A cult hellbent on death and destruction, a troubled family with a twisted web of secrets and lies, and an ancient forest swarming with ungodly abominations.
When Hattie and Richard Penrose take their family on a ‘staycation’ to the Cornish village of Bodhmall’s Rest, cracks in their unsettled marriage start to appear, as does the truth about Hattie’s fling with a co-worker and Richard’s burgeoning money problems.
As the family members battle their own individual demons, strange creatures are sighted in the woods, and the ghost of the mysterious Red Man appears in the attic. When an undercover SOCA agent uncovers links with a criminal organisation known as The Belvedere Saints, things start to unravel at a terrifying pace. Little do the Penrose family know that Glanna Cormoran and the members of her pagan cult are keeping a close eye on them.
And the Terrible Babies. They’re watching too.
A cult hellbent on death and destruction, a troubled family with a twisted web of secrets and lies, and an ancient forest swarming with ungodly abominations.
When Hattie and Richard Penrose take their family on a ‘staycation’ to the Cornish village of Bodhmall’s Rest, cracks in their unsettled marriage start to appear, as does the truth about Hattie’s fling with a co-worker and Richard’s burgeoning money problems.
As the family members battle their own individual demons, strange creatures are sighted in the woods, and the ghost of the mysterious Red Man appears in the attic. When an undercover SOCA agent uncovers links with a criminal organisation known as The Belvedere Saints, things start to unravel at a terrifying pace. Little do the Penrose family know that Glanna Cormoran and the members of her pagan cult are keeping a close eye on them.
And the Terrible Babies. They’re watching too.
Alison raced through the forest as rapidly as her screaming lungs would allow. Brambles clawed at her face and arms, nettles attacked her ankles, and sharp, wire-like twigs slapped viciously at her chest. She was breathing heavily, her heart hammering incessantly. Hot blood rose to her face as her skin turned hard and prickly. Torrential rain was streaming through the dense canopy overhead. The freezing cold water had soaked through her thin T-shirt, causing her body to shiver and her lips to tremble. It was absurd. Just two days ago she was standing on crisp, golden sand, tossing a coin on whether to go back into the cool ocean waters or collapse onto a beach towel and soak up the baking hot sunshine.
Where was Michael? What the hell had happened to him?
Night had descended. The forest was bleak, and frankly terrifying. She could hear a distant groan, as if someone was in horrible pain. There was a thud and the squelch of footsteps in thick mud. She cried out as a bat flew across her path, and she stumbled over a raised root, sliding down an incline and landing hard on her backside.
‘Shit! Shit!’
The clasp of her sandal had torn in half, and the shoe was now hanging limp, useless. She grabbed it and threw it angrily into the undergrowth.
‘Bloody cheap crap!’
She unclasped the other and tossed that too. She was crying now, tears rolling down her cheeks and mingling with the rainwater. She wiped her forearm across her eyes and stood, almost slipping in the mud once more.
‘Michael! Where the hell are you? I’m out here in these bloody woods, all on my own! This is so like you, just abandoning me like this! You’re such an arsehole!’ She was shaking with rage, but she was afraid too, like, really afraid. Her voice became a hoarse whisper. ‘Michael? Please. I’m… lost out here.’
It was hopeless. She sounded hopeless.
That bitch; those monsters. They’d called themselves neighbours, friends even. She’d fallen for it, been taken in by the woman’s charm and her fake promises. What the hell had she been thinking? How could she have been so naïve, so pathetically foolish? Michael had tried to tell her, but had she listened? No, she hadn’t. She’d allowed herself to be seduced. To be… well, to be bloody groomed.
Suddenly there were eyes all around her: red and orange, hundreds of them floating in the black, glaring at her, malicious and hungry. She heard the sound of sniggering and scowling, like a thousand hissing snakes – the babies.
The air had turned putrid and dense, like a toxic fog. She backed away and turned on her heels, retreating the way she had come, stumbling and staggering. She could hear a wailing, a sobbing, but she couldn’t place it. She realised with a growing sense of despair that it was her. The sound was coming from her.
Childlike voices drifted from within the darkness.
Alison. We can see you. We can smell you. Come back to us, Alison, come back home.
