The Mackey House is a century-old house, now a B&B owned by a husband and wife in the idyllic Pocono Mountains. When Jan, a struggling writer, returns for a writing retreat, he learns that the husband has gone missing. Inspired by the enigmatic statue on the front lawn, he begins researching the tragic and twisted history of Mackey House, and in the process teams up with Kathy, a local Sheriffâs deputy, to investigate the husbandâs disappearance. They uncover secrets that will put them, body and soul, in the gravest danger.
The Mackey House is a century-old house, now a B&B owned by a husband and wife in the idyllic Pocono Mountains. When Jan, a struggling writer, returns for a writing retreat, he learns that the husband has gone missing. Inspired by the enigmatic statue on the front lawn, he begins researching the tragic and twisted history of Mackey House, and in the process teams up with Kathy, a local Sheriffâs deputy, to investigate the husbandâs disappearance. They uncover secrets that will put them, body and soul, in the gravest danger.
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The tapping of steel on stone, followed by running footsteps, drew Jan to the porch railing as a spotlight illuminated the strange statue on the lawn. After scanning the darkness for a moment, the light switched off, leaving only the full moon to illuminate the scene below. When the moon-cast shadow detached itself from the statue and slid across the lawn, Janâs rational mind dismissed what he saw as a trick of the light, but a seed of fear was planted deep in his subconscious.
He heard a muffled curse from the ancient Crown Vic cop car that was the source of the dazzling light. More indistinct mutterings cut off as the driverâs window rolled up. Exhaust fumes blurred the taillights of the cruiser as it pulled away, descended the hill, and disappeared around a bend. Janâs eyes followed it, then tracked further down the hill to where the moon reflected off the waters of Lake Wallenpaupack.
Wind-blown leaves, their fall colors turned to shades of grey by the moonlight, danced around the enigmatic statue standing proudly on the lawn. Like a magnet, it drew his eye. As he had many times before, Jan wondered about its origins and why it seemed more alive than simply a chunk of granite.
Damn, itâs getting cold.
He rubbed the gooseflesh on his arms and suppressed a shiver.
I hope that Tomlin couple is done, well, âcouplingâ, so I can get some sleep.
Turning to his laptop sitting on a table, which had long since gone to sleep itself, he sighed and closed it. The new novel it contained just needed a final polish before going back to his publisher.
Iâll wrap that up tomorrow after I head home.
Scooping it up, he re-entered his suite and stopped to listen. The century-old floorboards in the Mackey House bed-and-breakfast announced hurrying footsteps in the hall outside, which were followed by the squeal of the Tomlinsâ door closing, then some rustling and murmuring, the squeak of bedsprings, and ultimately silence.
If they start up again, Iâm going to bang on their door. Maybe theyâll let me join them.
He chuckled to himself. It had been two long, lonely years since he returned home from a writing retreat at this very bed-and-breakfast to find an empty house and divorce papers on the kitchen table.
I should write more, now that Iâm up, he thought.
But he had nothing to write. He should be drafting his third novel, now that the second was nearly finished. His agent talked about his growing readership, and her expectation that âthe next oneâ would be a bestseller. Her encouragement was a much-needed boost to his chronically deflated ego, though he knew the reality of his âsuccessâ was but a shadow of the publisherâs expectations.
I canât. I just canât. Iâve got nothing to say anymore.
Each time Jan sat down to write, his mind wandered. When he forced himself to reread what he had written so far, he ripped it apart and littered it with comments and corrections. As edits piled on top of edits, he realized the story was tedious and worse, boring. His agent insisted his growing fan base would eat up whatever he wrote. The book contract that launched his second career, and probably saved his life, led to a second one and a third. Even though this third novel was barely begun, his publisher was already pestering him for progress reports.
Itâs crap. Everything I write now is crap. It was all luck before, not talent.
What he couldnât explain to his agent or publisher, though, was that his previous stories had evolved in his head for years before he put fingers to keyboard. Theyâd still be floating in there if he hadnât lost his wife, his house, and his job in the space of a month. He couldnât just spit out another one. So, he fled to here, where this new career that he had sacrificed everything for had begun, looking for inspiration.
At least here, in the mountains of eastern Pennsylvania, he felt a semblance of peace. In the past, in this place that was the antithesis of his ârealâ life, he had the solitude he needed to capture his dream life in words. Not this trip, though.
Perhaps it was the company of his fellow guests, the strange Tomlin couple whose noisy sexual antics in the suite next door had driven him out onto the chilly porch an hour ago. Jeffâs loud, crassness and Naomiâs tittering, faux-girlish laughter set Janâs nerves on edge.
Jan looked to the bottle of bourbon on the sitting-room table, then tilted his head to listen.
Silence. I guess theyâre done.
With a goodnight wave to the bottle, he turned into his bedroom.
Iâm leaving tomorrow. Maybe when I get home, Iâll be able to write something, or at least get a decent nightâs sleep.
I started The Ghost of Mackey House thinking this story was going to center around this B&B, Mackey House, and the ghost that was in it, with the history surrounding it as its dark and mysterious backdrop. Unfortunately, for me personally, this was not the case.
Books with a haunted house are usually very heavy with atmosphere. The Ghost of Mackey House feels like it has very little atmosphere, likely because the story is so character-driven. The characters spend so little time actually experiencing Mackey House that the haunting atmosphere just isn't there. I like in-depth characters a lot, but not when the integrity of the plot is put aside for character exposition and backstory. This sort of exposition takes up most of the book - we don't get much of the ghostly atmosphere and plotline until two-thirds into the story, and so I was very uninvested for that much of the book.
I won't get too into the characters themselves - overall, they weren't bad, and I think if I was more prepared for an almost entirely character-based story, I would have enjoyed it more. I do wish, however, that I was able to empathize with the characters more. I think if they were written in such a way that I truly felt for them, they could have been excellent characters.
I don't think this book needed to be as long as it was. I think a lot of the story relied on characters' backstories to fill the wordcount, and thus made the story feel slightly incoherent and muddled. I think this book could have been great if it was shorter, almost a novella, and if it took place more inside the titular Mackey House. However, I do think the story, as written, could make a very cool videogame. In terms of the characters and the history, it really reminded me of games like Silent Hill or Resident Evil (if you were to make it more horror-based).
While The Ghost of Mackey House was not for me, I do want to end this review with some positives. When the story does pick up, in the later half of the book, the plot was a lot more compelling and I became really eager to find out what happened in the end. And, if you are someone who likes more character-focused storytelling, I will say the background characters are very fun, and I would read the book again just for them.