I don’t recall how it got on my fiction reading list—I probably saw it on Goodreads—but I picked it up because it was short. And surprisingly, multiple copies were in Barnes and Noble. Since James Daunt bought the chain out it has definitely improved. In any case, Hunter Shea’s To the Devil, a Cryptid looked like it might be a fun romp, and if it turned out that I didn’t like it, well, it was short. Ads in the back keyed me in that this was a part of a series of horror novels about cryptids. Besides, I like to support publishers that aren’t part of the big five. I’d just finished reading a five-hundred-pager, so something under two was very welcome. The title seems to riff off the horror flick To the Devil a Daughter. As much as I try to keep up on my cryptids, I was unfamiliar with the Goat Man. And I did like it, by the way.
So, the real Goat Man is mostly associated with Maryland, but in Texas, where the novel is set, there is the Lake Worth Monster. This seems a good fit for the cryptid part (whether intentional or not I don’t know). A bunch of kids messing around with Satanism decide to sacrifice a goat in the woods where a Goat Man cryptid is said to live. Something goes wrong and the goat fuses with a guy trying to break up the ceremony and mayhem ensues. Lots of bodies torn apart in this version of the Lone Star State. Still, the story is fun. I’ve been writing cryptid fiction for years, and this may be a targeted demographic, but that doesn’t prevent this from being a good horror novel. Particularly interesting is the resolution. I’ll try not to give too many spoilers, but the next paragraph reveals something.
How do you stop a demonic, bulletproof Goat Man? You call in a priest to do an exorcism. The truly remarkable part of this is that the priest is treated sympathetically. None of the characters are religious. And of the two main young people who survive, you really don’t expect them to be found in church. The story isn’t intended to be believable, of course. The Goat Man is an urban legend. Urban legends are often difficult to tease apart from actual cryptids sometimes. Cryptids remind us that there’s still more to be discovered in the world. And I may have just discovered a series of stories that work for a quick fix.
