It’s that combination of peculiar local culture and isolated location that lets small towns develop into genuine horrors, if we let them. When I wrote The Gulp<\/em> and The Fall<\/em> I leaned hard into that concept\u2014Gulpepper is a small harbour town on the coast of New South Wales in Australia that some maps don\u2019t even show. That town is weird with a capital WEIRD. I got to build an entire mythology around its weirdness which allowed me to tell all kinds of wild stories, and I\u2019m not finished yet. There\u2019ll be more Tales From The Gulp<\/em> one day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I wanted to visit that idea again with Sallow Bend<\/em>, my latest novel coming out through Cemetery Dance Publications on September 2nd<\/sup>. But where Gulpepper is truly weird, Sallow Bend is a small town with a slightly different angle\u2014this one is a pretty regular place, only it has a dark and forgotten history. Forgotten except that it periodically repeats, and at the start of the novel it\u2019s beginning to come around again. That history best left unspoken is another aspect that makes the small town intriguing and potentially frightening. It\u2019s small, isolated, with a dark past\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n Where the isolation of the small town allows strange culture to build, it also provides a kind of trap when things go awry. In the city, the police are usually not far away (although they might shoot you simply for calling them, but that\u2019s an entirely different strain of horror). In the city, you can jump on a bus or a train or hail a cab and leg it. In the city, there\u2019s usually cell phone coverage. In the city you can get lost in the crowd and spend most of your time unnoticed. In a small town, the cops are very far away. In a small town there\u2019s no public transport to help you get away (where I live there\u2019s a bus once per hour on weekdays between 9am and 6pm\u2014good luck if the monster is after you in the evening, or you just missed the last bus and have to wait another hour.) In a small town there are often cell phone dead spots\u2014honestly, those places piss people off but they\u2019re a fucking godsend for horror writers. In a small town, you can\u2019t do anything without someone seeing you and taking note. And there\u2019s another aspect of the horror we draw on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOh, I noticed young Charlie wasn\u2019t in school on Tuesday. Perhaps he\u2019s dying of some rare terminal childhood disease!\u201d Yeah, or maybe he had a dentist appointment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHey, I saw old Mr. Crackerjack taking a lot of money out of the bank on Friday. I wonder if he\u2019s paying off some terrible debt? Or hiring a hitman to take out Mrs. Crackerjack?\u201d Yeah, or maybe he needs a new car.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Honestly, the gossip machine is out of control in local communities. But that\u2019s the thing about the small town community\u2014any of those explanations could be true, from the boring to the infernal. The people can have as many dark secrets as the place. Someone might be as sweet as pie or a cannibal who wants to eat your lips, sauteed in a nice onion and garlic sauce. Your lovely neighbour might indeed be dear old Mrs. Flowerpot, who runs the Country Women\u2019s Association and makes delicious orange marmalade cake, or she might be dear old Mrs. Flowerpot, who runs the Country Women\u2019s Association and makes delicious orange marmalade cake and is also a slimy swamp beast wearing the original Mrs. Flowerpot\u2019s skin like an ill-fitting suit. \u201cDo come in for a nice, moist slice of cake dear, then I\u2019ll trim off those full lips of yours and fry them up with onions and garlic.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Small towns are often old too, therefore packed with haunted places. There are a million apocryphal stories passed on by generation after generation that make city-based urban legends seem like children\u2019s stories. When people see everything that goes on, it\u2019s easy to speculate about your neighbours and the best speculation involves all manner of things sinister and cruel. Despite the idea that small towns are friendly and supportive (which, to a large degree, they often are) they frequently also create sharply opposed cliques, groups at loggerheads with each other about any number of issues, small or large. This engenders all kinds of potential conflict. Now the town is small, isolated, with a dark past, and there are factions and gossip running rife. Who fits where? And why? Or why not?<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the idea of fitting in often brings those communities together on one subject: their disdain for the outsider. Their distrust of anyone not local. That alone creates some wonderful fodder for horror. But what if you\u2019re part of that community but also, somehow, always seen as the outsider?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Equally, of course, the disdain can run the other way, with urban folk sneering at the backwards simpletons in the country. Well, that\u2019s all very well, Chad, until you go for a weekend antiquing and your cell phone has no coverage and dear Mrs. Flowerpot is eating your lips. Sucked in, Chad!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Small town horror has been around forever, and some of our favourite horrors are small town ones. Think of movies like A Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween, Scream<\/em>, or The Lost Boys<\/em>. TV like Midnight Mass, Stranger Things, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, League of Gentlemen<\/em>, or Gravity Falls<\/em>. And of course books, like Stephen King\u2019s Salem\u2019s Lot, Needful Things<\/em> or IT<\/em>, Peter Straub\u2019s Ghost Story<\/em>, Shirley Jackson\u2019s We Have Always Lived in the Castle<\/em>, Josh Malerman\u2019s Goblin<\/em>, Jennifer McMahon\u2019s The Winter People<\/em>, and so many more. Plus, of course, my own books like The Gulp<\/em> and The Fall<\/em>, and now my new one, Sallow Bend<\/em>. All these examples are just a random selection off the top of my head, and even there you can see such a wide range of horror styles. The genre is indeed a truly broad church, from the blood-soaked to the deeply disquieting and everything in between.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I think small town horror has a place deep in our souls, and I have a theory as to why, beyond the obvious one that it\u2019s just super entertaining and hella creepy. Just maybe it\u2019s because, no matter where we live or were born or grew up, we\u2019re each a kind of small town ourselves, existing in our isolated brain-mind-trapped-in-a-meat-bag state. The locations of these horrors are small, isolated, with a dark past, and there are factions and gossip running rife, and people who don\u2019t fit in. That only serves to highlight our own fears of insignificance, isolation, forgottenness, otherness, with our secrets we don\u2019t want others to know, and a terror of not fitting in, or just being too fucking weird. Perhaps therefore, these stories reflects some of the most deep-seated issues we all carry with us, consciously or not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But take comfort, friend, because the other thing horror does so well is help us face the darkness. It helps us interrogate our fears. It\u2019s cathartic and emboldening. And while we might each be a little isolated weirdo, we can all be isolated weirdoes together in our love of this wonderful genre. I hope you enjoy some small town horror soon, you brain-mind-trapped-in-a-meat-bag, you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sallow Bend<\/em><\/strong> is now out through Cemetery Dance Publications <\/em>— ! Learn more about it and everything else Alan Baxter at <\/em>www.alanbaxter.com.au<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
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