Pay the Piper

There are many unique and diverse names in horror making it, for me, one of the most interesting genres out there, but to the layperson they may only know a few names. Stephen King, maybe Dean Koontz. In film they may have heard of Wes Craven, or one of the newer horror auteurs. Zombie fans should have heard of George A. Romero, but do they know that the director also made non-Zombie movies and worked on other horror aspects in print? Daniel Kraus, skilled writer in their own right, has worked with the Romero estate to bring to the shelves Pay the Piper, a book as horrific as any Dead, but with a very different type of monster. 

Alligator Point, Louisiana is already a backwater with a small community living on the edge of the swamps and bayous. With the snakes, alligators, and quicksand, people sometimes disappear, so when a small boy walks outside one night and does not come back, it is a tragedy, but understandable. However, when more young people start to go missing and tales of a strange person trying to persuade others into the murk, action needs to be taken before there is not one left. 

Piper has a distinct sense of time and place. Alligator Point has a strong Cajun influence and that is portrayed in the book. There is a thin line between making the characters rounded and interesting or making them caricatures. I am not from the Cajun culture and cannot attest truly how well this is done, but I do think that Romero and Kraus manage to create something that is entertaining to read but takes a little artistic license. This adds to the flavour of the story and is much needed. Kraus even says before the book's start that consideration was made into how to portray the way the Cajun characters speak in the book. For me there was a good balance between flavour and being able to understand what was being said. 

This book is a form of Folk Horror, but not on a remote Scottish island, instead a remote Louisiana settlement. Alligator Point has its own customs and superstitions. We are introduced to all this via Pontiac, a young girl who is in some ways typical of the locale, but also atypical. Although she speaks like those around her and has a deep love of the culture, she is also far more observant. She notices the small octopian carvings that dot the town, she notices the missing people. Her forthright attitude and age remind you of Scout from To Kill a Mockingbird and I suspect that was deliberate on the behalf of Romero. 

This deliberation laces the entire story. A lesser writer would have just written a fun horror story, but you get the sense that Piper is built on a foundation of research and history. You get the sense of the culture and the history; it is this that dictates what is happening to the characters and what is happening is solid horror fun. No characters are safe, no matter how innocent. There is something out in the water and it preys on the weakest, the smallest, the youngest. This slow horror increases in speed until the final act is explosive. I do enjoy a horror book that goes full horror by book’s end. 

The DNA between this novel and the Dead films is present in that Romero was a master in storytelling and scares. The book is its own thing, dealing with Folk Horror and Cthulhu, rather than the undead. Kraus has done an excellent job of taking Romero’s draft papers and bringing the themes through and creating a bombastic finale. Piper is an enjoyable horror story for any fan of the genre, one that scratches both the slow insidious horror and the larger-than-life monster horror itch.