Beneath the Stairs, the first novel from playwright Jennifer Fawcett, is hard to categorize: Is it horror, a mystery or a literary thriller? It's all of those, with a psychological exploration of adolescent trauma.
Years after a teenage dare drew them to "the Octagon House," a crumbling dwelling in the woods, two women struggle with what happened in its dank dirt basement and the recurring terror it conjures. In this first-person narrative, Clare recalls, "I had no idea back then what had been started that night. None of us did." She's returning to the upstate village of Sumner's Mills, N.Y., where she and her friend Abby grew up. Abby's mother has requested the visit, telling Clare, "[Abby] said your name." Fawcett skillfully alternates Clare's haunting memories of 1998 with scenes from Abby's hospital room, where she lies in a coma after a suicide attempt in that very basement, and the chilling story of the ominous, mysterious house. Determined to "finally disentangle ourselves for good," Clare digs into the history of Sumner's Mills and the house, and a spooky ghost story twists into a very credible and terrifying mystery.
The years have not lessened the allure of the house, and Clare desperately hopes to help another adolescent girl struggling to resist its pull. Before returning to the sinister house, Abby had written to Clare: "Go back to the beginning to find the end." In a nail-biting climax, childhood secrets and forensic facts collide as hope emerges that the Octagon House will finally and forever free those it has controlled. --Cheryl McKeon, Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza, Albany, N.Y.