Wake Up and Open Your Eyes

For fans of Noah Fairchild has been losing his formerly polite Southern parents to far-right cable news for years, so when his mother leaves him a voicemail warning him that the “Great Reckoning” is here, he assumes it’s related to one of the many conspiracy theories she believes in. But when his own phone calls go unanswered, Noah makes the long drive from Brooklyn to Richmond, Virginia. There, he discovers his childhood home in shambles, a fridge full of spoiled food, and his parents locked in a terrifying trance-like state in front of the TV. Panicked, Noah attempts to snap them out of it and get medical help. Then Noah’s mother brutally attacks him. But Noah isn’t the only person to be attacked by a loved one. Families across the country are tearing each other apart-–literally-–as people succumb to a form of possession that gets worse the more time they spend watching particular channels, using certain apps, or visiting certain websites. In Noah’s Richmond-based family, only he and his young nephew Marcus are unaffected. Together, they must race back to the safe haven of Brooklyn–-but can they make it before they fall prey to the violent hordes? This ambitious, searing novel from "one of horror''s modern masters" holds a mirror to our divided nation, and will shake readers to the core.

Auteur

Clay McLeod Chapman

Texte du rabat

“Clay McLeod Chapman is one of my favorite horror storytellers working today.”—Jordan Peele

“Surreal, hypnotic, unrelenting, profoundly claustrophobic, and an absolutely scathing sendup of the pitfalls of American divisiveness.”—Keith Rosson, author of Fever House

From Vulture's “master of horror” Clay McLeod Chapman, a relentless social horror novel about a family on the run from a demonic possession epidemic that spreads through media.

Noah Fairchild has been losing his formerly polite Southern parents to far-right cable news for years, so when his mother leaves him a voicemail warning him that the “Great Reawakening” is here, he assumes it’s related to one of the many conspiracy theories she believes in. But when his own phone calls go unanswered, Noah makes the long drive from his home in Brooklyn to Richmond, Virginia. There, he discovers his childhood home in shambles, a fridge full of spoiled food, and his parents locked in a terrifying trancelike state in front of the TV. Panicked, Noah attempts to snap them out of it and get them medical help.

Then Noah’s mother brutally attacks him.

But Noah isn’t the only person to be attacked by a loved one. Families across the country are tearing each other apart—literally—as people succumb to a form of possession that gets worse the more time they spend glued to cable news or falling down internet rabbit holes. In Noah’s Richmond-based family, only he and his young nephew Marcus are unaffected. Together, they must race back to the safe haven of Brooklyn—but can they make it before they fall prey to the violent hordes?

This ambitious, searing novel from one of horror's modern masters holds a mirror to our divided nation, and will shake readers to the core.

Échantillon de lecture
December 18
Get your family out of there, Noah. Please. The city isn’t safe anymore.
None of them are. If you’d been watching the news, you’d know this by
now. Please, honey. Please. For me. For your mother. You need to leave
New York before it’s too late, before your family gets hurt . . .

     Mom left another message.
     Noah didn’t even hear his phone ring this time. Her voicemails are digital mosquitoes buzzing about his ear at all hours of the day—and night—hungry for blood.
     This one landed at eleven. Shouldn’t she be in bed by now? Fast asleep?
     Paul Tammany must’ve just gotten off the air.
     “Everything okay?” Alicia props herself up on one elbow in their bed, sensing tension.
     Noah nods, still listening to his mother.
     “Is it her?”
     “Yeah.” The frequency of Mom’s calls has really ramped up since Thanksgiving. Something’s in the air. Or maybe it’s the fluoride in the water. Or the cell towers, all that 5G microwaving her brain.
     I just watched another news story and they said there have been more protests—these riots and I, oh God, Noah, I’m so worried for you . . . So worried about my grandbaby . . .
     When Noah was just a boy, growing up in Virginia, his mom would take him to the library. She’d let him check out two books. Any two. His choice. Their deal was simple: One for you and one for me. Mom would read one book to Noah at bedtime while he had to read the other on his own. He’d pick a picture book to tackle—the easy reads, Sendak or Silverstein—while for his mother, he’d tug the doorstoppers off the shelf. The cinder-block books. Tolkien. Dickens. King. He can still remember the sound of her voice, a soft southern lilt gamely taking on the personas of every last character, her words filling his bedroom, his mind, his dreams.
     Noah can still hear her voice now.
     When I think of you up there in that god-awful city, with all those awful people around, I—I don’t know. I wish you’d come home to us. You can’t be safe up there. Kelsey can’t be safe . . .
     He doesn’t recognize her at all.
     It’s not Mom. It can’t be.
     Technically, yes, that’s her voice. But . . . the words. They don’t sound like her thoughts at all. These are someone else’s words in her mouth. Her mind.
     It’s getting worse. She’s getting worse.
     “Is it bad?” Alicia’s voice is calm. Fair and balanced. Working as an admin at a nonprofit will do that—her uncanny knack for putting out fires with nothing but the serenity in her tone.
     “Pretty bad.”
     “How bad?”
     They’re talking about a reckoning, son . . .
     Noah stares at the ceiling, phone pressed to his ear, his mind’s eye filled with his mother’s distorted visions of a city on fire, of protests right outside their window, complete chaos.
     I know you don’t believe me and I know you think I’m overreacting, but I—I just wish you would wake up, honey, before it’s too late. I wish, I wish you would open your eyes.
     “Can I hear?” Alicia slides in closer. There’s that curiosity of hers. That mettle. Probably the first thing Noah remembers about meeting Alicia was how she was the one to approach him at that Antibalas show in Williamsburg—what? Thirteen years ago now?—in the back room at Black Betty. She kick-started the conversation, buying the next round. They danced with their drinks held up at their shoulders, those crinkly plastic cups, spilling G&Ts all over themselves. They both carried a hint of juniper all the way back to his apartment, seeped into their skin.
     “You don’t want to hear this,” Noah says.
     “What’s she saying?”
*     Somebody ought to do something. Somebody ought to put a stop to these people—

•      These peopl…