Forced by his publisher to deliver a fresh manuscript by the end of the year, author Rick Rooney retreats to a secluded cottage in the West of Ireland in search of inspiration. After a night of dabbling with a spirit board at the local pub, strange events begin to unfold at the cottage, while a menacing figure lurks in the trees outside.
When Rick digs deeper into the area’s dark history, he makes a chilling discovery about a local family, a devastating fire, and a centuries-old curse. Has Rick disturbed an ancient evil, and who, or what, is stalking him now? Some souls should never be summoned…
Dark bleatings, my lovely tribe! Today, we’re talking about one of the more unique stories I’ve read this year. Part Celtic folklore, part suspense, and part “Hoggle from Labyrinth was right all along”, this story is about an author called Rick who stays in a cottage in Ireland to meet a writing deadline. While he’s there, he stupidly participates in a spirit board (because that’s just always a stupid idea, right?), discovers some horrendous things about a local family, and becomes increasingly disturbed as he becomes less and less sure that he’s actually alone.
The first thing I enjoyed about this was the format, because it uses prose and also letters, and I just generally love it when authors mix up the tense or the style like this. I also liked that Rick was staying in an increasingly creepy place all by himself – I also typically love these kinds of stories. Few things are scarier to me than solitude when something creepy is lurking.
We basically have three timelines running simultaneously here – Rick’s agent, Pierce, is writing letters to someone in the present. The sections of Rich in the cottage are technically in the past (though presented as the.. er.. present, you know what I mean), and then we also have the letters that Rick finds, which are passed between people 80 or so years ago. There are suspenseful issues and hints to something bigger and worse happening in all three of these timelines, all as individual events pertaining to their own time periods. I thought the author did a pretty good job of weaving these stories and then tying them altogether.
If I have any gripes I guess I’d say that perhaps I didn’t quite gel with the author’s writing style, as I found the story dragged a bit in a few places. Not so much a criticism as that’s no fault of the author, more just a reflection of my own reading experience. I guess that there were some moments where I got a bit confused, and found myself re-reading a couple of passages for clarity, but these are such small complaints.
I’d like to round off with this… it’s not every day that a horror author gives you fairies, so do with that what you will! If you’d like to check out the book or the author, there are some links for you below:
Bleeeeat!
Happy Goat Horror 
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