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The Adirondack Witch is a 2022 horror novel by Patrick Reuman.
It concerns grieving widower Hank taking two of his friends on a hiking trip he had planned to go on with his late wife only for the three of them to come upon something supernatural and malicious...
The Adirondack Witch contains examples of:
- The Alcoholic: Hank has taken to hitting the bottle frequently since Mary died. He has a particular fondness for brandy.
- All Just a Dream: Well, delusion. There was no witch; Hank committed all the murders himself. His wife isn't even dead; they're just divorced.
- Always Night: The first indicator that something is wrong is that it's pitch-black at 7am. The moon and stars are nowhere to be seen.
- Anyone Can Die: By the end, Hank is the only one alive. Jennifer, George, and Eve are cut to pieces, Jake is burned to death, and Jackie has her neck broken. We never see what happened to Scott, but he doesn't emerge from the mountain even after Hank escapes.
- Closed Circle: Eight people trapped together at the top of a mountain, trapped by some supernatural force.
- Demonic Possession: Charlie is taken over and made to commit the murders by the witch...Only not really. Charlie doesn't exist.
- Developing Doomed Characters: A lot of the earlier chapters are spent developing the characters met on the hike. Only Hank is alive by the end.
- Driven to Suicide: Hank's mom and sister are concerned that this is his true intention for the hike. He doesn’t think it's any of their business whether he does or not.
- Dwindling Party: First Jennifer goes missing in the night, then Eve runs into the forest because she thinks she sees Jennifer in the trees. Then George is taken by something in the night. Hank finds their bodies cut to ribbons later. It dwindles even further later. Sometime after being separated from Jake, Jackie (who both abandoned him, thinking him responsible for the disappearances), and Scott, Hank finds Jake being burned on a cross made of human bones.
- Eldritch Abomination: Implied. The witch is never presented as human or something that used to be human. Hank ultimately comes to the conclusion that she is the mountain itself somehow. The ending reveals that she's just a figment of Hank's deranged mind.
- Flashback: Hank has regular ones to his relationship with Mary.
- Happily Married: The impression we're given of Hank and Mary's marriage. As the story goes on and we get more flashbacks, it turns out their relationship was collapsing pretty badly, to the point of divorce, as it turns out.
- Jerkass: Jake, one of the other hikers Hank, Scott, and Charlie meet on the mountain. He likes subtly antagonising the others and tries to freak them all out.
- Law of Inverse Fertility: Hank and Mary tried multiple times to have a child (despite Mary not really wanting to), but it never happened.
- The Lost Lenore: Mary, Hank's late wife. Turns out she isn't dead. Hank is insane and they've been long divorced.
- Outliving One's Offspring: Two other hikers, Eve and George, are there because of their late daughter.
- Shout-Out:
- Hank imagines the plot of The Blair Witch Project when he starts getting the creeps during the hike.
- Hank has an absurd thought about Lord of the Flies when he has to camp at the top of a mountain with a bunch of strangers.
- Split Personality: The final chapter reveals that Scott and Charlie were never real and Hank was always hiking alone. Charlie never killed all those people under the influence of a witch; Hank did it in his delusion.
