Through the Woods by Emily Carroll

Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2014

ISBN: 978-1442465954

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition

Carroll’s Through the Woods includes five short sequential art stories, each one atmospheric and eerie. In “Our Neighbor’s House,” sisters Mary, Beth, and Hannah are left on their own after their father goes out to hunt, with instructions to venture to the neighbors’ house if he did not return by the end of the third day. When he does not return, they do not obey his instructions. Mary disappears, followed by Hannah, leaving only Beth. Before her sisters vanished, they talked of man smiling man wearing a wide brimmed black hat. Beth ventures out to her neighbors’ house, only to meet the strange man, who is not a man.

“A Lady’s Hands are Cold” tells the story of a newlywed couple venturing to his estate, which the heroine discovers to be haunted. A ghostly song leads the new bride through the vast mansion where she picks up deeply disturbing items left throughout the rooms, in the walls, pieces of a woman’s body. As I wrote in my Ax Wound review of Through the Woods in 2017, the song can be considered a character on its own. The winding blood red ectoplasmic ribbon that runs through the panels with white lettering is incredibly effective. After seeing how Carroll uses red in this story, I reread it and saw the implications of the colour itself. The man uses and consumes everything he possesses, including the women in his life. He uses them to death.

In “His Face All Red,” a man confesses to the murder of his brother. The brothers went out to hunt a mysterious beast that had been harassing the village. At the town hall, the young brother volunteers to track and kill the creature, but nobody takes him seriously until his brother stands smiling and declares they will hunt the beast together. He returns home after burying his brother with a story of avenging his brother. Afterward, he takes his brother’s place in the village. But what can he do when his brother comes back?

“My Friend Janna” centers on best friends Yvonne and the titular character. People wanting to talk with their dead relatives travel to visit Janna, who communes with spirits. What they don’t know is that it is all a ruse committed by the two friends. They want to stop, but people just keep coming, yearning to have contact with their loved ones one more time. Yvonne sees something following Janna, but is afraid to tell her friend.

In “The Nesting Place”, opens with the story of a monster that lived in the cellar with thousands of teeth, and a mysterious fog that fell over the town that contained many mouths. Bell’s older brother, Clarence, picks her up from the boarding school to stay with him and his fiancée Rebecca in the countryside after the death of their mother. She is warned by the housekeeper never to wander into the woods near the house, lest she become trapped there as Rebecca had. Bell sees strange things while she stays with Rebecca and Clarence: Rebecca’s teeth seeming to clack inhumanly as she eats, the strange red marks on the housekeeper’s wrists, and seeing Rebecca wander into the forest Bell was warned against exploring.

The five stories are situated between two short pieces. The beginning tells the story of a young girls’ fear of turning off the light at night after she was finished reading lest something pull her into the darkness. The piece at the end of the book presents a story of the same girl dressed in a red cloak walking home through the dark woods, curling up in her bed, and breathing a sigh of relief at the wolf not finding her…yet.

Rereading this after a few years hasn’t changed my mind. Through the Woods is a must-read for those who enjoy atmospheric and period piece horror. While Carroll does not indicate dates of any kind in her stories, it is easy to place time periods in which the stories are set based on attire, environment, and backgrounds in her artwork. Her use of color is deliberate and communicates very specific information to the reader. It’s a hauntingly beautiful graphic novel.

Highly recommended

Reviewed by Lizzy Walker