A Horror Story with Writing So Good You Can Smell It

A Horror Story with Writing So Good You Can Smell It
BY SHELLY BRYANT I SEPTEMBER 14, 2008

For many people, the whole genre of horror, with its gore and darkness, is an unholy thing unfit for good Christian folk to trifle with. Just as many fall on the other side of the question, ranking Christianity itself as the biggest horror story of all time.

One way or another, it is hard to deny that Frank Peretti, one of the most successful authors of "Christian fiction" this generation has seen, broke serious ground with his writing a couple of decades ago. His early works, This Present Darkness and Piercing the Darkness, were relatively mild on the horror side, though they did manage to horrify leaders of the faithful all over the world when some of their sheep took Peretti's fiction a little too literally. (Imagine that...Christians taking fictionalized tales at face value.)

It was with the publication of The Oath that Peretti moved more clearly into the field of horror. Later novels such as The Visitation and Monster have followed this progression, but The Oath stands out as both the first and the best of Peretti's horror novels. It is visceral and graphic and very memorable.

In The Oath, a beast roams the hills, devouring and brutalizing unsuspecting humans who venture too far into the forest. If you don't get that creepy feeling at the back of your neck from this novel, you aren't paying attention. It is gory and bloody—so much so that you can practically smell it. It opens with:

She ran, tree limbs and brambles scratching, grabbing, tripping, and slapping her as if they were bony hands, reaching for her out of the darkness. The mountainside dropped steeply, and she ran pell-mell, her feet unsure on pine needles and loose stones. She beat at the limbs with flailing arms, looking for the trail, falling over logs, getting up and darting to the left, then the right. A fallen limb caught her ankle, and she fell again. Where was the trail?

Blood. She reeked of it. It was hot and sticky between her fingers. It had soaked through her shirt and splattered on her khaki pants so her clothes clung to her. In her right hand she held a hunting knife in an iron grip, unaware that the tip of the blade was broken off.

It is the opening to a real page-turner, and most of Peretti's novels are nothing if not page-turners (with the notable exception of some kids' stories he's written). Peretti writes well, putting together stories that are the sort you will want to stay up all night to finish. And you might as well finish this one, because the images you'll read might just keep you up all night anyway.

Of all the Peretti novels I've read, The Oath is by far my favorite. The writing is tight and crisp, and the story is wonderfully paced.

And if the Christian "message" is the most horrifying part of the novel to you, never fear. It is kept in check by the thrills of the story itself. Think of it as more in the vein of C. S. Lewis's That Hideous Strength than his later The Chronicles of Narnia series. Sure, the message is there, but it doesn't interfere with the well-crafted story told on the pages of The Oath.

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