Let's Go Play at the Adams

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I have to admit that I held out hope toward the end. Barbara's confinement and torture are a slow burn, and we learn a lot about each of the characters as the children become bolder. This makes the story even harder to read, because we know that Bobby has grown tired of the game, and actually feels bad for Barbara. For a while Cindy even tires of having complete freedom, and considers releasing Barbara out of boredom and because she genuinely likes the young woman. But the McVeigh children threaten them multiple times and have no intention to stop the game until the inevitable ending. John and Dianne are clearly sociopaths, and Dianne is highly intelligent. Paul is barely able to function, and is almost certainly a psychopath. So toward the end, when we dread the obvious outcome, and Bobby actually seems to waver and consider stopping such a monstrous game, the reader grasps desperately at a shred of hope. Alas, The Freedom Five has too much influence on him, and we learn that poor Barbara never really stood a chance. It’ll be interesting to see. From the article I shared about some of Johnson’s life, it doesn’t sound like he was that liked of a family man and I can’t speculate on if his family wants to be involved with it at all.

Dianne – initially described as being tall and boring to look at (when reading this I had to remind myself that a man in his mid-forties writing this book, would still believe a woman would be longing for a girlish figure and to have the boy’s attention, especially in the 1970’s) she blossoms into a young woman by the end. Not in a sexual way, but by having to make solid grown-up decisions. She also transforms from idle participant to a dictator in charge of what will be happening. The author has never written another novel again (He died shortly after publishing this one). There's some speculation as to whether or not this is essentially one massive Author Appeal-fest, but most will tell you, the book is very well-written, and definitely gets under your skin. One review here attests to that.

As you can imagine, things go very horribly wrong for Barbara. The children chloroform her one night and bind her to her bed, really just doing it in the beginning to see if they can get away with it. Once they realize they have full control of Barbara, and that she is completely unable to escape, the game escalates, and pretty much goes exactly where you would expect it to. Ripped from the Headlines: Maybe. Some speculate that it was very loosely inspired by the Sylvia Likens case (which was a tragedy of its own, also involving kids being very cruel to a teen girl, but was of a very different nature than this book). Others say there are more differences than similarities. And so we are left with incredibly long chapters of pure cruelty and torture of a helpless woman with nothing to induce empathy or horror in the witnessing reader. It never really gets under your skin. And you get tired of it fast. Really fast. It’s adrenaline that makes his vision blur as he waits. His hands are shaking, too, and that’s adrenaline as well; as he wipes his eyes, as he steadies his grip on the shotgun, as he takes short breaths, chest aching and burning, unable to breathe. When he dribbles urine into jeans that are already soaking wet from the rain— What could have been a childish prank spirals into a nightmarish meditation on the ethics of power. The children know they could easily let Barbara go at any time...but then they'll get in trouble. But if they don't let her go, they will ultimately get into even more trouble once the adults return. Gradually their excitement over having a captive turns into resentment as they come to understand that Barbara, through her very helplessness, has trapped them in an inexorable chain of events they are now forced to bring to the only possible conclusion. She was supposed to be powerless. Now the very fact that she is their prisoner has exerted an even greater power over them all. And that wasn't part of the plan.

The five kids that make up Freedom Five all go through various, thorough changes. It might be cringe-worthy to some, blasphemous to others, but I got the impression that this was a stab at writing a coming-of-age, psychological-horror tale. While it is based around a political/societal narrative of ‘ what if good people do horrible things,’ I can’t separate the overall plotline as being anything else than coming-of-age. It’s just told from the point of view for a large portion of the book from the murderer’s side. Died Standing Up - Perhaps the only time this trope has had no connection to Badassery. Barbara, due to how she is tied at the end. Fix Fic - At least two professional works, the above mentioned Game's End by Barry Schneebeli, and a subplot in the novel The Abyss by Steve Vance, were born out each writer's desire to save Barbara and/or punish the kids. An interesting note I’ll add here instead of further on, in the Further Reading section – from the link I’ll provide, it appears as though Mr Johnson detested children (though he himself had two daughters from his first marriage) which adds further intrigue to the basis of this story using children as the main characters. Some of what I felt reading this book, I also felt while watching The Strangers (the home invasion movie starring Liv Tyler). The sheer helplessness and hopelessness to be at the mercy of captors who you cannot reason with, who have no empathy, no guilt, no human mercy that you can hang your hat on. I remember the trailer for that film when Liv Tyler asks “Why?” and her captors respond: “Because you were home”. For me, there’s such a chilling simplicity in that response, that something so horrible and violent can occur for no other reason more complicated than that simple fact.

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Ugliness is not a fault of horror literature, it’s an attribute. Darkness is, unfortunately, a part of the human condition. We can choose to pretend it doesn’t exist, or we can try to understand it. We can trivialize it, or recognize its sinister impact. After all, what makes horror horror is empathy. If you can’t sympathize with the victim, it’s not scary. Good writers know how to do this, and the bad ones at least try. But I firmly believe, if more people read horror, more would understand how it feels to be hurt. To be marginalized, taken advantage of, or tortured. To be raped. Redemption Equals Death: In Game's End, a now-teenaged Bobby dies saving a girl who he thought was drowning. She wasn't really drowning, she thought he was cute and was just trying to get his attention. Say what you will about Bobby, but this does redeem him somewhat. When Dr. and Mrs. Adams go to Paris on a summer vacation, young Bobby and Cindy Adams sneak inside their babysytter Barbara's bedroom in the dark of night to chloroform, tie and gag her.