A collectors edition book of Hallowed Halls, containing the first five stories. It depicts Winerva the scarecrow in a frighteningly abstract way with tattered frayed angles and hands that, instead of their usual human shape, resemble the ends of straw bundles.

Now that I look back on our older articles it has become apparent that of all the characters we have talked about on this site, Winerva Woeful is possibly the least discussed of them. This update will aim to rectify that, exploring the world of the Hallowed Halls book series she originates from, as well as discussing why the series is such a big deal in the world of children’s horror to begin with. For those who did not grow up around Hollowed Halls or have not revisited it since you were young, let me give you a brief refresher on their history. Written by Jeffery H Klein and illustrated by his wife Deborah, this series started as an experiment on the author's part. Up until then Jeffery Klein had only written horror literature for adults, with his books selling moderately well but never quite reaching the levels of acclaim this series would. Klein had been reading his nephew scary stories before bedtime, as one does, when he came to the conclusion that the stories contained within were lackluster and noticed they did not seem to interest his nephew.

With this in mind Klein began looking through other children’s horror literature of the time. Similarly to his previous encounter the author found these stories to be extremely uninventive, recycling the same urban legends with mild changes. His major issue with them however was that the books took on a generally condescending and detached tone that did not respect their young audience. Klein grew concerned that, with such poor work being the standard, young people might have a harder time getting into horror; they might think it all the same quality of these books and mistakenly think they just didn’t like horror in general. Whether this hypothesis of his was true or not can be contested, but regardless it was the spark that drove Klein to create Hallowed Halls.

Klein, with the help of his wife, did a lot of research before writing the series. They interviewed children from all over the country on what they found scary. To him, it was important to see what he could do differently from other books and how far he could take the horror before it became too much. Spoilers: the answer was that kids could handle a lot of horror, and the things that scared them could get pretty bizarre. With this information in hand, Klein wrote the first book of the series which we will discuss now.

An illustration of Mr and Mrs Klein sitting in two fancy chairs in front of a fire place. The two have dark skin, curly greying hair, and Winerva sits in Mr Klein's lap reading a copy of Hallowed Halls. Surrounding the two are a variety of oddities such as a unicorn skeleton, butterfly monster, crawling tendrils, strange photos, and shelves stacked high with eerie trinkets a fish tank, and a hummingbird collection.

The Killer Curtains at Aunties House

The first book in the Hallowed Halls series is still regarded as one of the best amongst fans, but also one of the tamest - something which would rapidly change later on as Mr. Klein found his footing. Before we get into it I would like to take a moment to appreciate the cover art. This series used a very strict monochromatic color arrangement, with other colors rarely if ever showing up (more on that later). The artwork of Deborah Klein is simply wonderful; it creates such an ominous feeling while also being oddly playful in how it chooses to depict the monsters of the stories. I really love the almost bioluminescent glow of the curtains and the way the “ghost” of the story fazes through the window.

This book is also a good time to discuss how inventive and vague Jeffery can get with the horrors he writes. On the surface, this book reads like a simple ghost story about a young boy visiting his weird reclusive aunt's house and then having multiple encounters with an entity lurking around the window of his aunt's bedroom. It doesn’t help that the boy's aunt is almost always locked in said room talking to someone, which goes to reaffirm the boy's belief that the house is haunted. Eventually however we discover that there is no ghost. No, what is wrong with the room is that the curtains are not only a living, very ravenous creature, but they also have the power to manifest false visions to those in their proximity. Then the curtains eat the boy as his aunt locks the door to the room.

I feel this is a nice first glimpse into what Klein is capable of as an author, but also his vagueness when it comes to explaining the horrors. What is going on with the aunt? Why did she end up with this weird creature in her home? Where did the curtains come from? There are hints, like the boy noting the smell of the curtains to remind him of baby's breath, and the aunt constantly buying baby food (which the boy also has to eat for his meals during the stay), along with the fact that the aunts room appears to once have been a nursery. But that all just leaves us the readers with more questions, and everything that comes to mind is disconcerting to say the least.

