AN HOMAGE REVIEW:

1:30 a.m.

THE HOUSE WAS quiet, and Reed should have gone to bed hours ago.

But he turned the page and kept reading.

Put it down, an inner voice screamed. No, commanded another.

His daughter got up to use the bathroom. Reed was relieved that she had not noticed him reading on the living room couch, and had gone back to bed.

Something — the book? — compelled him to keep reading the pages, to construct the house (that indomitable, sinister house) and the tragic characters in his mind, and so he did. The living room’s grandfather clock was his enemy, each of its ticks a screaming reminder that he should be asleep.

Reed read past the riveting ending, the inevitable epilogue, all the way to the author’s obligatory credits and thank-yous. Putting the book down at last, Reed savored the victory. He had finished it.

But was the book finished with him? He discovered the next morning  that it was not. The whole thing was a ghost story, after all.

Really slow start. But once they get to act two Halloween night and on you can't help but devour the book. Great classic horror book to read well into the night with the creep factor.