Story for the Week
Everyone practices perfectly normal rituals as well as their own unusual rituals every day. We wash our hands before we eat. We brush our teeth before bed. When Corinne was a baby, our bedtime ritual included bath, pajamas, story, bedtime. We put our socks and shoes on the same way every time, and if we don’t, it feels weird.
Anyone who practices organized religion understands rituals. Prayers are said a certain way at certain points in the church service. We share Communion the same way every time. Weddings, funerals…churches handle these services much the same from one to the next. Many churches have a moment where you “pass the peace” and greet the people sitting around you. As an introvert (Introverts Need Dialog Too (Book Dialog, That Is)), that’s one I dislike more than a little bit.
Then there are rituals specific to us that may or may not strike others as a little odd. When I have a plate full of food, I eat one thing at a time. I am not a bite-of-this-bite-of-that person. For our recent Thanksgiving dinner, I ate my cranberry sauce, my corn, my mashed potatoes, my macaroni pie, my turkey, and finally my roast. I might vary the order from one year to the next depending on what I want to eat first, but I would never—ever—eat a little corn, a little potatoes, a bite of roast, a little more corn, some turkey, more potatoes. Don’t ask me why. I have no idea. It’s just the way I’ve always eaten.
When Dennis and I got together, he decided one day that he didn’t want to say “goodbye” when we hung up the phone or left the house for work. He said it felt too final, like we were never going to see each other again. (He grew up in the Caribbean and might have been more than a little superstitious.) So he decided on “love you, see you.” Over text, it became LUSU. Corinne and I still say it today, and even my dad says it to Corinne.
Speaking of my dad, he and Corinne have an unusual ritual that started when she was still in a car seat. My dad spent the vast majority of his career working in ramp service for a couple of different airlines. One of the jobs of ramp service is to direct the planes in and out of the hangars. After Corinne was born, he shifted that talent into making hand and arm motions that she could mimic just to entertain her.
As she has gotten older, the motions have become faster and more complicated, but it is a grandfather/granddaughter ritual that means a lot to both of them. They even have a name for it—the waves. One time when she was maybe six or seven years old, my parents brought her home from school, and she came inside to drop off her backpack and planned to go back outside to do the waves. My parents were headed to dinner, and they didn’t realize she had planned to go back out, so they left.
When I tell you…so many tears because Grandpa left without doing the waves. But don’t think it doesn’t mean just as much to my dad as it does to Corinne. When I called to tell them how upset she was, they stopped on their way home after dinner. It used to embarrass her if they were in public, but now she doesn’t mind so much. She even willingly did the waves at her 18th birthday party in front of her friends.
The waves are their ritual every time they see each other, even if just for five minutes. “Grandpa, can we do the waves?” And once the motions finish, they do a double thumbs up followed by, “See you later, alligator. After a while, crocodile. Not too soon, you funny baboon. Love you, see you.”
Theirs is a good ritual…unlike some of the creepy rituals in the book reviewed below.
Book Review
⭐⭐⭐⭐
4 Stars for Midnight is the Darkest Hour by Ashley Winstead
391 pages
Publisher: Sourcebooks Landmark
Publication Date: October 3, 2023
The Creepy Book Club selection for November 2023, purchased on Amazon.
Publisher’s Description
For fans of Verity and A Flicker in the Dark, Midnight is the Darkest Hour is a twisted tale of murder, obsessive love, and the beastly urges that lie dormant within us all…even the God-fearing folk of Bottom Springs, Louisiana. In her small hometown, librarian Ruth Cornier has always felt like an outsider, even as her beloved father rains fire-and-brimstone warnings from the pulpit at Holy Fire [Born Again].
Unfortunately for Ruth, the only things the townspeople fear more than God and the Devil are the myths that haunt the area, like the story of the Low Man, a vampiric figure said to steal into sinners’ bedrooms and kill them on moonless nights. When a skull is found deep in the swamp next to mysterious carved symbols, Bottom Springs is thrown into uproar—and Ruth realizes only she and Everett, an old friend with a dark past, have the power to comb the town’s secret underbelly in search of true evil.
A dark and powerful novel like fans have come to expect from Ashley Winstead, Midnight is the Darkest Hour is an examination of the ways we’ve come to expect love, religion, and stories to save us, the lengths we have to go to in order to take back power, and the monstrous work of being a girl in this world.
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Main Characters:
- Ruth Cornier – 23-year-old librarian in Bottom Springs, Louisiana, daughter of the local minister, unlikely best friends with Everett; obsessed with the book Twilight
- Everett Duncan – became Ruth’s best friend in high school; only child of an alcoholic and abusive single father because his mother died in childbirth; left home after his father died to escape Bottom Springs but this is the first summer he’s been back in a couple of years
- Pastor James Cornier – preacher at Holy Fire Born Again, has built up almost a cult following with his fire-and-brimstone style, strict fundamentalist
- Barry Holt – a young deputy who has been dating Ruth for the past year
Content warnings (provided by author): religious fundamentalism, substance abuse, ableism, colonialism, familial violence, sexual violence, child abuse, murder
I wasn’t sure what to expect from this book when I started it. It was a book club selection for November, and I was behind schedule. By the time I started it, I had seen a lot of people in the book club talking about how they couldn’t get into it, they didn’t like it, but I was determined to read it. I’m so glad I did.
Told in the first person by Ruth, the story begins in the present day at a press conference held by the local sheriff. He announces the discovery of a human skull in the swamp with evidence of blunt force trauma. While Ruth’s father, the local preacher, prays for God to cast out the demon that surely walks among them, Ruth escapes to the quiet of her home. Later that evening, Everett arrives, and we discover that Ruth and Everett know something about the skull in the swamp because Ruth tells Everett, “It’s finally happened. They found him in the swamp.”
Someone is dead. Ruth’s father already appears to be on a witch hunt. Ruth and Everett know the identity of the dead person in the swamp. And I want to know who it is. This is page 7, ya’ll. This is how you start a great thriller!
The rest of the book alternates between present day and when Ruth was 17, 18, and 19. The story is kind of a slow build (a little too slow, thus the 4 stars), but I do not want to give anything away here. There are elements of Christian fundamentalism, paganism, symbols of evil and protection, middle-of-the-night rituals, conspiracies, the idea that you really don’t know who you can and can’t trust. The only person Ruth completely believes in is Everett, and she even doubts that at some point.
The bodies keep piling up, and everyone is keeping secrets from everyone else—even Ruth and Everett. I really couldn’t wait to figure everything out.
Pick this one up. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.
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