NOTHING BUT BLACKENED TEETH, Cassandra Khaw's eerie group-ghostie tale

NOTHING BUT BLACKENED TEETH
CASSANDRA KHAW
Nightfire Books
$10.99 Kindle edition, available now

Nominated for the BEST NOVEL AWARD—2021 SHIRLEY JACKSON AWARDS! Winner annunced on 29 October 2022.

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Cassandra Khaw's Nothing But Blackened Teeth is a gorgeously creepy haunted house tale, steeped in Japanese folklore and full of devastating twists.

A Heian-era mansion stands abandoned, its foundations resting on the bones of a bride and its walls packed with the remains of the girls sacrificed to keep her company.

It’s the perfect wedding venue for a group of thrill-seeking friends.

But a night of food, drinks, and games quickly spirals into a nightmare. For lurking in the shadows is the ghost bride with a black smile and a hungry heart.

And she gets lonely down there in the dirt.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: No one gets do-overs in life. The one thing Horror teaches us, firmly and finally, is that single adamantine truth...that final, fierce fact that trumps them all.

When privileged and pretty people want to play, they go mad. They have no reason to consider consequences and no desire to moderate their demands on the Universe's supply of goodwill. There's nothing to say that a destination/theme wedding, a haunted-house horror wedding for five, couldn't be just lovely.

Except, of course, common sense.

As the events of the day unfold, as the people whose lives were compressed into a block of being by the exigencies of education and privilege come unstuck, their masks reveal the real cracks in their faces. Then the masks fall off. Then the faces fall off. This is a horror novella about the awfulness of unslakable appetites, and the enduring pain of never, ever having Enough. Being enough. Finding enough.

Author Khaw has used the silences of screaming people to make this dread-soaked, foregone-conclusion-led, story into a fable for our use. You can find anything in it. You're going to try, so don't bother to front. Looking for a climate-change metaphor? The ancient house with the dead people in its walls. Looking for a religious metaphor? The Forces of Evil animating one of the young people to perform uncharacteristic acts. Revenge fantasy? Dude!

Slasher fans: You have a new talent to follow. Author Khaw understands why we love to see the world end in a welter of blood. Go down the dark alley leading up to the ancient haunted mansion with the moldy old books falling apart in its library.

Go on. You know you want to.