Far away in Hungary, a folklorist named Halmi Álmos travels the quiet and ancient streets of Debrecen in search of a manuscript. The book in question is called The Book of Untold Devotions and Unheard Tributes. Álmos has learned quite a bit about this book. To the best of his knowledge, it contains the folktales and occult rituals of a secretive order founded by a shtetl Jew named Kholem Ein-Sof Ben Avrom. This founder sought to combine several mystical traditions, namely the kabbalah and Romany folklore, with the pre-Christian religion of the Magyar people. Kholem’s secret society found adherents among all of society’s outcasts. As such, the group was chased far deep into the Carpathians by Protestants, Catholics, and Jews united in their hatred of the group’s dark syncretism. Years later, a researcher named Tamás went to study the cult before ultimately disappearing. Álmos wants to find Tamás.
Across the ocean, a young child actor named Emily Barna travels to British Columbia to portray a kidnapped Puritan girl on a television show. Emily seems to be a level-headed young starlet, and thanks to her young aunt Nora, she is not alone among the usually suspicious Hollywood lot. However, things begin to go badly for Emily when she starts having vivid and nightmarish dreams. Unbeknownst to her, Emily’s dreams coincide with strange developments in Hungary, including one accidental death and Álmos’s unnamed belief that the world is on the precipice of ruination.
Hypnagogia by Romain P.A. Delpeuch is an odd novella that combines disconnected scenes with overlapping poetry. The poems are taken from the forbidden Hungarian grimoire, and each has an off-kilter, slightly morbid character befitting what is ostensibly a horror story. You see, whatever great chain of being that links Álmos and Emily causes both of them to lash out wildly. People get hurt, and in the end, reason gets thrown overboard. It is this last quality that marks Hypnagogia as an Expressionist text. It is unreal in creative ways. How and why these two people are spiritually connected is never explained. Furthermore, like all good dabblers in speculative fiction, Delpeuch makes the wise decision to refrain from over-explaining the Hungarian cult too much, thus leaving their power all the more shocking.
Hypnagogia is not like most books you will read this summer. Mr. Delpeuch is a novella writer now, but he seems to be a poet first. And as a writer of verse, he works with images, emotions, and other things less-than-solid. This background provides Hypnagogia with a unique feel—somewhere quasi-Lovecraftian but still far away from the Old Man of Providence’s usual ambiance. Subtlety is the weapon most used, as this novella’s ending will likely leave you with more than a few questions. Those questions will go unanswered unless you consult with a goulash oracle or maybe roll the bones (so long as they’re doused in paprika).
The one criticism of this book is, counter-intuitively, related to it strength. The amorphous narrative can feel flat at times, as it does rely on a Fortean understanding of events. For every reader who enjoys inexplicable anomalies, others will groan at the vagueness of it all. Hopefully these two types of readers stay out of the same room.
Independent publishers like Terror House, The Bizarchives, Imperium, and so many others continue to flex on the weak tea produced by the multi-billion dollars conglomerates out of New York City. For the sake of full disclosure, I am a co-editor at Terror House, but I did not read a single word of Hypnagogia before its publication. Therefore, I can say with a modicum of honesty that this is one of the finer productions from Terror House, and it is definitely one of there best speculative works yet. Here’s hoping for more horror from Matt and co., for yokels like us need highly literate horror in order to transverse this clown show we call modern life.