How do you let go of the past, if the past won't let go of you?
When her abusive mother goes missing, Joanna Smith sees an opportunity to lay the past and the inner monsters that still haunt her to rest. But while en route to investigate her mother's whereabouts, Jo and her sister, Amanda, become stranded and are forced to journey into a forest that grows stranger and deadlier the closer they get to the house they grew up in. To survive this homecoming reunion, Jo must untangle herself from secrets that have plagued her family for generations as she faces a skin-crawling possibility: Her inner monsters might not just be in her head.
How do you let go of the past, if the past won't let go of you?
When her abusive mother goes missing, Joanna Smith sees an opportunity to lay the past and the inner monsters that still haunt her to rest. But while en route to investigate her mother's whereabouts, Jo and her sister, Amanda, become stranded and are forced to journey into a forest that grows stranger and deadlier the closer they get to the house they grew up in. To survive this homecoming reunion, Jo must untangle herself from secrets that have plagued her family for generations as she faces a skin-crawling possibility: Her inner monsters might not just be in her head.
Patrick wasnāt ready to die, but he was beginning to suspect that he and the other salt miners would, long before help came.
āAll you get is a sip,ā he heard the foreman, Morales, say from the opposite end of the tight shaft, the manās voice a dry rasp. Patrick directed his helmet light, finding the burly man amid the heavy salt dust swirling in the dead air. Morales handed the canteen down to the first man sitting against the wall, who gulped a mouthful.
Patrick dragged his tongue across crusted lips.
He believed it to have been two days since the cave-in. It had started with a deep rumbling that reminded Patrick of distant thunder. Then the ground under his feet quivered, building with intensity, until a series of explosions erupted farther down the shaft, followed by a cloud of salt dust that enveloped him. The lighting went dark, leaving them with their headlamps to slice beams of dusted light across each otherās wide-eyed faces, to whimper with voices that were as trapped as they were. A head count of nine men revealed Smitty, Harris, and Derickson to be missingāburied alive under the collapsed rock salt.
Patrickās body throbbed with dehydration as the canteen of water crawled its way toward his position at the end of the line. Panic was steadily clawing its way out of the depths of his mind. Thereāll be no water left, a voice told him. Youāll die first.
So Patrick let his eyes slip closed. He slowed his breathing and racing heart. Heād been working the mines long enough to know that down hereā1,800 feet below the surfaceāthe only thing a man had any true control over was his own mind. And panic was a minerās death sentence.
Patrick opened his eyes to find Morales handing the canteen to the boy, Douglas, at his left, who drank greedily. Douglas was the youngest of themānot yet twenty years oldāand this had been his first week in the shafts.
āEnough!ā Morales commanded, snatching the canteen away from the boy, who cowered, a whimper escaping him.
Patrick took the offered bottle and sipped from it, the water delivering pure liquid relief. It took every ounce of resolve in him to pull the bottle away from his burning lips, to not just open his throat, let the remaining water into his body. But he also knew chaos would ensue if he did that. They would turn on himāand then each other.
Morales left, returning to the front of the line.
And another headlamp blinked out, its batteries gone dead.
Patrick felt the boy beside him stir in response to the deepening darkness. Eventually, when all the headlamps quit, a complete and total blackness would swallow them.
āWeāre running out of air,ā Douglas whispered beside Patrick. Patrick turned to the boy, who seemed to be grabbing at his throat, bloodshot eyes widening with panic.
āItās the salt dust.ā Patrick kept his voice steady for the boy. āBreath through your nose.ā
He placed a hand on the boyās quivering knee, feeling a fatherly urge to protect him, thinking of his own infant child at home. Patrick had never understood himself as a protector until the baby had arrived into his life, awakening something in him that replaced any doubts heād had during his wifeās pregnancy. It also left him with no doubts that dying down here in this shaft was not an option.
āI canāt breathe,ā Douglas coughed out, beginning to writhe, eyes bugging.
