Book Review: The Creeper

It’s time for some more Villages/Small Towns Are Evil And Should Be Avoided At All Costs horror. You know, that subgenre in which innocent outsiders realize that picturesque village is in fact a hotbed of cannibalism, ancient cults, and human sacrifices. The Creeper by A. M. Shine gives readers Tír Mallacht, a village, which can’t be found on any current maps, and has remained unchanged for 200 years. This should raise all sorts of red flags, but cash-strapped historian Ben and archaeologist Chloe still accept Doctor Sparling’s job offer to go there and study it. A job that also includes finding out all they can about a local superstition - the creeper. Predictably, things go very, very wrong. Warning: SPOILERS.

The first night he’s far, far away. And then the next night he’s closer. So close that you can see him, and he can see you. And then, on the third night his big ugly face is at your window. The fourth night is your last one.

Unlike other villages in this subgenre, Tír Mallacht isn’t picturesque - it’s miserable and dirty with a population so inbred that everyone has some sort of physical deformity. The church has been defaced and covered with odd symbols that don’t match any known occult tradition. The villagers refuse to talk about the creeper and make all kinds of ominous warnings that Ben and Chloe ignore. It’s a child who tells them about it, and that same night, the two witness a disturbing looking stranger watching them from afar. They tell themselves it’s nothing… until they see the same man outside Chloe’s window the first night after they left the village. Ben forces himself to remain sceptic, while Chloe starts to freak out. The situation becomes more desperate as they find out they weren’t the first that Sparling sent to Tír Mallacht, and that the others all either died or simply disappeared. The reason for Sparling’s interest is that he himself is a victim of the creeper, trying to avoid the fatal third sighting by locking himself in a specially designed house, and is looking for a way to break the curse. To make matters worse, the curse is hereditary and Ben has a daughter, Aoife, whom he lied about to get the job. Another way the curse spreads is by talking about it, which makes warning people very dangerous. The mystery of the creeper and Tír Mallacht is intriguing, and Shine makes everything very, well, creepy. However, there’s that ending, the Prologue was unnecessarily spoilery, and the characters weren’t that good. Yes, including Ben, despite readers being told about his issues over and over again. His problems should’ve made him more complex, but they didn’t. Not even his decidedly un-PC reaction to the villagers' looks - pity in the beginning, and in the end, revulsion - and strained relationship with his daughter's mother, Jess, helped. Sometimes, reducing the characters to tropes or types can take from a story - others, they’re all it’s needed. In The Creeper, the most interesting thing is the titular threat, its origins, its actions, and how to stop it, not Ben’s worries about his ineptitude as a father. Aoife may be part of his motivation, but his inner monologue was repetitive and annoying. Sparling, too, though it was easier to read his chapters because there was always the hope of learning some new tidbit of information. I get that Shine wanted to compare him with the villagers, but frankly he could’ve been replaced with some old book Ben and Chloe found in the university library. Also, his machinations weren’t complex enough to warrant so much pagetime. Poor Chloe got the least of the lead trio. In the beginning she comes across as unnecessarily aggressive when dealing with the villagers - after all, they’re not obligated to talk to her and Ben - and then she devolves into a substitute daughter for him to take care of, even though it’s clear he doesn’t know WTF he’s doing either. It’s only when they return to the village that she gets to do more (and fall during a chase as it’s expected of women in horror stories).

The Creeper is a quick read, its not very long chapters encouraging readers to keep going. However, it doesn’t handle its reveals very well. The Prologue tells readers too much right away by showing Fiona, one of Sparling’s previous hires, being caught by the creeper. So, from the start, we know that there is something (or someone) going after people. This was followed by a first chapter in which Detective Barry sells her file to Sparling, which makes it clear he’s up to no good, though at this point we don’t know how they’re connected. This means that when Ben and Chloe watch his presentation on Tír Mallacht and accept his offer, readers know, not suspect, that they’re screwed. Why? Sparling’s information on the village, the place itself, and the little girl’s tale are ominous enough on their own. There was no need to reveal so much so soon. The Prologue becomes momentarily useful by Chapter 14 when Ben and Chloe learn of another historian hired by Sparling and it’s a different name from the ones mentioned earlier (Fiona and Tom). Except Sparling himself freely admits this to Ben and Chloe in Chapter 17, with just a pretty short Chapter 16 in between. This is followed by an info dump in Chapter 18, when he tells them all he knows about the creeper and his family’s connection to it. I honestly thought that we were going to find out some of it was a lie, but it wasn’t. The only wrong bit of information was something Sparling himself couldn’t have known. He genuinely believes all of it. Detective Barry could’ve become a problem after Ben tells him about the link between Carol, himself, Chloe, and Sparling, but he remains an obedient little minion. Yes, Sparling has dirt on him, but at that point he should’ve been wondering if he was covering for a serial killer. Then you have the previous teams. Even with the NDAs, I found it hard to believe that absolutely no one ever mentioned Tír Mallacht or the creeper to others and it managed to stay off the Internet. Maybe if it had just been three (Carol and someone, Fiona and Tom, and Ben and Chloe), but the book never tells readers how long Sparling had been doing that or why he never thought of using drones to get a better view of the village, which might’ve yielded some interesting results. Of course, any of that would’ve made things a little more complicated, and while there is a mystery, the story is surprisingly simple and when things get a little less simple, it all falls apart.

