PopHorror Let's Get Scared
Indie horror author Jay Sizemore released his second novel, Ignore the Dead, in September. His first novel, Apnea, gave me literal nightmares, so I was extremely excited to dig into his latest. I suspect Ignore the Dead is going to be a sleeper hit.
Synopsis:
In Clarkson, Kentucky, Richard Chandler gets diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. Just five years after losing his wife to the disease. He contemplates ending it all. His suicide attempt is interrupted by a call from a mysterious stranger. What the stranger offers is a way to cheat death, all he has to do is give his cancer away to other people. And ignore the dead. What transpires is a story of terror, one that delves into the existential dread lurking beneath human mortality, the secrets kept in small towns, and a chilling glimpse of what lies beyond death’s invisible door.
There are worse fates than dying.
Ignore the Dead didn’t scare me in the “piss my pants and sleep with the lights on” way that I think most people expect from a horror novel, but it is TERRIFYING in its own way. This novel explores the idea of confronting your own mortality and the lengths to which one may go in order to cheat death. If you were given the chance to extend your own life, at a cost to others, would you take it? I think that most people are inclined to believe that they would never knowingly shorten a stranger’s life to increase their own, but when your death is looming, I think you’d be surprised what you’re capable of doing.
This novel is a symphony of existential dread, which played all the right notes and unlocked a door inside my mind that I’ve always kept locked. Once that door was open, all my doubts crept out. I wondered whether this life is all there is, whether there’s an afterlife, if it hurts. I’d find myself staring off into space, wondering about all these things and sometimes even questioning my own character. What would I do in Richard’s place? Is my character better than his, or worse? And most importantly, DOES IT EVEN MATTER? There are answers to some of those questions in Ignore the Dead, but don’t shoot the messenger if you don’t like the answers.
Pick up Ignore the Dead now and find out the answers for yourself.
