SHADOWS

An adolescent boy in 1967 forms a bond with an extraterrestrial entity stranded on Earth as the local body count rises in Aanes’ SF thriller.

The story opens in an untamed 1663 Virginia forest, where a disc-shaped interstellar craft careens out of control and crashes, entombing its cyclopean alien pilot in a tangle of mud and tree roots. Over the next centuries, the consciousness of the creature attempts to communicate with random humans settling the area, with sometimes fatal results. Ultimately, in the fall of 1967, when the region has become a “redneck” suburban community, the entity finds a collaborator, in the form of adolescent Billy Beaudet. The son of a Korean War casualty on bad terms with his hard-drinking, less-than-loving stepdad, Billy eagerly absorbs the works of Homer and seems more thoughtful and forward-looking than his peers—he won’t subscribe to the prevailing anti-Black racism among his friends, family and neighbors, for instance. The alien inhabits the plastic form of Billy’s favorite toy soldier and reveals itself to Billy as a wonder-working genie, granting Billy’s every whim, including healing the schoolboy’s bad eyesight. But Billy, bright and admirable as he is, remains bound to the testosterone-charged youth culture of cliques, bad-influence peer pressure, merciless feuds, homophobia, and raw lust. Casualties mount in the course of Rémy’s little errands, and the police start to notice. This nicely honed narrative is like something out of a vintage horror comic book crossed with a vivid coming-of-age narrative—Tobias Wolff’s This Boy’s Life (1989) rewritten by Joe R. Lansdale, perhaps, and not for the squeamish. Profane rural dialogue and pithy descriptions (“Bull Broward’s words exploded the levee, their authoritative gravity forcing the human sea to flow along”) lend a fine flavor to the very atypical ET invasion, and Billy is a disturbingly sympathetic menace, as his rash impulses and good intentions bring about shocking and savage acts.

A well-done and satisfying SF thriller with a memorable young antihero.