We Used to Live Here by Marcus Kliewer
A creepy tale full of twists you won’t see coming
Eve and Charlie have barely moved into their new home — an impressive older property on a remote parcel of land — when a family knocks on their door.
The father says that he grew up here. He and his family are traveling across the country, and he wanted to show his kids his childhood home. Would it be possible for them to come in for just a short while — 15 minutes at the most — so he can show them the house where he lived as a boy?
With Charlie off running an errand in town and Eve a people-pleaser to a fault and notoriously incapable of sticking up for herself, she acquiesces.
As you might suspect, given that We Used to Live Here is a horror novel, the strange family do not leave after 15 minutes.
In fact, they end up spending the night. First, the youngest daughter disappears somewhere in the basement. Then, a winter storm blows in and cuts off the roads. Eve and Charlie have no choice but to offer accommodations.
But even in the morning, when there is no reason left for the family not to shove off, they still linger… They show no intent of leaving… They act for all the world like this house is their own…
Eve grows increasingly exasperated about the family’s refusal to go. Eventually, she becomes so infuriated that she storms out of the house and leaves them there.
And that’s when she begins to learn some strange details about the boy who used to live in this house: a neighbor remembers him, but there are inconsistencies in what she recalls and what the father himself had told her…
To discuss much more about the plot would be to venture into spoilerish territory, so I won’t — although I very much would like to. What I will say, however, is that the setup of this story does not in any way, shape, or form prepare you for its ultimate destination. The unexpected turn it takes in the second half reminded me of Barbarian — not in content, but rather how it becomes something wholly unexpected, utterly wild, and thoroughly thrilling.
Is the father dangerous? Is it the daughter? Is there someone else in the house? Who is the father, really? What actually occurred here during his childhood? Why won’t they leave? All these questions and many more compound as you constantly guess at where this book is heading and what eventual doom awaits Eve.
I didn’t realize until after reading the novel, that the story was originally published on r/nosleep. That seems appropriate in retrospect, given that the novel is a series of scary chapters that ultimately flip into something entirely different but equally frightening.
These chapters are also interspersed with documents apparently assembled by some collective of internet sleuths (very Reddit!) which, as the book goes on, come to make a whole lot of sense and supplement the main novel in a very effective and useful way. Too often, I’ve found, it feels like novels that utilize this approach do so more to pad out the wordcount that anything else. With We Used to Live Here, they serve a genuine purpose. To borrow a phrase from The X-Files: “You’re going to hear the words, and they’ll come to make sense to you.”
We Used to Live Here is delightfully creepy horror novel — a page-turner that maintains an eerie atmosphere of suspense and unease throughout. As the narrative continually twists and turns, the author plays his card deftly, leaving you uncertain about the direction of the plot or what fresh new terrors lurk around the corner. I loved it.