Waking Up Old Evils - Reviewing Thomas Olde Heuvelt's "Hex"

The weather is warming up and what better story is there to read in these early days of spring than Hex, the story of a witch being awakened from her centuries long hibernation? Dutch author Thomas Olde Heuvelt's breakthrough novel has been quite the talk of town ever since it was first published in 2013, mainly because of its USA version for which the author decided to re-locate the story to the USA instead of originally Netherlands and to re-write the ending for the American audience. Whether you think it is the ultimate witch novel and Katherine van Wyler one of the scariest monsters of modern times or you think a re-write was unnecessary and turn up your nose on the US version - I guess the whole back story is a little sensation itself that probably did good advertising for this eerie slice of small town horror and enhanced its fame as the horror novel that was too scary for Americans (just kidding!).

Hex revolves around a New England town stuck with the curse of the witch Katherine van Wyler who, in the seventeenth century, was killed as well as mutilated in that her eyes and mouth were sewn shut so she cannot give them her evil eye and cannot pronounce her vicious spells and hurt people. In today's Black Spring, Katherine will suddenly appear in random places, including people's homes, or walk back and forth her routine laps and not further bother anyone, even though the sight of her in, say in your living room or even worse beside your bed just standing there can give you massive creeps. She'll eventually go away but will just stand around for maybe a long time. She will only react when you try to touch or harm her and she'll do so in a seriously catastrophic way, causing death and mayhem.

This being the situation, a set of unusual rules shape the life in Black Spring and the most important one is that her eyes and mouth should always remain shut! Then there is the rule of absolute secrecy; no one from the outside can know about Katherine, so the town is pretty closed in on itself and there aren't many outsiders coming in. Now, if you don't put a whole town inside a dome, plot holes are inevitable with a concept like this and there are quite some here too. The author tried to plug those holes by way of Katherine's supernatural support and quite a few innovate solutions brought on by the town's folk - a special shout out here to the eight old ladies who come running and surrounding Katherine on her walks and who, if necessary start singing Christmas carols to chase away any stranger who might stick around long enough to be alarmed by the sight of an underfed and mutilated older woman. There's also HEX, something like a neighborhood watch, and the HEX app where you can follow Katherine's activities. You can't leave the town as you will start having suicidal thoughts and eventually kill yourself, if the pressure grows enough. So they are all as captive as can be.

What nobody in town realizes is that a group of teenagers, armed with their cameras and social media, intend to change that; they started shooting little videos and want to come out of the closet, show it all and be free! Little do they know what sort of apocalypse they're kicking off.

I have a friend of whom I am extremely jealous of because she has read the original version! And what she told me confirms my suspicions that Katherine the witch originally was a great bit nastier than she turned out to be in the US version. As much as I appreciate the slightly feminist and humanist tones of the witch trope, that it almost always touches on the pursuing, torturing and killing of women outside of society, I also immensely enjoy reading a through and through EVIL witch! I was slightly disappointed here since ultimately, the worst of the evil in this book is not caused by Katherine.

What I really enjoyed on the other hand was the commentary on religion and beliefs as well as the massive and graphic descriptions of violence generating violence. It is not a very big spoiler to say that the people of Black Spring, whatever happens, think sacrificing someone will make it all good again and I'm afraid people in real life would act similarly under similar circumstances. Black Spring is quite a crazy place, even without a witch.
All in all I would say this is a positively solid horror novel and as with every horror novel set in NE, a little reminiscent of Stephen King and his "small town in Maine" trope. Hex isn't perfect by any means, but the kind of book where it's OK and good for it not to be perfect.

All this aside, while researching the book I realized I'm not the only one who is dying to read the original version, so if there's anyone involved in the publishing reading here, please hear us!