Forest Ghost

February 17, 2014
Widower Jack Wallace is prompted by his autistic son’s dire visions to investigate a mass suicide at a Boy Scout camp in Michigan. A mysterious woman subsequently leads Jack to explore a connection between the Michigan horror and the disappearance of his great-grandfather in Poland during WWII. A running debate about free will vs. fate punctuates Masterton’s clumsy attempts to induce horror through redundant outbreaks of slaughter and repetitive sightings of elusive white shapes in the woods. Discourse on the differences between Slovak and Polish cookery provide vivid comic relief amid indistinguishable instances of descent into panic and declamatory warnings. A talky resolution fizzles into incoherence as lawmen confront malign entities and Jack’s son implausibly explains the origins and motivations of the forest spirits. Masterton never manages to create a viable story from this assortment of clashing clichéd elements.

March 1, 2014
Twin forests on two continents seem to be haunting visitors and making them want to kill themselves. Jack Wallace, widowed owner of a Polish restaurant in Chicago, receives some terrible news about his son Sparky's closest friend, Malcolm. On a Boy Scout trip he took to faraway Owasippe Scout Reservation, all the Scouts and Scout leaders evidently killed themselves. Jack is shocked by this news and even more shocked that it's not news to Sparky, who seems to have known it would happen. Although Sparky has always been a bit quirky, Jack puts much of that down to his Asperger's diagnosis. Now, however, Sparky is consulting star charts and trying to predict the future. The two leave Chicago with Malcolm's mother to claim the body and try to find some answers, but the forest reservation spooks them, and they're troubled by the persistent sense that there's something more in the woods. A seance Jack's neighbor insists he attend connects him to a spectral voice (his dead wife?) that eventually connects him--as usual in Masterton, the logical steps are never very clear--to Dr. Krystyna Zawadka, who's been investigating a disturbingly similar phenomenon in Poland. As Jack and Sparky travel abroad to find out if the danger is animal, human or something more, Sparky makes hauntingly accurate predictions along the way. One thing remains clear: Whoever sets foot in these forests is in grave danger, even from their own hands, until the truth can be found. Typically creepy and graphic fare from Masterton, with an environmental spin that may herald a new direction (Drought, 2014). Given the final acts, this one clearly won't be a series.

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