“It gets lonely down in the dirt….” Five young adults make the mistake of partying in a haunted, Heian-era manor in Cassandra Khaw’s hotly anticipated horror novella Nothing But Blackened Teeth. I had the pleasure of interviewing Khaw last month to get their thoughts on haunted houses and the horror genre. And then I devoured this bite-size novella in just a few sittings. If you’re looking for a horror story to eat like candy on Halloween, grab Nothing But Blackened Teeth when it comes out next Tuesday, October 19.
Cat pretty quickly gets the feeling that coming to the manor was a mistake. Once upon a time, Philip, Lin, Faiz, and Talia were her best friends—always seeking thrills together by chasing down ghosts and cavorting in abandoned buildings. But something changed; they grew apart and lived their own lives while Cat was left to wallow in her worsening mental health. When the gang gets back together for one last haunted house to celebrate Faiz and Talia’s nuptials, something isn’t right. The group is divided by secrets and insecurities—and the ghosts of this house want to drag them even further apart. Legend has it that a young bride was buried alive in the foundations of this Japanese mansion, waiting for her groom who never came. Each year, another girl joins her beneath the walls to assuage the cold and loneliness. If Cat and her friends aren’t careful, they could easily become just another part of this local legend.
The scariest parts of this horror story are based in reality: Japan really does have a history of burying people alive beneath the foundations of buildings or other large structures like dams and bridges. The practice is called hitobashira, and it was thought to protect the structure from natural disasters or enemy attacks. The characters in Nothing But Blackened Teeth even reference a real-world example: Matsue Castle, said to have involved the sacrifice of a young maiden whose ghost makes the castle walls tremble if anyone dares to engage in her once-favorite activity—dancing—in its vicinity. The activity that seems to upset the ghost of this story’s manor is a happy couple getting married, like the young bride never managed to do. Another factual element of this story is teeth blackening. Throughout Japanese history, it was fashionable—particularly for married women and new brides—to use a dark ink to glaze one’s teeth. This practice is reflected in legends of the ohaguro-bettari, a type of specter from Japanese folklore that appears as a young woman in a bridal kimono whose face is devoid of all features but that signature inky mouth. In Nothing But Blackened Teeth, the eerie smile of the manor’s ghost is described in visceral detail, including even the stench of vinegar and rust that wafts from her mouth, hinting at the ingredients that were historically used to create this ink.
But the novel does not just draw on Japanese legend and folklore; the characters show a modern meta-awareness of horror genre conventions. At one point, just as things start to get spooky, Lin comments on what archetype each of the friends would fit into as characters in a horror movie and who would die first. Later, Cat argues vehemently against splitting up, since that never ends well in films. But even as the characters realize that they’re falling into cliché roles, that awareness is not enough to make them change their behavior and prevent further bloodshed. And that is because the true horror of this story doesn’t come from its ghosts. Instead, it is their toxic, festering friendships that inevitably propel these characters toward violence.
If you’d like to join in this misguided mission at a Heian manor, you can find Nothing But Blackened Teeth on shelves later this month (October 19). Or you can preorder it now and support The Gothic Library in the process using this Bookshop.org affiliate link. Once you’ve finished it, let me know what you think in the comments!