New Book Alert: Nightmares in Aston: Wicker Village by Michael J. Moore; Kids Mystery Adventure Takes A Dark and Disturbing Turn

 

New Book Alert: Nightmares in Aston: Wicker Village by Michael J. Moore; Kids Mystery Adventure Takes A Dark and Disturbing Turn

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: Michael J. Moore's novel Nightmare at Aston: Wicker Village starts off as a kid's mystery adventure not unlike a Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mystery or the '80's films, The Goonies or The Monster Squad where kids come face to face with something weird or spooky and they encounter creepy adults who are behind the weirdness or are monsters themselves. However what sets Wicker Village apart from its predecessors is that at about the halfway point things take a dark and disturbing twist that opens up some very dark, very adult, and very existential conflicts, concepts not experienced by similar books and movies within this subgenre.

The Narrator, Jaunito, is a young boy who lives in the Wicker Village Trailer Park with his parents and baby sister. They had moved to Aston from their home in Seattle with Juanito still struggling to adjust to the move. He also feels like an outsider since they appear to be the only Mexican family in the small farming community. One night he comes across a frightening sight in which he dubs the Boogeyman (though for all he knows it might be a Boogeywoman). It is a swarm of bees that form the shape of a large man. (Insert obvious Nicolas Cage Wicker Man reference here.)

 Shortly afterwards, he is attacked by an elderly possibly drunk and certainly temperamental man. 

Of course when Juanito tells his parents, right on cue, they don't believe him.

Things take a turn for the seriously creepy when after everything is settled down and Juanito is convinced the strange apparition wasn't real, he hears the same buzzing in his own bedroom, meaning the Boogeyman got inside and could be standing over his bed. He also has dreams about a girl named Sarah who is running away and is terrified.

Well these experiences are enough to give a person nightmares but the next part is even weirder. Juanito worries that he might be schizophrenic and hallucinating people made out of bees and girls in trouble. So he does what any modern kid does to research information: In a very creepy moment in a book that is filled with them, he watches a video of a doctor with surrounded by visuals including a snake which forms from his mouth. The doctor addresses Juanito by name and welcomes him to Wicker Village. A YouTube video is made with complete knowledge of Juanito and where he lives and is rigged just in time to appear based on his search terms. 

Even stranger, later when Juanito searches for the video, it's gone even from his previous searches and history.

Juanito makes new friends, Pinky, Lauren, and Bobby. They hang out at their fort and share spooky stories when they are interrupted by a strange man who is looking for a young girl. What is particularly compelling is that he resembles the man from the schizophrenia video that Juanito just watched and is now gone.

The book does some interesting things with its storyline. At first it seems relatively harmless, like a Scooby Doo episode in which the sharp savvy kids investigate strange hauntings and the ghost is revealed to be Old Man Marley dressed in a rubber suit trying to scare people away from his criminal dealings. It's almost paint by numbers, with stereotypes that can be found in any of these type of adventures: the leader, the best friend who sometimes acts as comic relief, the lone girl who is sometimes as tough and tomboyish as the boys, and the big brother figure. Of course they are the frequent targets of local bullies. It's almost predictable but there is something in the air that makes one think that the predictablility is almost too intentional.

I can't reveal too much about the developments for spoiler's sake so the only thing that I can do is give generalities. Let's just say that something occurs that makes the story darker and more complex than initially believed starting with the supernatural occurences.

There are real questions, even from Juanito himself most notably with him watching the YouTube video whether the odd happenings are real or not. The video that he searched for no longer exists and disappears from his search engines like it never was. The Bee Creature only appears at certain times and only in front of certain people. Sarah only appears in his dreams. So how can we be sure that what is going on isn't in someone's head maybe even Juanito's?

Here's an even creepier thought, if the monsters aren't real how do we know what if anything in Wicker Village is real? Could Juanito and his friends be acting like typical adventurer kids because they are made to act that way in  someone else's fantasy? 

There is another possibility that these things are psychic impressions that someone is sending telepathic signals in the hopes that someone anyone will hear them and rescue them. So if they dreamed of the monsters, did they dream up their rescuers too and let them act and behave in a way that they recognized from popular culture? Are these kids acting in someone else's mind but are unaware of it?

Wicker Village starts out as a fun romp. However, the more one reads, the more they become involved in Existential nightmare fuel.