Those Across the River

So if you are not currently listening to the podcast that is Fear of a Dork Planet  an hour long verbal spewage of all things dorky and geeky which my BFF Erik and I record roughly every two weeks...

#1 - You suck, and fuck you.
#2 - You probably missed our eloquent discussion of all things Lycanthropic. Namely, the lack of good films about werewolves.

The Wolf Man, An American Werewolf In London, The Howling, Dog Soldiers, The Company of Wolves, Ginger Snaps...those are the films that immediately come to mind when the subject of werewolf movies comes up. And believe it or not, it's a subject that comes up fairly often in my world. But sadly - as awesome and classic and majestic as they all are - they are the only werewolf films worth listing. Over 100 years of horror movies and we only have 6 werewolf flicks worth watching?

I mean sure, you could point out the Underworld series if you wanted to, but that's less a movie about werewolves than it is about Kate Beckinsale's black leather wrapped asscheeks. There's always Hammer's Curse of the Werewolf, but Oliver Reed was no Christopher Lee, lets face it. But push those aside and reach further into the bargain bin and what do you get? I Was A Teenage Werewolf. Werewolves On Wheels (which I liked, but would never call a good movie by any means). The thoroughly craptastic War Wolves. The flaming bag of werewolf shit that was Arizona Werewolf. I haven't personally seen Wolf Cop yet, but I can and will vouch for Big Bad Wolf being, if not a noteworthy entry into the genre, at least a really dirty and vulgar chew toy worth playing with once.

The subject then came up of books about werewolves. Not much there either, sadly. While The Howling was a great movie, the book it was based on was total shit. As I was struggling to remember another werewolf book, or even a book that briefly mentions werewolves, or has one as a secondary character, and totally failing to do so (first person to mention the Twilight saga will be kicked right in the kidneys), Erik came to the rescue and asked if I'd read Those Across The River. Which I had not. Never even heard of it. Mere days later, Erik produced a hardback copy of the book and I made short work of it. You know that rare happiness that comes from reading a new book? A new book that's really good? You can't wait to get home and crawl into bed and read. You almost don't want to finish it because then what will you do?

I'll definitely be heading to the library sooner rather than later in search of more books by Christopher Buehlman, the author of Those Across The River. I have no idea what Between Two Fires, The Necromancer's House or The Lesser Dead are about and I don't care. I will find them. And I will read them.

But in the meantime, let me tell you all how awesome this book is.

Set in 1930s Georgia, right smack in the middle of the Great Depression, the pages of this book practically wilt with the sticky humidity of a particularly cruel Southern summer, even though it's January and the temps barely got above 21 the whole entire time I was reading this. Nightmare plagued WW1 vet Frank Nichols has been run out of the North on the proverbial rail. His crime: "stealing" another mans wife. The wife in question is Eudora, a blond sweet potato with heterochromia. They're really, genuinely, truly and deeply in love and are going to get married ASAP. But for the time being, they move into Frank's old family home in Georgia, a rent-free set up where Frank hopes to finally write his book and the couple hopes to get back on their feet after a long and ugly divorce from Dora's vindictive ex.

So yeah, they're not married yet, which is a HUGE No-No in the 1930s. Especially in the South. So Frankie and Dora pretend they are married and hope for the best. But the little town of Whitbrow has bigger problems than premarital sex. It's the midst of the Depression remember, and the dirt poor South is even dirtier and poorer than usual. The monthly tradition of sending two fat hogs across the river, draped with flowers, is under fire.

Wait, what? Um, why are these God Fearing Christians sending pigs out on a boat to the forest on the other side with much ceremony and spectacle? Seems they're not even sure anymore. It's just tradition, passed down through the generations. But times are tough and bacon is scarce, so a decision is made to send no more pigs. It's a waste of good food.

A month goes by. Life goes on. Dora takes a job as a schoolteacher at the Whitbrow one room schoolhouse down the road. She's eager to teach and eager to help the white trash offspring realize that there's more to life than bailing hay and feeding chickens. And a goodly amount of the kids seem just as eager to learn. At least until the day Dora arrives for work and finds twenty dead bodies in varying stages of decomposition tied to the kids desks. Over the chalkboard, scrawled in grave dirt are the words:

SEND THE PIGS

k, you know what? I ain't even gonna lie. I peed myself a little tiny bit when I read that. Those three words literally sent chills all the way down to my bone marrow. I'd already been captivated by Buehlman's writing style, his unique metaphors and quirky insights. His writing is like a frantic, alcohol fueled jitterbug in a room full of aged waltzers. But this scene - not the first, but definitely the point in the book at which you know shit is about to get real - is...hell, what word do I want? Beautiful and terrible are too generic. Breathtaking sounds cheesy. Galvanizing, maybe? I suppose it's close enough. The effect was not unlike being slapped across the face with a handful of blackest Gothic horror. As bad as it is, you know it's going to get monumentally worse.

And it does. Barbarically, savagely, grotesquely worse. It doesn't just get worse, it gets unholy. Every ugly human emotion is stripped down to its bare components and transformed into bestial lust: for sex, for blood, for torture and ruin. You don't survive horror like this without severe repercussions. This shit makes the corpse littered trenches of WW1 look like a picnic by comparison. The already skull fucked Frank may survive the physical brutality, but his skull is about to get fucked even harder, gang banged by an entire pack of honest to god werewolves whose knowledge of pain and torment were handed down through generations of abused slaves straight from the sadistic hands of the plantation owner who was Frank's own kin.

This is quite literally the BEST book I have read in a very long while. The fact that it's about werewolves is just the fresh fetal pig carcass on top of the bacon sandwich. I've heard rumors that it's being made into a movie, although those rumors are five years old now. Word up if it comes to fruition: don't fuck it up. Do not fuck this story up or I will hogtie you, bedeck you with flowers and smear honey on your ass before I push you out on a canoe bound for the woods. The Megiddo woods. Where the Look-A-Roos live. 

Nice touches, those. I got the joke, Buehler. *wink