Hell Spring: Isaac Thorne unleashes a soul-sucking Marilyn Monroe on a dark and stormy night

1 Sep 2022.

by Drew Rowsome -

Immersed in Isaac Thorne's forthcoming novel Hell Spring, I had to pause because of a sudden spasm in my thigh. Caused either by tension or from sitting so long turning pages, I was forced to stand and stretch. I limped to the window and was surprised, startled, to see a bright sunny summer day. In the world of Hell Spring it is rainy, stormy and dark.

Relieved that my world was still turning, I dove back into Hell Spring.

I'm a fan of Thorne's work ever since discovering the short stories Nobody Was Here and Hoppers then the collection Road Kills, and finally his masterpiece novel The Gordon Place. So I was an easy sell for a tale of eight people trapped in a general store during a flood in the 1950s. Even more so when "one of them hungers for human souls, flesh, and blood." Even more so when his website offered a trigger warning consisting of "brutal acts of monster violence, some gore, domestic violence, self-mutilation, gaslighting, abusive/controlling levels of shaming, questioning of religion/spirituality, and some sexuality." While that list may be a touch tongue-in-cheek, I did find one of the above to be very disturbing. Very. (That's a compliment, after all trigger warnings are also great bally) Pretty much what we've come to expect from Thorne.

Hell Spring begins with a fevered scifi nightmare depiction of what might be hell, but which is certainly a bizarrely sexual and phallocentric horror show. 

She ran. The thing was after her again. She could sense it. From the day of her birth—or her creation, or her evolution, or whatever process had belched her into existence—the gigantic phallus in the center of the fiery arena had wanted her for its own.

It is disorienting, grotesque, absurdly funny and oddly hot: a '50s geek fusion of science fiction and fantastical porn. Disorienting for 'She' as well. After a volcanic bukkake moment, Hell Spring shifts abruptly into Capote and McCullers territory. We are introduced to the seven about to be trapped. Their backstories are lyrical but laced with horror, thwarted sexuality and violence. Marilyn Monroe's Playboy photo has managed to wend its way down to this small Southern town and it has inspired both lust and an opportunity for 'She.' The innocent sex appeal of Monroe becomes a disguise and Thorne turns our, and the seven's, presumptions on their heads. And from there things get loopier as the tension ratchets. Thorne takes his time before building to climax after climax. There is an overlapping structure that contains subtle reveals, until we are living in the skins of all the characters. Making the bloodshed, and worse, particularly horrific.

The literary structure of people with secrets trapped by a natural or unnatural disaster has been used before from Agatha Christie murder mysteries through The Mist, but Thorne warps the plot so thoroughly that it is not just fresh, it is demented. And I bought every moment. Only once, when an adolescent awakening worthy of Edmund White was echoed in a Spongebob Squarepants creep out, did I pause to ponder just how intensely my sense of reality had been revoked. How the ridiculous had been made plausibly horrifying. Aside from writing a tense thriller/horror novel, Thorne is exploring where sin and guilt intersect. And where they are completely different. And just what is sin? All of the characters have secrets but only some have guilt about them. And one of the so-called sins just might not be worthy of guilt. That particular passage is extraordinary as a character has a major revelation and life changes. That this happens amid a pitched battle with a soul-sucking demon that looks identical to Marilyn Monroe is a quirky twist. Thorne is exploring how society and religion apply guilt with calamitous results.

Of course no novel that revolves around guilt and sin set in the '50s would be complete with a homosexual. Thorne provides a complex portrait of a tortured man (and a possible explanation for the rampaging penis in the opening scene). I will not give away a major spoiler but the man's ultimate fate moved me to tears. Not only emotionally accurate but gorgeously written. Because Hell Spring is written from the various characters perspectives, Thorne has to be careful about balancing their perceptions with his voice. And of course the gay man's voice winds up dominating. The pages abound with brand name products and pop culture references specific to the era and the locale. Most enticingly is that Marilyn Monroe was not only a sex symbol that stirred the loins of men and boys, she was also, and always will be, a gay icon. A masturbatory fantasy and a facade to be emulated. Two very different but intertwined identities. To which we can now add a third less pleasant image: a predatory murderous monster.