BED AND BREAKFAST

A troubled couple’s bed-and-breakfast weekend turns into a nightmare in Kherbash’s horror yarn.

It sounds romantic—a couple’s return visit to a quaint bed-and-breakfast to make more happy memories. Here, the author takes a darker view.  No need to wait for hints about where this dark novella, a disturbing portrait of a marriage in crisis, is heading; from the start, an atmosphere of horror creeps steadily through the pages. Clueless Nolan hopes that surprising his wife, Emma, with a getaway to the Tappy West Creek Bed & Breakfast inn will bring her out of her oppressive grief stemming from a second miscarriage. The first disquieting note: The reception area is oddly quiet, filled with cascading potted plants, “dim in the transient hour between late afternoon and early evening, when an amber shade steals over every inch of wall and furniture.” The inn is closed, says the establishment’s new owner, Leah. (Is the off-putting, coy, and cold Leah the source of the pervasive “loamy, sulfurous odor”?) And then there are the baby dolls, gradually multiplying in various rooms; walls sprout unpleasant, fleshy fungi, and the wallpaper’s roses appear to have eyes. Demoralized and vulnerable to Leah’s unhealthy manipulation, Emma views her own body as “a cruel tally of failed pregnancies and deflated hope,” and her self-doubt causes her to suspect that her husband is unfaithful. Here and there, Kherbash slyly undermines readers’ sympathy for Nolan, making clear that he disregards what she feels: “We’re here because I want to go back to where we were last year—before the pregnancy and the false hopes. I want to erase them. I want a do-over,” he says to himself. Nolan’s attempts to reestablish closeness with his wife drive her further away as Leah uses Emma’s grief, her yearning for a baby, and her dwindling self-confidence to poison her against her husband, leading to a disturbing, fevered scenario of twisted seduction and a shocking entrapment.

A well-told story of unhealthy obsession and horror with a chilling twist.