Halloween, 1963. They call him the October Boy, or Ol' Hacksaw Face, or Sawtooth Jack. Whatever the name, everybody in this small Midwestern town knows who he is. How he rises from the cornfields every Halloween, a butcher knife in his hand, and makes his way toward town, where gangs of teenage boys eagerly await their chance to confront the legendary nightmare. Both the hunter and the hunted, the October Boy is the prize in an annual rite of life and death.
Pete McCormick knows that killing the October Boy is his one chance to escape a dead-end future in this one-horse town. He's willing to risk everything, including his life, to be a winner for once. But before the night is over, Pete will look into the saw-toothed face of horror-and discover the terrifying true secret of the October Boy . . .
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[A Midwestern town. You know its name. You were born there]***
(Tor Books, 4 September 2007 (first published 2006), bought from Amazon)
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I read this for 2017 Popsugar Reading Challenge. The category is 'a book set around any other holiday than Christmas'.***
I'd never heard of the author before. I stumbled across this title while searching for inspiration for this category.
Dark Harvest is the perfect Halloween horror yarn, dark, sinister and creepy as hell.
I loved it.
I was hooked from the start, the strange ritual to bring October Boy to life. I couldn't stop reading as more and more bizarre things happened, locking the boys up without food for five days, the hunt, the weapons and the utter craziness of it all.
The truth about October Boy's identity and the strange annual ritual chilled me to the bone but wasn't a complete surprise, there are hints to the true nature of the monster from page one, but it still made my flesh crawl.
Dark Harvest is the perfect campfire horror story, to be told in a hushed voice, while toasting marshmallows and jumping at every rustle in the woods around you.