I’ve been on a Grady Hendrix kick lately. When I mentioned to someone I had just finished reading The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires, they recommended this more recent book by Grady Hendrix, so I immediately requested it from my library.
Honestly, I liked this one more than I liked the first Hendrix book I read, even though I can’t quite put my finger on what it was about the vampire book that didn’t appeal to me. I think it was the awful things the humans were doing to each other in that book that just hit a little too close to home for me.
This one is more of a straight-up ghost story, and I was completely here for it. But don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of family trauma in this one as well.
The book is told mostly from the perspective of Louise, the older of two children who thrives on competition and accomplishment. She’s from Charleston, SC, but lives in San Francisco, partly because that’s where most of the good software development jobs are, but also to get away from her dysfunctional family.
Her younger brother, Mark, is the dropout who never tried hard enough to succeed at anything in life, yet their parents constantly made excuses for him and let him have his way, even going so far as to avoid celebrating Louise’s accomplishments for fear seeing it would hurt Mark’s feelings.
Of course, as tends to happen in families, Mark takes after their mom and Louise takes after their dad, the stable, steady, practical professor who kept returning to campus after he retired because he just couldn’t stay away. So their mom is the one who primarily coddles and makes excuses for Mark.
After their parents die in a car crash, Louise leaves her young daughter with her ex to fly to Charleston to deal with the funeral arrangements and the inheritance, then get back home as fast as she can.
But we know it can’t be that easy, because if it were, it would be a much shorter book.
First, it turns out each of the parents had their own will, which would go into effect only if their spouse predeceased them. They were both killed in the same car crash, but Dad was already dead when the paramedics arrived on the scene, whereas Mom died later in the hospital. That means her will is technically the one in effect and she left everything to Mark. She even left a letter explaining to Louise that she made this decision because “Mark needs it” more than Louise does.
I hate to say it, but as much as I understand why Louise was so upset, I also understand their mom’s position. She knows Louise can take care of herself. Mark, not so much. But, of course it feels like Mom loved Mark more than she loved Louise. And the fact that she’s not around to argue about it makes it all the more frustrating.
It doesn’t help that Mark is a total dick about it right off the bat. Louise paid for all the funeral and burial arrangements, assuming she’s inheriting everything. When it’s pointed out to Mark that the estate normally pays for the funeral arrangements, he only cares about whether the estate “has to” pay for it. When the lawyer admits that it’s not required, he shrugs it off without even thanking Louise.
Then, when Louise goes to the house to clear things out and see if there’s anything she wants to keep, she’s greeted by a man in a truck with one of those services that cleans junk out of houses for people who don’t want to deal with it. Except Louise very much does want to deal with it, as she explains to the guy in the truck before sending him off.
Mark shows up and follows Louise around the house to make sure she doesn’t take anything that doesn’t belong to her. When she tries to take her childhood toys, he claims they belong to the estate and she can’t take them without compensating him. Then puts some ridiculous price tag on them like $100 each. Not only is it clear he’s doing it just to be a dick, but if Louise really wanted the toys, she could get them professionally appraised and pay Mark whatever the appraiser says they’re worth. Of course, paying the appraiser would probably cost more than the toys are worth, but at this point, I really just wanted to stick it to Mark.
Louise manages to change the subject and offer to buy dinner as a way to honor their parents with one last meal in the house together. He agrees, but then they get in another fight, and he leaves, warning Louise not to stay in the house overnight because weird things have been happening. Louise knows weird things have been happening, but she refuses to listen to her brother, and instead insists on staying in the house.
Sure, enough, she gets attacked by a puppet named Pupkin wielding a hammer, and if Mark hadn’t slept in his truck and come into the house when he heard a commotion, Louise almost certainly wouldn’t have lasted the night.
Starting at around this point, we get several flashbacks into Louise and Mark’s childhood with Pupkin. Turns out Mark didn’t drop out of college because he got lazy or lost interest, but because he experienced some serious trauma courtesy of Pupkin.
Louise experienced her own trauma with Pupkin, but she managed to block it out and get on with her life. Mark could only heal by addressing the trauma head on, but no one in the family would let him. Mom and Louise both denied a certain event I won’t get into, and the only thing worse than your sister trying to kill you when you’re just a toddler is having everyone deny that ever happened.
So Mark and Louise have a heart-to-heart in which they each disclose the ways in which Pupkin messed them up when they were kids.
Then they have to go back into the house to get Pupkin and destroy him.
But that’s also too easy, because that happens way too early in the book to make for a satisfying conclusion.
Because Pupkin isn’t made of cloth. He’s made of the spirit of a child who died too young and was never spoken of again. You can’t contain that in cloth and string. To truly get rid of it, you have to banish the ghost, and that requires, not only help from some of their extended family, but acknowledgement of an old family tragedy no one ever talked about.
So, if you like your ghost stories with a big side of generational trauma, this book is for you.
If you can’t stand to think of children dying and/or being in danger, I suggest you pass on this one.