Empty Heaven

By Freddie Kölsch

The success of a story can, ironically, often come down to a stellar villain—it’s the bad guys whom readers often find themselves remembering years later, the diabolical ones who drive the emotion of a story with a sort of fierce brutality. Kölsch presented such a figure in her first novel Now, Conjurers (BCCB 7/24) in the ghastly, persistent, and entirely unforgettable Mr. Nous, a vile creature who had been toying with humanity for generations, preying on his victims’ weaknesses with a vicious zeal and delighting in his own cruelty. It is remarkable, then, that in her second outing, Kölsch has outdone herself in developing yet another malevolent force, this one built on a beautiful but terrible lie that asks the reader to consider whether they’d be able to stand up to a merciless, unrelenting evil.

Seventeen-year-old Darian has spent most of her summers in Kesuquosh, Massachusetts, a bucolic, small-town haven from the personal demons that haunt her in New York City. This year, in fall of 2001, she’s taking a trip to witness the quaint Harvest Hallow, a celebration of the town’s quirky religion-of-sorts built around a giant scarecrow, whose benevolent voice the villagers claim to hear in their heads (which Darian has never believed and was never really concerned by). The town has its usual mellow, breezy vibe, but Darian’s three best friends from town offer only a strange and anxious welcome. It turns out that this year’s festival is a different, horrifying version that only happens once every 35 years. In quick succession, Darian learns that Good Arcturus, the scarecrow, is real and alive, and although it is indeed his compassionate voice that everyone has heard in their minds for their whole lives, he’s being controlled by something that is malevolent and unyielding. When Darian’s summer crush, a girl named KJ, is selected as a sacrifice to the dark magic at play, Darian (who only has her own moral compass as an inner voice) is one of the few people with a clear enough mind to actually see what is happening and do something to stop it.

Kölsch wisely allows the reader, like Darian, to initially believe what they want about Good Arcturus—real or unreal, benevolent or not, he’s still a key figure in the town’s beliefs and its residents’ lives. The myth is eventually revealed to be true: an otherworldly being that came through a portal centuries ago, Good Arcturus connected with a young woman, watched her murdered as she tried to save him, and decided to stay, offering a haven in return for a sacrifice every 35 years. As our baffled and horrified narrator, Darian slowly comes to realize the real source of evil is a witch whose sense of self and goodness was crushed by her fellow humans and then corrupted by the power of gods. The fact that the villain was originally deeply hurt by the people in her village is a source for sympathy, but it is also the core of her warped concept of justice that she has acted on for hundreds of years—left to their own devices, she believes, humans will always veer toward what is wrong, so they should never be allowed autonomy.

It is to Kölsch’s credit that the book does not dismiss the villain’s worldview but rather explores its possibilities. There are, after all, so many lovely things about this little town where everyone hears a calming voice in their heads all the time, everyone belongs, and people are unerringly kind. It’s grotesque, sure, but it’s also such a beautiful lie that one can understand how it would be utopia for those hurt by human cruelty. The witch’s assessment that everyday humanity is often ugly enough to merit a town like Kesuquosh is perhaps more brutal in its truth than in its villainy. Readers will be left to wrestle with that fact long after the final page, putting this story in the uncomfortable league of other unforgettable evils such as Philip Pullman’s terrifying Metatron or the incomparably creepy Mr. Glueskin from Hiromi Goto’s Half World (BCCB 9/10).

—April Spisak, Reviewer