"Burnt Offerings" is nineteen-seventies classic horror. It's not in a hurry, It's not looking for the quick spike of fear that comes from slash-and-splash action. It's a slow burn read designed to build the kind of terror that comes from extended exposure to a threat you can't name, that you may even blame yourself for and which you can't escape.

Marasco takes a relatively normal domestic "What if?", adds an element of the supernatural and then unfolds events with dreadful implacability, leaving me feeling like I was watching flies struggling in the web of a spider that I hadn't yet seen. The "What if?" is: what if you had chance to have your dream house but the price was putting your marriage under strain and leaving you with no energy left over to do anything else? Would you pay the price? Would it be worth it? Could you NOT pay the price once you've started?

I suspect that, if this were being converted to a movie today, there would be a rush to get the young family to the haunted house so bad things could start to happen before people lose interest. Marasco goes a different route. He makes the oppression of living in a crowded, noisy apartment block in Queens in the summer heat and humidity come alive. He gives us time to look at wife and husband and to see how they are alone and apart. This achieves two things: it makes the decisions each of them make later more believable and it lays the foundation for believing that what befalls them is, somehow, their own fault.

When we finally get to the huge, remote house in up-State New York that the couple is thinking of renting for the summer, there is a strong sense of threat being masked in the same way that a spicy sauce is used to hide the tainted meat it covers. The masking is done partly by the weirdly charismatic Alerdices, who own the house but the couple themselves actively collude in not seeing anything wrong.

As the reader, hearing the Alerdices say that the house will be rented to "The right people'" felt like a doom or a curse, as if they were identifying "the right people" the same way that a predator uses the barely-there-but-bound-to-get-worse lameness to mark one of the herd as prey.

To me, the rental house seems a twist on the fairy tale gingerbread house: part lure, part trap. The Alerdices, brother and sister, seem at first to be the wicked witch, yet something speaks to priest or acolyte which opens the question of who or what is being worshipped.

Yet the Alerdices do not force the house on this couple. The wife lusts after it, not just blind but antagonistic to any suggestion of a problem. The husband senses the taint of something rotten beneath the surface but will not stand behind his judgement. If the house is a trap then these two have chosen to ensnare themselves. This self-ensnarement provides an element of guilt that will make them distrust themselves and each other and which made me less sympathetic to them.

As time goes by and various spooky, tension-inducing things happen, I found myself starting to dislike both the husband and the wife. They were never particularly engaging but I could feel the best parts of them leaching away like topsoil in a rainstorm, as they came under the influence of the house. I think the power of Marasco's writing is shown by how my perceptions as the reader where manipulated, letting me slide from being neutral about this couple at the start of the novel to experiencing a kind of grim schadenfreude-driven satisfaction at what happens to them at the end.

I won't give away what happens. The ending was not a surprise but that amplified rather than reduce the level of horror.

I listened to the audiobook, read by R.C Bray, who I always think of as having a "Joe Friday" voice although his range is much broader than that. He's the perfect choice for this low key but relentless horror story.

Click on the SoundCloud link below to hear a sample.

Love the slow-burn tension in this book. It gives a sense of threat masked, like tainted meat beneath a spicy sauce.

Saying that the house will be rented to "The right people' feels like a doom or a curse, marking "the right people" the same way that barely-there but bound to get worse lameness marks one of the herd as prey.

I'm asking myself if the rightness based on need or on something else, something that makes the prey sweeter?

The house itself is a twist on the gingerbread house - a lure and a trap.

The Alerdices , brother and sister , seem at first to be the wicked witch, yet something speaks to priest or acolyte rather than witch, in which case, is it the mother, she who must be offered a tray three times a day, who is being worshipped or the house?

Is there a link between the boys cut knee and the revitalisation of the apparently dead plant?

And is the fact that the husband senses but cannot find the taint and will say yes to the house anyway something worthy of blame or something that shows that fate cannot be avoided?

I love being able to close the book at the end of the chapter that brings me a quarter of the way through the novel and ponder these things rather than being rushed to the splatter and gore.

I've been meaning to read this haunted house story for some time and the opening hasn't disappointed me.

It's read by R.C Bray, who I always think of as having a "Joe Friday" voice although his range is much broader than that. He's the perfect choice for this very late seventies early eighties kind of horror. 

If this were being done today, I think there would be a rush to get the young family to the haunted house so bad things could start to happen before people lose interest. Marasco goes a different route. He makes the oppression of living in a crowded, noisy apartment block in Queens in the heat and the humidity come alive and he gives us time to look at wife and husband and how they are alone and apart. It's an encouraging start,

Marian is a 70’s housewife and she is tired of city life and coerces her husband, Ben, into checking out a summer rental with a beach that is far from the sweltering heat, stink and noise of the city. He says it sounds too good to be true and whines, “but honey, we can’t afford it”. But he caves. Should’ve stood your ground, man!

The rental turns out to be a giant estate on 200 acres. There are 30 rooms and all they have to do is pay $900 for the summer and leave “Mother” sustenance three times a day. Ummm, what? Yes, Mother is staying! Apparently, Mother doesn’t leave her room and will be no trouble at all as long as you keep to the feeding schedule or so say the weird brother and sister who are renting the place and who skedaddle out of town leaving no contact information as soon as the couple agrees to rent the place.

Marian immediately takes to the home as if it were her own, obsessively preparing meals for Mother and cleaning and fretting (which sounds like a vacation in Hell to me) while Ben, his aunt and their young son fritter away their days in the sun. But that doesn’t last long. Soon enough eerie events start to occur and Marian’s obsession with the house intensifies. They can try to escape but the house wants what it wants!

This was an unnerving listen that allows the dread to slowly build. It is read expertly by R.C. Bray who is perfect for this kind of old-timey story. His voice is so serious and wizened just enough to set the scene and make the words even creepier. But, folks, it was written in the early 70’s and its 70’s roots are definitely showing in some of the dialogue.

“I’ll do the talking. Just look pretty and keep your mouth shut.” Ben says this to Marian and she doesn’t punch him the face.

At another point Marian says (out loud, mind you) to Ben, “You know I’m the dumb one.” He accepts this as fact and again does not get punched in the face and they move along with their day.

Ahhh, the 70’s. I am so very glad I was too young to have to deal with this WTFery!

If you like haunted houses and haven’t listened to this story on audio, what the heck are you waiting for?

What scares me most, as a horror reader, is not gore or on-screen frights; what gets under my skin is the unseen. The imagination is a helluva thing, and mine is good at creating terrors worse than what is usually on the page. Perhaps this is why horror from the 1960s and 1970s is my favorite: it isn’t gratuitous or in your face with blood and screams . . . instead, it relies on the reader using his or her own imagination to fill in the blanks.

Burnt Offerings is one such novel.

This is quiet horror at its finest. The Rolfes — Ben, Marian, and son David, as well as Ben’s aunt Elizabeth — rent a “unique” summer home for two months at a steal. The estate is two hundred acres of water-front property. The mansion has tons of rooms, endless hallways, a pool, the finest furniture and dishes. It is a marvelous place, especially compared to the Rolfes’ cramped Queens apartment. But, of course, some things are too good to be true . . .

A rather unrelenting descent into obsession and insanity, this novel is a force to be reckoned with and should get more recognition. It seems to be largely forgotten these days. An obvious inspiration for stories like The Shining, this is an unnerving tale I won’t soon forget.

Read for ‘Gothic’ in Halloween Bingo.