I love Halloween! I’m all about ghosts, witches, ghouls, monsters, messages from the grave and every scary trope you can imagine. My October TBR is filled with the creepiest tales I can find. So with Halloween a week away, I began to wonder what would Rising Starlook like if I’d written it as a horror novel rather than a contemporary young adult book. So I gave it a stab…(pun intended!) and came up with this:
In Cursed Star Book One of The Damnation of Dani Truehart young adult series, Dani’s overbearing stage-mom, Jodi comes across a necklace in antique shop in their neighborhood she’s never noticed before .
The shopkeeper at first refuses to sell it, hinting that it is more than just a necklace; it is too powerful and dangerous for him to part with. He ‘accidentally’ reveals it is an ancient talisman that allows the wearer to achieve their wildest dream, but that every dream has a cost.
Unfazed by the ominous foreshadowing, Jodi uses every trick she knows to persuade the elderly shopkeeper into selling her the necklace, convincing him she doesn’t believe his far-fetched tale and just wants a good luck gift for her daughter’s big audition. Handing over an ancient velvet box with the necklace tucked inside, the satisfied smirk of the devilish shopkeeper goes unnoticed by Jodi as she rushes out of the shop, blinded by her dreams of impending fortune.
Why would money-hungry Jodi ask for fame for her daughter rather than herself? Well, there’s always at least one gaping plot hole that never makes sense in every good horror story, so I say this is mine.
After all in Poltergeist when Teague moved the headstones to build the Cuesta Verde neighborhood, we’re supposed to believe none of his construction guys ever unearthed any of the hundreds of bodies from the burial ground while excavating the foundations and basements for the houses. And no one in the entire development had thought to put in a pool before the Freelings. Not to mention that the psychic Tangina never heard a peep from the horde of restless spirits buried in the backyard before she declared “This house is clean”. Viewers around the world happily ignored these holes because the movie scared the beejeezus out of them so I’m sure this glaring gap in reality works for my story, too.
Fast forward through the discovery of intricate instructions for a magical ritual that will lead the wearer of the necklace to their heart’s deepest desire conveniently concealed in the lining of the box, Jodi gifts the necklace to Dani the morning of her big audition making her promise to never take it off. The necklace transforms Dani’s voice into the mesmerizing call of a mythical Siren and she is instantly offered a record contract with legendary music producer, Jenner Redman.
With her recording contract secured, everything seems to be falling into place for Dani as famed song writers are dying (some literally) to write songs for her and her growing fan base would kill to be near her the moment they hear her sing. But when her vocal coach Martin Fox is suspicious about the changes in Dani’s voice and somehow connects it to the appearance of the cursed necklace Dani refuses to take off, tension between the long-time friends builds.
As Dani spends more time with Jenner in the studio locking down hits for her debut album, she pulls away from her friends and family who are upset at how much she has changed since she signed her music contract. Her physical appearance deteriorates the closer she comes to completing her first album.
Martin winds up in the hospital after trying to unclasp Dani’s necklace while she naps. Jodi warns him to stop investigating the necklace. Friends and family who question Dani’s unhealthy appearance and obsession with music mysteriously meet with similar freak accidents and near-death experiences.
Unable to relate to her loved ones and obsessed with finishing her album, Dani collapses after recording her final song. No doctor seems to be able to find a cure.
Worried that the wealth she dreamed of might die with her daughter, Jodi returns to the antique shop hoping to find a miraculous antidote only to find the shop appears never to have existed and no one remembers seeing it. Keeping vigil at Dani’s bedside, Jodi confesses what she has done to Jenner, burying her face in her hands as she cries.
“I told you the necklace was powerful. Your daughter must pay the price for her dreams. The Sirens demands it.”
Shocked, Jodi looks up and sees Jenner momentarily transformed into the ghastly grinning face of the shopkeeper, before he morphs back into his normal appearance. Jenner reveals himself to be an ancient mariner whose fate was tied to the Sirens thousands of years ago when he survived a shipwreck caused by their hypnotic singing.
He explains that the Sirens were water nymphs cursed by Demeter for failing to protect her abducted daughter. They were thought to have perished, but their spirits live on in the cursed necklace that once belonged to one of them.
Anyone who wears the necklace becomes a Siren, blessed with a voice of a goddess, but doomed to kill those who hear her song. Dani may pass the necklace on to someone new, releasing herself from the curse and dooming another. But she will die the instant she takes it off. The only way to break the curse forever is if the wearer refuses to kill anyone and accepts she will slowly waste away for refusing to honor the Siren’s thirst for blood. In all the eons since the Sirens were cursed, no one chosen to end the curse.
A string of disappearances and dead bodies share the headlines with Dani as her fame becomes legendary. Will Martin recover in time to keep Dani from killing fans as she tours the world? Or will Dani’s thirst for blood strengthen as her fame grows, putting anyone who hears her cursed song at risk?
Guess you’ll have to find out next Halloween…Happy Haunting!🎃👻