The villagers watched from the shadows of their cowls like a ring of gargoyles. Imprisoned for centuries, with every generation becoming something less as the years chipped away at their minds and bodies, until this was what they had become.

This book would always live or die by the solution to the creeper mystery, and Shine destroyed it with a twist that would take way more explaining than it got to be remotely believable. And what’s the twist? That the villagers worship the creeper and that they regularly choose one of their own to be mutilated to resemble it as a gift to their god. It’s these human creepers who travel around the country killing Sparling’s teams. The villagers also know about Sparling and his 2-year schedule and were expecting Ben and Chloe. You could argue that Ben’s scepticism and alternate explanations for the supposedly supernatural events had paved the way for this non supernatural reveal. He even outright wonders if the villagers had made themselves look miserable and dirty for their benefit and had chosen the best actors to speak with him. Except that while they were pretending to be nice and innocent, they do believe in the creeper and its rules, which their chosen one follows, they do live in that shitty village, and inbreeding has taken a toll on their looks as well as their intellectual abilities. So, how the hell are these very conspicuous, isolated lunatics travelling around the country to murder people in strange neighbourhoods without having ever been seen? And how can the seriously deformed, broken creeper climb roofs and disappear in seconds? Also, how the hell can they afford a vehicle of any kind? Where do they get their money from? Since Ben is worried they may find out about his daughter’s existence from Sparling’s papers, I guess this means they not only were already literate 200 years ago, but managed to stay literate until now. Oh, and also learn enough to be able to interfere with Sparling’s home security system. Education and money would of course require them to leave the village, but if they are coming and going, how can Tír Mallacht have remained a secret for so long? All it was needed was a mention of less distinctive looking creeper worshippers having left the village to bring back news of the outside world, but Ben doesn’t mention seeing new faces at the church ceremony. Then again, if they do believe the creeper rules, they shouldn’t be able to move freely, should they? After all, the book spends several chapters showing readers how limiting those restrictions are through Sparling’s inner monologue. As for what the villagers are getting out of this, there’s nothing. Ben believes they’re afraid of the creeper and doing all this to remain on its good graces, but the villagers say they traded the Christian god for the creeper because it listened to and cared about them. Only we’re never told what the creeper might’ve done for them. How did they maintain their faith? It’s clear that, contrary to what Ben thinks, they want material rewards, so, again, what are they getting out of this?

The creeper reveal isn’t the only issue I had with the ending. When Ben and Chloe arrive at the village, they find the latest creeper tied to a rack in one of the houses and, believing he’s a victim, promise to help him. When it’s time to kill Chloe (which, by the way, was the most shocking moment in the book because I didn’t really think Shine would go through with it), there’s zero recognition and he’s eager to strangle her. When it’s time to kill Ben, he not only manages to remind the new creeper of their attempt to help him, but also convince him to ignore the creeper rules and just kill Sparling + burn down his house, in the hopes that it would destroy any evidence of his daughter’s existence. This is exactly what happens in the Epilogue, where the creeper breaks into Sparling’s house even though he had only seen him twice. On that night, which takes place 5 months after Ben and Chloe’s return to the village, his housekeeper, Lara, was conveniently absent, which made me wonder if she was in on it. That would be the obvious answer, but why wait 5 months? If she’s working for them, she could’ve left at any time. And why would the creeper do what Ben asked? Does that mean there is a creeper entity and that Ben letting himself be killed was seen as payment for his request? Ugh! So annoying! This is clearly one of those books that gets worse the more you think about it.

VERDICT

The Creeper can be scary, creepy, and intriguing, and the uninteresting characters and oddly paced reveals might’ve been forgiven with a great ending. Unfortunately, everything fell apart with the twist. The problem wasn’t so much the idea itself - an evil cult of inbred villagers trapped by their own superstition - but connecting it to what came before, which necessitated a lot more than one villain’s monologue and one character’s ongoing scepticism. And if the goal was to leave readers wondering which answer was right (supernatural or not), there wasn’t enough for that either, as the things that don’t add up could have been just plot holes. This is a shame because parts of the book were very good and it could’ve been great.

By Danforth