Do the Creepy Thing

Caz and Lucy have devised a game. They break into houses in the early hours and take it in turns to do the ‘creepy’ thing’ – putting their faces an inch from the sleeping occupant’s (usually an old person) for fifteen seconds. Caz is doing this when the old lady catches her wrist and snaps a bracelet onto it. Later, the bracelet seems to have disappeared but the pattern of the bracelet is etched on Caz’s skin. The old lady has always felt it was a curse put on her that she had spent fifty years trying to pass on to someone else. She is delighted now to be rid of it: her life has changed and she can use Caz to get chores done for her in return for sketchy details of the ‘curse’. So far, so predictably creepy. But what makes this more interesting is the attempt to break out of some of the easy stereotypes both of the genre and of characterisation. Caz’s mother, who seems to be perpetually dozy from anti-depression drugs, has begun to go out with a man who turns out to be Caz’s maths teacher. Horror of horrors. Yet he turns out to be a thoughtful and strong character standing up to Lucy’s abusive father. And Caz’s boyfriend, Mark, is also thoughtful, sensitive and caring. Amid all this, Caz finds that she can see into people’s troubled memories and help them. The bracelet becomes her means of helping people to repair their lives, of learning to care about and work with people. Moral purpose, worn on the sleeve, but an interesting version of the horror tale that many readers are caught up in.