My only real complaint is that this book is littered with really obnoxious pranks by the boy and a very poor understanding of how a child of the boy's age would talk, with lots of dated slang that makes it obvious Mr. Klein is still getting comfortable writing for this demographic. Thankfully in later books these faults recede to be hardly noticeable, if present at all.

Patricia was her name, every parent he wrote had a name, even when the books simply called the adults “father” “mother” “aunt” and so on. Patricia, Patricia, was it worth it? Keeping things the way they were? It’s easy to loathe her, but I pity her, what a lonely existence that has trapped us all in place.

Attack of the Mutant Hummingbirds

One of my favorites! This was the twentieth book of the series, and what a book it is! If the previous story seemed weird to you then I am excited to see what you make of this one. In it a local boy (if I have one complaint with these books it is that the protagonists are almost always young boys) named Hank thinks to himself about how during the years he has grown up in this place there has not once been any acknowledgment of the tall abandoned factory on the edge of town. The way the book describes this factory is really good; it makes a particular point to constantly bring up the smokestacks which are described as, “Burrowing up from the ground like grey worms.” Really unpleasant image!

Then the Mutant Hummingbirds appear - yes it is indeed as abrupt as it sounds. The setup in this book is a little quick before the horror, something pretty unusual for Mr. Klein, but I do appreciate it when he switches things up for his stories. In this case I think the abruptness is part of the eeriness (and theme) of the creatures. These “chittering, slobbering, needle beaked beasts” erupt from the smokestacks of the factory and terrorize the town, not directly attacking people but being dangerous because of their extreme speed and sharp beaks. The book describes the creatures as always in motion and having a clumsiness to them that leads the beasts to accidentally run through walls, clothing, cars, and humans. This story was possibly inspired by the rare real world incidents in which hummingbirds have flown beak first into people's eyes, but there’s never been official confirmation on this inspiration.

I really love how the birds are portrayed, they have an unsettling human-like quality to the secondary faces on their backs and as we will learn later on, the implied reason is pretty harrowing! The reason I like this book series so much is that, while the scarier details and implications might fly over the heads of younger readers, there is still enough tangible fear and horror present in the story for these young readers to still enjoy it. They may not put together the horrifying implication of why the hummingbirds are swarming, but they will still be frightened by the idea of these awful little beasts impaling people and animals in frankly brutal ways.

Now I’ve been eagerly waiting to get into the next part of this story so let’s do that right now. Hank and his friend venture into the factory, intending to see what the source of the problem is and hopefully rid the town of the hummingbirds, only to find that it is actually not a factory but a facade built around an old abandoned research station. There is no concrete explanation for the current happenings but there are clues, like what Hank can understand of the research notes discussing wavelengths, radiation, and sound. Another odd detail is the countless piles of clothing littering the floor of the laboratory.

The story ends with the hummingbirds flying so fast they “dwindle into particles,” but for the rest of his days the protagonist is haunted by the sound of hummingbird wings.

Fluttering around on tattered wings made from bits and scraps of frayed lab coats, the ease with which states change is surprising, frightening, repulsive to humans. Everything must change, in time, yet they fight it, clawing at the edges of history. Their hands tear and puncture the canvas, changing it further.

Illustration of the previously mentioned scene. At the end of a darkly lit laboratory a boy opens the exit doors pouring light into the cluttered mess of a workplace. The clothing, name cards, and belongings, of those who worked there beforehand sit empty on the tiled floor.

The Closet From Outer Space

To me, this is the best Hallowed Halls book. A story that I would not only recommend for children’s horror readers, but horror enjoyers in general. It’s a great display of the weirdness and creativity of Mr. Klein's tastes in horror, as well as an interesting concept.

For starters, the conceit of this story is very simple: A young troubled boy by the name of Isaac wakes up to find a new closet in his room. It has black stripes, feels like sandpaper, and is cold to the touch despite it being the middle of summer. Isaac at first ignores the closet. In fact, he spends half the book doing his best to carry on in his deteriorating homelife (said homelife being outlined in uncomfortable detail several chapters before the closet even enters the picture), while also dealing with bullying at school. In a lesser author's hands all this time would be spent on the same old “nobody believes me!” antics in which the boy tries to convince people around him of the closet and is not believed. I feel like in The Closet From Outer Space, that time is utilized in a more interesting way.

