Stories have power. Dark stories can have dark powers, dark infectious power. In Clay McLeod Chapman’s The Remaking the burning of two witches (mother Ella, daughter Jessica) in the early 20th Century has ripple effects over the next 100 years as their story infects several generations of “storytellers.” This novel happens to be based on true events.
Inspired by a true story, this supernatural thriller for fans of horror and true crime follows a tale as it evolves every twenty years—with terrifying results.
Ella Louise has lived in the woods surrounding Pilot’s Creek, Virginia, for nearly a decade. Publicly, she and her daughter Jessica are shunned by their upper-crust family and the Pilot’s Creek residents. Privately, desperate townspeople visit her apothecary for a cure to what ails them—until Ella Louise is blamed for the death of a prominent customer. Accused of witchcraft, both mother and daughter are burned at the stake in the middle of the night. Ella Louise’s burial site is never found, but the little girl has the most famous grave in the South: a steel-reinforced coffin surrounded by a fence of interconnected white crosses.
Their story will take the shape of an urban legend as it’s told around a campfire by a man forever marked by his boyhood encounters with Jessica. Decades later, a boy at that campfire will cast Amber Pendleton as Jessica in a ’70s horror movie inspired by the Witch Girl of Pilot’s Creek. Amber’s experiences on that set and its meta-remake in the ’90s will ripple through pop culture, ruining her life and career after she becomes the target of a witch hunt. Amber’s best chance to break the cycle of horror comes when a true-crime investigator tracks her down to interview her for his popular podcast. But will this final act of storytelling redeem her—or will it bring the story full circle, ready to be told once again? And again. And again . . .
A Virginia women (Ella) suspected of being a witch and, along with her daughter (Jessica), is burned at the stake in Pilot’s Creek Virginia in 1931. This story is told around a campfire and has a drastic effect, spurning one of those people to make a movie about the witches. That infection transfers to Abigail, the young girl cast as Jessica. The movie is remade 20 years later and features the adult Abigail in the role of Ella. Finally, a podcast in 2016 tries to get to the truth of the story.
Chapman tells the story in chapters featuring someone in the 1950s affected by the incident twenty years prior, the 1971 film, the 1995 remake, and then a true crime podcast (a la Serial) in 2016. The narrative focusing on the 1971 film, “Don’t Tread on Jessica’s Grave,” is where we see much of this tale’s impact and long simmering effects. Amber Pendelton is a fairly typical nine-year old girl, prone to whims and attitude changes. It doesn’t help that her mother fits the mold of overbearing child actor’s mother, pushing Amber beyond what should be expected for any nine year old child. Nor does it help that Amber may be somewhat possessed at the most, in communication at the least, with the spirit of Jessica, the Little Witch Girl. As the filming reaches its climax not too far away from Jessica’s grave, Amber goes missing only to be dug up by the actress playing Ella.
About twenty years later a fan of the original film, which has achieved cult status and not an easy film to track down, wants to do a remake. Amber has not had the best of lives since “Don’t Tread on Jessica’s Grave,” as her first person narration during the section of the 1990s remake makes clear. She never truly recovered from the events of the first film and ekes out a living making appearances and signings at horror conventions. She is hesitant to join the remake, even more so when she learns the filmmaker is an obsessed fan, but something, maybe a voice, convinces her to make the movie. Even her once forceful mother advises Amber against making the film. Much like the original film, the production of the 1995 remake was fraught with “incidents.” The film was to be very self-aware and as recounted later in the novel, could have had the same effect that Wes Craven’s masterpiece Scream did if the filming didn’t become a bigger story than the film itself.
Finally, a podcaster unearths some footage from the remake and wants to set the record straight about the events occurring during the filming. This podcaster is extremely ambitious and seeks to gain fame by forcing Amber to recount the events of the filming.
So, there’s quite a bit going on in the book, much of it I found very enjoyable. I like stories that are about the power of story itself and The Remaking has this in spades. Ella and Jessica’s story is like a disease or virus, it has negative effects on everybody it touches. Much like a curse. To say Amber’s experiences in the film world have a bit of resonance with Jessica is an understatement.
Horror films have often exploited women, and Slasher films specifically have always exploited women to an even larger degree, from their physicality to their perceived promiscuity to the falsely perceived notion of their intelligence. From the very start of the novel, what drives everything is the male misunderstanding and fear of women and their exploitation of women. The witches, Ella and Jessica, helped the people of Pilot’s Creek despite being shunned. When their help is begged for and the potential consequences were unheeded, they were murdered. Then Amber, poor, poor Amber. Thrust into a life she didn’t want, manipulated by everybody around her as a child into an uncomfortable situation only to survive a harrowing life-changing event. As an adult, this trauma she experienced was exploited. The director of the remake (Sergio) had an unhealthy obsession with her as that of an object and not a person. And not just obsessed with Abigail, he wants to exploit her traumatic experience for his own gain. He felt he was the only one who could tell her story, that he was “Meant” to tell her story. The podcast creator (Nate) sees her in an even less flattering light, he has a less personal connection with her so when she shows the slightest hint of not cooperating with Nate for the podcast, he grows frustrated and sees it as almost a personal attack.
I liked how each chapter, during each time frame, was told from a different narrative point of view. This gave the legend of “The Little Witch Girl” even more power. Each narrator brought something different to the story, from the kid at the campfire to Amber herself, Jessica’s story affected them each in some powerful way. Through it all, however, was the story of the burned witches and somebody trying to exploit that tragic event.
Ultimately, Chapman has crafted a fascinating horror novel that is both excellent within itself and a sharp commentary on an element of the genre. I’d imagine people who enjoyed the original Blair Witch Movie would enjoy this novel.
Highly Recommended
© 2019 Rob H. Bedford
Quirk Books | October 2019
Hardcover | 295 pages
http://claymcleodchapman.com/books/the-remaking
Review copy courtesy of the publisher
