Andy Davidson (1) (1978–)

Nellie is fleeing an abusive relationship with her 11-year-old son...but she's taking him to a different type of danger... a place she once called home. The story tells us of danger, but also greed, revenge, and obsession. This horror tale tells the story of the unforgivable trespasses that cost multiple generations their very souls. The year is 1989 and Nellie Gardner is fleeing her nursing school, her home and her abusive husband with her son, Max, to Georgia. Her abusive husband, Wade Gardner, is an academic with a quick, hot temper. The story then takes a slight detour...same place, but the year is now 1917, and we are now with Nellie’s grandfather, August Redfern and his wife, Euphemia, who have started a turpentine enterprise in the southern Georgia wilds and soon are the parents of twins Charlie and Hank. Hank goes on to be Nellie’s father. The twins soon learns that the land they are defiling for profit demands more sacrifice in the full meaning of the word, than mere greed can satisfy. Nellie settles into her grandfather’s creepy Gothic mansion and is soon confronted by local "snake oil" salesman Lonnie Baxter, who has always thought that the property and the house was his birthright. Her reunion with Hank doesn't go well and leads to an uneasy discussion between father and daughter, and soon Nellie and Max are also threatened by some unpredictable phantoms; the ghost of a young girl; a dead bear who won’t seem to stay put; and the resurrected Dr. Gardner. Of course, we were expecting something on this order...after all if you hang out in dusty old mansions that are populated by long well-kept secrets, along with guilt, remorse, and madness, something unwanted, unexplained and undead is bound to come slithering out of a moldy hole. I really liked the way Andy Davidson deftly sloughed his way between bated-breath anticipation and a downright unexplained horror. By the end I was thinking this would make a great horror movie...move over Shirly Jackson.… (more)