One summer when I was a kid, our neighborhood was terrorized by raccoons. It really wasn’t as dramatic as I’m making it sound, but they would often knock over our trash or freak us out when we were walking home from the playground after dark.
We were warned that raccoons can carry rabies. So, to us, that meant that every raccoon carried rabies, and we didn’t want to get rabies, or worse, have to get rabies shots.
If you look at the cover of Mark Berton’s horror sci-fi novel, Aroughcoune, it might not be apparent at first glance that the creature silhouetted against the moonlight is a genetically modified, rabid racoon. But that’s exactly what our heroes are up against in this classic cat and mouse game. And while I know a raccoon isn’t the first killer animal you might think of, I totally get it. Below is my review of Aroughcoune followed by an interview with Berton about his book and writing.
Aroughcoune plot summary
Aroughcoune, pronounced “arrow-coon,” for reasons that are explained early on in the book, opens with a seemingly knowledgeable tracker named Doug Slotter on the hunt for “the creature” that he has been tracking through the wilderness for several hundred miles. He has now landed in Pennsylvania and has come across the carcass of a small raccoon which he believes was rabid, leading him to believe that this genetically modified creature from a government lab located on Plum Island is now rabid itself.
Cut to Bill and Zin, two teens and best friends who have decided to spend the weekend camping at Algonquin State Park. The two are minding their business when they find themselves caught in the path of the Aroughcoune, and their evening is promptly spoiled.
Another unassuming prey is Monique McKesson, a game warden for the park who is wrapping up her shift when the creature attacks. An indigenous herbalist who lives in the park named Mingan Jones also comes to the rescue, offended by the existence of this scientifically grown creature and eager to end its life and release its trapped and tormented soul from its body.
As these four struggle to survive the night, they are met with ruthless attacks from the relentless creature. Each character comes face to face with their own mortality and must make tough choices that will help define what type of person they are in a life or death situation.
The story
I picked up this novel at a horror convention. Normally, books sold at horror conventions tend to be more fantasy and series based. But this novel caught my eye with its striking cover and Pennsylvania setting.
This book is perfect for those kids who grew up watching the original Jurassic Park movie or other “survive the night” stories which create these episodic events that these characters are tasked with surviving. The violence is brutal, and our heroes get thrown around like rag dolls while the unfortunate victims of the Aroughcoune are left decimated.
However, the gore and violence doesn’t come across as gratuitous. It’s simply nature’s response to the disease, and each death is treated very realistically and sensitively. Berton doesn’t try to populate the story with throw away characters just to fill the pages with gore and violence. Instead, the violence is meant to heighten the stakes and keep us rooting for the heroes to not only survive but make it out in one piece.
I love how, even early on in the book, the characters appear to find a way out of danger only to have danger come rushing at them, cornering them and forcing them to survive another attack. Knowing how many pages were left in the book, I found myself willing the characters to take the Aroughcoune out with each encounter, knowing that there was still a lot more story left to tell.
Throughout, Berton populates the story with random facts that show how little the average person knows about survival skills, weapons, and how to treat serious injuries. So, the simple solutions we as an audience shout in our heads at the characters while our adrenaline is pumping turn out to be based in ignorance and lack of experience.
Pacing and tone
The story is also well-paced. There’s a lot of action and intensity, but Berton also leaves room for characterization and downtime where characters can regroup and hash out what just happened, what they’re going to do next, and what life experiences have led them to that conclusion.
There’s a tendency in horror to end abruptly, either when the characters triumph or meet their demise as a result of the events of the story. This book leaves room at the end to flesh out the aftermath and how each surviving character is affected by these events. It’s clear from the moment it begins that it will be a life-defining evening, but this story wants its readers to know how life-defining it is.
The characters
The characters Aroughcoune are all diverse and all likable. It gives the story an enthusiastic quality in a time when stories tend to lean towards anti-heroes and other severely flawed characters who challenge the reader’s ability to root for them.
Bill and Zin are truly undeserving victims who have done nothing to warrant this nightmare scenario. They also end up with the brunt of the injuries and attacks.
McKesson too finds herself working overtime when her final task of the evening, cutting down a tree so that she can drive out of the park after her shift, turns into a chase through the woods and into a frigid river to escape the hydrophobic creature.
McKesson keeps a very human yet very level-headed attitude throughout the night. She’s also heroic and knowledgeable. The ordeal doesn’t change her, but it does change her perspective about what goes on well above her pay grade.
Mingan is a curious, well-rounded character as well. This curiosity gets him into the ordeal, but his spirituality keeps him involved. Yet, he’s not a two-dimensional “magical character” who has all of the answers. He’s flying by the seat of his pants just like the others, yet he frames the situation as a learning opportunity above all.
The message
I feel like the message of this book is to determine how far you’re willing to go to save your life and the lives of others, whether it’s your best friend or a stranger you’ve never met. These characters are driven by their desire to go down fighting if necessary, not because they are ordained with a type of superhuman bravery but because they are good people who don’t want to see others suffer.
As for the “villain” of the story, the Aroughcoune represents the long leash that certain entities drag to the limits without any regard for consequences. To Mingan, it represents an abomination of nature that is as much a victim of itself as those who are trapped in the park with it overnight. The last 40 pages or so flesh this out in more detail than I want to disclose at the risk of providing spoilers, but there is more to this than just a monster in the woods story.
My recommendation
I recommend Aroughcoune to anyone looking for a simple “man vs. nature” survival story with a touch of sci-fi and horror thrown in. This book was difficult to read at night because the action would keep me awake and alert as I went along for the ride.
Aroughcoune is a pretty short novel, but it’s tightly packed and feels like the appropriate length for the story it tells. I found myself flipping back to the beginning chapters at the end in order to pick up on details I’d missed or were unclear at first so that I could read them with the hindsight of knowing what all has gone down.
