Tread Softly

Two families go camping in the California mountains. They cross paths with a backwoods witch and her murderous son. They kill the son and escape but not before the old woman puts a curse on them. The families return home, eager to put the horrific trip behind them, but strange things start happening. Small things at first. One slips in the shower. Another gets cramps in both legs while swimming in the pool. But soon, the coincidences begin to pile up. People end up in the hospital. Or worse. Soon, the remaining unharmed members travel back to the mountains to deal with the witch and remove the curse.

Tread Softly (later published as Dark Mountain in the U.K.) was Laymon’s twelth published novel and his most ambitious yet in terms of cast. There are twelve principal characters and Laymon shifts between eight of them to tell the story. There’s a classic Laymon sequence to open the story where we’re introduced to the witch and her son, but then it’s a bit of a jumble as he brings in the two families. It’s a bit odd that the two families would be close enough to vacation together, yet their teenage children wouldn’t know each other. Anyway, things smooth out once Laymon gets the characters introduced and into the woods. It’s a cliched setup (hikers stalked by mountain psychos) but Laymon uses it to engender us to some of the characters, and it almost pays off.

In the second half the setting shifts back to suburban Los Angeles. We’re no longer in a predictable setup. The curse takes effect, winnowing the cast. There’s a well-done scene involving two teens on a first date that ranks among Laymon’s best to date. While Laymon may have overextended himself in the first half, he seems much more comfortable in the second.

But as good as the second half is, it can’t quite justify the first. Some characters never pay off. Flash’s wife and twin daughters are underdeveloped. The cousin feels like a plot convienience. And the mountain witch and her son are forgettable.

Tread Softly feels like an exercise for Laymon. He takes what is, for him, a familiar plot, and stretches himself by writing from a larger number of viewpoints with a larger cast of characters. For fans of the author it may be an interesting look into his development as a writer, but others would do well to skip it.