After the terrifying ordeal at the Usher manor, Alex Easton feels as if they just survived another war. All they crave is rest, routine, and sunshine, but instead, as a favor to Angus and Miss Potter, they find themselves heading to their family hunting lodge, deep in the cold, damp forests of their home country, Gallacia.
In theory, one can find relaxation in even the coldest and dampest of Gallacian autumns, but when Easton arrives, they find the caretaker dead, the lodge in disarray, and the grounds troubled by a strange, uncanny silence. The villagers whisper that breath-stealing monster from folklore has taken up residence in Easton’s home. Easton knows better than to put too much stock in local superstitions, but they can tell something is not quite right in their home...or in their dreams.
Let me tell you a story, and if it gets too long, you can skip it. Promise. One of the few places my mom stopped long enough, as we moved more times than I can count — pre-carnival years — was Salem, OR. We lived there for at least a full year before moving further north, but that’s not the story. The house we lived in is.
It was a yellowish beige house on the corner of State St. and some random street I don’t remember the name of. It dead-ended at a railroad track, if that helps anyone place it. Salem wasn’t the safest area to live in the mid-1980s, and our neighborhood was pretty rough… but that’s not really the point.
This little, unassuming house was odd from the start. I had never sleepwalked before, but I started within the first week of living there. The attic opened into the garage, and if you threw a rock up there, it came back down a few minutes later. My mom kept our dog in the garage — not the attic — and it would go absolutely insane, barking up at the attic like its soul was in jeopardy.
One night, some kids from the neighborhood were spending the night, camped out in the living room, when we all heard what sounded like a power saw starting up in the attic. There wasn’t a kid there who didn’t bolt for home. Then there’s the time I watched a crutch travel across a wall in my mom’s bedroom. That one stuck with me.
Needless to say, my mom did a little digging, and while I won’t go into the details, that house had every right to be haunted.
I’m not here to convince you that ghosts are real or that haunted houses exist. I’m just telling you all of that so you understand why I love haunted house stories as much as I do. You’d think an experience like that would’ve sent me running in the opposite direction, but it did the exact opposite. I can’t get enough of them — especially when they lean more Gothic, like What Feasts at Night by T. Kingfisher.
When I realized the sequel to What Moves the Dead was set in a haunted hunting lodge, I was basically screaming in delight like a six-year-old at a My Little Pony birthday party.
I loved What Moves the Dead so much that, despite all that excitement, I was a little hesitant going into this one. I was worried a second outing with Alex — which still somehow doesn’t involve us sitting down for tea — wouldn’t live up to my probably overinflated expectations.
Thankfully, Kingfisher didn’t let me down. I enjoyed the hell out of this.
I tore through this in one sitting, and I’d be lying if I said it didn’t get under my skin a little. There’s a slow, suffocating dread here that just keeps building until you realize you’ve been holding your breath right along with Alex. That dread comes through most in how the haunting itself plays out.
The way she crafts this haunting genuinely got under my skin. Alex is attacked by a vengeful spirit that literally steals their breath as they sleep, slowly wearing down their already fever-racked body. And as if that isn’t bad enough, they’re trapped in a nightmarish dreamscape that forces them to relive the worst atrocities they experienced during the war — along with all the guilt and regret that comes with it. To fight back, Alex has to work through those memories head-on instead of avoiding them, which makes this feel more personal.
Maybe that’s why this worked so well for me. That house in Salem never really left me — that feeling that something is there, just out of sight, but very real. This book taps into that same kind of quiet, creeping dread.
Some haunted houses try to scare you.
This one feels a little too much like home.
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