This closet soon begins to follow Isaac around town, appearing on walls and ceilings wherever he goes. When the closet opens Isaac rushes to close it before it can open all the way. We never get clarification on the why, but the story makes it very clear that Isaac is already aware there are consequences for letting the doors open.

From the other side of the door, Isaac can hear what he can only describe as “shape noises.” At night the closet plays loud music, and casts the room in “awful colors” through the cracks of its doors. I feel like I’m not doing this story justice because the writing is really integral to its enjoyment. The way I describe it makes it feel very repetitive but trust me, this story is very good at filling the reader with a constant dread of the closet.

Something I find interesting is how Isaac feels alone in all of this; he never goes to an adult for help nor confides in his friends. While this could be easy to dismiss as stupid horror protagonist behavior, I think with all we learn about his home life and parents, these actions are born less out of a lack of thought and more so out of the notion Isaac has that there is nobody in his life he feels safe to turn to about his problem. It’s a sad thought for sure.

Slightly related information I have is that Mr. Klein has always rejected the idea of using horror stories to teach “moral lessons.” In his own words he prefers to, in the case of children’s horror, use the genre as a way to throw a lifeline to his audience in order to understand them. He lets the writing take him wherever, and is not so concerned with teaching as he is with prompting emotional responses or introspection.

The closet continues to harass Isaac. When he opens his school locker, it is the interior of a closet and when he opens a cabinet the same happens. The origin of the closet is not clearly defined but it appears to act as a catalyst for change within the world as it passively exists within it. People Isaac knows are reduced to clothing on hangers which thoughtlessly billow in the windy streets, stars drift together above the town to the point the sky turns white. Everyone Isaac interacts with begins to smell like mothballs, and at one point the closet, which he tries to lock closed, spews out what is only described as something that dances and snaps its square green teeth at him. As chaotic and spontaneous as the events produced by the closet are, it seems there is an order to them, and whenever Isaac tries to interrupt that order (the back and forth between him trying to mitigate the chaos of the closet) he is punished for it.

Eventually, after months of being harassed and emotionally battered by the closet, Isaac just accepts the closet’s presence in his life. He lets it open entirely, transforming and changing all in its wake.

In today's environment of every horror story being about a vaguely gestured towards concept of “trauma,” a lot of readers might read this ending as Isaac accepting the reality of his homelife, coming to terms and learning to live with his issues. Yet to me the book portrays this acceptance of the closet in a very grim way, there is no relief or elation experienced from letting this thing overtake Isaac's life. It feels like Isaac just gives up and is so tired and exhausted from fighting that he lets this awful object do whatever it wants with him. One detail that will always trouble me about this story is something I intentionally omitted from the introduction. On the first night that the closet appears in his room, Isaac describes the structure as being cold to the touch and feeling like sandpaper. Despite Isaac raising his hand to make contact with the object, anxiously preparing to press his fingers against the wooden surface, it was the closet that closed the distance to first touch him.

The way in which identity shifts state is concerning isn’t it? A closet, a humble puppet, shadows on the wall. Waiting and gesturing to be inhabited by thoughts and ideas despite the prudish efforts to keep them clean and undesecrated. For all the attempts to turn them into empty mansions and uninhabited houses that pad the wallets of real estate companies, they cannot keep them empty. An empty vessel will be filled with the ease that air and water flow to occupy space. A story without an idea? An object without character? Impossible.

Blight of the Butterfly Men

After the last article it feels a bit jarring to discuss a book which contains none of the paranormal cosmic elements of The Closet from Outer Space. I promise however that this story has its moments. It’s also shorter than the previous story, which on that note seems like a good time to point out that the Hallowed Halls books could often be pretty lengthy, much longer than the typical children’s book series of the time.

