The Bayou

by Arden Powell

"Eugene didn’t know if he believed in the devil beyond the wicked things people did of their own accord, but if the devil had a face, it would look like Johnny Walker’s."

Small-town Louisiana, 1935.

When Eugene was twelve, a girl from town disappeared. Everyone said the gators must have got her when she strayed too near the bayou. No foul play, just a terrible accident. But Eugene can't shake the conviction that Mary Beth's death had something to do with the man who used to haunt her—the man no one else could see.

Now, nearly two decades later, there are more dangerous things than gators in Chanlarivyè. People are disappearing again, and this time, no one can find the bodies. As the town's unease grows, charismatic fugitive Johnny Walker arrives on the scene, shedding bullet casings and stolen bank notes in his wake.

He tangles himself up in Eugene's life and awakens memories Eugene thought he had laid to rest years ago. Memories of the mysterious man who followed Eugene into his dreams, and memories of the bayou—

And of the horrifying entity that lurks beneath the water's surface, slowly seeping into the town like a stain.

Genres: Horror, Queer, Fantasy, LGBT, Historical Fiction, Historical, Gothic

149 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 12, 2021

About the author

Arden Powell (they/them) is a Canadian author and illustrator with stories in Lightspeed Magazine, Baffling Magazine, and Haunt Publishing, and whose books include The Faerie Hounds of York, The Bayou, the Flos Magicae series, and their short story collection, The Carnelian King and Other Stories. A nebulous entity, they live with a senior rescue hound and an exorbitant number of houseplants, and enjoy the company of both.

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Reviews

[Frankie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was supposed to be a buddy read but I accidentally read it in one sitting 👁👄👁

Sorry, Sed.

>gay
>Southern gothic
>Christianity being terrible
>demons and devils and ghosts and other spooky things
>holy shit that ending

[Daydreamer · Rating 5 out of 5]

My general impression is YOU NEED TO READ THIS BOOK.

I have no words to describe this, but I'm in love.
The Bayou is an example of storytelling at its finest. This dark, gothic feverish story is a gem. The writing is absolutely brilliant and the atmosphere Powell delivers here is INSANE. .. one hundred stars

[Linh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh, how I so love reading Southern gothic literature! Definitely my comfort genre.

The Bayou, in its bare bones, is not super intricating or mind-blowing of a story to write home about. But the way Arden Powell wrote this book made it shine so beautifully. Lush, evocative, creepy; and so very horrific and erotic at times.

This was a very enjoyable read for me. I wish it was longer! 🖤

[Stitching Ghost · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had a bit of a hard time keeping up with the story at first but I ended up really liking this little novella. I liked the main character and how he progressed, the different threads of the story and the use of the space were also pretty solid. If you're in the market for a blend of horror, fantasy and historical fiction this one might be for you.

[Iman (hiatus) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hmmmmmmmmmmm it was a really, really difficult book. I feel so stupid the whole time. It fits to halloween and eerie theme. Halloween BR with Hugo :) which made everything better.

[Claire Cray · Rating 5 out of 5]

This really gives us a lot.

Melancholy psychological horror. Lurid, soulful crime fiction. That Louisiana Gothic atmosphere dialed up to 11. Relentless human suffering. Heavily descriptive sex scenes full of dark feelings. Vengeance. A killer final act. A moral point of view with heart and teeth.

All that. But honestly, I was sold before the end of page one.

[Laura (laurascozyreads) · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars

queer southern gothic horror with men that are too pretty and air that is too hot and smiles that are too sharp my beloved!!

there is something uncanny about hot summer days, how time stretches like molasses, dog days making everyone go a bit insane and blurry around the edges.
arden powell is a master at creating that atmosphere, invoking the oppressive, sickly heat of a southern summer in the 1930s.

the bayou isn't a long book, but it packs a punch. it's unsettling and alluring, the writing seductive in a way that makes your skin crawl. while i enjoyed the built up of the story a tad more than some of the revelations, the ending was just!! the writing and the themes of this book — if you enjoy dark, queer stories that are kind of messed up, similar to summer sons, you would probably also enjoy this. which is to say, personally, i adored it.

also the way this is lowkey a monster romance... a slay if i do say so myself

(you might want to check the content warnings for this one)

[Teru · Rating 5 out of 5]

4,5*

...oh. OH 👁️👄👁️

Southern gothic queer horror story with an incredibly stifling, unsettling atmosphere. Even though I've read this shivering under the blanket, I could almost feel the cloyingly hot and humid summer.

