The Saturday Night Ghost Club by Craig Davidson

The Saturday Night Ghost Club

Craig Davidson

In this sensitive tale, adult Jake looks back on his childhood in Niagara Falls, Canada, in the 1980s. As a 12-year old he is quite the odd man out, just like his half-native boyfriend Billy and sister Dove. Jake has an uncle who runs a shop in occult paraphernalia. Every Saturday uncle Cal takes them to special places and tells them ghost stories. Unknowingly Cal tries to banish his own spirits with them. Brilliant coming-of-age story.

Extract
The dial on the See 'N Say spun and spun and spun.... I heard things. Screams in a dense sonic mist, wind sawing across rusted metal, something bubbling, rainfall like ten-penny nails. I would have slammed the lid of the Psycho-Phone, crumpling the horn between the lips of the case, but I couldn't move, was paralyzed, the sounds ebbing into whale-songs as something else built behind them—a sinister presence running behind those melancholy arias. Soon all I could hear was horrid stifled breathing, breaths built out of whispers, realizing too late that the cadence of those breaths matched the rapid beat of my own heart.
Something's coming, I thought. Something horrible.
Parallels
  • Stand by Me - the film
  • Breath by Tim Winton
  • The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold