Nothing But Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw
I would like to thank Titan for an advance copy of this novella in exchange for a fair and honest review
Publisher – Titan
Published – 21/10
Price – £9.99 hardcover £4.68 Kindle eBook
A group of thrill-seeking friends in search of the perfect wedding venue plan to spend the night in a Heian-era mansion. Long abandoned, and unknown to them, this mansion rests on the bones of a bride, and its walls are packed with the remains of the girls sacrificed to keep her company.
Their night of food, drinks, and games quickly spirals into a nightmare, as the house welcomes its new guests. For lurking in the shadows is the ghost bride with a black smile and a hungry heart.
And she gets lonely down there in the dirt.
The haunted house is a staple feature of so many horror stories from Hill House’s not sane walls to The Shining’s never leaving guests. I bet there is house near you with some form of reputation or history. Places that hold memories of bad deeds are of course constant magnets for the brave and foolhardy. Ghost hunting is a boom industry from tv shows, youtube videos and of course the plot for many a horror tale in itself. Are you brave enough to come in and stay? This starts the dark nightmare of Nothing But Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw where fractured friendships and an abandoned mansion are a dangerous combination.
Cat arrives at a ruinous Japanese mansion for a wedding of her two friends Faiz and Talia. She is accompanied by Cat’s one time lover Phillip and soon will be arriving their distant friend but often a class clown Lin. The group hungers for thrills and the idea of a eerie wedding ceremony in the ruined remains of a decaying house with a thousand year old reputation for a ghost and many women buried alive on its grounds is just too good an opportunity to miss. But this group is not quite the tightly knitted group of college everyone remembers. Talia is not happy when she finds Faiz and Cat dated for just 8 chaste weeks long ago and Phillip is trying to repair a damaged friendship while Cat is still recovering from a breakdown. The last thing anyone needs is a clever ghost to now enter the story. The night will end in death and betrayals.
This novella is a masterpiece in how to build a story. Told always from Cat’s point of view we get to meet the friends and before any supernatural action commences, we feel the fracturing that is underway. It’s that feeling when you know you’re meeting the same people out of routine and nostalgia rather than love. These people know when each other is lying and they know all the defences people will use to hide their feelings. Khaw shows us the brittleness hiding behind smiles and gestures yet also shows the ties between these were once strong and you’d love the group to cast their problems away and just enjoy themselves. But as the story darkens you know these emotional whirlwinds in Talia’s constant suspicions, Phillip’s guilt and Faiz’s constant feelings of inferiority to Phillip being the rich leading man of college, life and the group conspire to create a perfect recipe to entice a ghost who herself has experience of a bad relationship being jilted at the altar then buried alive.
The second act is when the story enters true horror and the setting forthis tale is a remarkably creepy mansion. It has all the classic haunted house flourishes with rooms full of decay with books turned to mulch, rooms of broken staring dolls and on each wall demons and other nastier creatures from Japanese mythology looking on as humans implode with one another. Khaw moves from creating the human characters and their dynamics to a sudden rush of dark energy and you’ll notice the narrative speed up as the group realise they are now in the hands of an ancient ghost known as ohaguro-bettari pulling them along into a living nightmare. At this point the reader starts to realise we cannot trust Cat’s eyes as reality is being played with and things go south fast. This experience shatters the minds of the group and all that inner anger with each other suddenly erupts. As well as the creepy atmosphere the true horror is how the characters are now so broken that they can’t actively resist what is unfurling. They’re on guiderails created by a ghost and bloody visceral ending is coming, and they can’t stop it. The finale is dark not just for the event but what this means for any future survivors. Khaw writing throughout is spell-bounding and captures the mood of each scene perfectly from suspicion; arrival of ghosts to anger and hostility via madness. The truly horrible suspicion behind it all is has the ghost orchestrated and controlled all of this or is this just the final fractures that needed only a very little push?
This is a truly wonderful piece of horror storytelling with a great blend of psychological and bloody horror. An imperfect group falling foul of a haunted house is a classic storyline but the energy and use of setting and atmosphere by Khaw made this a hugely memorable read with that central idea of friends not being able to save you is a unsettling fear many of us may have and makes this story easy to respond to. If you want something that makes the back of your neck go cold and wonder who may be about to whisper a less than sweet nothing in your ear this is perfect for you. Strongly recommended!