The basis of the second book in the series is, adorably, based on Mr. Klein's days exploring the wilderness outside his childhood home looking for famed West Virginian cryptid Mothman. I like getting these little insights to what influenced the stories because they help add more texture to the experience, if that makes sense, but I will save this anecdote for the end of this book's summary.

A book of Hallowed Halls’ “Blight of the Butterfly Men”. The illustration on the cover emulates a mid action photo with blurry rushes paint strokes. It depicts the titular butterfly man lunging, or perhaps recoiling in the presence of whoever took the photo. It has human-like mitts for hands, two grossly distended eyes, and a body covered in mottled fur.

This story revolves around our first girl protagonist of the series, Ruby. Ruby is a pernicious young child who, much like all girls, loves nothing more than goofing around in the forest, getting herself covered in mud, twigs, and leaves, scaring her younger brothers, daring her friends to eat moss, and generally being a menace to everyone in the neighborhood. She’s awesome. The current fixation of Ruby is the local tall tales her town has about a mysterious figure called the Butterfly Man which has haunted the town for years, to the point they have a statue erected of the creature in the town square that tourists often visit. According to the townspeople, those who get too close to the Butterfly Man risk having their memories sucked out of their head by its long tongue. Ruby is determined to find the creature for herself and thus enlists the help of her two brothers, who reluctantly tag along.

I feel like the atmosphere of this book really saves it because the hunt for the creature is one of the unfortunate instances in which Klein substitutes his usually interesting character writing with pranks and gross out humor. One such example is a disgusting porridge made by Ruby to lure in the Butterfly Man, ruining it because she refuses to use any ingredient that requires a fraction. Overall the plans made by the kids are just not very interesting nor compelling. What is compelling is the way the land is described as being oppressively chokingly humid. Klein does some amazing work building up this awful gross swampy forest(?) that you really would not want to go into, even if it wasn’t haunted by a monster. A lot of the book is spent wanting to scream at these kids to stop playing around in what is ultimately a very unforgiving and dangerous area. I remember when reading this as a kid being very put off by the forest sections, sometimes having bad dreams about the forest itself.

The monster of the story is an interesting case of misdirection. For a lot of the book Butterfly Man is built up as this fantastical wish granting being that can teleport, brainwash people, and mess with electronics, all very supernatural behavior. However when the trio of children finally stumble across Butterfly Man, he is ultimately revealed to be nothing more than a wild animal. There is no man in “Butterfly Man”, so to speak. I could easily envision this turning into a story about some misunderstood monster that the three children have to protect from the fearful townsfolk; a lot of movies and books have done similar things so it wouldn’t be out of the ordinary.

But this is Jeffery H Klein we are talking about, so of course there is some tragic eerie twist to these circumstances. In this case it is partly that the Butterfly Man is near the end of its life. It’s described as decrepit, with eyes that have long since clouded over and wings that are missing many of their once vibrant scales. It makes snuffling sounds and moves at the speed of a sloth. The way Klein describes this poor thing brings to mind the way a once hyperactive dog becomes old and feeble, or a once strong bear's fur becomes matted and its eyes grey.

Of course, much like a bear, age has not changed the Butterfly Man’s nature.

The Butterfly Man lashes out with sudden quickness, grabs Ruby's brother, and before she can react tears off into the deeper forest. Days later a pile of dried skin and one brainless skull is found at the edge of the marsh.

So, returning to what I said about the inspiration for this story at the start of the article, Mr. Klein says this story was based off of all the times he wandered into the forest in search of cryptids and creatures. More specifically, it was based on the retroactive terror he felt thinking about all that time spent alone in a place he shouldn’t have been exploring as a young child, what could have happened to him, what if something had happened to him, and what if he actually had found a cryptid while he was alone out there. There’s also the idea of wildlife as something wonderful and sympathetic but also dangerous. The Butterfly Man has human traits projected onto it when ultimately the creature is not a human, and reacts to the children as it would any other prey animal. There isn’t much mystery to this story nor haunting ambiguity, but overall I like it a lot and still think it’s earned its place as one of the better known books in the series.

