By SIMON CLARK (Bad Moon Books; 2009)
I’m not a huge fan of the British horrormeister Simon Clark (whose many novels include BLOOD CRAZY, DARKNESS DEMANDS, THE MIDNIGHT MAN), although he has a fairly substantial following. Clark’s fans will likely appreciate this novella, even though I’m lukewarm on it.
It deals with an intriguing concept: an invisible psychic wave called a “Ghosting Tide” that sweeps the land and causes the dead to rise. But that’s just one of several ideas warring for prominence in a book that never quite coalesces into a satisfying whole.
In a nonfiction prologue Clark claims this tale was inspired by a ghost hunting documentary series Clark created for the BBC called WINTER CHILLS, from which he “combined memory of actual events with imagination and invention” into a “cocktail of fiction and autobiography.” A confused cocktail, I’d say!
Much like Clark’s TV program, THIS GHOSTING TIDE centers on a colorful group of British ghost hunters—whose ranks include an ape named Polidori to go with the group’s leader Byron—investigating an apparently haunted beachfront home. But they’ve barely begun setting up their equipment when the Ghosting Tide hits and a bunch of slaughtered rabbits painfully return to life.
Where the tale goes from there I won’t reveal, except to say that a development occurs that’s so out of left field it might as well have emerged from an entirely different book. This bizarre occurrence—which gives another meaning to the eponymous Tide—has the effect of jazzing up a narrative that seemed on track to becoming another cookie-cutter haunted house story.
What follows has a certain B-movie energy, with some diverting grossness (what is “corpse gloop?”) and a second sweep by the Ghosting Tide, which this time is far deadlier than before. The disappointing ending, however, seems on loan from a bad Hollywood movie (it comes complete with a doomsday countdown, a device that doesn’t work especially well in fictional form) and could definitely have used some major work.