A Review of Matthew Lyons’ “The Night Will Find Us”
Scary Stuff
In the city where I live — Ottawa, Ontario, Canada — Halloween has been cancelled due to COVID-19. No trick or treating. No candies for children. No spooky shenanigans or egging of houses (hopefully). The only thing that possibly exists to do is just dress up and get into the spirit of the ghoulish holiday. Of course, if you’re an adult, you can watch a scary movie or read some Stephen King. But there’s something else you can read: Matthew Lyons’ The Night Will Find Us. It is a genuinely creepy, unsettling, and unpredictable read. That doesn’t mean that it is perfect. It suffers from a bit of a rough beginning and takes some time to grow on you. However, once the tale does get going, it rages like an out-of-control wildfire. Stick with it, and it will grant you some serious rewards.
The story is about six teenagers who spend what was to be a night camping in the woods of New Jersey as an end-of-the-school-year trip. There’s Chloe, who is sassy but innocent, and her cousin Parker, who is just a very short fuse away from always blowing his top in inappropriate ways. There’s Nate, a real a-hole, and Nicky and Josh — the typical new couple who are seemingly shagging every time they go off into a tent together. There’s also a friend named Adam tagging for the ride who is the requisite jock in these tales. Together, they plan to get drunk, let off some fireworks, and have a good time being (somewhat horny) teenagers. However, as the tale is a horror story, this plan goes sideways when the local entity living among the trees gets its tenterhooks into them.
The Night Will Find Us is a notch better written than many horror novels. Lyons uses inventive and creative language and images, for the most part, in ways that are far from clichés. Early in the story, one character beats another character to a pulp, and the description Lyon uses to describe the beat-up guy’s injuries is that they resemble a bowl of tomato soup. That’s an original way to describe the outcome of a fight (at least, to me). What’s more, Lyons uses language in dialogue that is realistic to the way teenagers speak. That means there’s a lot of whining and hand wringing on the part of these characters, which is as much of an asset as it is a liability (more on that later). These characters feel real and three dimensional to a point, which shows just how much Lyons is a genius of a horror writer — or just simply a writer, period. There’s some great penmanship on display here.
There’s a but to all of this goodness, though, and it comes back to the beginning of the novel. A lot of the backstory is told to us, rather than shown to us in scenes or flashbacks, because Lyons is ever so impatient to get the story into the woods as fast as he can so he can get to working his supernatural fireworks display. That makes what happens in the opening pages of the story to be rather clumsy, and the only thing that saves it (and will keep you reading) is that, as much as Lyons is telling and telling, he does it with a fair amount of panache. The other thing that nearly capsizes the whole novel is that the teenagers are unlikeable in many ways. One of them does a surprising thing early on the story that may test the patience of the reader because it feels so darn unbelievable and out of place before a lot of the individual’s character has yet to be established.
Still, despite the obvious horror trappings and tropes used throughout the novel, once it gets going, it’s a rip-roaring delight of a read. The woods, it turns out, are haunted by an entity that turned one of its earliest inhabitants to outright murder at the start of the area’s colonization. How this plays out is rather unexpected and the novel’s outcome will keep you guessing right to the very end. It might not be the sort of thing that would be easily translatable to a movie, but the climax is rather unexpected and offers a bit of a twist, even if you guess who the only survivor or survivors of this ordeal will be.
I would say that if you’re looking for something spooky to read on Halloween week, The Night Will Find Us would be a good choice. It will probably be best enjoyed by older teenagers — since they may relate most to the ages of the characters, and probably have the lessened critical facilities to get through the novel’s plodding start — but adults might get something out of this, too. The Night Will Find Us is worth a look, even if it is riddled with imperfections. Come to it for some relatively good writing and some sinister twist and turns. Stay for the novel and fresh approach (for the most part) for how the modern-day horror genre is being played out in this slice of literature. All in all, The Night Will Find Us is one hell of a joyride through the same state of America that gave birth to both Jason Voorhees and the Blair Witch, and may just keep you up at night in the wee hours of the morning making you wonder if the story is going to turn out alright for many of these characters. A stronger commendation couldn’t come for a horror novel, and this might be the best thing you might read in the genre by an author whose name isn’t Stephen King. This is fun stuff, and an enjoyable thrill once it starts firing on all its cylinders.
Matthew Lyons’ The Night Will Find Us was published by Keylight Books on October 20, 2020.
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Get in touch: zacharyhoule@rogers.com
