Shelter for the Damned - A Supernatural Shack with Vile Motives
This story follows Mark, a troubled teenager with troubled friends, Adam and Scott. They love to hang out together, play video games, and smoke cigarettes. In their wandering hangouts, they come across a shack in the middle of a field in suburbia; it's abandoned. They claim it as their own and find it to be a fun, albeit creepy spot to smoke and escape their home realities. Adam and Scott seem able to take it or leave it, leaning more towards leaving it, but for Mark it becomes an obsession and calls to him when he is apart from it. One night, he entices his friends to join him again at the shack, and reluctantly they join him, even though they don't feel the same way about it that he does. Everything changes for the worst that night when all three boys realize that the shack houses, maybe even embodies, something faceless, nameless, and evil, and its hope is to use Mark as its vessel.
Shelter for the Damned is a supernatural horror story that touches on the needs of the young who have hard, sometimes abusive lives. It gives off the feeling that had these boys received the love and compassion every human being deserves, they might not have been so inclined towards the darkness that is the Shack. Negligence, abuse, and the pain of youth all play a part in drawing these kids into something bigger than themselves, but there is some ambiguity here that also says anyone could have found that shack and been pulled into its sinister needs because it's just that powerful.
There seems to be a lesson here that says people can't really win against evil by playing its game, but once you start falling down that hole it's nearly impossible to pull yourself back out of it. Then when you're in that hole, or shack, because of irreversible actions, you've already found shelter for the damned, so why not make yourself at home?
The writing and editing in this book is good. I love a book that keeps my eyes strolling along a page easily and quickly with no distractions like grammatical errors or spacing issues. It made reading this book a pleasure. I kept one line highlighted because it really summed up what a person who is experiencing a supernatural situation while simultaneously trying to deal with 'normal life' might be thinking, "He selected his words with great caution. Thoughts of unthinkable violence, of the Shack's faceless face, kept gnawing holes through the utter banality of this conversation."
I left this book with an aftertaste of unending horror and a real sense of loss. It made me want to seek out Mike Thorn (who happens to live in the same city as me!) and ask him what his own childhood was like, and who hurt him. I recommend it!
A big thank you to Mike Thorn for providing Horrorbound.net with an ARC for review!
Don’t want to miss anything on the site? Sign up for our newsletter HERE
Want more spooky reads? Just search below.
