Skinned Babies

by Mason Burgess

Clear Vista, California is picturesque town overlooking a tranquil bay on the Pacific. Quiet. Friendly. It's a great place for children to grow up. That is, if they grow up. But an unusual number of children in Clear Vista don't live long enough to grow up. A car accident. A hit-and-run. A tumble down the basement stairs. A suicide. So many tragedies fill the plots in the local cemetery, Resurrection Gardens. The worst is the disappearance of the eight-year-old Loewen twins, Heidi and Holly. When their bodies are found in the cemetery's tool shed, the horrified townspeople are desperate to find the predator that has come into their midst. Under the mounting pressure, Police Chief Braden Powell searches for the culprit, but he soon finds himself investigating a string of additional deaths. Adults this time. All parents of lost children. They're definitely not murders, but they're definitely not natural, either. Is the town of Clear Vista just unlucky, or is something far more sinister moving over the horizon?

Genres: Horror

286 pages, Paperback

First published September 12, 2015

Reviews

[Horror Underground · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reveiw from HorrorUnderground.org

Skinned Babies
The Zharmae Publishing Press, L.L.C.
Author: Mason Burgess

Clear Vista, a picturesque town on the pacific coast, is brimming with tragedy. As the residents get older, the seemingly frequent loss of children becomes more and more apparent. The children themselves are lost in tragic circumstances, car accidents, falls at home, suicide, etc., but when two eight year old twins are the subject of a potential murder investigation, the town begins to plead for answers.

Police Chief Braden Powell is tasked with uncovering the investigation with the only clue being a mysterious transient that many have seen, but no one can describe. With pressure mounting, Powell chases ghosts as now the tables have turned and adults are beginning to die in mysterious ways...not just any adults, these are the parents of children that have died over the past few years.

With a title like Skinned Babies, one can easily assume that this will be a splatterpunk book filled with all manner of grotesqueries. Unfortunately, it is not. Not that I was begging to read about babies being skinned, to which there are none, I was certainly expecting something far more sinister than what is contained within these 286 pages. Starting off with an urban legend tale that will most certainly become the focal point of the novel, Skinned Babies starts off quite promising with an eerie tale of madness and murder. Unfortunately, the book is never able to keep up with its early promise.

Being bogged down by endless, useless description and character narrative, the reader will find themselves sucked out of the book at multiple occasions with boredom. Burgess certainly has a good grasp on writing jarring, atmospheric horror, but it happens too infrequently - giving the feeling of a novella stretched too far. The majority of this novel is written with the flair and gusto of an author being paid per word. After the prologue and opening chapters involving the murder of the Loewen twins, not much else happens. Chief Powell dates a waitress at a diner that he frequents, we learn about the needless backstory of numerous characters in lengthy exposition that has nothing to do with the story, and we learn that the townsfolk are getting classically frustrated with its small town police force.

In between the long winded backstory, we are given moments of horror. Eventually the parents begin to be knocked off by the mysterious figure that haunts the cemetery and the children they lost. The setup for each of these moments is fantastic, but then they become spoiled with uninteresting payoffs. No gore, no violence. Each setup goes out with a whimper, leading to a very unsatisfying ending that is the only thing about this book that is rushed.

The title of this book will certainly keep people away from reading it as it gives the illusion of containing extreme horror. On the contrary, this is mass market thriller/horror that would probably sell well at the front of a grocery store if it contained a more appropriate and causal title.

[Ben Wagner · Rating 5 out of 5]

For starters, the two other reviews here (and on Amazon - same ones) are fake. The reviewers were paid employees of the now defunct publisher. All of their other reviews similarly lead to books no longer available. And, in this case, it is a tragedy.

As a huge fan of 80's horror, I was thrilled to find out that after a long hiatus, Mason Burgess was releasing another novel. And with such a title! And with such wonderful 80's tropes! Child murders, witches, Halloween, not one but TWO small towns with secrets...

So I wishisted and waited. And waited. And waited some more.
The book was never officially released. The publisher went under right at the time of publication. There ARE a very small handful of ARCs around - but that is all. I got mine from a HPB location that had no clue as to what they had. If you can find it, BUY IT. Maybe not for the $800 rate, but it would be worth a $150 investment for the hardcore book collector. The novel is written in the 2000's but harkens back to the fun chills of 80's horror. It is truly an excellent work of nostalgia fiction for the horror lover!

[Amanda Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

There’s an episode of the TV series Friends, where Joey talks about putting his copy of The Shining in the freezer when it gets too scary. With this in mind, I recommend making sure you have at least a little spare room in your freezer before you start reading Skinned Babies, because you’re probably going to need it. You should also be prepared to check the locks on your doors obsessively and understand that you’re going to be very aware of even the tiniest noises in and around your home. In other words, if horror is your thing, you’re going to have a very good time with this book. If horror is not your thing, move along. Nothing to see here.

The reference to The Shining is apt because Burgess makes it clear that he draws a lot of inspiration from Stephen King and many of the other greats of the horror genre. The influence and inspiration is clearly apparent in the nothing-is-off-limits content of the story and the almost cinematic styling of the plot and descriptions. The small-town-under-siege motif is almost reminiscent of classic horror movies like Hitchcock’s The Birds or Spielberg’s Jaws, except instead of townspeople battling the natural world, they’re up against monsters quite literally of their own creation.

In all fairness, the decision to make the “monsters” of this piece children—or at least a version of children—may be considered a controversial move, at the very least. This plot point is definitely not for everyone, and it might even prove to be a deal breaker for a number of readers, but I urge a deeper look. Making children the focal point also breathes freshness into some of the tropes that are in danger of becoming too heavily overused in current entertainment. I’ll leave it at that for fear of treading too close to spoiler territory.

The focus on children and childhood as a means of creating horror is effective, though, precisely because children and childhood are typically associated with innocence, joy, and absolute goodness. Any threat to that innocence, joy, and goodness is something we agree upon as an absolute evil, and the loss or damage to childhood innocence plays on our worst fears both as individuals and as a culture. At the same time, the focus on childhood also highlights a truth about the world that most of us would rather ignore, namely that childhood is fraught with extreme dangers, from the mundane threat of a reckless driver to the much more serious and secret menaces that often lurk in our own homes and families. While we say we love and value our children—which is definitely true—as a society we often expose them to the unthinkable, and the results of carelessness or neglect become the real horror that is exposed in Skinned Babies.