While Vincent Endwell’s Olyoke is presented as a collection of linked stories, it reads more like parables from the scriptures of an Appalachian cult, demonstrating preoccupations with multiple overlapping themes: language and meaning, identity, perception, bodies in transformation, storytelling, inexorable forces overpowering free will. In style and subject, it situates itself firmly in the Lovecraftian tradition of weird fiction, with heavy allusions to Robert Chambers’s The King in Yellow (1895). Readers looking for individual stories that tie themselves up with a neat ending should look elsewhere; an Endwell story doesn’t *ahem* end well in the traditional sense. Each story works off the other and, taken as a whole, the collection transmits a satisfying sense of existential dread which will worm around in readers’ minds long after they’ve left the strange town of Olyoke.

The opening piece introduces itself as a fragment of the writings of self-proclaimed prophet Hieronymus Johnson. Only partially salvaged from a fire which killed its author, the text’s incompleteness and history of survival give it a supernatural glow of importance, a collection of Holy Writ for a Smokey Mountain cult.

It was the advent of First Winter when the raven-thinkers arrived unto the ville and commenced their proclamation. See, this was in the days of Karnivale and Oats, in Celsior, when the sea was still filthy red with the blood of languids and the law of the Potentate was exercised through the land, and so the raven-thinkers then were nothing more than nuisance and vermin […] There they sat, querulous, croaking their news to all the villeagers [sic]. The Pestulance was coming, and it was coming swift as Eurus from the East. (pp. 6-7)

Is this opening paragraph understandable for a reader who just picked up the book? No. Does it set a mood? Yes. The style sits somewhere between the King James Bible and translations of epic poems, aiming to give readers the impression of reading the Book of the Blue Ridge Apocalypse. It mostly works; but there are moments at which the invented archaisms of the language simply feel like misspelled or misused words. It’s no small feat to create a unique voice with its own uses (and misuses) of English. But how far can you go? Endwell sometimes oversteps the limits for me. But the opening is still pretty creepy and, when it works, it inspires a sense of awe and dread.

The stories that follow come in a variety of styles, showing characters defying, ignoring, and embracing the weird, semi-divine forces at work around them. In “The Modeling Resin,” social worker Beth-Anne is called to a bar-boarding house she and her sister explored as children. She’s checking on an elderly man who hasn’t left his room for days. While there, childhood memories force her to confront her sister’s mysterious death and its possible connection to the apartment she’s visiting. In “The Strange Case of the Collapsible Man,” a weird estate company must empty a home full of Egyptian artifacts, but it’s guarded by a wooden man who can extend or collapse his appendages indefinitely. In “Pyramid,” after the death of Frank’s grandfather, he and his partner Damion inherit a clock that has a portal to a mystical desert where they can walk across time.

The stories are connected by more than just geography, and reader-detectives will find references and clues to Olyoke’s mysteries peppered throughout the book. The sore, red eyes that characters hardly consider in early pieces show themselves to be more disturbing than seasonal allergies. In the story “Itch,” the protagonist, terrified of contagion, can’t stop scratching herself and peeling dead skin off her eyelids until they bleed. In the story “Love in The Reem,” Christine and Dylan go on a date in the middle of a plague, one that requires behavioral adjustments far beyond social distancing, mask-wearing and hand washing. As their date progresses, they ignore more and more hygiene and health recommendations, even as they notice the growing number of red frogs dying or lying dead around them.

Endwell writes dialogue particularly well and that’s on full display in the stories with non-traditional frameworks. “The Wandering Daughter” is a story told through discussions on a social media forum similar to Reddit. The main character-commentator is a former employee of Hailey Land (a Dollywood-like amusement park) who worked at the park’s eerie wax museum until it burned down. There are asides that link the theme park to the occult underpinnings of Olyoke, some employees thinking that “Hailey Land is a (bad) pun on Holy Land […] The original owner was also a revival preacher, so there’s definitely something weird going on there” (p. 30). But the main story is about a mysterious woman who keeps appearing at the wax museum looking for her missing daughter among the wax sculptures. Like many stories in this collection, the ending is that of an episode in a series, leaving unanswered questions for future stories to address. But that feels natural in this story. Perhaps because it’s exclusively dialogue, it awakens the kind of investigative instinct that plunges people into hours-long internet searches which also end abruptly.