What are your favorite creature stories? Leave your answers in the comments below!
My rating
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An interview with Mark Berton
What inspired the idea of making your creature a raccoon?
I read about different animals used by various intelligence/military agencies around the world for clandestine or combat operations. Rats, dogs, dolphins all have been used because of their intelligence and trainability.
Raccoons fit right into this mold because they are extremely versatile. They solve complex problems on their own, formulate strategies to accomplish their objectives and they have fingers that can hold items similar to people, so that dexterity would be invaluable in a military environment.
I love science, so I wanted everything in the book to be “Mythbuster Plausible.” The fact that they would breed raccoons for war is something that fits the bill.
Did you plot the story out first, did you have certain scenes planned in advance, or did the story come about as you wrote?
All of my English and creative writing teachers would frown, but I never outline anything. I just don’t think that way. I let the story take me where it goes. It’s like walking a big dog with too much energy – eventually you’ll get to where you’re going, but there’s going to be a lot of side quests along the way.
It’s also very challenging. I’ve had to scrap entire chapters or scenes because I painted my characters into a corner that just didn’t work. The trade off is that you really have to think your way out of problems, which boosts creativity and unorthodox methodology when dealing with tropes.
Have you ever gone on a paranormal or cryptid hunt? If so, do you have any stories you can share?
Full disclosure – I live for science. I see the world as science, so I love the paranormal and cryptid lore as Houdini loved hunting mediums: I love a good ghost story, but I don’t believe in an afterlife.
I believe there are plenty of species that we haven’t cataloged yet, but I don’t believe there’s a lone sasquatch roaming the woods for decades that has never been seen on one Ring camera or drone. Plus, for me, the real world is much, much darker and scarier.
Some of the things I’ve seen when I was a reporter were pretty disturbing. A lot of the Graaf State Hospital parts of Aroughcoune are based on Dixmont State Hospital, which was the subject of my first book.
When I was researching that, people familiar with Dixmont would tell me all kinds of wild tales about what went on there. Then I would interview former staff members and find that it was mostly urban legends.
The stigmas that plague people with mental health issues get exaggerated when you couple them with a physical monument to those afflictions. The truth is, all past medical treatments seem barbaric by today’s standards, and mental health treatment was no different. This leads to outlandish tales from laypeople with wild imaginations.
Do you have a favorite character and a non-spoiler moment featuring that character?
Definitely McKesson because she was so challenging to write. Most of the other characters are just different facets of my personality to one degree or another, McKesson was entirely made up of whole cloth.
My goal with her was to not end up getting skewered in some “How not to write women” subreddit. Plus, she’s Black and I’m not, so how do you deal with those realities of living that life? I’ve been fortunate to have been blessed with many Black friends over the years who’ve been honest with me about how they grew up, how racism is a very real part of life for them.
And, having grown up white in the area, I’ve seen the other side of that racism. I’ve heard those words spoken by white people only around other white people and knew which parts of town harbored that hate. I wasn’t looking to make McKesson a figurehead of social commentary in a B-movie equivalent creature feature pulp horror book, but I wanted her to be real. And I hope I’ve achieved that.
The story is set in Pennsylvania. How important was the setting in telling your story? How did you want the area to come across to readers?
They say write what you know, and I’ve only ever known Pennsylvania intimately enough to base a story here. In that regard, it was essential and became another character.
I fudged the geography to fit the needs of the story. If we’re talking reality, the book’s boundaries would stretch from Pittsburgh to State College, but I had to condense things a bit to make everything work.
How I wanted it to come across? I guess like any other Pennsylvanian – that it’s not just Steel City, Amish Country, and Philadelphia. Pennsylvania is a beautiful state, especially if you love nature. I’ve never lived a day without seeing a tree here. When you have that kind of scenery, it’s easy to drop your story into the middle of it all.
Are there any Easter eggs in the novel you’d be willing to share?
Everything in there is distilled through me. I’m not sure exactly what you’re referencing, and I could get into specifics if you sent me an example, but I call out my own idols and trash those who I disdain in real life.
So, if you’re reading about how Zin’s recalling Led Zeppelin songs in his head as he’s walking through the woods, it’s a safe bet that I’m a Led Zeppelin fan. Jeremy Wade, Gordon Ramsey, John Carpenter, Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen King are all mentioned in passing and all are inspirations of mine or people I admire for their talents.
The only person who that doesn’t apply to is John Fogerty. I’m not a fan of his or CCR, per se, but I needed a baseball song reference for a particular bit towards the end of the book and “Center Field” was the only thing I could think of that would have mass recognition.
If the book is made into a movie, who would you want to play the main characters?
Wow, you’re jumping to the movie, and I’d be happy with a graphic novel! This is very hard for me because I’m terrible on current pop culture, but here goes:
Wes Studi as Mingan, Ajiona Alexus as McKesson, Caleb Brown as Bill, Levi Miller as Zin, Walton Goggins as Slotter and Giancarlo Esposito as Passenger. Nicholas Cage would be an excellent Slotter, but given that this would be my first Hollywood film, I doubt we’d have budget for him!
What’s next for you?
I’m currently working on a sequel under the working title of Ghostmother. So far, it brings back Bill and Mingan in a quest to defeat an evil shaman who’s trapped himself inside a fetish stone that would give him the power to rule the world.
My publisher is British, so their idea of YA for Aroughcoune is more liberal than what I would consider American YA fiction to be. So, while there’s nothing wrong with YA at all, I don’t want to be pigeonholed into one age range, either.
Ghostmother is going to be a lot darker and more horrific than Aroughcoune. I’m trying to unleash my inner Clive Barker with Ghostmother to present something that goes for the jugular that’s not dumbed down.
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