A Review of Whisper Down the Lane - Steve Bailey
Whenever I read a good suspense thriller, a feeling comes over me, a haunting sensation that lingers with me even when I am away from the pages. It is a feeling I first experienced when I read The Exorcist. I got it again by reading Clay McLeod Chapman’s novel Whisper Down the Lane.
This story has its basis in a phenomenon that emerged in the 1980s and is still around, known as the Satanic Panic. It is a conspiracy theory that holds that devil worshippers infiltrate schools and daycare centers to perform abusive rituals on children.
The spark that started this psychotic inferno was two trials in California in the 1980s when interrogators allegedly manipulated children into telling stories of ritual abuse performed by their teachers. There were no convictions in either trial.
I am fond of novels with two stories set in different times, running simultaneously and ultimately fusing. I know they will, but the how and when of this blending is part of the suspense. In Whisper Down the Lane, one story takes place in the early 1980s and provides a fictionalized version of those California trials.
Chapman puts us inside the mind of Sean, a lonely five-year-old boy desperate to please adults. Confused by a malicious adult interrogator who rewards statements that fortify the conspiracy theory and punishes those that contradict it, Sean tells her what she wants to hear. It is easy to see how the actual children would fabricate a story under that kind of pressure.
Woven into the storyline is the culture of the 1980s, “I’d like to teach the world to sing,..”, the cassette tape, He-Man, and the hauntingly beautiful Orinoco Flow by Enya Patricia Brennan. Chapman peppers his novel with references like this one to well-known horror stories, appearing throughout the book like the diamonds in The Legend of Zelda. Horror fans will find these gems delightful.
The other story takes place in 2013 and is the narrative’s driving force. Richard, the protagonist, tries to build a life with his new wife and her son from a previous marriage. But strange things begin to happen, things that appear to lead to another round of Satanic Panic. What is the source of these manifestations? Is it the grey specter that frequently appears in the novel, silent, unmoving like an image in a black and white photograph? Is Richard not who he claims to be? Or is it something altogether different?
This story is fast-paced, like a car speeding through the night on a diabolic mission. Chapman spends little time describing surroundings and uses various techniques to focus on the action. Good people and pets die, pentagrams and bizarre Polaroid pictures mysteriously appear, and accusations destroy lives in this well-crafted horror story.
Originally published by Horla 2022
Steve Bailey is a retired history teacher. For the last three years, he has been a freelance writer. His work has appeared in Commuter Lit, The Bookends Review, 101 Words, Ariel Chart, The Paper Dragon, and others. His work has been printed in anthologies, and he has self-published a novel and a collection of short stories. Steve has a complete list of his published works on his website, vamarcopolo.com.
