enough and that's incredibly refreshing. His most powerful line is an easy one to miss, but he reminds Felix that while he's protecting Faye, she's also protecting him in her way, and that carries some serious depth.

The possession angle is never truly sought but manifests in how Faye changes as her symptoms escalate. Now she's talking in her sleep most nights. She sleepwalks. There are talks about her dreams and her trauma. And, just as the environment often seems off, like there's a presence nearby, one that's often visible and/or audible, she seems off too. When Felix asks questions, a lot of her answers change, as if she's not Faye any more. Now she says she had never visited the cabin in her life, even though she freely admitted it earlier. Her mum says they went up there all the time when she was young and she loved it. Her engagement ring has vanished and it's a treasured item that the real Faye would never take off.

And Blackwell only makes this creepier. The scene when Felix wakes up to find not only Faye still talking away in her sleep but a bony man crouched on their bed talking right back at her has to be one of the chief reasons why this book gives readers nightmares. We're supposed to feel as safe as we ever feel when we're asleep, which makes scenes like this one outstandingly creepy. There are scenes that Blackwell hints at but never really follows up on, possibly because he had a sequel in mind but not necessarily, and they're often ones that would surely count amongst the creepiest. What's in the cellar under the cabin? Inquiring minds want to know!

There is a sequel, 'The Church Beneath the Roots', which I'll have to pick up, but that may be it for the series, because Blackwell has retired from writing for health reasons. That means, of course, that he's not going to be giving more interviews about this book and the movie version that's supposedly coming may not answer our questions. If we can't find those answers in the book, we're rarely going to get them from screen adaptations. And I do have a few. I can safely say that I found the ending a little underwhelming but it didn't disappoint. As I mentioned, the book is as much defined by what it isn't as what it is. Readers may have felt let down that this didn't end how they thought it would but that doesn't make it a bad ending.

And, after all, what's more appropriate than a horror novel about a blurry legend that's poorly remembered manifesting in ways that aren't fully understood or explained. We do get closure on Felix and Faye. Their story is wrapped up here in ways that make sense. Sure, it could easily have been wrapped up much sooner, had certain characters been more forthcoming about their histories, but that's as real as the dialogue. I know people exactly like that. I don't see that as a problem. It's the broader picture that's left a little blurry and I appreciated that too. There are good reasons for it and Blackwell clearly understood them, given his afterword.

At the end of the day, this is a very powerful and very worthy novel indeed and it stands up for me to all the hype it received at Books of Horror. I hope Blackwell is doing well and I'm sad that he isn't writing any more, but he should be very proud of what he achieved here. ~~ Hal C F Astell