āYou can breathe,ā Patrick assured. He squeezed the boyās knee harder as the other men in the line stirred, sensing the release of panic into the air, emanating from Douglas.
āShut him up, or I will!ā Morales commanded through the dim dark.
Patrick stood, reaching a hand to the boy.
āCome with me,ā he said. āLetās walk it off.ā
Douglas didnāt resist being pulled up to his feet, and Patrick led him deeper down the shaft, the salt crunching under their boots, into the chamber where the ceiling towered above them and the sounds of their breathing echoed tightly.
āJust focus on taking slow, deep breaths,ā Patrick said, recalling the same assurance heād offered his wife during her labor.
They paced across the chamber, headlamps lighting the way. It was one hundred feet across and wide, and maybe fifty feet high. Patrick felt the oppression of the smaller shaft lift as he became less aware of just how trapped they were. He thought to suggest to the men that they should relocate from the shaft into the wide-open chamber, but also knew they wantedāneededāto be close to where the rescuers would come through.
At the far end of the chamber, Patrick noticed that whatever had caused the cave-in had affected the chamber too. A crack like lightning had travelled down from the chamber ceiling, where it had broken open a hole in the wall, down at his feetāa hole big enough that a man could crawl through it.
Patrick kneeled, shining his headlamp into the hole, seeing a long tunnel that went a great distance, farther than his light was able to penetrate.
āWhat is it?ā Douglas whispered.
āShhh,ā Patrick said. āDo you hear that?ā
āHear what?ā
An intoxicating sound had caught Patrickās ears, coming from the hole. āI can hear water.ā
āI donāt hear anything,ā Douglas whispered, his voice high with anxiety. āIām going back to the shaft.ā
Patrick was barely aware that the boy had left his side. Heād already stuck his head into the hole, his light shining along the length of the tunnel. Alone now, he listened, letting his eyes slip closed, waiting for the sound.
He gasped as he heard it once again: the unmistakable plop of a droplet, like a tap dripping in the middle of the night.
Water.
His shoulders squeezed through the holeās diameter, and Patrick began shimmying along, lying flat, pulling himself with his elbows and pushing with his toes. The only sound was the drag of his body across the salt under him. It was slow going, but he was making progress; the end of the tunnelāa dark holeāwas getting closer.
Patrickās mouth was coated in salt, his tongue so dry he thought he might choke on it. His vision fluttered. Or was it the helmet light?
He began to fear that heād misjudged the distance to the end. He questioned if he had the strength to make it. The salt dust in the air was thickening, making Patrick cough as it burned his throat. He retched, but there was nothing to come out, and no saliva in his mouth to make throwing up possible.
The salt tunnel became rougher, the edges sharper. I should go back. But turning around was impossible, he realized, as his arms burned with exhaustion.
Patrick gritted his teeth and kept pushing. His helmet light had dimmed and could not penetrate the thick blackness hanging just beyond the exit. But finally, when he thought he could go no farther, he was pushing himself through the end of the tunnel.
There was space to stand up.
On his feet, Patrick ran his hand along the wall of another chamber.
No, not a chamber. A room.
He was inside a room, one with solid walls the color of pitch and not terribly largeāabout the size of the bedroom he shared with his wife and their little one.
It was impossible that there could be a room down here. And yet here Patrick stood, savoring the smooth, cool surface of the roomās black walls, perfectly constructed. He tilted his headlamp toward the ceiling.
What he saw there could not be true: tree branches snaking down.
They were covered in spade-shaped leaves that were so exquisitely green they seemed to shimmer. All that was missing was a gentle breeze to caress the leaves, make them flutter in the wind.
Patrick was convinced he must be hallucinating. Or that he had died.
But the ground was too solid under his feet.
This was real. The tree branches were growing down from the ceilingāout of the ceiling.
He reached up to touch one, but stopped.
Because everything about this simply couldnāt be.
He took a few steps into the room, scanning over his head, marveling at the strangeness of it all, until his eyes caught color within the leaves: a flash of red. A luscious red. Patrick adjusted his position, shuffling his feet forward, until the red object came into view.
