Fiction Reviews
Darker Days
(2025) Thomas Olde Heuvelt, Transworld, £18.99, hrdbk, 405pp, ISBN 978-0-857-50818-8
Drawing on the darkness to be found in small-town American and familial life, the story of a group of individuals who’re trapped by a Faustian pact made over one hundred years before – a compelling, terrifying novel of which Stephen King would be very proud… Sometimes you think you can see things behind the fence. Bad things. So, it's better not to look… In Lock Haven, a quiet little town in Washington State, there is a very special street. Bird Street. The residents of Bird Street are all successful, wealthy, healthy and happy. And their children are all well-mannered and smart and high achievers. At least they are for eleven months of the year. In November, however, the 'Darker Days' begin. For November's the month when things take a turn for the worse: accidents, bad luck, familial conflict, and illness take hold. And it is in November that a stranger comes to Bird Street to collect the debt owed by the residents. Because, you see, there is a price that must be paid for all the happiness and good fortune they enjoy for the other eleven months of year.
And that price is one human life.
Every November.
Without fail.
My review copy of Darker Days is an uncorrected proof copy which means that it lacks some of the finer points of the final edition, namely there is an almost empty page where a map will be included, presumably one of Bird Street, but we do get a list of the residents of said street including the Lewis de Silvas, the Wachowskis, who have two alpacas called Seepy and Sappy, the McKinlays, the two occupants of the Aikman bungalow, the inhabitants of the Old Nyholm House, which includes two greyhounds, and also we get a list of the former residents of the Nyholm House. Given that the roll call features animals, I did feel the stirrings of concern for those creatures and what might happen to them come November as the humans go off the rails.
Concerns aside, we move swiftly into the action with Part 1, set in 2022, followed by Part 2, set in 2023. Chapters are not numbered and vary in length and are more or less told from the viewpoint of one of the Lewis de Silvas which I suppose is a tight way of keeping control of the narrative but also means that we never really get into the heads of their neighbours and does lead to some confusion when all twenty residents are gathered together for a pow-wow. Even though the chapters aren’t numbered we know what is going to happen in them as Heuvelt employs that device I’ve seen other writers use, namely by giving the reader a steer of what is going to happen, so, for example, the first chapter is titled “RALPH The Sick Woman. The Good Samaritans of Bird Street. There’s No Place Like Home.” That very first chapter sub-heading gives you a notion of how the families who live on Bird Street fulfil their side of their devilish bargain they have made, by sacrificing a person every November to maintain their good fortune, and they usually offer a person who is terminally ill. A short, sharp, mercy killing and their darkly blessed lives continue.
It is a pity that Heuvelt hasn’t devoted similar time to the other characters in the novel as we really get inside the heads of the four members of the Lewis de Silvas family – father Ralph, mother Luana, teenage daughter Kaila and son Django. Ralph was born and raised in Bird Street and is almost a fully-fledged alcoholic with anger problems that get worse in November. Luana’s whole world is her children and also living in Bird Street, a place she has to remain as she should have died from her injuries in a car accident twenty years earlier, but was healed by the man the residents call “The Accountant” and she knows if she did leave her injuries would return and they would be fatal. Kaila is a champion diver on the cusp of being selected for the Olympics, but has mental health problems, and has tried to kill herself several times, and matters aren’t helped by her learning the secret the residents of Bird Street share. Her younger brother Django is a whizz-kid on the piano who idolises Jerry Lee Lewis and isn’t really sure what the heck is happening. For eleven months of the year they enjoy their lives and good fortune, but everything changes in November when they don’t go outside, not to work, not to school, and they don’t look out the back of the house, nor venture into the surrounding woods.
All in all, things don’t seem too grim then, do they? Kill someone who is going to die anyway and you will live a charmed live, but such deals usually have a way of biting back, and the rules are about to change, plunging everyone in Bird Street into a deeper nightmare, and if they want to keep the good fortune going, things are going to become even darker than normal.
Deals with the devil aren’t a new trope for horror stories, they go back centuries, and in popular culture we have had stories such as The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Devil and Tom Walker, The Master and Margarita, even Needful Things by Stephen King, but Heuvelt has delivered his own unique take on this trope with his usual bravado. The main characters are well defined, the story is horrific in places, and creepy in others, with the novel posing many ethical questions around what is right and wrong, and the consequences of our actions, while examining the impact of things like mental health, depression, guilt, and rage. On the downside, Darker Days could have been shorter, and the jury may be out regarding the ending which some readers will either love or hate, but even if it is the latter, they will still have a lot of twisted fun getting there.
Ian Hunter
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