Six Stories: A Thriller: 1

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Twenty years later, King interviews many of those involved at the time—the leader of the outdoors group who took the teens on the trip, a man who became inadvertently enmeshed with the teens, and several of the participants themselves, as well as the man who discovered Jeffries' body. The story that emerges years later sheds new light on the events leading up to the night Jeffries disappeared, the dynamics of the group of teenagers and their sometimes-troubling behavior, the instances in which more adult supervision might have changed things, and the disturbing and bizarre legends and ghost stories about a sinister figure or creature who haunts the Fell. Is that enough to make audiences overlook the utter mess Six makes of its attempts at feminism? Judging by the rapturous reception among my fellow theatergoers at Saturday’s press preview, the answer is likely yes. But I found myself just as bothered by Six’s messiness in 2021 as I was in 2020, and if anything time has made me more vengeful. I’m more dazzled by the spectacle now than I was then, but less inclined to forgive the disarray. Atmospheric, gothic, dark and twisty, Demon is another perfect work by one of the most talented storytellers of our generation. Matt Wesolowski crafts his story with descriptors imbued with a deep physical sense. You seem to hear the crunch underfoot and experience the rawness of the swampy woodland that holds a death knell for the abandoned mine shafts hidden in the choke of winding growth. Six Stories is a novel constructed as a series of podcasts, in which an investigative journalist looks into the mysterious death of 15-year-old Tom Jeffries, which occurred twenty years ago. By interviewing people who knew Tom, podcast host Scott King attempts to paint as clear a picture as possible of the circumstances surrounding his death.

I’m not entirely sure what I expected this story to be. But it’s something altogether more chilling and better than I could have predicted. The story is an intriguing one. The beast of the East snow storm of 2018. A dead vlogger. A dangerous following. An old tale of Vampires. Three culprits. A foreboding tower. The darkness this story creates is threatening and ever lingering. It creeps up on you and you don’t notice until it’s too late. Supernatural or something far darker, something more human? Well I guess you’re just going to have to read the book/podcast. A girl frozen to death and three accused with 6 witnesses and a journalist with his own crime podcast were all in this book. 6 stories from the witnesses and I was capitulated into a different world so away from my reality. While every book in this series contains suggestions of horror, I feel pretty sure Demon goes the hardest on that front (especially the climactic scenes of episode 3... shudder). At the same time, it also delves the deepest into the ethics of true crime – again, a thread that runs through the whole series, but never more prominent than it is here. Just as Changeling turned out to be about coercive control, or Deity about the corruptive nature of power, Demon explores the problem of what people do, think and say in response to a tragedy such as the Ussalthwaite murder. Musicals aren’t always kind to women (some classics are downright misogynist), but Six is a joyous celebration of sisterhood. It’s the kind of show that makes you want to be a teenager again; if you’d found Six when you were sixteen, you’d be obsessed too. No wonder it’s getting 60,000 streams per day.

Table of Contents

I mention all this because Changeling was always going to be a very tough act to follow, and it definitely affected the way I read and reacted to Beast. This fourth book is enjoyable but, in contrast to its predecessor, does not present a complete narrative or a revelatory conclusion. Instead, it's a very different take on the perspective 'six stories' can provide.

In the wake of the 'Beast from the East' cold snap that ravaged the UK in 2018, a grisly discovery was made in a ruin on the Northumbrian coast. Twenty-four-year-old vlogger, Elizabeth Barton, had been barricaded inside what locals refer to as 'The Vampire Tower', where she was later found frozen to death.As every interview unveils a new revelation, you’ll be forced to work out for yourself how Tom Jeffries died, and who is telling the truth. Well, so there is a lot of precedent for fictional investigation of crime through a patchwork quilt of interviews – this was also what Truman Capote did in In Cold Blood and Norman Mailer in The Executioner’s Song – both brilliantly. As the disturbing darkness unfolds you have the old and the new, local legend, fable, folklore and myth of the Ergarth Vampire combined with social media, perverse Internet games, modern life and real-world issues in an unholy union. What happens next is somewhat disturbing to me. I’d like to think that when I die people will let me rest in peace. Unfortunately for the protagonist, a few of the doctors in charge of performing his autopsy aren’t so respectful to the dead. One doctor in particular, Rusty, who thinks Howard has an uncanny resemblance to Michael Bolton, finds it amusing to move Howards mouth in sync with his singing. Thankfully, Dr. Arlen doesn’t find this display very amusing and removes Rusty from the room. The setting and the sense of place that you get whilst reading Beast is tremendous and you are transported to the rundown coastal town of Ergarth. Ergarth is a claustrophobic small town where Tankerville Tower ‘The Vampire Tower’ a decaying monolith on the outskirts casts a forbidding shadow over the whole town. It is an area that has been forgotten by the government with no money and no jobs available. It is a place where life has been drained, leeched away, bleak and drab where the colour is muted and has turned to grey. It is a community where everyone knows each other and where gossip and rumours are rife. It is a town with history, the Ergarth Vampire a story that has been passed down through the centuries and from one generation to the next.