Arsenic and Old Lace Meets Hell House;
or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Ghosts
Carissa Orlando – The September House
Reviewed by Barry Lee Dejasu
The past decade has seen some seriously unusual and imaginative takes on haunted house novels. Cassandra Khaw’s Nothing but Blackened Teeth, Jennifer McMahon’s The Invited, Grady Hendrix’s How to Sell a Haunted House, Jac Jemc’s The Grip of It—the list goes on, but there’s nothing repetitive or boring about them, because they’re all wholly original and unique from one another, reinventing one of the oldest tropes in horror fiction again and again. Thus it is that with her debut novel The September House, Carissa Orlando doesn’t just think outside of the proverbial box—she expertly pulls the box apart and reconstructs it in a shape of her own design.
Margaret, the protagonist, is living in her dream house, a big, beautiful Victorian out in the countryside that she and her husband Hal had purchased. Her daughter Katherine is grown up and living on her own, which was a blessing for her, because she didn’t have to experience the dark truth of the house—that it is in fact quite haunted, and in many more ways (and by more ghosts) than one.
Bleeding walls, screams throughout the night, a maid with a savage wound down the side of her face, a little boy with a mouth full of fangs, and so much more dwell within its walls—but it’s mainly in the month of September each year that they manifest. Imagine every haunted house trapping happening all at once—the madness of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House and Robert Marasco’s Burnt Offerings coupled with the frenzied violence of Richard Matheson’s Hell House—and you have some idea of what horrors occur in The September House, with one unusual touch: the hauntings aren’t the outright focus of the book. Instead, Margaret’s narrative focuses on how she’s come to accept the bad with the good, and to enjoy living in her beautiful dream house, at all costs. If she can handle a month’s worth of supernatural chaos once a year, the prize is of course her gorgeous dream home.
It’s against this backdrop that Margaret finds herself in a serious predicament: her husband Hal recently stepped out on her, which hints at marital tensions that are only gradually explained. However, Katherine becomes deeply concerned because her father seems to have gone missing—and she is singularly determined to find him…and she is coming to Margaret’s house to start her search. Oh, and did I mention that this is in early September? …Uh-oh!
If this sounds like the start of a comedy, in some ways it is. Although this book isn’t written solely for laughs, there are some genuinely funny moments that this scenario of inconvenience and the uncanny creates. Margaret’s on a constant mission to keep Katherine safe from the knowledge of her house’s dark nature at all costs, having to do everything she can to literally hide the horrors away. She scrubs blood from the walls daily, keeps certain rooms and their dismembered occupants closed and locked, and has to remind the attentive, kind, murdered maid to not move around dishes and other objects—all while her headstrong daughter is storming from room to room trying to determine what may have happened to Hal. In a lot of ways, this novel plays out a bit like the classic stage play (and Cary Grant-starring film) Arsenic and Old Lace, where the horror at hand is a household given, and it’s up to the protagonist to prevent others ranging from loved ones to law enforcement from learning about the grim details.
All this isn’t to say that this haunted house tale isn’t without its share of creepiness. The hauntings are uncanny and unnerving (especially the fanged little boy), and often the passing mentions of them make their presences even more disquieting. The moments of horror are plentiful, but usually fleeting, because for the majority of the book, Margaret is all but shoving them behind doors and sweeping them under carpets with the urgency of a screwball comedy.
A noteworthy aspect of the ghosts is that although they may come across as a rogue’s gallery of different kinds of hauntings (and perhaps they were brought into the story in that manner), Orlando very smartly links up their presences in an organic and cohesive way that makes it all make sense, instead of an everything-and-the-kitchen-sink mess that’s strictly all for show. What’s more…there’s also a deeper, darker horror at work in the basement, but fitting in with Margaret’s narrative of her efforts are focused on welcoming her daughter into her house, we don’t outright have much of an idea of what’s going on down there…and as with the best slow-burn horror tales, the revelation comes in good time, and for good reason.
Margaret’s plight may sound far-fetched, but a very earnest and sympathetic narrative keeps her character into a very real light. She genuinely loves her home and the time and effort and work she took to live there. The ghosts are worth all of their trouble—in fact, Margaret refers them as “pranksters,” and handles their presences with an almost matter-of-fact attitude. She has a good thing going for herself there, and even with her husband having left her, she’s determined to make the best of it. And while she’s so focused on keeping Katherine from knowing about the pranksters, it’s not solely as an effort to keep her home intact—she loves her daughter, and she wants her to not have to worry, even as the questions surrounding Hal’s disappearance begins to loom.
And while Katherine’s firecracker attitude at times can be grating and frustrating, it comes from a place of genuine concern. She doesn’t always (okay…usually doesn’t) have the best ways of processing and expressing her emotions, and as a result often comes across as temperamental and short-fused. Because the deeper into the whereabouts of her father she goes, the more frantic she becomes, and often to some volatile extents, but there are some genuinely touching moments between her and her mother that show that, like the rest of the book, hers is a story that is far from black-and-white.
While reading this book near the end of this past September, I found my overactive imagination piecing together certain plot points and imagining certain outcomes, and for a while, I became worried that the book was heading in a direction that I wasn’t going to enjoy. In fact, it got to the point that I was letting out annoyed groans and worrying that what had been such a solid read was taking a sharp turn toward a frustrating denouement. But while I of course won’t spoil anything, I’ll simply say that the way things turned out, I was most definitely not disappointed.
The tale of Margaret’s dream home and the struggles she faces to keep it is an unforgettable one, full of comedic scenarios and genuinely surprising turns. There’s horror, there’s humor, and there’s heart, all in equal amounts (and often all at once), making for a truly one-of-a-kind read. In a world of unusual haunted house novels, this one is as unusual from them as they are from their predecessors. The September House is a genuine and original treat for horror fans, and one that deserves to be read any month of the year.
