The House Across the Way

by Brian McNaughton

Amworth College, Connecticut -- a place where the gates between our world and the Land of Faerie are thin and crumbling, a place where horrors really do lurk in the shadows, and evils in the gardens. A place where the fates of worlds really does hide within the brushstrokes of a forgotten painting.

Genres: Horror, Fantasy, Fiction, Literature, Novels, Fairies

212 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Brian McNaughton was an American writer of horror and fantasy fiction who mixed sex, satire and black humour. He also wrote thrillers.

Reviews

[mark monday · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brian McNaughton is yet another lost, unsung author - a tragedy! although he did receive some recognition in his life, in the form of a World Fantasy Award for the story collection The Throne of Bones.

The House Across the Way - despite its faerie villains - is pure horror, set in the here-and-now. in many ways it is a precursor to Connolly's Book of Lost Things and Feist's rather feeble Faerie Tale. basically the story is about a few residents of a small college town learning how much the faerie world really wants to fuck over humans, in the worst possible ways. blood-sucking, co-ed murders, corpses walking, dreams of the future and the past, entrails strewn hither and thither, a sinister house-cum-demonic castle, a bizarre and upsetting faculty party, the Eldritch King and his vengeful but sometimes less-than-effective servants, a blind granny, a chase through dimensions and time, and a haunted playhouse are some of the items featured. the writing is fluid, equally at ease in detailing everyday details as well as clearly depicting the many supernatural, hallucinatory events. and dry, so very dry.

the elements that set this one apart from most horror novels are the structure of the narrative and the perspectives of the characters. the reader is plunged right into things - not in a way that inspires breathless page-turning, but rather one that keeps things constantly off-kilter: details parsed out slowly and ambiguously, versions of past stories differing surprisingly depending on the teller, the meaning of the events and mysteries surrounding the cast of players only becoming gradually clearer as events unfold. characterization is also fascinatingly conveyed: although the characters remain fully grounded in reality, they also exist on multiple levels, and somehow McNaughton is able to make them both very real and disturbingly mythic. another virtue: pulling away from the action or what may even seem like the climax of a key event, only to let that event be recounted through another character's perspective. the author is not afraid of graphic depiction, but even better, he is comfortable with meaningful ambiguity.

the first chapter, perfectly detailing a sad outsider's frame of mind and his disturbing transformation, is striking to say the least; the last three paragraphs - jaw-dropping, horrific. another chapter - a firsthand account of the long, terrifying night of a corpse that walks - is brilliantly unsettling and dreamlike, a grim and grotesque journey but also the second sympathetic portrayal of a terrible being's confused thought process. and another chapter, depicting the advent of a deadly home invasion while a blind grandmother struggles to come to terms with her simultaneous life in two different dimensions, starts out as compelling, almost amusing, and ends in one of the more gripping horror sequences that i've read in a while. the final struggle between granny and the Eldritch King is powerful, surreal, and really moving. the entire novel demands close attention and i found myself constantly flipping back and forth through the pages to re-read and puzzle over various clues and multi-leveled comments from characters. passive readers will not find much of value in the experience; i absolutely loved it.

[Matthias · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've added this obscure book of horror to my favorites without much of a comment quite simply because it left me baffled. But to let it sink away, unsung, in the swamp of my other reading activities would be more heinous a crime than to burden it with a review, regardless of how little justice it does to the frankly overwhelming talent of Brian McNaughton. That's why I would like to use the occasion that is this introductory paragraph to refer you to the review by mark monday who pointed me to this "buried treasure", as he aptly called it. I'm sure that my review will prove to be sufficiently harmless in its convincing company.

Brian McNaughton is a mystery. His bio is short: Born in New Jersey, attended Harvard (something tells me he was above graduating there, but maybe he could be bothered after all), worked ten years as a reporter and another ten years as a night manager at a decrepit seaside hotel. He died in 2004, but the circumstances in which he did are not easily found on the net. For the better. What has been mentioned here is all I want and need to know about this author. The man that roamed the hallways of that isolated hotel in the dead of night lives on in "The House Across The Way". His wit is sharp, his pen is polished and the pages that carry his words crackle with delight as they are turned.

There is not a single superfluous sentence in this tale. Every word is a carefully placed piece of a smooth and delicate anatomy, each unit carries an energy that adds to the blaze of wit and observation. Characters come alive halfway through their introduction and the resolution of their fates become an urgent question as the mysterious mansion shows flickers of its dark side and the author deftly puts the reader behind the eyes of his creations as they stubbornly explore the depths of his house and their nightmares.

Honestly, I didn't want this to end.

[Jack Tripper · Rating 5 out of 5]

A desert island book for me, and a serious contender for my favorite horror novel of all time. I first read this seven or eight years ago under the title Satan's Surrogate (1982), which has its own listing here on Goodreads despite essentially being the same book as far as I could tell (this edition has been slightly “modernized,” which I’ve never been a big fan of but isn’t too noticeable here). I’ll let my original review stand, though I think I enjoyed it even more the second time around, which is rare for me.
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I've no idea why McNaughton ended up disowning his "Satan" novels of the late 70s/early 80s. I do know he was unhappy with the erroneous titles and the fact that he had to sex-up the narratives at the behest of the publisher, but I feel that this and Satan's Mistress are top-shelf horror (Satan's Love Child was pretty subpar, and I haven't gotten to Satan's Seductress yet). This is the fourth book in the "series" -- which really has nothing at all to do with Satan -- and is unrelated to the previous three.

