Panic by Chris Curry

Pocket Books 1994

Chris Curry is actually prolific horror author Tamara Thorne.

Video review here. Written review below.

Panic starts in the year 1964. October 1st. It’s a chilly fall day in the fictional Californian town of Santo Verde. The leaves are turning autumn shades and falling from the giant oak tree into the front yard of our seven-year-old protagonist Ricky’s country home. A peaceful time for most folks but unfortunately for Ricky, he has “the sight.” A gift passed down through his Scottish ancestors. When he looks out his window, he knows those aren’t leaves dancing and bobbing around in the wind. They are the Greenjacks; impish little creatures who exist partially on our plane of existence as spectral entities seemingly comprised of misty air. Ricky is the only one in his family who can see them for what they really are. And they know that he can see them, so they taunt him from the windows. “Icky Ricky…Come out and play.” Luckily, they cannot harm him from their cross dimension unless it’s Halloween night. That is when the Greenjacks can enter our world.

They bond together into a giant treelike entity called Big Jack. If they catch someone unconscious, they can enter their body and remain in our world while the soul of the person is banished into the Greenjack world. Or that is what Grandpa Piper says when he tells young Ricky and his twin brother Robin the family folktale. Because the jacks and the pipers are forever connected.

Robin doesn’t have the site and doesn’t believe the Greenjacks are real. At the same time, he also kind of wishes it were true. He wants to trade bodies with the Greenjacks as he was born without legs. If he were a Greenjack he could run and dance around the tree like the legends say.

Halloween night comes. The jacks have converged into Big Jack. Only Ricky knows and is terrified. While playing a practical joke on Ricky, Robin falls from the window and is knocked unconscious. Also at the window is Big Jack.

The next day Robin starts to act strange. He is smiling fiendishly at Ricky while licking their mom’s hair and pajamas from behind her back. He seems to be exploring his surroundings as if for the first time. That night Ricky hears Robin go downstairs and silently follows him. Robin has opened the refrigerator and is licking all the food and putting it back. He grabs the carton of milk, takes a drink and spits it back into the container. Ricky knows Robin is gone and replaced with the Greenjack.

And that is the set up. Genuinely creepy. Something about Robin in the refrigerator licking ham gives me the willies. I was all in and would have been completely content for this story to stay in 1964. But it jumps ahead to 1993. Grown up Ricky living in Las Vegas as a professional consumer advocate with a “funny” column in the paper. I can tell you; he probably wasn’t very good at it because Ricky says nothing even remotely funny in this book. He is a pretty neurotic fella. Even in his grown-up years as a father to two children. His son is five. His daughter is sixteen. His wife was killed in a car crash years ago. His parents were murdered. His brother Robin was killed. No wonder the guy isn’t funny.

Anyway! Chris has inherited his parents’ home back in Santo Verde. He’s actually owned it for years but was too frightened to go back. But now that his daughter has turned sixteen he decides Greenjacks be damned, his daughter isn’t turning mature in Sin City and moves the family out to the old farmhouse.

Will he still see the Greenjacks? Was it all just in his head? What actually happened to his brother Robin? Will his son be the next victim or do they have their sites on Icky Ricky still?

The time period will jump from 93 to 64 and further as we get to hear more of what happened to the Greenjack possessed Robin. Both eras pack a punch. Ricky’s white trash elderly aunt lives at the house. She and her shitty husband and moved in after Ricky’s parents died. They didn’t care for the kids, only for the money. She is now borderline senile and talks about how she used to bang Robin.

And how she is STILL banging Robin.

Which Ricky knows is bullshit because Robin is dead. Right?

This book will give you the creeps. There are hidden passages in the walls. Odd things are happening in the house and we still have the jacks dancing around the tree outside.

The flashback scenes with Robin are unsettling. Ricky has to live years with this maniacal imp possessed brother sleeping on a bed ten feet from his. Robin torments Ricky to no end. And the worst is Halloween night because the only thing a Greenjack wants more than to possess a human is to possess a human with “the sight” so they can still interact with their Greenjack family. And it’s almost Halloween again.