Darkness Wakes
Tim Waggoner
Leisure, Dec 2006, $6.99, 336 pp.
ISBN 0848957948

Aaron is a middle aged man, who lives in the small Ohio town of Ptolemy, and he is restless and unfulfilled. He feels like life is passing him by and although he loves his wife Kristen her low sex drive has him fantasizing about his neighbor Caroline. One night he drops off some CDs at the shopping center when he sees Caroline with a man not her husband and they go through a door that he never noticed before using a key in her possession.

The next day she comes to his vet practice where they participate in sexual foreplay before she invites him into Penumbra, the place she entered the night before. He accepts thinking it is a sex club which it is, but it is also much more. Towards the end of the evening, the members take him into a dark locked room and tell him not to enter the circle embedded in the concrete. They have a rabbit enter the circle and the Overshadow grows eating the essence of the sacrifice. As a reward, the Overshadow touches each member giving it pleasure so intense that they become addicted to it. Aaron is in for a surprise because the Overshadow has special gift for him.

Tim Waggoner is a magnificent horror writer who will be appreciated by readers who like Douglass Glegg and Bentley Little. DARKNESS WAKES is worthy of a Bram Stoker nomination because this is one creepy and scary horror thriller. The erotic sex scenes are a necessary prelude to the real intense pleasure given by the Overshadow. As in his fantasy books, Mr. Waggoner doesn’t neglect character development so readers understand what motivates each person in the story.

Harriet Klausner