Bark at the Ghouls

This is a mean little story about a young woman attempting to make a better life for herself by coming to America who is then kidnapped by a gang of human garbage. In that moment her life is changed forever. She is now forced to have sex with strangers in a dirty room day in, day out. This is horror of the real kind and it is not easy to read. Her only bright light in all of this darkness is Mark who shows her glimpses of kindness. But Mark is a prisoner of the gang as well and is forced to work for them against his will or his innocent sister will pay the ultimate price.

As you can see, this is the human monster variety of horror. The subject matter is chilling because you can’t close the book knowing that you’ve shut door on those made up monsters and get on with your day. This is the stuff nightmares are made of.

Andrew Vacchs writes this sort of too-true-to-life horror as did Jack Ketchum and their words can devastate you for days, weeks, possibly forever. Perhaps I’ve been a little ruined by reading them first but this story seemed to miss the impact I felt it could’ve had on me. As I was reading I felt like an outsider being told about these terrible, harrowing, life ruining things and never truly felt the emotional impact these horrible wrong doings should’ve had on me.

I felt like something was missing in the writing and that some of the traumatizing bits were skimmed over and because of that I can only give this story a three. Also, that last line was like a kick in the head. Grrrrr!