There are few horror traditions more robust than that of the creepy child. Whether tormenting their mothers from the womb (Rosemary’s Baby), their fathers from the crib (ERASERHEAD), both their parents from birth (THE OMEN), or any unfortunate adult who might happen by (Children of the Corn), creepy children are a mainstay to which we can all relate, whether we ourselves are parents or not. (and indeed, for those of us who have not partaken in the screaming, gushing, torturous miracle of creating new life, it is perhaps this very creepiness that has led us to opt out). Likewise, even if you do manage to produce non-demonic offspring, there still exists the possibility that your perfectly good, non-creepy child will become a helpless victim of your own inherited trauma (HEREDITARY), a conduit for vengeful spirits (THE SHINING), or a host vessel for the Antichrist (THE EXORCIST), to name but a few. Within the horror zeitgeist, creepy children have come to embody all manner of parental anxieties, but binding together these disparate examples – all of which, in one way or another, clearly exerted some malevolent influence on Robert Ottone’s The Vile Thing We Created – is a single, baseline fear: will I give rise to evil?
The couple at the center of Vile Thing are approaching what we might call “use it or lose it” territory with regards to their reproductive capabilities. Still blissfully in love and happy to while away their extended youth together enjoying weed and booze, movies and rock concerts, and lots and lots of sex (this a real horny book y’all), Ian and Lola never really planned to have kids (scared off, in part, by a terrible abortion experience in their teens), and it’s telling that the thing that restarts the conversation is not Lola’s biological clock, but rather Ian’s social calendar. After accidentally discovering that (gasp) all their friends are hanging out without them, this not-entirely-likable, but wonderfully lived-in pair of aging hipsters decide they better get on with it, lest they never be invited to another (children’s birthday) party again! And so, amid a flurry of pet names and double entendres and eagerly doffed Bowie t-shirts – and for all the extremely wrong reasons – they make themselves a baby.
The tension builds slowly in The Vile Thing We Created – Lola’s pregnancy takes up almost half the book, and Ottone is careful not to give the game away early, parceling out backstory, filtering in slowdrip worries and jump scares, and letting it all gestate along with the couples’ own mounting fears about their fast-changing lives. A shadowy figure here. An unusual medical issue there. Bad dreams that feel a little too real. It’s a rough pregnancy, to be sure, but Ottone always keeps things just grounded enough for his desperate-to-remain-happy couple to talk themselves down. I think it’s fair to say they don’t suspect any of what they’re in for, even as Lola endures one of the most harrowing birth scenes ever committed to the page. We’re talking ALIEN-scale flesh-ripping gore. Episiotomy as exorcism. Ottone knows this is what he’s been working up to, and he absolutely nails it.
When the bloodmist settles, what our ill-equipped duo is left with is an almost unnervingly agreeable infant named Jonesy (cleverly named, perhaps, for the people they had him to keep up with, or the cravings they had him to take the place of, or both). But despite his quiet ease, Jonesy fails to bring his parents the joy they (maybe only half)-expected. Lola descends into post-partum depression, and Ian feels disconnected from and resentful of the child as a direct result. They reclaim their peccadillo addictions to cope, but as Jonesy grows into a precocious toddler, it soon becomes clear – to a degree that even the most unconditionally loving parents on Earth (which Lola and Ian decidedly are not) couldn’t ignore – that there is something very, very wrong with their bouncing, biting, body-slamming, occasionally teleporting, and strangely well-spoken baby boy. Born largely out of reactionary FOMO, he only serves to manifest and amplify the couples’ already low-simmering problems, soon bringing them to a dangerous boil.
Even as Ottone centrifuges all the aforementioned “creepy child” mythos and very real parental stressors together into a maximalist gumbo of modern folk horror (without giving too much away, let’s just say that Ian and Lola’s historic town and extended family have some dark secrets too), The Vile Thing We Created works best on the psychological level, weaving a kind of inextricable Freudian spiderweb of cascading, reticular breakdowns. The more the couples’ subconscious motivations come into focus – Ian’s looking to Lola for the love he didn’t get from his mother (a real piece of work), Lola looking to Jonesy for what she feels she’s losing from Ian (and not finding it), Ian quietly seething at Jonesy for lowkey replacing him (and almost killing his wife in childbirth), Lola not-so-quietly hating Ian and Jonesy for this new dynamic (and herself for being helpless to make it all fit), and of course, simmering under the sinkhole-prone surface of all of this, both parents absolutely blaming Jonesy, each other, AND themselves, for the forward march of time toward death undefeated.
Their failing bodies. Their flagging sex life. The traditional gender roles they’ve grown too tired to resist. That expected sensation of “being a grownup” that never quite comes. And the very fact that the things they’d always relied on for happiness have suddenly and perhaps irretrievably abandoned them. It’s all in the mix. They made their own bed, and yet it still feels short-sheeted – a sentiment that echoes across the entire book, all the way to Ottone’s chilling last line. I’m not a parent, and have never particularly wanted to be one, but this book is a fun, spooky, and eminently readable reminder to anyone out there who might be eyeing the old bioclock and weighing their options: bringing a new person into the world is arguably always a selfish act – Earth is, as you’ve probably heard, quite full up on people already (including a surplus of children just sitting around waiting for someone to care for them) – so whatever you decide, don’t have kids just because all your friends are doing it. It’s a child, sure. But it’s also a choice.
–Dave Fitzgerald
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