Summer camp is one of the last places you want to find yourself if you’re living inside a horror novel. But the scariest thing about Camp Damascus? Rose can’t even remember attending it. Internet-famous erotica author Chuck Tingle deftly pivots to serious horror in his first traditionally published novel Camp Damascus, out tomorrow, July 18.
Twenty-year-old Rose is as devoted to Kingdom of the Pine—an insular sect that combines fundamentalist Christianity with worship of capitalism and a business-savvy Prophet—as her parents or pastor could hope. Despite her tendency to overindulge her curiosity with internet research rabbit holes, her oft-criticized habit of counting out patterns with her fingertips, and her confusing feelings toward her classmate Martina, Rose is trying her best to live a life guided by the Bible passages she’s memorized and the Prophet’s Four Tenets. But with just weeks to go before high school graduation (Kingdom of the Pine Kids take two gap years, and so are older than their peers), Rose’s life is thrown off course by a series of disturbing occurrences. Rose vomits up flies during family dinner one night, she’s being haunted by a demonic apparition wearing a red polo shirt like a camp counselor, and the infomercials for Camp Damascus—Kingdom of the Pine’s famously successful ex-gay conversion camp—start to feel alarmingly familiar. Even more concerning is the way her parents and church-appointed psychologist react, as though they have something to hide. When Rose’s demonic encounters take a deadly turn, she realizes the only way to get answers is to seek them out herself. As Rose fights to unlock her buried memories, reconnects with people from her clouded past, and sheds the worldview she’s been raised with, she discovers that the secret Kingdom of the Pine harbors is far bigger and more terrifying than she could have ever imagined.
Camp Damascus adeptly mixes real-world and fictional horrors. This book is not for the faint of heart and hits just about every avenue of horror: On the body horror side are detailed descriptions of retching up flies and several limb-twisting injuries and gruesome deaths. On the psychological end, there’s Rose’s inability to trust her own memories and her fear that certain lines of thought will trigger supernatural apparitions. The supernatural horror here packs a punch: the unsettling demons with their lank, stringy hair and incongruous polo shirts are paired with brief glimpses into an almost Clive Barker-esque hell. But the true horrors at the heart of this story are dangers that plague our own world: religious fundamentalism and cults, homophobia and bigotry, conversion therapy and the abuse or abandonment of LGBTQ youth. Despite all these different forms of horror, however, the book also manages to include some moments of lighthearted humor and an ultimately uplifting message of empowerment.
I also love the way that this book plays with a classic slasher movie trope: summer camp. The most iconic example of this trope is the 1980 box office hit Friday the 13th, in which a group of carefree and sex-obsessed teens are picked off one by one by an unseen assailant. The mere existence of a summer camp in a horror novel is already priming us to be thinking about young folks being punished for their sexuality. In one twist on this trope, the sexuality being punished here is not necessarily the engaging in sexual acts but rather sexual orientation—Camp Damascus is a camp devoted to “converting” gay youth back into Kingdom of the Pine’s conception of properly behaved Christians. In another twist, the majority of this book does is not actually spent at camp. Instead, Rose spends most of the novel unable to remember attending Camp Damascus or any of the horrors that took place there. She has to slowly build her mental image of the camp back up, at first merely from infomercials, then by plumbing the brief flashes of memory that resurface, questioning fellow attendees, and reconnecting with her former camp counselor. Only once Rose has sketched in an outline of the horrors she experienced at Camp Damascus does she actually return to the camp grounds for a climactic confrontation. In this case, however, the villain isn’t one lone slasher out for revenge, but rather the whole power structure that has put the camp in place.
If you’re seeking a good summertime horror novel to send shivers down your spine while you read by the pool, Camp Damascus may be just what you’re looking for! You can find it on shelves at your favorite local retailer starting tomorrow. Or preorder it online now and support The Gothic Library in the process using this Bookshop.org affiliate link. Once you’ve read it I’d love to know your thoughts, so feel free to comment below!
Cognitohorror is definitely difficult to use right, but has a huge effect when done well.
I found the “demons” origins confusing. They’re scienced-up and extraplanar, but are they from the Christian Hell? The ending showdown seemed a little rushed, too. But I like Chuck Tingle and was glad to buy the book.