The Vines is Christopher Rice’s second horror novel ( The Heavens Rise is the first it’s still in my TBR pile) and it, too, is a variation of the bad place horror convention Spring House is a gorgeously restored house outside of New Orleans with a horrifying history of its own. The story is told very simply, the setting is perfect, and the descriptions of the treasures she finds are lovingly written–and the sense of growing impending doom and claustrophobia are perfect. Strange things start to happen, and occasionally she is aware that something’s terribly amiss…and then goes back to cleaning. The wife soon becomes obsessed with the house and cleaning it, putting it into order finding treasures in closets and cupboards and bringing them out…and ignoring the distance growing between her and her husband, his aunt, and her son. Husband, wife, young son, and the husband’s aunt–despite the husband’s misgivings–move out there for the summer the only requirement of them (other than the rent) is that three times a day the wife must take a tray of food up to the owners’ mother’s suite of rooms and never knock–just leave the tray outside. It’s good, even if it subscribes to one of those horror tropes that always requires the suspension of belief– if something seems too good to be true, it usually is. A family from the city–Queens, i believe–take a summer rental out on Long Island that, of course, is too good to be true a dilapidated but once stately manor. Vaillancourt Books recently reissued it, and I bought a copy. I remember it was also made into a movie with Bette Davis that I’ve also never seen, and periodically it appears on lists of ‘best haunted house’ novels. I would spend the entire time my mother was shopping looking at every book in the book racks, and I picked it up numerous times only to always set it back and pick something else I’m not sure why. I remember Burnt Offerings from when I was a kid, and we used to go to the Zayre’s department store every Saturday.

Burnt Offerings by Robert Marasco