Hex

Heuvelt’s HEX is a brilliant tale of the dark emotions that rule men’s hearts and the devastation those emotions can wreak upon society. Black Springs is a town with a secret, a conspiracy so entrenched and so horrific that Outsiders are dissuaded from moving into the quaint mountain town. Black Springs is home to Katherine van Wyler, the Black Rock Witch.

In the late 1600s, Katherine was accused of witchcraft and executed. Since then, she has ghosted the town of Black Springs, once New Beek, a colonial Dutch settlement. To hear her is to be driven mad, compelled to suicide. Lost to the ashes of time, some brave folk managed to sew her eyes and mouth shut, leaving her to follow her timeless path around the lands.

She appears and disappears, sometimes standing in one location for days. Pragmatic townfolk cover her with false pipe organs or hollow Easter bunnies and never, ever get close enough to hear her soft, sibilant whispers. Westpoint was established to keep the secret contained. Later, the task passed to HEX, loosely supervised by the Point.

There was a time when the curious wanted to communicate with Katherine. This failed, and the Emergency Decrees forbade further attempts to interact with Katherine in any way. She is not spoken of to Outsiders. Penalties for disobeying the Decrees can be swift and harsh, even today.

Enter Tyler Grant and friends. They push the boundaries of what the Decrees allow, skirting the edge of the acceptable. Until the day they go too far.

Katherine’s “retaliations” against the assaults to her person seem less a truly malicious attack and more psychic survival mechanisms. When a modern-day man opens her eyes and mouth, inoculated against her despair by his own that runs just as deep, the unexpected happens. Yet that doesn’t stop the fully expected from playing out as well.

I can’t recommend this book enough!