Then there’s “Wine and Crime Club––Episode 121: A Cursed Play and Quality Rosé,” a story in the form of a podcast transcript in which the hosts discuss the mystery around a play called “A Pyramid Fit for a King” (perhaps reader-detectives remember that one of the other stories is titled “Pyramid”). This second all-dialogue piece juggles two stories nicely. First is that of the podcasters carelessly joking about exploring a theater that could well be a nexus of dangerous supernatural forces. Then there’s the story of the cursed play they’re discussing, one that took over the director and cast’s minds. Once rehearsals began, the director imprisoned himself in the theater. Unable to leave, he’d ask the crew, “Oh, do the doors exist for you?’” (p. 75) Then, on opening night, when the play seemed to be ending:

The final lines were said, but the actors never bowed. They just started again with the first scene. They performed for over 14 hours before people finally pulled them off the stage. And when asked why they had done so, the actors all expressed that they believed something to be watching the performance, and “If we don’t stop, it won’t come.” (p. 78)

What wouldn’t come? It’s hard to say, but we get increasingly anxious that the minute the podcasters stop recording, it will come for them too. This story is filled with hints about the themes and outcomes of upcoming stories. Are they spoilers? Perhaps for Holmesian readers. But the world of Olyoke is so consistently uncanny that foreshadowing discretely blends into the eerie atmosphere.

While I found the social media forum and podcast stories the most immediately engaging, some pieces written in classic short story forms have notable weaknesses. A tendency towards over-description would sometimes distract me from the action at hand, making the main character’s experiences seem secondary in importance to worldbuilding. This is a beef I have with a lot of Lovecraftian fiction, and it could say more about my attention span than the writer’s strengths.

Another stylistic pet peeve of mine showed up occasionally: an overuse of similes. Don’t get me wrong. A well written simile is wonderful and can deepen our understanding of its object through a surprising yet accurate comparison. In a few stories, most notably “Pyramid,” the similes are weak, yet they come so frequently that they distract from their object instead of illuminating it. That leads to some clunky lines: “Wrapping your mind around it was like trying to get too little paper around too large a box” (p. 134). Or sometimes to misuses of words: “Damion sat back, green leaves hanging like a limpid from his chopsticks” (p. 134). I don’t think Endwell wants readers to put the book down and check if “limpid” is also a noun (it isn’t). But that’s what happened to me. It’s upsetting to see how this can mask otherwise good writing. Take these paragraphs:

The log farmhouse was swaddled in yarn-dark leaves like an old man draped in a shawl, a wrinkled bark face peering out. Red-frogs peeped like a phone left off the line. Latex powder and the soapy smell of liquid sterilizer somehow still surrounded Damion like a shroud, as it always seemed to for hours after a shift, just one of those things you learn to live with.

The headlights petered out like a wish you give up. (p. 127)

Granted, the farmhouse comparison isn’t bad. But I’m sorry Simile Dickenson, it’s time to… like… calm down. If you remove all the other clauses following “like” in that example, you have a haunted atmosphere that’s still focused on the character Damion. Endwell is a writer capable of deliciously weird and insightful prose. So fortunately, this simile obsession shows up rarely. But when it does, it drowns out the writer’s talent.

The book ends on a strong note. The final story, “The Celebration,” follows Maggie Warner, who’s staging a play she’s put together called The Winsome Daughter. Like the fictional play in Olyoke’s literary ancestor, The King in Yellow, this production tears at the threads of her reality. She’s a workaholic, but is also driven by vivid dreams in which she’s a fat man in a green twill suit called “The Whistler”—a cheerful man who’s planning a strange ritual to coincide with Maggie’s play. As preparations progress, Maggie is less and less able to distinguish between who is real and who is a dream: her or the Whistler. As the Whistler strengthens his control over her, pushing her to commit dangerous acts, he also starts controlling the people around her.

Olyoke is a book that’s begging to have a cult following, and it may get one. Its stories are interlocked not only by theme but also with mysterious details that will make a puzzle-solving reader want to fill their wall with cross-referencing story diagrams showing character, theme and stylistic overlaps. Yes, there are some craft slip-ups. But the collection’s rawness, in most cases, is a part of its charm, and makes for a morbidly playful addition to Appalachian horror. The portrayals of bodies in transformation, human nature courting oblivion, and the arrogance of prophecy are a unique exploration of how harmful outside forces can patiently and gradually take away our agency and free will. A fear that feels very much of our times.