Through the interview, readers learn that Leeds was wasting both his time and his musical talent playing backup for a small-town wedding troupe called Garrett’s Band when he spied Layla dancing her heart out to their mediocre music at a wedding. The story opens as Leeds Gabriel meets with a detective while his girlfriend, Layla, is restrained in a room one flight above them. But the central plot and storytelling are gripping, built on smart psychological parrying and good old-fashioned gross-outs: Parker recalls his mom pleading for help because “the damn maggots won’t crawl out of me, baby,” and Joe says he was haunted by a creature with “fly eyes and two big, superstrong spider arms” that “eats bad thoughts.” The story’s blog format gives the novel a casual, galloping pace (DeWitt posted an early version to a Reddit horror-fiction community), and the climactic confrontations between Parker and Joe are entertainingly intense.Ī clever cocktail of psychological thriller and supernatural horror.Īn aimless young musician meets the girl of his dreams only to have his newfound happiness threatened by several inexplicable-and possibly supernatural-events. DeWitt’s story exploits some well-worn tropes (“lunatics running the asylum” prominent among them) and nakedly evokes The Exorcist and Dracula (Parker’s name seems an homage to Stoker’s Jonathan Harker) subplots involving Parker’s fiancee and the asylum’s administration don’t have much life to them, and the nurse’s early departure spares the reader extended time with her clichéd Irish accent. (His mother’s mental illness inspired him to pursue psychiatry.) Joe is initially polite and seemingly sane, an experience that cues a series of twists until Parker discovers the truth about whether Joe is misunderstood, mad, or something harder to define.
Still, Parker plunges in, inspired by youthful determination and a commitment to his profession. Previous doctors have given up on Joe, left emotionally shaken by him on Parker’s first day, one orderly exits Joe’s asylum room in hysterics, and soon after his nurse kills herself in despair.
It’s 2008, and Parker, the narrator of DeWitt’s crisp and creepy debut, is moved to blog about his experience treating Joe, an institutionalized young man with a terrifying ability to exploit others’ worst fears.
A young psychiatrist goes head-to-head with a patient with a reputation for driving caregivers mad.
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