Nocturnal

Nocturnal by Scott Sigler

I’ve seen the movie Misery several times and love it. But I have to admit that every time I’ve watched it (since the first time), I’ve had to turn my head away and close my eyes when Annie hobbles Paul with the block of wood and the sledgehammer. I’ve never been able to watch the footage of Joe Theismann’s final play. I know what happens, and I’m not man enough to handle seeing it. There’s just something about limbs bending where they’re not supposed to bend that I don’t do well with. Bloody entrails pulled out of a person's abdomen, decapitations, stuff like that doesn’t bother me, but a visibly broken limb makes me cringe and quite honestly makes me a little light-headed. Which brings me to Scott Sigler's new book Nocturnal.

I know when I start reading a horror story by Sigler, that I'm going to experience some light-headedness. I know I'm going to cringe and squirm at parts, but I still can't wait to read one every time one comes out.

I first discovered Sigler when I picked up a copy of his book Infected about microscopic aliens that enter earth's atmosphere and then the bodies of humans and begin to grow. That book made me cringe numerous times as the human hosts took drastic measures to try to rid themselves of the parasitic hitchhikers. Nocturnal delivered as well.

Bryan Clauser is a homicide detective in San Francisco who has begun having vivid and disturbing dreams in which he stalks and violently kills human prey. But these aren't merely dreams he's having. At the same time Bryan is having these violent dreams, they're actually taking place on the streets of his city. As he tries to investigate the murders he discovers that all of the victims are tied to one person, an awkward and bullied boy named Rex.

Rex likes to draw. It provides him an outlet for the miserableness of his life. He's the victim of abuse, both at school and at home, but his drawings have begun to become reality. Shortly after he draws the horrific demise of one of his abusers, that abuser comes to an eerily similar demise.

Bryan's dreams and Rex's drawings are signs of something much larger that's been going on in and under the city of San Fancisco for more than a century. 

I enjoyed Nocturnal a lot. I've never read anything by Sigler that I didn't like, so I'm not surprised. His stories are always entertaining, and even though they occasionally make me question my manhood by making me cringe like a little school girl, they always jump to the top of my to-be-read pile whenever a new one comes out.  

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