Jonny Numb

One of the great pleasures of following any artist throughout their career is witnessing how their areas of interest (fetishes, if you will) evolve over time, and how – in the best, most disciplined cases – their art grows better, richer, and more effective with each subsequent effort.

Such is the pleasure – albeit the unnerving pleasure – of William D. Prystauk’s latest novel, The Hanging Girl.

Think about some of the iconic houses in horror literature: the House of Usher; Hill House; Hell House…

While the aforementioned places – spawned from the imaginations of Edgar Allan Poe, Shirley Jackson, and Richard Matheson, respectively – represented foreboding structural monuments to supernatural unrest, Ravenhurst Manor – the dominant setting of The Hanging Girl – harbors a mystery that’s plagued the sibling duo of Tabitha and Kerri for decades:

Was their grandmother Rebecca, blessed with a fountain-of-youth appearance and a lifespan stretched beyond that of a “normal” human being, participating in some sinister, Bathory-esque activities to preserve her body (at the expense of her soul)?

Decades after Tabitha allegedly witnessed her sister and grandmother bleeding an upside-down runaway in the kitchen of Ravenhurst Manor, the sisters – along with two skeptics and amateur documentarians – converge upon the isolated residence, around which countless rumors have circulated through the years. The goal of this excursion – outside of perhaps putting Tabitha’s trauma to rest once and for all – is to determine whether or not what she witnessed as a child actually occurred, or if it was a vivid figment of an overactive imagination.

That’s the setup, and while firmly in classic Jackson/Matheson territory (the “team” tasked with investigating some accursed abode), Prystauk creates his own unique tale wherein earthbound logic clashes against the supernatural, and skepticism gives way to potential belief.

One thing I know about Prystauk is his passion for accuracy. The man does his research and is as thorough about addressing holes in logic, motivation, and history as he is with telling a damned effective story.

And The Hanging Girl is not only effective and impactful in its character and narrative developments, but efficient, as well. The novel comes in at just under 200 pages, creating an experience propelled by one captivating plot machination after another. The question of whether Rebecca Ravenhurst was truly a monster or simply misunderstood floats in the either like an omnipresent balloon, but Prystuak is less interested in parlor tricks to keep the reader guessing (though he does that, as well) than how the events that transpire dredge up old emotions and rivalries and commingle with fresh fears facing the characters.

While Prystauk is best known for his ongoing “Kink Noir” series, The Hanging Girl proves him adept at a self-contained, one-and-done story that strikes with cunning, page-turning impact. Something you’ll notice is how his characters rarely stand still for too long…and if they’re not expressing themselves verbally, there’s usually something going on with their body language. This restlessness serves as an interesting corollary to the haunted emotions that loom large over Tabitha.

Stories of this type typically have one of two endings: the legends surrounding the haunted place turn out to be true; or the haunting is an elaborate hoax perpetrated for shallow, selfish reasons (i.e., someone trying to get their hands on an inheritance). I’m not going to tell you where The Hanging Girl goes in its final pages, but it’s a testament to Prystauk’s authorial skill that he could make either option monumentally unsettling and satisfying.