Devil's Creek is the book that should make Todd Keisling a household name for horror fans. I fully expect it to see mentioned in the same breath as Stephen King's Salem's Lot, with Keisling's Stauford, KY standing alongside those east coast terror towns of Derry and Castle Rock, ME. Stauford's a special place to visit, but I sure as hell wouldn't want to live there!

Thirty years ago, a group of children were born and raised to serve as sacrificial pawns in Jacob Masters' death cult. Masters, their father, was stopped and the children were saved, but they've carried the memories and scars of that violent night with them ever since. Some, like Zeke, have gone on to become drug dealers, while others, like Stephanie have found a modicum of success, building their own hard rock radio station that has earned the ire of the town's most devout worshipers. For Jack Tremly, he's turned his decades worth of nightmares into lucrative pieces of art. After his grandmother's death, he returns to the town he left behind years ago -- just in time for everything to go south after two children go missing.

Devil's Creek is freaking nuts, and Keisling kicks the action off in grand fashion, opening the book with a high octane set piece that feels more like a gung-ho climax than a proper starting point. And in some ways, it is just that -- it's a climax to Master's legacy as leader of the Lord's Church of Holy Voices, and the upsetting of his plans to kill half a dozen kids on behalf of his nameless god and in service to The Old Ways. It's violent and kinetic, and, good lord, it's only just the beginning! Instead of serving up an "and they lived happily ever after," Keisling instead charts a course for the aftermath, jumping ahead 30 years and into the present-day to show us what became of those children, the Stauford Six.

Jack Tremly is our central character here, but we also become acquainted with his brothers and sisters along the way, all of whom are the offspring of the deranged Jacob Masters. Some have continued their father's work in secret, while others live each day in disavowal of the man's memory. In Jack, we see just how much damage Masters has caused to these children's bodies and psyches. As Jack uncovers more of his grandmother's secrets, though, we also learn of darker, more arcane rites and although Masters's church and many of his followers may have been destroyed decades previously, remnants still persist. In the woods where Masters used to conduct his sermons, something evil is lurking and growing hungry, and demanding fresh followers.

Keisling crafts several moments over the course of Devil's Creek that are legitimately scary, and the work as a whole is a masterful blend of the occult, creature, and cosmic horror, with a few dashes of body horror thrown in for good, disquieting measure. I will admit, I have thing for horror scenes involving eyes, and it always, always, always makes me twitchy when a book or movie starts forecasting some kind of violent damage being done to a person's eyes. Well, Keisling freaked me out good a few times with some of his more ocular-focused descriptions, and the sort of creepy-crawly terrors that set their sights on Stauford are absolutely brilliant in their awful and bloody depictions.

While the supernatural elements are top-tier, the human elements of Devil's Creek are just as salient and help ground the work in a much-too-relateable fashion. Stauford is right in the heart of the Bible Belt and it's a town built firmly on the typical foundations expected of such locales, namely hypocrisy and bullying. Despite being Bible thumpers, the people of Stauford aren't exactly quick to turn the other cheek, preferring to mock, attack, and attempt to censor whoever has ruffled their feathers of late. It's the type of town that wants to see Stephanie's radio station, Z105.1 The Goat, shut down but no doubt listens to Rush Limbaugh and prays for his good health because he's such a decent, upstanding human, votes Trump, and has banned Harry Potter books from the local library if they haven't already burned them all. The good people in Stauford have either left town, like Jack, have died, like the vilified Mawmaw Tremly, or are social outcasts, like Stephanie and her goth nephew, Riley. This isn't all to say that Devil's Creek is overly political, for those of you who gnash teeth over such things -- it's certainly less "political" than the preceding sentence here! -- but it does capture a very specific culture and belief system of a modern-day, small Bible Belt town, and it feels all the more realistic for it.

It is, in short, the perfect place for evil to brew.

Decent cult horror, but it felt a bit too long. I did enjoy Keisling's writing, so I plan on checking some of his other work out.

I knew right away, this story would scare me!

From Ronald Malfi’s intro you know this will be a true book of horror, and from the first page onward the story proves it. Some scenes were so intense my stomach would literally clench with dread. I’d have to stop reading, taking a break to calm down before delving back into the pages. The scene with Zeke sitting alone in the dark… seriously freaky!

The story is fast paced, tense and has you on the edge of the seat, amping up even further on “Revival Day”.

This was such a good book to read for Spooky Season: cults, curses, & cosmic horrors below the earth. The writing is also perfectly complemented with maps and illustrations to aide the imagination.

Thank you so much to the author & Cemetery Dance Publications for a copy!