It couldnāt be.
But it was.
A piece of fruit, perfectly spherical and plump with ripeness.
A droplet of moistureālike dewāslipped from the fruitās surface, striking the floor with a plop.
Patrick dragged his sandpapered tongue across his chapped lips. The fruit looked like the purest heād ever seen. Juicy and sweet. Filled with nutrients. Waiting to be plucked. And he knew, even as he reached up toward it, that it would be smooth and supple.
It came off easily, the stem eagerly popping from the branch.
Patrick had forgotten that he was deep underground, inside a room made of black walls. The fruit in his hand became everything, pulling him into its red ripeness, its promise of nourishment just below the smooth flesh.
It wanted to be eaten.
His teeth sunk into it. Juice caressed his tongue, filling his mouth with rich, decadent sweetness. Nectar dripped down his chin as he devoured it, savoring every moment, until his lips reached the pit at the center, and he slipped that into his mouth too.
It was not solid like a peach pit, but soft and jelly-like, and it slipped down his throat with ease, gliding along the walls of his esophagus.
Until it vanished into his stomach.
Eyes closed, Patrick licked the nectar from his fingers. But as he opened them he saw, through the beam of his headlamp, that it wasnāt nectar.
It was blood.
Patrick wiped his mouth and chin.
Thick blood.
He inspected his hands, wondering if heād cut himself somehow and the blood was his. But the sweet taste in his mouth told him that the blood had come from the fruit.
A hot sensation spiked in his stomach. He recoiled, clutching his belly, tuned in to the pins and needles prickling inside him.
And the prickling seemed to be spreading.
He stumbled back, gasping as a burst of panic flooded his mind, until he came up against the wall. The tingling trickled up his chest, and across his back. It moved down his thighs, crawling toward his toes. The tingling moved up past his shoulders, along his neck, down his arms, and to the tips of his fingers.
He was electric, every cell in his body prickling with heat.
Patrick closed his eyes and wished with all his might that he was home in his bedroom, lying with his wife, their baby cooing in the crib by their bed. But when he opened them again, he was still in the black room. The tree branches still reached down from the ceiling above. And the tingling was moving up his neck, to the inside of his skull.
Patrick began to see things in his mind that heād never seen before, things he would never do, things he didnāt want to think about, but which intruded into his mind anyway.
He thought about clutching a small animal in his hands and tearing into it with his teeth as the animal squealed.
He thought about holding a childās head under water as her little arms and legs thrashed against the sides of the bathtub.
He thought about a woman, stripped of clothing, tied to a bed. Her name was Sandra. He saw her mouth, torn open in a silent scream as he pulled a straight razor across her breasts.
Faster and faster, the thoughts intruded into his mind. They violated him over and over and over.
He thought about holding a shotgun in his hands and aiming at his sleeping parents. His finger pulled the trigger, the shotgun exploding, kicking back, splattering blood and gore against the headboard.
He thought about the young woman he held down as she fought against him, pine needles sharp against his bare knees as he fucked her on the ground of a dark, lonely park.
On and on the thoughts intruded, needling into Patrickās mind. He pulled at his hair. He screamed in the black room. But they wouldnāt stop.
Until his mind began to changeāand he felt the first flicker of pleasure.
He felt the edges of his lips curl into a smile.
The delicious pleasure grew, flooding him with dizzying joy, as the thoughts reeled through his mind.
He thought about stomping on a manās face with his boot and not stopping until nothing remained but a gory mess of blood and bone and teeth.
The sick pleasure enveloped his mind, and his own memories began to blink out. He tried to remember his wifeās name. But then pop, and it was goneāand he didnāt care.
Now, he no longer knew that he had a young child.
His body slid down the wall, and by the time he came into contact with the ground, it was no longer his body. It belonged to something else.
The man rejoined the others in the shaft. Heād learned his name was Patrick by the ID card in his breast pocket. He learned he was a miner, and that he and these other men were trapped.
