WE CAME BACK BY PATRICK LACEY

REVIEW BY JOHN BODEN 

 
Melvin Brown is a loner. A strange pariah who skulks and mutters through his days, drawing monsters in his notebooks and talking himself out of doing terrible things.  He is picked on and bullied and one tragic day, he has his fill.  Shooting himself in front of a cafeteria full of fellow students and the bullies who brought him to that point.  But hatred is tough to kill.

Years after his death, in the town of Lynwood, a strange young man shows up in town. He's the splitting image of the dead Melvin and he's dating one of the smartest girls in school.  Another  of the town's teens is lured to the old school while jogging and introduced to someone or something with grand designs . Soon after, things start to change. The jocks and the brains and the popular kids all start to transform into that which they never understood and readily tore apart.  They dress in black and seem paler. They are angsty and the air around the thickens with malevolence.  Their numbers grow daily, they earn a nickname from the faculty-and then the town- The Lynwood Vamps.

Their epicenter seems to be the condemned school where the tragedy took place all those years ago. They have a plan and they have a leader and before long, the entire town will understand that sometimes bygones can't just be bygones. Things swept under the rug don't always disappear, sometimes they grow fangs and slither.  Sometimes turning the other way will get your neck broken.
Patrick Lacey's novel is a truly fun and well-rendered throw back to those glory days of pulp horror.  We Came Back is the gory and shadow-shrouded offspring of Salem's Lot and Sixteen Candles.  It delivers honest portrayals of  troubled teenagers as well as flawed and troubled adults. The struggles of both groups to come to grips with what's going on and played parallel and perfectly so.  The pacing is quick and logical and the prose is lean and mean and licked-bone clean.
Recommended, very much so.
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We Came Back is available from Sinister Grin Press.

"WE CAME BACK is an emotional trip through our darkest fears. One of the best books I've read in years."--Kristopher Rufty, author of SOMETHING VIOLENT and DESOLATION.

Growing up dead.

Melvin Brown sees things that aren’t there. Monsters with tentacles and razor-sharp teeth. Ever the social outcast, he is bullied to the point of suicide. And his hatred of those who did him wrong does not die with him.

One decade after Melvin's death, something strange is happening to Lynnwood High School's smartest and most popular students. They begin to act out and spend time at the former high school, now abandoned and said to be haunted. And their numbers grow at an alarming rate.

Is this just a passing fad or are the rumors true? Does Lynnwood really have a teenage cult on their hands?

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