Synopsis
When they were young they dreamed of finding the source of their favorite band’s inspiration. Now they can only pray it doesn’t find them.
In 1973, at the peak of their stratospheric fame, the members of the classic rock band Bad Mother posed for an iconic photo gathered around an old stone well in the woods. That indelible image became the cover of their magnum opus, Wellspring, and the subject of a thousand fan theories concerning what the lead singer found in the well that drove him to new heights of artistic genius and depraved depths of violent madness culminating in the gruesome murder of a fan.
Forty years later, four lifelong friends and former bandmates brought together by their shared love of the classic Bad Mother album are drawn into the dark mystery of its origin when one of them goes missing on an unholy pilgrimage to find the legendary well. For Brian Parker, the prospect of dropping everything to go looking for a friend who never let go of their youthful obsession is an inconvenient obligation but one he can’t turn away from after watching Adam’s last unsettling video message from the dark forest where the well is rumored to be.
When they arrive at Adam’s last known location, Brian and his old bandmates are confronted by secretive and unfriendly locals who declare the forest off limits until the festival of the Hunter’s Moon. Defying the taboo and embarking on a treacherous trail, the would-be rescuers soon find themselves wounded, lost, and confronted with all manner of strange occurrences.
Adam has left cryptic clues to his whereabouts, but nature itself seems to conspire against them. And while they hunt for their lost friend, Brian can’t shake the feeling that something ancient is hunting them.
Review
If I’ve learned anything in my almost-five decades as a horror fan, it’s to stay the fuck out of the woods. Don’t go camping, glamping, or hiking, and for sure don’t ever stay at some random, run-down cabin off the beaten path. There’s predators in those woods, or aliens, or aliens fighting predators. There’s killers, cannibal hillbillies, meth heads, monsters, mutants, mutant cannibal hillbillies on meth, cocaine bears, and cults. So many goddamn cults. Going into the woods? As a Jordan Peele protagonist might argue, that’s some stupid white people shit.
So, as soon Joe tells Brian that he’s worried their best bud and former bandmate, Adam, is lost in the New York Appalachian, you just know things are headed south. Nearly sixty years ago, the band that inspired them to form their own group went into the woods to photograph the iconic cover art for their album, Wellspring. The band, Bad Mother, was cagey about where that well was and its location was a mystery that kept defying fans and internet sleuths searching for it. Bad Mother obsessive Adam think he’s found it, and his sudden disappearance portends certain doom. You see, shortly after discovering the well, the members of Bad Mother and their photographer were hit with a spate of bad luck that one could only call a curse, forcing their devotees to wonder what, exactly, they found out there.
Loyalty and urgency wins out over better judgement, and Brian and Joe head into the New York woods surrounding the aptly named town of Kilkradle, where Adam was last seen. An innkeeper warns them away, and soon the sheriff is threatening to arrest them for violating an obscure local law, while the townspeople look ready to break out the torches and pitchforks.
Naturally, our protagonists disobey and sneak away into the woods, where they rile up something far worse than clannish townsfolk with a distaste for them there city boys. Their search for Adam starts off bad and progressively gets worse as author Douglas Wynne layers in creepy folklore, ancient creatures, the troubling history surrounding Bad Mother and Adam’s fanboyish obsession over them, and – of course – death, drugs and rock and roll.
Wellspring is a love letter to the magic of music, as filtered through a cult horror book. Music, particularly their shared affinity for Bad Mother, binds our central leads together and has the power to save them, or even transform the world, if it doesn’t destroy them first. It’s as primordial a force as the entity stalking the forests around, and worshipped by the people of, Kilkradle. A former songwriter and rock band frontman, Wynne writes what he knows in Wellspring, grounding the horrors with a measure of authenticity. One scene involves some psychedelic sound engineering across multiple tape decks to play one song backward while another runs simultaneously forward, and the resulting effect is a chilling sequence of slow-burn dread that gave me goosebumps. Wynne takes this scene that is ostensibly little more than a group of stoners and their dates getting high and entertaining themselves with a classic conspiracy theory, and transforms it into something akin to a black magic séance with cosmic horror overtones. It’s superbly, deftly done.
Which basically describes Wellspring as a whole. Wynne plants a number of little seeds throughout the narrative and then pays them off one by one as things heat up. We know from the second that innkeeper warns Brian and Joe to be sure they’re out of the woods before the full moon that obviously isn’t going to happen, and Wynne does a fine job of keeping us in suspense over what the big deal is. We know the Kilkradle townsfolk are bad news, but not the scale of their threat, or that of what they worship. Wynne slowly reveals it all, though, playing with the strings of both his characters and readers alike as he builds toward a magnificent crescendo.
Wellspring is a terrific one-and-done horror read, but I still found myself shouting “Encore!” after I hit that last page. Douglas Wynne, man. He puts on one hell of a show.
Wellspring is available to pre-order as a Kickstarter-exclusive signed, limited edition hardcover, ebook, and audiobook.
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