‘Stay the fuck away from me! I don’t want you anywhere near me, you fucking freaks! I—’ Tears continued to pour down her face. Rain ran from her slick hair and into her eyes. ‘I don’t believe in you!’ She pushed through a dense thicket but tripped on a rock. She cried out but managed to keep her balance by pin-wheeling her arms and spreading her legs. She slid down a muddy slope, her body gathering pace at a frightening speed. She reached out and found a hanging strand of ivy that she clung onto in grim desperation. Her feet continued to slip and move in the mud, but she wedged them onto a slug of limestone. She began to laugh hysterically as her uncontrolled journey came to an abrupt halt.
She glanced over her shoulder. The eyes had gone, as had the cruel laughter. She was getting out of this. She was now so determined to make that her truth. Surely it had all been just a crazy hallucination, a nightmare. When she eventually woke up, she was going to slap Michael for being such a dream idiot, and then they would have coffee in bed, and maybe they would make love. She needed him close to her. She needed to feel the warmth of his skin. It had been so long.
She stepped through the wall of ivy, pushing it aside like a heavy drape, and gasped. She was at the cliff’s edge. The land fell away sharply towards ferocious waves that roared savagely beneath her feet. It was that place; that terrible, blood-soaked hellhole. The ocean ravaged the rocks with an unyielding onslaught. The sky was black, the water charcoal-grey. A sweeping, silver beam from a distant lighthouse flitted across the undulating waves. The swell rose and fell with a growing intensity. The horizon appeared endless, her route to escape just a distant promise. The hiss from the ocean sounded like a desperate scream. Alison slipped at the edge, almost tumbling feet-first into the darkness.
That was when she saw it. It was gargantuan, a giant behemoth rising from the depths. Pounding waves lashed over enormous, heavy hooves. Its hands were encased in a swarm of black locusts, its huge equine skull resembling something from a freakish horror movie. It leered down at her. Drool hung from its teeth and lips, elastic and yellow.
‘Oh… oh, God!’
She turned her head, only to be confronted by the sea of red and black once more. The eyes. They resembled a twisting loop of grotesque Halloween decorations. The laughter resumed. She heard her own voice from a million miles away, frantically reciting a once forgotten prayer.
‘I believe in God, the father almighty, creator of Heaven and Earth, and in Jesus Christ, his only son, our lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary…’
Something warm and wet fell onto her shoulder and she raised her head. Her vision was obscured by a huge, terrifying face: the skin cracked and bleeding, black, soulless eyes unmoving, dark crimson teeth hanging with festering skin. She smelled its breath. It reeked of death.
The beast smiled.
In The Faraway People by Stacey Dighton, a family rents out a cottage in Cornwall with the hope that they will be able to spend a relaxing holiday together amidst the chaos of their lives. Their vacation ends up having a lot more in store for them than anticipated, however, as they are introduced to the eccentric community of people that inhabits the area. Amidst the secrets that each family member is hiding, the family slowly begins to realize that something sinister may be at play among the locals they’ve befriended.
One thing that struck me about this novel was how cohesively Dighton managed to wrap up all of his story lines. While we are mainly following the family throughout this novel, there are a couple moments during which we go back in time to gain some context about the present day, and the way that Dighton connects all of these plotlines by the end of the novel is expertly done. There were also many characters introduced throughout this novel, and while I lost track of who one or two of the characters were a couple times, I generally found the characters to be complex enough that they were memorable and distinguishable. Especially with the family, Dighton introduced many complicated family dynamics that further fleshed out the characters.
Dighton also very elaborately lays out the quaint setting of this beach retreat/community. His skillful descriptions aid in the way that he is able to slowly but surely build up the suspense and horror throughout the story. The story generally felt well-paced, although I felt that the epilogue could have had a stronger build up to its devastating conclusion. However, this story also had twist upon twist, and I found myself continuously being surprised at each new development.
One thing that stuck out to me while reading was that a character who was a trained police officer was making mistakes that it didn’t really make sense for them to be making, given their purported level of skill. Special circumstances aside, I didn’t understand why this character was making the mistakes they were making or coming to realizations later than I, as the reader, did.
I also found that throughout the novel, so much focus was placed on the tension between the family members and their respective flaws that I didn’t particularly have much sympathy for the characters for much of the story. However, I appreciated the unlikely bonds that formed between some of the characters towards the end in an effort to combat a common enemy. By the end of the novel, I felt much more invested in the characters and in rooting for them.
Dighton’s The Faraway People was a delightful work of horror full of twists and deceit. Trigger warnings include graphic violence, mentions of homophobia, ableism, child abuse, and mentions of rape. I would recommend this novel to anyone who enjoys medium-paced horror with an emphasis on creature horror, tense and complicated family dynamics, and switching perspectives.