Mary Beth? Good for you. Give them hell.

Beware of the CWs, for such a small book there's quite a few.

[Amanda Prado · Rating 5 out of 5]

me the moment i read that last chapter: HOLY FUCKING SHIIIITTTT LETS FUCKING GOOOOOOO

the gay southern gothic monster romance of my dreams

[Brend · Rating 4 out of 5]

Southern gothic but no one said y'all :/

It also could have been a Supernatural episode!


.

[Vini · Rating 4 out of 5]

queer southern gothic horror with pretty men my love!!!

[tig :3 · Rating 4 out of 5]

i am a sucker for evil personified in the form of nature and innocence and everything lovely. the bayou is wicked in a way that lures you in like the devil striking a bargain.

i loved the faerie hounds of york, but i want to say i loved this a little bit more. it leans into that dark corner of gothic horror which elicits this slow, impending dread that urges you to run away yet wraps a leash around your neck to prevent you from doing so.

it’s sick, it’s twisted, it’s romantic in a syrupy sweet way that aches your teeth and becomes loathsome rather than enjoyable. powell is the master of creating a palpable atmosphere, and it truly astonishes me.

however, what astonishes me more is the fact that this is the second book i have read this week that has turned out to be some form of monster romance……. what is the universe trying to tell me ? ??

full review soon me thinks!!

[Livia · Rating 5 out of 5]

review to come

in the meantime i'll be staring at a wall

[sunny ౨ৎ˚₊ · Rating 4 out of 5]

folks didn’t need so many churches unless they had something that needed praying away

this book was like one big panic attack in the best way possible.

i could feel the sticky summer and throbbing heartbeats like they were my own and it had this slow feeling of impending dread that hollowed out my stomach, and yet, i couldn't keep my eyes off the page.

the ending was incredible and just as stunning as the rest of the book (honestly deserves five starts just on its own).

the bayou would be his grave as surely as it was hers

[catarina · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars

This was a pretty short novella, so I don't know why the author tried to do so much with it. It's the story of the death of a girl and how that impacted our main character, Eugene, who was friends with her when they were children. It's also the story of two outlaws who terrorise Louisiana, Bonnie and Clyde style. It's also about how Eugene gets kidnapped by them. It's also about Eugene's nightmares. It's also a ghost story. It's also about people disappearing from town. It's also about the bayou that's slowly swallowing it whole.

In short, it felt messy. It was a well-written mess, sure, and it had great potential, but it had no business being so short while also trying to juggle so many things at once. There was no time to give each aspect of the story the attention it merited.

The climax of the story was great, though, and so were the sex scenes. But everything else fell short for me, including the romance.

[Aimee · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have no idea how to rate this book, do I give it 3,4,5 stars?
With multiple timelines and characters jumping around in such a few pages, my ADHD brain was not computing or able to follow the storyline whatsoever for 50%. or let's be honest, like the 76% mark 😆
But my god once things started to click in place, that atmospheric southern swampy dark queer story line was pulling me further into that murky water. I mean, hello, queer sex with a dark entity in a church pew, what the fuccckkkkkk. Why did it end when it was just getting good! It's giving exactly what I was looking for - Midnight mass/Ethel Cain vibes.

[charlie · Rating 5 out of 5]

i dunno what i just read but i loved it

[Claudie ☾ · Rating 4 out of 5]

This would make for a great Halloween read. Disturbing and eerie, it captured the southern gothic atmosphere perfectly; the plot unfolded slow like molasses at first, but the gradual build up culminated in a darkly satisfying finale — with an unexpected twist. Beautifully written.

[zuz · Rating 4 out of 5]

chuckles i sure hope this doesn’t awaken anything in me

[Evie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was the perfect bite sized queer, southern gothic horror story my life was missing. Just amazing.

