My uncle owned a shop, the Occultorium, at the top of Clifton Hill. The name was spelled out in Gothic lettering on the marquee, while below, in elegant script, the slogan:
Investigating the dark cubbyholes of otherworldly experience …
Uncle C insisted on that dot-dot-dot at the end, even though he knew it threw off the marquee’s alignment and made the whole thing look a bit sloppy. “The dot-dot-dot is key,” he told me. “The dot-dot-dot means there’s so much more, yes? Without the dot-dot-dot, how could we invoke” – his hands performed a whimsical arabesque – “the mysteries of infinity?”
From chapter 1
Maybe you don’t like horror stories, but maybe you’d like something a little mysterious for late summer or for the days leading to Halloween? Something not terribly scary, but like a Bradbury story, a little spooky and with characters engaging enough to care for?
I may have the book for you.
Our narrator, Jake Baker, looks back on the summer he was a lonely, introverted twelve-year-old. Now a brain surgeon, with a brain surgeon’s perspective on memory and its mutability, he recalls those personally momentous events carrying him toward adulthood, beginning with a brief meeting with Dove Yellowbird who swoops in to save him from bullies. Shortly afterward he meets Dove’s brother, Billy, when Billy visits Jake’s uncle’s shop, the Occultorium. Before long Jake, to his surprise, has a new friend as he, Billy, Uncle C (short for Calvin) and Uncle C’s friend Lex form the Saturday Night Ghost Club for which Uncle C is tour guide to the haunted places around Niagara Falls, Ontario. The question of whether those places are really haunted remains open, but we come to realize that there are memories associated with them having great power over those who visit.
Reading The Saturday Night Ghost Club recalls other stories of teens reaching for adolescence, both written and filmed. The novel’s charm and appeal derive from sources similar to those tapped by Ray Bradbury in Something Wicked This Way Comes, Jeffrey Ford in The Shadow Year and Stephen King in “The Body” (among others), and movies and tv shows from the 1980s or referencing the 1980s like E. T., Stranger Things, Stand by Me (based on King’s story), and Super 8. And maybe all of those owe thanks to, To Kill a Mockingbird, since they all portray a child’s experiences with matters even adults struggle with, and which lead toward maturity. But Davidson makes this his own story by setting it where he grew up, his memories of and affection for Niagara Falls informing Jake’s experiences.
Jake’s Uncle C has an obsession with odd happenings like those recorded by Charles Fort – referred to in the novel – and a network of like-minded obsessives who alert him to recent occurrences and the supposed stories behind the reported stories. A kind of understanding of the whimsical and imaginative allows Uncle C to instinctively appreciate his nephew in ways Jake’s parents do not – which is not to say Jake’s parents are in any way neglectful or dull, just different from Uncle C. But Uncle C also has issues stemming from a past that Jake doesn’t know because his parents think he’s still too young to hear about it, a past Uncle C seems hardly aware of as he acts as catalyst for Jake’s adventures.
Davidson, the real name of horror writer, Nick Cutter, writes prose that is in itself one of the novel’s pleasures, a fine representation of the young Jake at one moment and of the older Jake looking back the next, always moving the story forward but also stopping now and again to appreciate Jake’s reactions in ways that recall, for me, Ralphie’s narration in A Christmas Story or Bradbury’s occasionally word-drunk descriptions:
I thought about Billy asking if I liked Dove. How could I, a mere mortal, like Dove Yellowbird? Did mortal men like the goddess who lurked in the caldera of their island volcanoes? No, they worshipped their goddesses. If they dared to even think about touching, or kissing, or gazing directly upon the goddess, that goddess would incinerate them like flies in a bug zapper. And those fools would deserve no less.
The heightened language ending in a prat-fall of an image is a spot on description of a first crush, and throughout Davidson’s first-person narrative becomes an appreciation of the exuberance and innocence of that time when one is growing out of childhood but not yet a young adult, to hanging with friends, traveling all around your hometown, being scared out of your wits, falling in love and being called on to face bewildering adult situations before being prepared to do so. All of which makes this a relatable and winning novel, a truly good read for either summer or those days leading to Halloween, which is also when Davidson’s story ends.
THE SATURDAY NIGHT GHOST CLUB by Craig Davidson
(First published 2018; this edition in 2022 by Flatiron Books)
253 pages
Review by Randy Money
