Hex is about small town Black Spring that is haunted by a witch. The witch's name is Katherine Van Wyler and she has a long history. She was persecuted and forced to kill one of her own children in her own time, 350 years before the opening of the novel, and she has been a presence in the town ever since. Katherine shows up periodically in different parts of the town and she walks familiar paths. At one point in her history, the people of the town wrapped her in chains and stitched her eyes and mouth closed. For the most part, the people of Black Spring have learned to live with the witch, putting up with her presence and hiding her form outsiders. The only real effect that she has is to keep people of Black Spring trapped in the town. Once a person takes up residence i the town they are unable to leave for more than a week or so before they begin to feel deep depression and suicidal urges until they return to town.
The main thing that sets Hex apart from other supernatural horror novels is the way that the townspeople deal with Katherine. HEX is the name of an agency the town council set up to deal with Katherine. Their job is to liaise with West Point (which in this world exists at least partially to monitor Katherine) and to track her movements through town with the goal of keeping her a secret from the rest of the world. So this is all pretty good so far, but what sets this novel apart is the integration of technology, and this is what makes is a truly contemporary horror story. HEX uses an app that allows people to log Katherine's appearances so that they can track her. HEX has also installed security cameras throughout town. The town maintains constant surveillance over the which, and also monitors the internet usage of its citizens to keep them from leaking information of Katherine's existence to the outside world.
Steve Grant and his family play a central role in the novel. Unbeknownst to Steve, his son Tyler has started a website called Open Your Eyes that aims to expose Katherine's existence to the world. Tyler believes that the town can break their spell by "coming out" to the world about their haunting. Using his GoPro to film evidence, Tyler and his friends begin a series of "experiments" involving Katherine. They try to disrupt her normal paths to see if she will vary her routine and they record her whispering to see if it will affect people living outside of town. Katherine's whispering is generally regarded to be curses that drive people to suicide.
The boys' interactions are all banned by HEX and violate the Emergency Decree that outlines the town's dealings with Katherine, which basically boils down to not messing with her and keeping her a secret. Tyler is careful to out of town to upload his videos and blog posts to avoid detection by HEX. However, one of his group of friends starts pushing the boundaries of what the group does. he begins to get aggressive with Katherine, siccing a dog on her and leading the rest of the group, excluding Tyler and his friend Lawrence, to stoning her. This, of course, sets off a whole string of escalating events that have dire results for the boys and eventually the town.
So there are really two major things going on in the novel that I really like. The first is that the characters are very well drawn and they react to their town and the events unfolding in realistic ways. All of the characters, Katherine included, act in keeping with well-defined motivations and their actions are generally understandable, even when they to the wrong thing. Both Steve's and Tyler's characters are dynamic, likable, and well-rounded. Even Katherine, a character who does not speak and seems to have limited agency, has strong motivations and a defined character. The second aspect that is very strong in this novel is the town-at-large's treatment of Katherine and the reflection that this has on our contemporary society.
Here's what I mean by this. Katherine was outcast and persecuted in her own time for the town's perception of her as a witch. After Katherine's son died, the townspeople believed that she brought him back to life through witchcraft and then forced her to kill her own son by threatening to kill her daughter if she did not. The town ended up killing Katherine as well. Now in the present, the town still perceives her to be a witch and regards her with suspicion and fear. Not only is Katherine subject to constant surveillance, but the town itself is as well. Put another way, the town acts out of a presumption that directly mirrors Katherine's treatment 350 years ago. It become clear over the course of the novel that the town reacts to Katherine, but it brutalizes its own citizens more than Katherine ever does. Her mere presence is perceived as a threat to the town and they react to that perception more than to any direct harm that she causes.
It is easy to look to the past and point to instances of misogyny and sexism, but Olde Heuvelt shows that we can easily blind ourselves to our own attitudes and rationalize our actions as necessary reactions. In this novel the reader is left in the dark as to what, exactly, Katherine is. She is obviously some sort of supernatural being because she has persisted in the town for so long, but whether she was a witch before her death, whether she has any other powers, whether she cursed the town or the town cursed itself is all left undetermined. We are left to wonder whether the town found a witch or created one.
No comments:
Post a Comment