Reading a Christopher Golden novel is always a welcome experience for me, he spins an addictive, page-turning tale, populates the story with engaging characters, and gives his stories a great edge of horror & terror. Even having those expectations, Carry Me to My Grave still presented some wonderful creepy moments, story twists, and character journeys. The heart of the story is fairly straightforward – a young veteran of the Korean War is asked by his dying mother to return her body to her home in Maine. The first complication is Malcom’s story begins in Indiana, which may be the least complicating element of the story…and the other “complications” have a tinge of darkness.
From New York Times bestselling author Christopher Golden comes a high concept horror novel about a man trying to protect his dead mother’s body from the evil that is hunting them.
Maggie Wise will take your eyes.
When Malcolm was growing up, the local kids made up that chant about his mother, claiming she was a witch. He and his siblings did their best to ignore it. Now, Maggie is dying, and those same siblings have left Malcolm and his sister-in-law Violet to hold a vigil at her bedside.
But they’re not as alone as they think they are. A dark figure waits and watches from beneath the willow tree across the street. Hundreds of miles away, an ancient evil stirs in its burrow under a farmer’s cornfield. Across the country, other buried things begin to dream in anticipation of Maggie’s demise. On her deathbed, the old woman elicits a promise from Malcolm, her youngest child―when she dies, he and Violet must return her body to her birthplace in Shediak, Maine.
From the moment she takes her last breath, before her remains are even loaded aboard the baggage car of the Imperial Limited, there are forces trying to stop Malcolm from fulfilling that promise. Violence erupts on the train, evil preys on its passengers, and once the sun goes down, those long-buried things are coming to make Maggie Wise pay for her past. God help anyone who stands in their way.
Malcom and Violet (his estranged brother’s wife) are waiting for Maggie (his mother, whom he and his siblings always referred to as Maggie) to pass. She’s at the end of her rope and Malcom wants to deliver on the promise gave to her dying wish.
What makes Maggie’s last moments more eerie than they should be is the crow-faced stranger just outside the window, staring. This figure urges Malcom to just walk away and ignore his mother’s last request. Fortunately, two burly men Maggie hired as muscle and protection arrive and help to facilitate the start of the journey for Malcom and Violet as they board the cross-country train.
Malcom never wanted to believe what the neighborhood kids said about his mother, the whispers he heard about her witchy ways. As strange things occur on the train ride to Maine, Malcom soon realizes his mother was keeping a lot secrets from him and his siblings. Malcom recounts the distance between he and his mother, how her strict nature never left room for what would be categorized as a true parent/child relationship and even lead to a somewhat mentally/psychologically abusive relationship. Right off the bat the aforementioned fact that the children called her Maggie and not “Mom” or “Mother” is a warning sign of a “non-standard” parent/child relationship. Nonetheless, he loved his mother, always sought her approval and sees this task of transporting her dead body as the last thing to earn some semblance of respect from her even if only in his own eyes.
That is just part of the emotional complications Malcom has with this whole situation. Add to that his feelings for Violet, his brother Elias’s wife. Violet developed a connection with Maggie that is probably stronger than any of Maggie’s own children and her feelings for Malcom are hard to ignore, just as his love for her is something he can’t ignore.
The we get to the monsters… led by the strange, horrifying, vampiric creature named Root. As Maggie approaches her death, Root begins its awakening from years underground entangled in tree roots. It isn’t often a writer can imagine such a classic creature/monster like a vampire in a new way that is truly unique, but damn did Golden do something special with this vampiric creature. The visual his words evoke give Root terrifying, monstrous imagery and demeanor.
With Maggie dead, these monsters which she somehow kept under wraps during her life are free and want to get to her body with the same kind of urgency Malcom has to get her body to her final resting place.
The train setting for about a third or so of the novel amps up the tension because of a train’s inherit claustrophobic nature. Even once the train setting passes, Golden maintains a high level of tension and powerful urgency because of Root and his gang of monsters are so unrelenting in their pursuit of the body of their deceased enemy.
I enjoyed everything about this novel – the awkward romance between Malcom & Violet, the frenetic pace, the tension and sense of urgency, the stakes initially seeming personal but growing far beyond that, and of course, maybe my favorite element: the inventive take on Vampires as well as Witchcraft in the form of Maggie and her history. In a relatively small space 325 pages – Golden gives this supernatural world a very lived in, deep historical mythology I want to explore more! Everything is in balance here between that supernatural history and the characters which leads me to the same thought I have just about every time I read a novel by Christopher Golden – I really need to read more from him!
Recommended.
© 2026 Rob H. Bedford
Trade Paperback | St. Martin’s Press
July 2026 | 336 Pages
https://www.christophergolden.com/
Excerpt: https://reactormag.com/excerpts-carry-me-to-my-grave-by-christopher-golden/
Review copy courtesy of the publisher