And he learned that heād been gone a long time, because death had taken the other miners, their bodies strewn about in the darkness, curled up into balls of pain.
His dimming headlamp uncovered the only one who remained aliveāa young man whose ID card read, āDouglas.ā
āWhoās there?ā the survivor croaked.
āDouglas, itās Patrick.ā
āWhere have you been?ā
āIāve been here all this time.ā Patrick sat down by Douglas and held the young manās head on his lap, stroking his hair. The dying boy trembled and whimpered as dehydration racked his body. The boy was defenseless, and it was simple for Patrick to intrude into his mind.
He pushed past the black shroud of despair, then past the tender part of the boy that wanted to be at home with his mother, and swam inside his innermost thoughts until he found what he wanted.
Patrick slipped into a terrible lie hidden inside Douglas, a shameful secret that had grown heavier as each year passed. Douglas fantasized about things, perverted things that heād never dare to share with anyone. Not even his priest. The fantasies demanded to be acted on, and though Douglas was resisting them, he was finding it harder and harder not to succumb. And Patrick licked his lips as he took hold of the boyās shame and let it fill him up with wonder and pleasure and nourishment.
āWhy do you hide?ā Patrick asked the whimpering boy.
āWhat?ā
āWhy do you resist what your soul aches for?ā
Douglas began to cry in his lap, though no tears fell.
As the boy cried, Patrick tasted the fear he carried inside his shame, fear that he would be caught, castrated, taken from his mother, and locked inside a cage where other men would beat him and rape him for what he was.
Within an hour, Douglasās life finally slipped away into the black nothing, but Patrick stayed with his body, waiting. He waited until a day or two or three later when the rescuers came pouring in through a hole theyād dug out. They moved quickly, their voices high and excited, shining lights down on Patrick.
Patrick saw the suspicion written in their expressions as they stared down at him, wondering how heād managed to live while all the others died. Patrick saw in their eyes that he was entering a dangerous world. A world that would lock him up too if they knew what was inside him.
And so they wouldnāt know. He would hide.
Hide in plain sight.
"She eats your despair."
These haunting words are repeated throughout Mike Dineen's cinematic tale of a family torn apart by the secrets they have struggled to keep and their inability to protect themselves from the infection that such secrets inevitably cause. Joanna Smith, or Jo, is a successful writer of thrillers and mystery novels who maintains mystery in her own life by writing only under a pseudonym, inspired by the name of her family home. Keeping others at a distance seems to be second nature for Jo, and it is made immediately clear that this is how she prefers to live her life. Haunting flashbacks and looks into her childhood, especially the violent and terrifying relationship with Diane, her mother, explain Jo's hesitancy to be open and trusting of those around her.
When she is called home by her twin sister Amanda, Jo is forced to confront the place and the people she left behind and her own guilt at having done so. However, the homecoming quickly derails into a terrifying fight for her life when Amanda and Jo are chased by mysterious figures and creatures in the dense forest around their childhood home. Dineen paints a visceral image of the tense stillness of the pines and the overwhelming feeling of loneliness found therein. However, what begins as a thrilling mystery quickly devolves into a Lovecraftian horror when Jo realizes that the forces at work are much older and more nefarious than she had first thought. When she is finally confronted with the truth of what lies beneath and within the walls of her childhood home, Jo realizes that she will never outrun or hide from the swelling darkness that now infects her. Instead, she must find the solution and her own salvation within herself, and more specifically, within the pages of her own writing.
Dineen takes care with establishing a protagonist who develops naturally on the page and does not bother with unnecessary exposition, preferring instead to tease the reader with the clues that they will need to piece together this frightening mystery. There are some truly horrible and disturbing images and scenes in this story, making it effective as a horror story for those readers who seek to expose themselves to a truly frightening experience.
Latcher is a story that explores the darkness that can fester within family histories and the responsibilities we have to each other. The importance of these ties is examined against a monstrous background which only serves to illuminate further the evil that humans can generate when they are afraid, even without the help of supernatural or malevolent forces.