A more complete illustration of the Butterfly Man, his appearance is now more haggard and forlorn, with sunken milky white eyes and a pair of tattered wings which resemble torn curtains. His hands are held upwards in a stalking motion but he also looks surprised.

The Scarecrow Seer

Winerva Woeful, the most well known character of the entire Hallowed Halls series. For more background on Winerva’s history, please refer to the character article linked on our notable characters page! In this article we will be discussing Winerva as she appeared in fiction, as well as the brief controversy her book wound up in when it was released.

The Scarecrow Seer is very interesting in that it hardly features Winerva at all, only at the very end does the character show up (but we are getting ahead of ourselves). The story centers around Beth Andrews, a young girl living in suburbia with her family. In these stories suburbia is a frequent setting for awful things to happen. In his blog posts (Yes, Jeffery Klein is online, hello if you read this Mr. Klein!), Klein has written about his experiences with suburbia. Being African American the place has always held an evil quality to him, so it was only natural to have creatures and restless spirits spring from the ground it sat on.

Beth Andrews, the adoptive daughter of two miserly disgusting suburbanites, is forced to move from the city, finding that her new house has an unsettling presence that both her parents obnoxiously ignore. I feel like this book is famous for introducing Winerva Woeful to the world, however I rarely see discussions of its actual plot online. I think it is a little suspect that this story is very much about race - in that Beth is a black girl and her adoptive parents are white. This informs the lack of critical discussion online as well as the controversy later on.

To start with, her parents are extremely creepy in how they interact with their daughter. Most of the horror manifests through them which might disappoint some readers. They are particular about what she wears, control what she eats, snap their fingers in her face to make her pay attention, grip her wrist to drag her along, and generally treat Beth as more of an animal than a human being. Her mom even jokes about chopping off her “unruly hair,” which is cartoonishly depraved levels of evil but somehow the story makes this work; these are disgusting people. What I like is that Beth does not seem to find anything wrong with this, she is portrayed and even stated to be very compliant which gives the impression she doesn’t find this treatment abnormal. If anything she believes it is the result of her own unintended “misbehavior.” If you’ve had the experiences I have I think this is very relatable.

There’s also a deep empathy for Beth. In general I find that Klein tends to write his child protagonists from this place and in line with his dislike of using horror to teach kids moral lessons. I think this, in its own way, shows his thoughts on how the world should work. To put it the best I can into words, the idea is that no child deserves punishment or to be scared into acting right. The horrifying circumstances experienced by his protagonists are not things they bring upon themselves, and even when they do it is not framed as just punishment. A lot of the time it creates a sadness in the story, like these kids are always caught up in something so awful and so terrible that they do not deserve, because no child deserves this.

For the entire book Beth is belittled and harassed by her new parents all while a presence in the attic attempts to communicate with the young girl through visions, mysterious bouts of good luck, and freak accidents. The book is very much meant to be a mystery in how it presents these events but because Winerva is on the front cover, we the audience already have an idea of what might be going on. I always feel that, and I may be overstepping, this book would have worked better with a different name and cover, something that kept the source of these visions an eerie question in the reader's mind before the reveal.

The supernatural angle of this book has always been difficult to describe when recommending it to people. When one hears the word vision they assume it is something intangible, a hallucination. But the book presents these visions as rolling multicolored smoke that pours out of the nearest cabinet, closet, door etc. From these churning waves of fog visions of the future emerge, people digging an unmarked grave, a young girl running, numerous monsters seemingly looking over a vision of Beth. The monsters always arrive last, overtaking the rest of the visions and even burning or leaving claw marks on the ground. When the visions make contact with Beth she is never harmed but it is absolutely an upsetting thing for a child to see.

Amongst the visions are also messages, small things about her current life. From interacting with the visions she eventually becomes, for the first time, fearful of her situation or rather she is given awareness of the abnormality of it all. This acts as the impetus for Beth to try and escape suburbia, but as much as she walks the young girl is always on the same street, the same patch of grass, the same mailbox always greets her tired eyes. The book does an amazing job of making suburbia feel like an extant entity, something that greedily holds onto its residents, not allowing a single one to escape.

