The Lost

When the protagonist of this potent gothic horror tale describes its unnerving revelations as ""images out of nightmare, shuffled and presented to our gaze like slides on a flickering screen,"" he could just as easily be referring to the epistolary narrative that Aycliffe (The Matrix) uses to give his literary nightmare the discomfiting feel of reality. Michael Feraru's ill-fated trip to Romania to reclaim Castel Vlaicu, the legend-haunted estate his family abandoned after fleeing to England at the end of WWII, unfolds through linked journal extracts, letters and press clippings that grow increasingly ominous the closer he comes to achieving his objective. On the surface, they relate Michael's painstaking excavation of his family's buried history, which is tainted with hints of vampirism and ghoulish atrocities well known to the locals. At a deeper level, they capture Michael's subtle transformation from naif to nascent monster, as the hereditary curse he unwittingly reactivates perverts his ambition to turn the castle into an orphanage and insidiously works its effect through him on loved ones back home. Aycliffe channels with finesse the undercurrent of terrible fear that runs through the novel, orchestrating Michael's investigations into the forbidden past and his travels through the bleak Romanian wilderness into a single irreversible descent into the heart of darkness. (Oct.)