The Forever House

The common horror trope of a malignant new arrival upending an otherwise normal town serves as the template for this chilling but uneven supernatural novel. In this case, the new arrival is the Eldreds, a creepy family of five that will put readers in mind of a less approachable Addams family, who move to Brookside Court, Ohio. Waggoner (The Mouth of the Dark) devotes the first half of his tale to profiling the Eldreds’ neighbors, delving into the deep-seated flaws beneath their perfect suburban exteriors—Neal Wilkerson is uneasy with his wife Kandice’s bisexuality; Martin Hawkins has a gambling addiction; Spencer Parsons is a pedophile; and so on. The Eldreds lure this troubled cast of characters to their home to feed on the “negative psychic energy” they give off, subjecting each of the townspeople to terrors personally tailored to their faults and fears. The horrors inside the Eldred house are spectacularly realized, but so over-the-top that the eventual resolution is contrived and unconvincing. Waggoner’s tale delivers some solid scares, but only occasionally rises above the genre conventions it employs. (Mar.)