#BookReview ‘Whisper Down The Lane’ by Clay McLeod Chapman

Horror

About the book…

Inspired by the McMartin preschool trials and the Satanic Panic of the ‘80s, the critically acclaimed author of ‘The Remaking’ delivers another pulse pounding, true-crime-based horror novel.

Richard doesn’t have a past. For him, there is only the present: a new marriage to Tamara, a first chance at fatherhood to her son Elijah, and a quiet but pleasant life as an art teacher at Elijah’s elementary school in Danvers, Virginia. Then the body of a rabbit, ritualistically murdered, appears on the school grounds with a birthday card for Richard tucked beneath it. Richard doesn’t have a birthday—but Sean does . . .

Sean is a five-year-old boy who has just moved to Greenfield, Virginia, with his mother. Like most mothers of the 1980s, she’s worried about bills, childcare, putting food on the table . . . and an encroaching threat to American life that can take the face of anyone: a politician, a friendly neighbor, or even a teacher. When Sean’s school sends a letter to the parents revealing that Sean’s favorite teacher is under investigation, a white lie from Sean lights a fire that engulfs the entire nation—and Sean and his mother are left holding the match.

Now, thirty years later, someone is here to remind Richard that they remember what Sean did. And though Sean doesn’t exist anymore, someone needs to pay the price for his lies.

Huge thanks to the awesome Stephen Haskins from Black Crow PR my gifted review copy of ‘Whisper Down The Lane’ which is published by Quirk on April 6th in hardcover and ebook formats.

The horror in this exceptional novel is that of the most human sort- the fallibility of the bodies in which we exist, whilst the battle for our eternal souls is waged on a moral plain influenced by religion, culture and politics, is an ongoing and deadly one.

The dual narrative reinforces how the experiences we live through as children informs, and burdens, our adult selves-Sean’s childhood sections are labelled ‘damned if you do’ whilst the adult ,Richard, has interwoven parts labelled, ‘damned if you don’t’.

The play on existential angst, the whole ‘speak the truth and shame the devil’ has such resonance here, Sean speaks up at his mother’s insistence, and Richard keeps quiet because he is removing himself far away from the time when he was Sean. If he never talks about it, did he ever cause a catastrophic set of events that made front page news? If he never opens that box, he can never truly care if the cat inside is in there, dead or alive.

The child, Sean, living in a pressure cooker of his mother’s hopes and fears, juggling a life which is threadbare at best, broken at worst, falls prey to what I would consider are the real demons of this novel, rumours.

I am old enough to remember the lives destroyed by the Cleveland trials, where children were removed from their families and well meaning social workers destroyed an isolated community by believing a half murmured sentence, that was built on by leading questions, and escalated into a full blown media circus court case.

Irreparable damage has been done in the name of children being led away from dark forces, this can be traced back to Biblical times, the Salem Witch trials, and here,the moral panic of the 1980’s. All these have roots in control mechanisms, whereby the ‘adults’, the controlling forces of the social sector attempt to reign in the young before they have a chance to make their own decision about what is, or isn’t evil.

Here, the title refers to a game of whispers where it takes a classroom lesson in memory of a whispered sentence travelling from child to child, and transfers it to a half heard child’s comment that escalates into a full blown witch hunt against a hapless teacher.

In an effort to appease the fearful look on his mother’s face, Sean goes along with what she says, and when she tells him this has happened to other children too, in his class, the line between reality and fiction blurs mightily as his tales become increasingly elaborate and satanic in nature.

As this pull to bring the youth of the 80’s, the young people reaching out and discovering the world for themselves, in line, and also abdicating responsibility for their offspring’s sense of dissatisfaction, the satanic panic offers a ‘reasonable’ response,they weren’t ‘bad parents’, the devil made them, literally, do it.

This can be seen reflected in the horror movies, novels, and cultural tropes of the time-have sex in a movie? Die. Drink in a movie? Die. Do something your parents warned you not to do? Die. Literally eviscerated, pulled apart in their dreams, by bogeymen who refuse to die, and are resurrected in sequel after sequel, offering a glimpse of what not to do. The ultimate symbol of capitalism being represented by Patrick Bateman in ‘American Psycho’, with it’s consumerist manifesto manifesting itself in homicidal tendencies. The devil made them do it.

And in Richard’s life as an adult who has ostensibly made good choices-teacher, married to another teacher, step father-his past is never really far behind him, a fact which is rammed home with an awesome bait and switch start to the novel that had me chortling and gasping. There are brilliantly horrific set pieces that paint a picture of a time which is just waiting for its’ next villain to through itself against-Jimmy Savile, Harvey Weinstein, Prince Andrew, all these are the modern day figures who gaslighted an entire world, getting away with truly demonic acts in plain sight. All the while smiling and painting themselves as patrons of a giving, Christian,charitable society, whilst bringing it down behind closed doors.

Is Sean guilty, or just a child of a desperate mother?

How much of Richard’s adult burden is guilt buried deep from his childhood or is a karmic kickback well overdue?

I very much enjoyed the uneasiness, the sense of menace which was so skilfully constructed and well delivered in page after page of narratives which present two sides of the same story. Interwoven with transcripts between childcare professionals and children, asking hideously leading questions, newspaper clippings, letters and testimonies, this book wears its influences proudly and, imho, is a must read for fans of Stephen King and Grady Hendrix. The acts of ordinary people have extraordinary consequences, and the retro feel to the writing feels reflective and also pre-emptive-what will be the next cultural or social figure to be blamed for moral degradation whilst those committing the real crimes could be as close to our children as over a white , picket fence?

About the author…

Clay McLeod Chapman is the creator of the rigorous storytelling session The Pumpkin Pie Show. He is the author of ‘Rest Area’, a collection of stories, and ‘Miss Corpus’, a novel. He teaches writing at The Actors Studio MFA Program at Pace University.