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Touch the Night is a wildly different novel from Max Booth III’s prior release Carnivorous Lunar Activities. Small towns are horrible places to live through a personal tragedy. The horror themes of Touch the Night are anchored in a very real dread. Percy is a small place, everybody knows each other, can’t run away very far, etc. The two women feel isolated in their ordeal because nobody else is taking it seriously. What makes it work so well is the Ottessa/Mary chapter, which explore the feelings of false security in their small town. Because it’s a pretty straightforward novel about an underground cult. That brings me to something more nuanced that Touch the Night does. There might not be a clown that makes you hallucinate your worst fears in Touch the Night, but there are two realities seemingly unaware of each other and that is almost more terrifying to me. It is embodied metaphorically by the lazy sheriff who refuses to properly investigate a freakin’ child disappearance and literally by the weirdo cult who kidnapped Alonzo and Josh. That a corruption has taken over a small town.

This novel is more Texas Chainsaw Massacre than it is Stephen King’s It, but it’s driven by the same idea than the iconic clown story. Because it definitely wasn’t cops who took the boys. Along with Josh’s mom Mary, she decides to take the law in her own hands. Even worse, he suspects Ottessa’s been harboring them from the law. But later, local sheriff claims they’re not at the station. Alonzo’s mother Ottessa watches them get picked up by the popo, but decides not to intervene because 1) she’s afraid of cops and 2) it might teach these brats a lesson. Touch the Night tells the story of Alonzo and Josh, rebellious prepubescent boys who get in trouble after fighting a convenience store clerk.

Rarely had I felt so vindicated by a book. But Max Booth III’s upcoming horror novel Touch the Night is an awesome middle finger aimed at cheap nostalgia and a purveyor of terror wrapped in one. Never in a million years did I expect someone else to understand that. Childhood is where you inherit the bullshit that will follow you around all your life.

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My formative years were full of shitty drunken adults, miserable redneck kids and scrambled porn on television, so fuck you if Nintendo or the Ninja Turtles make you feel any good. Nothing gets on my nerves like childhood nostalgia.

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