The Abyss

by Steve Vance

ABANDON HOPE, ALL YE WHO ENTER YORK HOUSEIt was such a lively old house, elegant and airy, but it had one minor flaw. The people who checked in, never checked out-alive.Undaunted by rumors of evil, Cathy Lockwood walked right into the festering heart of the crumbling mansion, determined to find her brother. She was sure he was alive-in some form-and she swore she'd rip York House apart, timber by timber, to find him.She thought nothing human or inhuman could scare her away-until she confronted the horrifying secret that waited for her in the dark, fetid basement. The she could scream to high heaven, but only hell would hear her.

Genres: Horror, Fiction, Horror Thriller

368 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 1989

About the author

Credited as: Writer, Inker, Penciller mainly for DC Comics

list of work can be found here, in chronological order:
http://www.comicbookdb.com/creator.ph...

Reviews

[Phil · Rating 4 out of 5]

An odd little tale by Vance, graced with killer embossed cover art and misleading blurbs. After a brief prologue, where two newly weds on their way to Kansas City for their honeymoon (Kansas City?) stop in a small Indiana town for the night. Well, the story starts up when the little sister (Cathy) of the new couple gets called out of class; turns out, her big brother is dead. Vance switches POVs then to a young guy named Greg who is spending the summer in a small town in Indiana (yep, the same one as the prologue). Greg's family is filthy rich and he is staying with his uncle. Well, one day Cathy shows up in the little Indiana town off the bus and runs into Greg at the station...

Vance's pacing varies quite a bit here, with lots of mundane details juxtaposed to crazy action sequences. Greg knows there is something hinky about the town, and especially York family, which owns a big mansion there. Greg, however, is an outsider and does not know anyone except for one friend he made (who works at the bus station). Cathy is determined to find out what happened to her brother. The official story states he ran his VW into the Ohio river and died, but Cathy has a postcard from the little Indiana town that makes the official story suspicious. What they find turns out to be pretty crazy, but Vance takes his time building up to if for sure. Decent characters, lots of crazy scenarios and some good foo at the end. This also has some pretty nasty tales (stories) embedded in it. 3.5 stars, rounding up for GR.

[DAISY READS HORROR · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a very creepy read! The story doesn't start off slow to begin with. It really starts to pick up when accidents occur in this small somewhat deserted town. People start to disappear. Well... Sort of....

A sister goes searching for her brother who she believed was killed in one of these peculiar accidents. Thats where the story takes off.

The most horrific and even disturbing part of the entire book was reading what Greg and his friends did to the young girl they held captive many summers ago when they were young kids. It seriously disturbed me and made me feel so morbid for reading it.

The rest of the book lives up to the cover. Creepy and odd. Overall, it was a great story and I can honestly say this should be a horror classic. It is one of the oddest/ horrific stories I have ever read & trust me, I've read many!

[Christine · Rating 3 out of 5]

The description for this book (and the cover art) had me very excited; nothing makes me want to read a book more than the promise of something sinister lurking in the basement... however, it turns out there really wasn't anything lurking in the basement. In fact, they didn't even get to the basement until maybe the last 20 pages. I still enjoyed the book; it was entertaining, and I would read other works by the author, but this was nothing at all what I expected.

[Horror Guy · Rating 2 out of 5]

A perhaps overly ambitious horror paperback with tons of ideas it never quite manages to do justice to, with the sole exception of a surprisingly meta subplot that's more unsettling in its brevity than all the other supernatural horror elements

[Jeff Jellets · Rating 3 out of 5]

Indiana Addams Family Values.

Steve Vance’s The Abyss is actually bit more intriguing then one might expect from the book cover.

The main plot is (by now anyway) a pretty familiar horror trope — take one ‘well-off-the-beaten-track’ town, populate it with perverts and inbreds, and set them loose to prey on any unlucky out-of-towners unfortunate enough to wander through. At the center of Wrong Turn Euphrata, IN, is the York house, a creepy, kooky mansion populated by an Addams Family-esque collection of freaks, who have a penchant for medical experimentation and gassing their guests.

