The Painted Darkness
Ratings2
Average rating2.5
15
Ratings2
Average rating2.5
"When Henry was a child, something terrible happened in the woods behind his home, something so shocking he could only express his grief by drawing pictures of what he had witnessed. Eventually, Henry's mind blocked out the bad memories, but he continued to draw, often at night by the light of the moon. Twenty years later, Henry makes his living by painting his disturbing works of art. He loves his wife and son, and life couldn't be better ... except there's something not quite right about the old stone farmhouse his family now calls home. There's something strange living in the cramped cellar, in the maze of pipes that feed the ancient steam boiler. A winter storm is brewing and soon Henry will learn the true nature of the monster waiting for him down in the darkness. He will battle this demon and, in the process, he may discover what really happened when he was a child--and why, in times of trouble, he thinks: I paint against the darkness ..."--Dust cover flap.
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The Painted Darkness is my first encounter with the work of Brian James Freeman, who if the blurbs on the outside and the glowing introduction by Brian Keene are any indication, may be something of a rising star in the horror field.
The book centers on its protagonist, Henry, in two different times. In the present day, Henry is struggling with a creative block which is interfering with his painting, which is his trade. As he attempts to break through it, he begins to remember the day as a boy when he saw something terrible, an experience he has blocked out. As he is struggling with these memories, Henry has to deal with the old heater in his renovated house. The story flips back and forth between, the present day, where Henry's travails with the heater take a dark twist, and the day in his childhood that he has repressed for so long.
Though clearly meant to be a horror story, I have to admit most of the real spookiness is concentrated in the middle section of the book, where Henry (much like the reader) is at his most disoriented. Once the action reaches its climax, the supernatural nature of the events became too fantastic for me to find scary. I'm no stranger to supernatural elements, especially in horror fiction, but Henry never felt fleshed out enough for me to let the danger to him get too far under my skin. The tale does retain a certain dark fairy-tale quality, and I would still recommend it.
(Note: I received The Painted Darkness through Library Thing's Early Reviewer's program.)
