Synopsis
Late one summer night, Elizabeth Sanderson receives the devastating news that every mother fears: her fourteen-year-old son, Tommy, has vanished without a trace in the woods of a local park.
The search isn’t yielding any answers, and Elizabeth and her young daughter, Kate, struggle to comprehend his disappearance. Feeling helpless and alone, their sorrow is compounded by anger and frustration. The local and state police haven’t uncovered any leads. Josh and Luis, the friends who were with Tommy last, may not be telling the whole truth about that night in Borderland State Park, when they were supposedly hanging out at a landmark the local teens have renamed Devil’s Rock— rumored to be cursed.
Living in an all-too-real nightmare, riddled with worry, pain, and guilt, Elizabeth is wholly unprepared for the strange series of events that follow. She believes a ghostly shadow of Tommy materializes in her bedroom, while Kate and other local residents claim to see a shadow peering through their own windows in the dead of night. Then, random pages torn from Tommy’s journal begin to mysteriously appear—entries that reveal an introverted teenager obsessed with the phantasmagoric; the loss of his father, killed in a drunk-driving accident a decade earlier; a folktale involving the devil and the woods of Borderland; and a horrific incident that Tommy believed connected them all and changes everything.
As the search grows more desperate, and the implications of what happened becomes more haunting and sinister, no one is prepared for the shocking truth about that night and Tommy’s disappearance at Devil’s Rock.
Review
A walloping blow to our hearts and nerves, Paul Tremblay’s Disappearance at Devil’s Rock accomplishes an astounding number of feats within the confines of a succinct novel. The premise is quite simple: a young boy goes missing in the woods late one night with his friends. What Tremblay is able to stretch and conform from this grief-laden narrative is nearly otherworldly, a deeply unsettling examination of loss. In fact, it’s my firm belief that this is some of Tremblay’s strongest writing, even surpassing A Head Full of Ghosts, a book that is undeniably a staple in modern horror fiction.
Before we get into the heart of the matter, it would be remiss of me not to discuss a clear, well-discussed influence of this novel, the 2008 found-footage film, Lake Mungo. In many ways, Disappearance and Lake Mungo operate within the same framework of a family attempting to digest an unthinkable loss. While the bulk of Mungo is incredibly drenched in sorrow, the last five minutes are some of the most haunting, devastating pieces of cinema I come across. This same strand of bleak DNA runs through Disappearance under Paul Tremblay’s masterful writing, even expanding upon the terror of such a tragedy.
And what a tragedy Disappearance at Devil’s Rock is. The vanishing of a child comes with its own innate sense of loss and darkness given the inherent loss of what I consider the “could have beens.” These are the blanks that will forever remain unfilled, the questions without answers, that are any parent’s worst nightmare. Tremblay seems to understand nearly every facet of this unique kind of nightmare as exemplified through the horrors Tommy’s friends and family face in these pages. Particularly in the home that no longer feels like home, Tommy’s mother, Elizabeth, and sister, Kate, are faced with unthinkable circumstances as more of Tommy’s interior life begins to be revealed through unconventional means.
This is where Tremblay employs his signature use of ambiguity to create the possibility of something otherworldly within the realm of the mundane. The sudden arrival of pages from Tommy’s “undiscovered” diary ushers in the possibility of some kind of supernatural force guiding the investigation into his own disappearance. Of course, certain revelations are made that seem to dispel any myths of the uncanny, but, true to fashion, the final moments of this novel leave us with more questions than answers. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, this is the hallmark of this novel, its ability to be a haunting in and of itself, a self-referential token of lingering questions and unknowable truths.
Disappearance at Devil’s Rock is a true masterpiece. Every word, every sentence, every scene is employed with distinct amounts of intention by Paul Tremblay to craft this exquisitely devastating piece of horror fiction. This is a novel that will have you second-questioning every shadow spotted from the corner of your eyes, shredding your nerves, while also actively breaking your heart. Equally terrifying and soul-shattering, it’s an unforgettable story that, once again, proves Paul Tremblay’s status as a champion of the genre.
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