Throughout the book the couple who adopted Beth are constantly experiencing migraines, which they at first blame on allergies, and then on the sun, and then on Beth. They clearly know something supernatural is going on, something which leads them to blame Beth, but refuse to give an explanation on why they are punishing her. Eventually this comes to a head when the mother and father return home one night. Even before a vision arrives Beth knows they intend to do something bad to her from their expressions alone. Panicking she tries to find a place to hide and ascends into the attic.

Here we finally meet the thing named Winerva. The puppet is described as laying on the floor of the attic with the presence of a dead curled up spider, and her eyes having an uncomfortable sickliness to them. It is the eyes that immediately let Beth know this discarded bundle is alive.

This is also where we learn something extremely fascinating about this book's depiction of the character: She can only communicate through fear. It answers Beth’s questions with possibilities of bad things that could happen or visions of scary things experienced by others. Through all this we learn it has no intention of hurting Beth, it just hoped to scare her out of this chain of events. We learn that, for years, this couple has been murdering children that “nobody will miss” and burying them. How or why or even when they came into possession of Winerva is never explained but the two have been, throughout the book, experiencing horrific visions from the puppet as well. They even stitched Winerva's mouth shut in an attempt to mitigate her powers which means everything so far has been the small trickle that leaked through.

This all crescendos when the parents break into the attic, flinging Beth to the side and threatening to burn Winerva for trying to interfere. The way they speak to Winerva even seems to imply the two see the puppet as their child? But it is very vague.

After a short bout Beth is able to cut open the scarecrow seers mouth, giving it a voice once more and unleashing the full brunt of its powers on the parents, in this beautiful illustration you can see the monsters of other Hallowed Halls books joining in the fray to terrify the couple before, in the book’s words, “taking them apart.”

I can only hope she found a place without painted fences and grass lawns, where her hair rustles in the wind, untouched by hot iron.

Earlier I discussed how the visions of horrors eventually help Beth realize the abnormality of her situation, leading her to try and escape her parents, and then her parents attempting to silence the seer. I think this is, perhaps, an acknowledgment of how these types of stories are treated in real life. When this book was released it had parents from all over claiming it was inappropriate for “telling children to be fearful of their parents,” and “exposing children to things they shouldn’t know about until they’re adults,” which I find extremely revealing. Not to get too dark but when these types of stories face censorship it is usually from a group of people deathly afraid of their own children recognizing signs of abuse and trying to resist it or make it public knowledge. Regardless, this short-lived movement was unsuccessful in getting the books removed, in part because the series was just too popular at this point to submit to their demands.

When the sniveling, simpering, shrieking dissidents tried to organize, they could not even find the publisher's address, the stories wanted to be told, and so they made the circumstances possible. I must admit it brought mirth to my puppet body watching them sputter and flail for an uproar that never occurred.

The full version of the illustration on the book cover, in this we can see in more detail Winerva vomiting up visions and entities from her jagged cut open maw. The visions start at her mouth with simple spiderwebs filled with scuttling arachnids but as they spread outwards on the page morph into things like ufos, a mummy with fractured elongated teeth, sullen faced dolls, children running through a field, vampires, and bedsheet ghosts.

Opal Eyes

I have been hesitant about discussing Opal Eyes in this article. This stems not from its contents, but more from the fact that this book was the definitive childhood ruining run-in with fiction of my youth. For reasons that will be discussed later, this book was allowed to fall out of print and looking online I was only able to find this one illustration after a full month of searching. I would make an open call for photos of the book cover in hopes that some collector out there could help, but honestly I will consider myself lucky not to ever look at this book's cover ever again.

Trying to write about Opal Eyes is difficult even as an adult, but I will try my best. Originally released to celebrate Hallowed Halls’ first published series of books, this story revolves around the unfortunate circumstances experienced by a little boy named Todney and his family. What is the inciting incident of this story? Todney has started to realize that every year, on his younger brother's birthday, said sibling's eyes grow wider in diameter. Things only get worse from here. The book makes a lot of interesting choices; for starters it never gives us Todney’s brother's name. The novel always refers to the child as “Todney’s brother” or “his brother,” and characters always refer to the sibling as “your brother,” “son,” “darling,” and so on. All possible ways of referring to the character are employed in order to avoid the usage of a name, and the effect it creates is offputting. For convenience sake I will be referring to Todney’s brother as “the Sibling” from here on out.

