Decades after the murders, he’s moved into the remains of the porn store, newly restored back into a two-bedroom house, while working on a book about what happened there in 1986. Gage Chandler, a moderately successful true-crime writer and native of central California, is our protagonist. The porn store teens are the emotional heart of Devil House, John Darnielle’s third novel, out January 25, but they’re ultimately characters in someone else’s story. It’s also the place where one of them will commit a grisly double murder. It’s a space the teenagers can call their own while basking in the dimming glow of their adolescence. The newly decorated store is an ode to the obscene and occult: an angel made of raunchy VHS covers hangs from the ceiling the roof is covered with a spray-painted mural of a giant ghoul witches and wizards adorn the walls of the video booth arcade in the back. In a blur of long afternoons and sleepless nights, Derrick and Seth transform the shop into a combination of clubhouse and installation art project alongside their friends Alex and Angela. Seth’s imagination begins to run wild, cycling through the possibilities made tangible by a secret space of their own, beyond the province of adult eyes. When the porn store shuts down, Derrick invites Seth to check out the abandoned storefront.

Derrick is applying to colleges - his mother keeps leaving brochures out on the kitchen table, carefully arranging them to look casually placed - but his childhood buddy Seth is facing a less certain future: he’s a good kid, bright and creative, but has never been able to apply himself in school. It’s 1986 in Milpitas, California, and Derrick’s interactions with his friends and classmates seem to crackle with the weight of a new disequilibrium - adulthood, or something close to it, lingers on the horizon, rendering every bike ride home along the scenic route or whispered conversation in the back of Spanish class oddly bittersweet. He even has a part-time job (albeit a secret one working the cash register at the local porn store). Derrick Hall is about as well-adjusted as a teenager can be: affable, responsible, even willing to indulge his parents’ sentimentality as the fall of his senior year flashes by.

The devil house book