For paperback horror, not too bad, but hardly something that carry the book past a two star rating.

Where things get interesting, though, is in a subplot. In a particularly thick section of the book, there’s a confession to a particularly sordid (and heinously executed) murder by a group of children who were inspired to the act by a few notorious ‘real-world’ books. Vance names some of the names — Golding’s Lord of the Flies is on the list — but is rather coy about the trigger text: Mendal W. Johnson’s Let’s Go Play at the Adams’ (a 1974 real-world, paperback nasty).

The mention could have been just a weird little Easter Egg in the middle of the book, but Vance comes back to the subplot in the epilogue in two very strange vignettes that get very, very meta (before meta was even a thing). Pamela confronts the ersatz author Johnson’s wife and another character Greg encounters the spirits of the victims of both books. Vance seems to be playing with a theme of the ramifications of art upon real life — or as Pam remarks “I have to see the man who thought that writing this in the name of entertainment justifies what it caused a decent and loving man to do.”

Or does horror inspire horror?

Final Verdict: So some big ideas are planted in this one — keeping me from simply cashiering The Abyss into a bottom bin of lowbrow horror — but to be honest, the really interesting bits don’t actually come together in satisfying way at book’s end. I was left with a lot of head scratching. But The Abyss definitely makes me curious to find a few more of Steve Vance’s works ... he’s obviously got some chops. They just didn’t become fully fleshed this time out.

P.S. If you must satisfy pangs of guilty curiosity, TVTropes has a good write-up on Mendal W. Johnson, Let’s Go Play at the Adams’, and its unauthorized sequel at
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph....

P.P.S. From the site, “Johnson, a recovering alcoholic, resumed drinking heavily during the course of writing. The alcohol abuse contributed to his sudden early death. His widow swore that he only started drinking again because the book's dark material so deeply impacted his mental health.”

P.P.P.S. Lesson learned. Write to excise your demons. And beware that once put on the page, they don’t turn about and swallow you whole.

[Janette · Rating 5 out of 5]

I came across this book in the thrift store a few years ago and just never got around to reading it until this month. I bought it because I was initially intrigued by the cover art, then I read the back cover and was even more interested. I'm pleased to say that the book didn't disappoint and I loved it. It was well-written and just a really fun read. My only complaint is I'm sorry it's over. But I'll definitely be looking for more Steve Vance books.

[Jenni Rolph · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a strange book!
I’d had this book for year, pick-up solely for the front cover, let’s be honest!
It was a gripping read and a story I never saw coming!
I’ve never read anything quite like it and I’m not mad about it, I enjoyed it. Very odd but at least it was unique!
Would make a good movie!

[Mikepottz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Creepy town and house where people who enter dont leave. The town people will protect their evil secret no matter what. The story that kevin told is deeply dark and disturbing. A story within a story.

[b-dub · Rating 3 out of 5]

A warm little seasonal treat, an 80’s horror dime novel that never outstays its welcome.

[Lorah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quick read - good for taking your mind off reality for a bit. You get exactly what this book is - a dimestore horror novel that isn't up for awards and recognitions. Fun, fast, and gives you a chill or two.

[RickyB · Rating 4 out of 5]

Giving it 4 stars because it was a surprisingly good horror novel. May have been influenced by the ridiculously bad book I read the day before.
A short novel so good for a weekend escape. Not big on character development but not bad for a short novel.

[Samantha Françoise Dark Regions Press Proofreader · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed this literary piece and had the pleasure of working on it with Crossroads Press. A must read! I have also read the following which are wonderful to add to your collection:

* Walpurgis Night
* All The Forms Of Fear

[Matthew Johnston · Rating 1 out of 5]

Hm.

Not the most gifted observer of people. I'm giving it a few more days, then giving up.

[Barry Edstene · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well written and well thought out.

[Brian · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not Vance's best work by a long shot. Try Spook instead.