[Nick Pageant · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was just fantastic. Totally unique and surprising.

[Kat · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Johnny Walker stood in the middle of the street like the heat didn't bother him and bullets couldn't touch him. Like there wasn't a cop dying at his feet."

Bank robbers, ghosts, & gators. It's the deep south in the 1930's, and the preternatural things that move through the swamp after dark are almost as scary as the people in the church.

This was jaw-dropping, nightmarish, totally transportive. I'm not going to say a ton about it because it's definitely the kind of book that you should go into knowing as little as possible - but the fact that it has under 800 reviews is a CRIME. I'm going to be yelling about this one from the rooftops for the foreseeable future. This is the epitome of queer horror: it's surreal and atmospheric, relying on its deliciously sinister setting and unreliable narrator to build unease rather than defaulting to cheap scares. In the beginning I was wishing for chapter headers that would clarify whether we were in the past or the present, as I sometimes felt mixed up, but I quickly realized that was the point: Arden Powell makes the passage of time soupy and nebulous, stretching and jumping then doubling back, disorienting the reader along with the main character. The story feels more and more dreamlike as it progresses.

Cleverly constructed and gorgeously executed, I feel somehow fundamentally not the same person I was when I started this. Sprinting to pick up the Faerie Hounds of York. (Also, oh my god, this author has RANGE. The last book I picked up by them was a charming and whimsical little romantasy of manners.)

"They say the devil comes dressed as everything you've ever dreamed of. I never really imagined what that meant until I met you."

[Kara Jorgensen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I greatly enjoyed this. THE BAYOU has a lovely Southern Gothic flavor with plenty of sensory detail to put you in the fetid swamps of Louisiana.
Make no mistake, this is horror, and the uncanny kind that I really like. If you don't like jump scares but love a good creeping, unsettling kind of horror, this is it.
The only thing I didn't like is that I felt like the author messed up some of the Catholic terminology (said preacher once, sermon instead of homily, weekly confession which isn't the norm, even back in the day). This annoyed me because I was raised Catholic, but it isn't something that would bother most readers.
Overall, I loved the gothic energy and the uncanniness of this tale.

[thosemeddlingkids · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a really satisfying queer horror! It felt like the location was another MC with how much description went into the surrounding environment. This is gory, this is mysterious, this is spooky, has the vibes, and was very engrossing. The two plot lines, child Eugene POV and adult present day POV was a great way to add tension and build up the storyline. I don't know if "liked" is a good way to describe this one - it made me feel things and made my head a little confused, which was what I'm looking for in horror!

Definitely check out the CWs before reading.

[Elise · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely breathtaking. The atmosphere of this novella left absolutely nothing to be desired. This is a world that breathes and grows and moves. The mystery had me hooked and the payoff was more than enough. One of those stories that sit with you for a long time.

[X · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tense, ominous, impeccable Louisiana horror. Alluring criminals, strange disappearances, haunting memories, and the bayou creeping closer and closer and closer… I physically couldn’t stop reading this.

Eugene, the protagonist, is a queer journalist in 1935 who sees a pair of Bonnie and Clyde-esque bank robbers kill a cop and make their escape. But he just heads home, goes into work the next day like usual, and tells no one what he saw. In other words, he’s a bystander.

And I’ll let you read it to see what exactly I mean by that! All I’ll say is this book is really smart, really compelling, and has a *fantastic* ending. What more can you ask for?

Frankly, I have DNFed multiple historical fantasy romances by this author. They always felt a little meandering, a little overstuffed. But here? I don’t know if it’s this author’s style being applied to the exact right genre for it, or just my personal taste, but this book is perfection. The pace, the language, the characters, the structure - it’s all phenomenal.

[Wendy · Rating 2 out of 5]

A lot of atmosphere, but a somewhat disjointed story.

[evy · Rating 3 out of 5]

newsflash goodreads users: a horror story set in the south doesn't automatically grant the status of southern gothic.

2.5/3 stars. this was going to be rated higher but it really trips over itself at the finish line with rapidfire, hokey exposition.