A secret doorway to the realm of Faerie has been opened up in a small, peaceful college town in Connecticut, allowing its denizens to pass through into our world. And these aren't charming little Disney-style fairies coming through, but the bloodthirsty, shapeshifting imps of old. This is a twisted, tripped-out story that features everything a fan of this genre could want: demonic fae folk; gruesome deaths; an ominous castle with a dark history; a creepy haunted playhouse; walking corpses; some King in Yellow-induced madness; wonky time-shifts; etc.

Woah, et cetera you say? Yes, and I don't want to give away any more of this mind/reality-bending tale. Just know that after the initial setup, this is a fast-paced, delightfully horrific story with good characterization, unsettling atmosphere, super-surreal imagery, and a slowly unfolding mystery that's masterfully executed. This has elevated McNaughton to one of my very favorite horror boom-era authors. Too bad he was the opposite of prolific.

A must for horror fiction fans.

5 Stars.
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ETA: Just wanted to comment on the fact that McNaughton wrote some of the very best party scenes I’ve come across in the genre. Both this and Satan’s Mistress aka Downward to Darkness feature giant shindigs that turn out … well I’d rather not say. He somehow builds an overwhelming sense of dread in the midst of drunken merriment that’s a wonder to behold. And here it’s from the perspective of a blind character, which makes it even freakier.

[Lizz · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don’t write reviews.

I’ve only read a smattering of McNaughton and I must say I’m enraptured. He has this magical style, this spark that brings his worlds to life. As he throws time and truth to the wind, he simultaneously weaves an intricate, consistent and thoughtful story.

The blurb is accurate; a playhouse is the door between our world and the world of what were once called fairies. The other world is a chaotic hellscape where everything changes at the whim of an eldritch king. When creatures from this place get into our world, they twist reality to make manifest human’s darkest dreams and basest desires. Influenced by Chambers (The King in Yellow) and Machen (The White People), but still its own beast.

Thanks to Jack Tripper for the recommendation.

[Carpentermt · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the 4th of Mr. McNaughton's novels to be published by Wildside Press. Unfortunately, unlike the others, this book as far as I can tell is only available in a nice hardcover with a pretty high list price. Page count was 209, pretty slim for the cost, but is McNaughton's final novel, I think. Originally the text was published in 1982 as Satan's Surrogate; used copies of this are quite expensive in their own right and I never saw a copy. Unlike Satan's Love Child, which was a pornographic version of Gemini Rising, I do not believe Satan's Surrogate had any objectionable material; the author reports that the text was substantially altered and we may regard THATW as his final thoughts on the text. Production qualities are good; cover art by Jaime Oberschlake was pretty good but did not blow me away.

Where Gemini Rising, Downward to Darkness and Worse Things Waiting had clear Lovecraftian motifs and themes, The House Across the Way was not in the same vein. Do not expect that it is part of the same series of stories. It owes a little bit more to Robert Chambers, with some character names, a maid named Cassilda for example, and a few place names. I have not made a study of reading Chambers' fiction like I have Lovecraft's, but I think there is no other big debt to Chambers beyond this. Similarly, in what I think is a nod towards some of McNaughton's favorite writers, there are place names from Lovecraft: the Whateley Library and the Pickman Museum.

The plot is extremely complicated and the truth only gradually becomes apparent to some of the characters. There are so many characters with such complicated relationships and points of view, and wild twistings of time, that they defy synopsis. The Otherworld is occupied by...the Others, who might be considered as Faerie. Not in the sense of lightness and good, Tolkienesque elves, but dark and incomprehensible, capricious and malicious. They love to torment humans and control them through both their uncontrolled passions and their dreams. The title house of the story occupies an important point of overlap between these realities which makes life fraught with menace for the current occupants. The Eldritch King has dark and mysterious reasons for manipulating humans, as he/it has done through the centuries.

None of this is clear to the characters in the book who fumble through their disorienting lives trying to grasp what is going on. Like in all of Mr. McNaughton's novels that I have read, all the threads come together to make perfect sense of the complex tapestry by the end. Along this wild ride, McNaughton's considerable gifts are on display: he takes us inside the minds of the characters; when it is their point of view, the world is clearly seen out of their eyes. I love the way he lets us sink into the characters' skins. Dialogue is sharp, the plot is propulsive and descriptions of the gory consequences of losing yourself to the Others are deftly written. The denouement was a fitting conclusion to a majestic effort. I was very glad to have read The House Across the Way and highly recommend it to all fans of dark fantasy literature. What a great loss that we will have no more such novels from Mr. McNaughton's pen!

[[Name Redacted] · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well, this was disappointing. It's definitely a Brian McNaughton book, but I think I was expecting something more like Raymond E. Feist's Faerie Tale or John Crowley's Little, Big and less like a bargain basement Stephen King. More eerie and fey and looming dread, less sex and gore. He's a good writer when he wants to be, but his focus on the overt (splatter) completely distracts from everything else he's doing here.

Also, I always forget that horror seemed to rely on adultery as a plot point back in the latter half of the 20th century... I get the feeling that these authors had a tremendously degenerate social circle or assumed everyone else was as perverse as they were, because they project that onto nearly all characters and it means work like this lack the verisimilitude in which a good horror story needs to be grounded.

[Hoover Public Library · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not far from a sleepy college campus, the reader will discover The House Across the Way, where a professor of medieval ballads and her family become the playthings of a court of malevolent fairies. Evocative atmosphere, rich storytelling and superior prose makes for a rewarding experience for any reader. An exceptional horror novel in the tradition of Lovecraft and Robert W. Chambers.