Strange things have been happening at the Orsk store. Between the time the store closes at night and opens in the morning, glassware is being broken, shelving is falling down, strange substances are appearing on sofas. And Corporate has timed their visit to coincide with the mysterious destruction. So what is store manager Basil to do but stay overnight with a couple of his employees to find the person or persons responsible for the damage? Needless to say, they got a lot more than they bargained for.
I am not a big fan of ghost stories or horror stories or anything like that. But when I heard the description of Grady Hendrix's Horrorstor, I knew I wanted to read it anyway. This is the story of an Ikea-type superstore that is being haunted and what the employees go through to try to figure out how to stop it.
Formatted to look like an Ikea catalog, much of this book's charm is in its layout details. From the Orsk corporate doublespeak to the maps to the product descriptions (keep an eye on those by the way, as they come into play throughout the story), the minutiae of the corporate lifestyle and self-marketing lays the groundwork for the ghost story in exacting detail.
I read a lot in ebook formats, but for this one, I made a special trip to Barnes and Noble to buy the physical book. And I'm glad I did. This isn't a hugely suspenseful story, and it certainly didn't give me any nightmares. But it was a fun book to read, in the way that Scream is a fun movie to watch every once in awhile. I recommend it, and it won't surprise me at all to see the trailers for the movie version in a year or two. And while it is mostly in good fun, there is an undercurrent poking fun at the superstores that have taken over the American marketplace, and maybe that's where the true fear lies.