!! ROUGAROU MENTIONED !! while stylistically pleasant (always thankful when an author can string sentences together), this definitely feels like it was written entirely around the idea of devil sex in a church, so it lacks the bite and depth of true southern gothic while also juggling uneven structural issues.

for one, this is STRIKINGLY whitewashed, beyond one or two mentions of haitian voodoo. and maybe i am too forgiving when i was initially going to say i could overlook this, given the length (tiny) and purpose (horror-yaoi), but we unintentionally draw attention to it with a throwaway line about how the fictional village of chanlarivyè only had crime in the form of “petty misdemeanors: the usual fights and small feats of violence that shaped America's south.”

Small feats of violence? In 1930s small town Louisiana? sorry, but i have to laugh… if you don't want to write about racism in your little supernatural story, especially in a cultural context you don't have, sure, whatever. but to not acknowledge it whatsoever in a setting built entirely on the blood of Black slaves (why do you think these swamps are teeming with ghosts?), still heavily populated by their descendents… it comes across as callously, haphazardly researched. i would argue that Yes, Actually, you DO have to grapple with racism in some capacity if you want something to be southern gothic. (what do we think the genre’s common motifs of decay and malaise might represent in this context, class?)

and out of fairness, none of the official advertising for this book seems to claim it is southern gothic, so i'm mostly wagging my fingers at reviewers, but i do think the author should take more research into consideration regardless. actually, i see that the author has written other "southern gothic" stories, so: research and do better.

the fact i’m cajun and near the same geographic area of this fictitious town (chanlarivyè would be near real-world chalmette or so) DOES lead to further pedantry–while the descriptions of the humid swampland are lush and oppressive, characters lack any real distinctive voice that ground them in this setting. not asking for mark twain accents here, but we're missing out on any unique Southernisms that ground these characters to their setting (not a single y'all?); actually, they don't even really seem to fit the time period, either, beyond eugene's internal struggle with homophobia.

also worth noting the mildly descriptive on-screen child rape: more than implication or fade to black, though not so explicit as to get every motion of it. still more than i find necessary, especially because we had already known she was raped prior to being shown, so it really just feels like distasteful shock value in the end.

all of this may make it sound like i hated this book, but i didn't. i thought it was fine and a generally enjoyable read. i am always thrilled to see the rougarou and i always crave gay shit, especially southern gay shit. 

but stop calling it southern gothic, man. it's a goddamn disservice to boil down southern gothicism to aesthetics alone, and it reeeeally doesn't do this book any favors either. and play NORCO (2022)

[Sofija · Rating 5 out of 5]

Finally, a 5-star horror for me. This was just what I needed. It is an eerie, dark tale about a naive boy (Eugene) who witnesses a horrific act, and scars him for life. 17 years later he accidentally photographs 2 robbers, a man and a woman akin to Bonnie and Clyde, right after they finished robbing a bank. The man looks him straight in the eye like he recognizes him. Eugene and the man's paths will cross again but it will be more than a simple encounter. Eugene never thought the man's history could be tied to his own.
Powell creates a lush, sweltering atmosphere, damp and putrid enough to clog your nose and create a mass in your throat. His writing is exquisitely descriptive. If you don't have aphantasia, I assure you that you will have vivid pictures of every scene ingrained in your mind's eye. The setting is colored by a sepia tone, rich in green, yellow, and brown shades. The bayou is a perfect setting for a book like this. A book where the protagonist is haunted by a religious figure, who may or may not be a rougarou. A book where the swamp is haunted, not by a mythical monster, but by a human person rightfully hungry for revenge.
If you enjoyed the atmosphere and setting of Green Fuse Burning by Tiffany Morris, I suggest you dive into The Bayou. Both books have queer protagonists as well.

[sher · Rating 4 out of 5]

"he looked less like the devil then, his eyes wide and earnest, but milton wrote that lucifer knew how to cry."

actual rating: 4.5

i think this book is very well-written. overall, i cant find any weaknesses to the storytelling. but since this book was too short, i kinda quickly got over it so that's why im rating 4.5 stars.