The novel also never once has Todney’s sibling say anything; no dialogue. He just exists within scenes with an upsetting presence. There are a couple of hints at what could be going on, as usual for these books, such as the parents not remembering their own son's birthday, always forgetting it each year. Or how the Sibling is always staring at the site of an oil spill that ruined the town years before his birth. Finally there’s the detail of Todney not being able to remember the color of his brother's eyes. Besides that, don't expect any explanation for what happens in this story.

As mentioned before, every birthday the Sibling’s eyes grow. They are described as not bulging outwards, but taking up more and more surface area of the boy's face. This is already an upsetting visual, but Klein takes it a step further and gives us the description of colors slowly beginning to mix around and escape the irises, contaminating the surrounding eyeball with ever intensifying colors. They remind Todney of opals, his birth stone. When Todney attempts to bring his concerns about the Sibling’s condition to his parents, they are described as being uncharacteristically aggressive in how they respond. The two yell at him and tell Todney never to bring it up again. The most disturbing part about this behavior to me is that it does not read as the secret side of these otherwise loving and warm people coming to the surface to “show who they really are,” more so it’s like the parents behavior is being influenced by… Something. The book explicitly states their behavior “came from somewhere else” but never elaborates on this.

Fun fact: Every story in the series has its own little write up from Jeffery Klein about what is actually going on in the story. He does this to make sure he is never setting up mysteries that have no answer and to help create an underlying cosmology for the book to work off of! I found this really interesting. Klein has stated these write ups will never be made public, and he’s arranged for them to be burnt upon his death so the answers die with him.

Back to the story however, this book has a way of building up to something awful, something horrible in its sheer mundanity. I'd actually say maybe this book isn’t as exciting for kids to read because it feels more aimed at adults in how it handles the descent into horror. The existence of the Sibling and his strange changes are the only unusual aspect amongst a very plain backdrop. The family goes about their domestic routines with little care for the danger which grows closer each year.

Then, abruptly, the Sibling hatches. Some of this book's details are lost to me but I vividly remember the Sibling being described as “hatching,” only a thin string of skin separating the space between his eyes, which now reach to each ear. The Sibling eats the father, then the mother, then his screaming brother Todney. There are other things to be discussed of course, such as what unusual powers the Sibling has, but I’d like to note that this story exists as a very bloody violent image in my memory when in actuality the story contains not a drop of blood except for the illustration. I think that speaks to the effectiveness of writing to create such strong reactions in us. It can make us remember events with gruesome details that never were mentioned. But speaking of the illustration, this is the only time in the series that color was used in a book, for the eyes of the Sibling.

At what point does the out of place element become perceived as abstract and repulsive to the observer? Something replaced or always there? Brought about by the conditions that made such horrors possible. Malice does not form spontaneously in a bottle much less in the wonderstruck eyes of a child.

Illustration from the book, it depicts an overly pleased child, in his pajamas, holding the arm of his mother between two hands. He’s in the middle of taking a bite out of the wrist and blood dangles from the wound all the way up to his mouth. Above the mouth is a face marred and mutilated by whatever’s hatching underneath, in place of the usual eyes are two bulbous spheres that swirl with every imaginable color, as they grow the skin around them peels back in their wake.

The Sibling elicits a visceral response from me, I used to have nightmares about him. In the story he had the ability to unlock doors with his stare and make people act upon his will, which did nothing to calm my fears as a child. There was also no hesitation in eating his entire family. The book made a point to emphasize there was nothing good in this child, which is why Jeffery Klein later requested it be allowed to fall out of print. When asked, Mr. Klein said he found the message the story gave to be a pretty bad one, the idea of some children just being born evil. The author did not feel comfortable with letting the work exist and so the decision was made to discontinue Opal Eyes.

Hallowed Halls, Selection of Novels